NTC3'S PROFILE

Well, I'm glad you like my writing style, although I wouldn't really have time for any more reviews in the foreseeable future.

I didn't really know that choices had that impact, but it's cool. For me, Skyler was the one staying back, and it just felt natural since she had the heavier armour and such. Guess it is a bit of a second playthrough bonus, kind of like how you don't get the importance of the first choice in A Blurred Line until you replay it and see that the entire first half of the game becomes different.

It's also good to hear that there's a lot more lore that's currently hidden. That way, there's hope we can learn why there are grenades and tanks and such, yet not even the Enforcers use guns, for instance. :) It would also be good to know a bit earlier just why it is that Verdamm is built under a mountain.


Anyway, best of luck.

Another game from Matseb so soon? Cool, I guess, although it's a pity Incitement 3 is still stuck in Greenlight. Anyway, I'm always up for another cyberpunk dystopia, and this feature list you have sounds very impressive. However, the bar has been set pretty high in this genre recently by OMNIS: The Erias Line. You would probably find it quite helpful to check it out, if you haven't already.

All the best.

Firstly, apologies for not replying sooner. My Internet access has been very intermittent the last couple of days. Anyway, time to address this point-by-point:

author=RedMask
I understand that the F12 thing is convenient but it's also not needed. Whereas the script that conflicts with it is very necessary. I apologize but I don't think I'll be able to fix that. Luckily You don't need that function to enjoy the game.

From what I've gathered, this is the way to fix the F12 bug, so if it works, you'll be able to do both.

author=RedMask
You were impressed by most of the graphics but a few graphics seemed low res to you. Please understand my games have zero budget, I am poor, and currently jobless. I might not have time to fulfill everyone's desires.

Well, that is unfortunately true of quite a few devs on here. To clarify my remarks a bit, I was actually referring to the graphics in the temple once the perspective changes (i.e. ones shown in the screenshot), and low-res was probably the wrong word to use. The reason they didn't look good was largely because it's single-shade floor and columns set against a sea of single-shade black. If you just make the shading more interesting and nuanced, it would then look good again.

Moving on you point out a lot of red growth in that screenshot. Yes, from that camera angle you can see a lot of it and yes it is a boundary. Games need boundaries, if you could go past that the Mode 7 effect would be ruined and I can't make my game go on forever.

Of course I understand the need for boundaries; I'm directly involved in developing a game at the moment, believe it or not. However, is there really absolutely no way of peeling all that growth back a bit so they that it is still present, but looks less prominent and leaves more ground for the player to walk on?

How many more things do you honestly expect to be crammed into this map?

7-10 total sounds reasonable, given that I've seen plenty of games on here that managed it. That includes the things you already have, as well as further elements like object descriptions. Speaking of that...

You mention that you wish to read about the weird plants. I wish to not waste players time. I believe players time is very valuable. Have you ever played Metroid Prime? Fantastic game, I love it. In that game they added a scan visor. It let you read a lot about the environment. And that's great and it can add to world building. But tell me this how much of that scanned info do you remember. Probably very little. I would bet you remember 2 or 3 really interesting scans but that's about it.

When you finish a novel, how many paragraphs of it do you actually remember? Probably not a lot, so why not just cut everything besides the plotline itself? It's the same logic here. Also, it's up to the player themselves, not to you, what they do with their time. If they don't wish to read those descriptions, they won't, so there's no problem here. If anything, you're currently wasting a lot more time by calling what should, by all rights, be Hard Mode, Normal.

I have nothing important I wish to tell you about that fantasy plant. If you want to learn about a real African plant there is one in the game the Baobab fruit which is explained in game to be from the Baobab Tree A.K.A. the Tree of Life. Said tree is also featured in my previous game as well. But I'm not a Botanist I don't know everything about the plants of Africa. My research is targeted mostly at the people, art, and culture.

It doesn't have to be about the plant itself. Plenty of games on here use the environmental description as a framing device to let us learn more about the main character, rather than the thing being described. For instance, there's a short game on here called Okiku, Star Apprentice, and at the start, there are some locked rooms. If you try to go there, Okiku herself will say (paraphrasing slightly) "This is room X, but let's not go there. I'm already cleaning out these rooms on a regular basis!" You don't really learn about the room, but you learn quite a bit about the kind of character she is through this kind of reaction. In another game, A Blurred Line, you control three people trying to stop a terrorist during the prologue, and interacting with items triggers short exchanges between them. In one of them, approaching a broken military robot leads to conversation about how it's useless without control, a metaphor for the underlings' situation. People do remember this kind of stuff.

If you find it odd that I should put in a fantasy plant well let me put it this way.
My art is not a simple recitation of my knowledge of Africa I've stated my games are
not documentaries. Every artist puts there own ideas in their work. Price of Persia is not just a recitation of Persian knowledge the artist who made that game put themselves in the work. African art and culture is my inspiration but my work is my work and not simply a replication.

Sure, I get that, and in fact, I never questioned that one aspect.

Speaking of straight educational knowledge I might just bring back the EDU Noks from the last game. Yes the break the 4th wall but it's the best way to separate the fantasy from the real knowledge I can provide. And I will remind everyone that these EDU texts are optional so if your worried about your precious 4th wall than don't read them.

Well, if you do that, you'll lose one of the key draws for this kind of game, which is the ability to experience this knowledge organically as part of the narrative. It's not just fourth wall concerns here; it's that the people in general tend to remember things better when they're directly linked to something they care about, which essentially exactly what integrating the information directly into the narrative does. As a matter of fact, have you wondered what happened to the so-called edutainment genre in general? It actually had been quite prominent during the late 90's and even early 00's, before fading away.

Its decline didn't happen because people were less willing to learn; it happened because as gaming became more mature, the storylines also became more important, and those games universally put their information first and storyline second, frequently separating the two like you're now proposing. This approach just doesn't hold player's interest, because as a rule, if the player puts the information you want to convey first, they'll just go and look it all up on the internet on their own. The kind of people that'll actually stick through playing are those who have some interest in the setting, but are primarily concerned about the way it plays and what actually happens in the story.

If you truly want people to know what you're telling in the game, you need to focus on making the storyline interesting (and the gameplay interesting and balanced, but you know that already.) That way, you'll be able to get even the people with little interest in African myth playing, simply because they've heard it's a great game because of the story it tells, and they'll finish the game with knowledge they never would've gotten otherwise.

I hope that doesn't disappoint you. In fact, I'm not against object descriptions so long as I feel they are worth talking about. For example, if you talk to Lanoa a second time in the shrine before the view shifts to reveal the door, she'll tell Rawjal that the large statue in the room is an oracle used in divination. That to me is interesting and that is the sort of world building dialog I wish to share with my audience.

I remember that bit, but it's actually exactly part of the problem I've covered above. I mean sure, it's an oracle, but so what? Lots of cultures have oracles: what makes this one more important than the rest? It is exactly this kind of reaction you'll get from people not already in love with African culture, aka. the vast majority of potential audience. If you've established the importance of this divination for the people in Lanoa's village earlier, by showing how a prophecy had impacted on someone's life, or something, then the reaction would've been very different. The people would then care about this oracle, because they know that its judgements really did change lives of people back then.

The saving sound goes on for a while because I have a habit in games of double saving and I know others do too. The sound is prominent so that people like me are less likely to waste time doing a double save.

Thing is, not everyone does that, and even when a person does double-save, they think of it as a personal thing, rather than an actual problem with the game's interface. On the other hand, everyone will be hearing this same sound many times throughout the game, and they will consider it the game's fault if it annoys them. Point taken about footsteps, though. Also, one of the first things people tend to do when playing games is press "Escape", since they know it's the default menu key, and when they do, they'll see the option to save there. You don't really need more remainders.

You mention taking issue with my characters occasionally using an American accent. Well I am American I can't help but write the way I do. Plus, I'm no English major. Besides I hate that unwritten rule that every movie about a foreign culture has to use British accents. I love the British accent but I'm not British. I do know an English major, he was kind enough to look through much of Nsala Liberation's text but I can't pay the man. I'm poor. So I don't know if I'll be able to get him on board again.

I'm pretty sure accent refers to the way a person pronounces words, which is irrelevant here, since you have no voice acting. The actual expressions people use is a different matter, especially because those expressions didn't exist back then, and so it takes the player out of the narrative. I appreciate that you've had English major on board once, but you don't really need to. A simpler approach is just to enter the words/phrases you consider suspect into Google search. I just entered "Jeez", for instance, and the second result is a dictionary telling me it's an Americanism, and thus that it should be be removed.

Anyway you take issue with the fact that sometimes Rawjal just speaks her mind without player input. Well she had an established character in NL so she's not a blank slate. I think blank slates are dull as characters. But maybe you have a point maybe I can add more dialog options.

I know, and I like that she's an established character: in fact, this is why I think it might be a good idea to add a prologue of sorts just for her so that people who haven't played NL can get to know her better. And like I said before, that humour just didn't feel very genuine after how difficult the healing was, so it's best to make it optional here.

Anyway, this should be it. Best of luck.


P.S. And as for Nsala Liberation, I'll probably wait for an update, since I'm quite busy now, and there are plenty of games on here for me to review in due time.

Congratulations! It's a little weird that a Greenlit title only has a single review on here, though. I suppose I ought to be free enough by July to add another review. :)

Heh, I actually downloaded it recently purely because it was an unreviewed game (and because I'm now two reviews away from getting my MS past the four-digit mark). Now, I suppose it can remain as it is, now that it seems to have an appropriate rating.