Comments on: IntroComp 2009 reviews /blog/2009/10/introcomp-2009-reviews/ Interactive Fiction by Juhana Leinonen Sat, 28 Mar 2015 22:48:45 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.1 By: Juhana /blog/2009/10/introcomp-2009-reviews/comment-page-1/#comment-337 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:55:08 +0000 /blog/?p=123#comment-337 In reply to Drew.

I’m not a big fan of requiring frustration to solve puzzles, but examine-twice is ok if you hint the player to repeat the action (”You feel that the gizmo would need a second look” or something more subtle), or if the player has learned earlier that the game requires some things to be examined twice. If you’re concerned about the pacing, maybe you could have the scene advance after a fixed timer.

I’m looking forward to the full game, good luck with that!

]]> By: Drew /blog/2009/10/introcomp-2009-reviews/comment-page-1/#comment-315 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:29:28 +0000 /blog/?p=123#comment-315 Thanks for the kind words! In regards to the object you have to examine twice, my thought was that if you were stuck in an area with only one obvious way out you'd naturally wanna give it more than a single glance, and having the player notice what what was wrong on the first look made it too obvious what needed to be done and thus might result in him leaving without exploring or examining surroundings. I imagined people playing through it like examining once, then trying to go other places, then getting frustrated and taking a second look and *then* noticing what's noticed there... because that's exactly how a real human would act in that situation. So at that point the player is acting like Kristen, rather than playing a game. I really appreciate what you say about my mood-building because getting the player in the right 'mindset' for it is what I spend the most time on; if the player isn't sympathising at all with the PC then it's unlikely that he is going to enjoy the game, and though I make her somewhat unlikeable at first the rest of the game delves into what made her that way. But, if you don't care about her to start out with, then none of that will matter to you and there's really little point in playing beyond that point, I'd say. So I have to walk a line on being emotional but not too so; angry but not whiny, vulnerable but not weepy. This is something I cannot gauge at all on my own, I'm far too close to it, so it's good to know that people are responding well.

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