The control scheme is "A" to go left, "D" to go right, "W" is essentially up, but only works to enter buildings, which are "up" from the player's perspective, and "S" is to go "down" in a sense, because most of the things you interact with are on the ground, or "down" from the player's perspective.
"Q" and "E" both toggle your tool, which dictates what action is available to "S". Through out my playthrough, I found it frustrating to switch to "hand" tool, simply because the hand interactions didn't feel intuitive. There was a point early in the game where I was confused why I couldn't perform an action and it turned out to be due to having my shovel equipped and not my hand.
Now for my suggestion: Instead of "Hand" being just another tool you need to equip, there should be a dedicated key press for it. I recommend either the spacebar, or "Q". "E" for "equip tool" is a perfect association and is quite common in these kind of games. Spacebar is often used as the action or interact key, so that would be my first choice.
Using this control scheme the game play loop would be more fluid, as the player moves along they can focus on either using the equipped tool, or interacting with items. They can be pulling weeds with "S" and as they pass the recycler they can quickly dump their trash in by pressing Spacebar or "Q" as opposed to stopping to switch their tool.
(I would even take it a step further and suggest maybe collecting tools unlocks new actions, as opposed to switching tools. What I mean is, instead of forcing the player to switch a tool and focus on one type of trash, maybe simply having the shovel, axe, and pick in your inventory is sufficient and then the "S" button can interact with grass, trash, rock, and wood. Whereas, when you start and only have the shovel, you can only interact with trash and grass. In this scenario the "S" key is context sensitive and handles the tool switching for you in the background. I don't feel as strongly about this, but it was a thought.)
Thanks for this feedback. This is the first time using the space bar was specifically mentioned, but it was something we considered early on when designing the control scheme. Our goal for this is to make it as simple as possible for most players, including those who've never experienced a game like this on computer before. So we tried to limit the number of inputs as much as possible.
Also, regarding tool switching: originally the UI was exactly as you described. There was no tool-switching and you could simply interact with more things as you collected new tools. However, we quickly discovered that this watered down the gameplay quite a bit, since players could just repeatedly tap the "S" button to discover everything there was to interact with, removing the element of problem-solving and exploration. Also, later on in the game, some objects can be interacted with in different ways using different tools, so a one-size-fits-all interact button wouldn't work.
Since so many people, especially children (who like to play video games) get excited about the animals that will be interacting with us in the paradise, could you put some animal interactions? IE: a squirrel runs up to you and you feed it. A lion walks by. A bear comes to your campsite at night and rummages through your stuff looking for food. You wake up and get him something yummy.
One could also imagine random "idle" animations (when you don't move your character for a while (30 sec for instance), where these animals could come and disappear off screen (right or left) when the player starts moving again.
We know that the main character is a brother, but would it be possible to make it selectable (sister) ? That would attract maybe more players, but it would require rewriting to make it gender neutral ?
I made notes while playing the game, and here's what I came up with:
- Prompt to use the hand tool to pitch the tent any time the player is next to the fire pit until they have the tent pitched.
- Prompt the player clear the garbage until it's cleared, any time they come into the camp site.
- Make the down arrow look more like "press down to continue". currently it looks like a "scroll down for more". Put a box around it? It may just take some getting used to on my part, so take that one with a grain of salt.
- Until the player has used a tool (shovel, axe etc) indicate its use by putting its icon above things it can hit.
- Regarding the opening cut scene - WOW. It did take until the second time around to realize it was a dream that the character woke up from. Could use a "wavy effect" at the end to indicate he's coming out of a dream. Or the alarm clock being IN the end of the dream and then he awakens with a gasp.
> Regarding the opening cut scene - WOW. It did take until the second time around to realize it was a dream that the character woke up from. Could use a "wavy effect" at the end to indicate he's coming out of a dream. Or the alarm clock being IN the end of the dream and then he awakens with a gasp.
I just want to say I really enjoyed the Demo...I really a would like to see slight Character Customization...Examples (Male or Female) Hair Color - Skin Tone - Shirt - Pants - Shoes - Hat. I played through the game three times. We need the ability to cook food in the campfire. Say Berry Tea A Cooked Can of Beans, Fiber Stew, just to name a few. Some of the plants could drop stuff like Potato, Carrots...Or maybe you meet someone or a traveler who knows, how to turn fiber into bread or rice? I can't see you implement a farming aspect to the game, but at least allow players to forge for food and then cook something. In all three of my play throughs I made it to Day 8 - there just isn't anything else to do...Other then that I look forward to seeing the updates that will follow...Question Can we possibly pay for like Early Access? I have like 5 Games on steam where I have Beta and Developer Access to those games...I would love to be able to fund a game that I actually enjoy...Especially a game made by Wittneses for Wittneses.
This is from my third session...No garbage remains and everything that could be chopped is chopped - I still had some stuff in the recycler and the carpenter shop. I did pass out a few times and lost some stuff but I ran out of food...
I'd also gladly pay for early access, but since the Demo has already been released for free, changing it now might not be the way to go. But, if you do a tip jar, paypal.me, or any other crowdfunding (patreon?) type of thing, I'm in. Or, once it's launched, merch and stickers!
@Ryan Flowers Thanks so much for wanting to support this project guys. However, when Jason and I first laid out the plans for this game, we determined that we would not charge anything for the demo. We also don't feel great about asking for donations at this point, since there is no way to guarantee how long this project will last. We have some other ideas about generating a bit of revenue to help us cover our costs so far (like hosting this website), but we probably won't be going the Paypal donation/Patreon route. Thank you again though, it's so kind of you all!
Suggestion : make random natural stuff appears every morning (some sticks, fiber, rocks) so we still have some minor cleaning to do (and gather some basic materials). Grass grows after all, sticks fall from trees... well, rocks don't, but they could appear when things grow and dislodge them ?
Fiber could grow randomly everywhere, but get additional chance to grow near existing fiber ?
If possible, I would really like to see this game support Linux operating systems natively. This can be done easily by utilizing open source game engine APIs (Vulkan, OpenGL) instead of proprietary ones (DirectX).
@Michael Berna Thanks so much for the offer! If in the future we decide to pursue Linux support, VMs will probably be the way to go, but it would be great to have some people to test on physical machines! Thank you for your offer, and we might take you up on that in the future! =D
Thank you for this suggestion! We currently don't have any plans to add Bible characters. Because this project continues growing in scope, we do have to draw the line somewhere!
"I found it frustrating to switch to "hand" tool, simply because the hand interactions didn't feel intuitive." So much this :D
The control scheme is "A" to go left, "D" to go right, "W" is essentially up, but only works to enter buildings, which are "up" from the player's perspective, and "S" is to go "down" in a sense, because most of the things you interact with are on the ground, or "down" from the player's perspective.
"Q" and "E" both toggle your tool, which dictates what action is available to "S". Through out my playthrough, I found it frustrating to switch to "hand" tool, simply because the hand interactions didn't feel intuitive. There was a point early in the game where I was confused why I couldn't perform an action and it turned out to be due to having my shovel equipped and not my hand.
Now for my suggestion: Instead of "Hand" being just another tool you need to equip, there should be a dedicated key press for it. I recommend either the spacebar, or "Q". "E" for "equip tool" is a perfect association and is quite common in these kind of games. Spacebar is often used as the action or interact key, so that would be my first choice.
Using this control scheme the game play loop would be more fluid, as the player moves along they can focus on either using the equipped tool, or interacting with items. They can be pulling weeds with "S" and as they pass the recycler they can quickly dump their trash in by pressing Spacebar or "Q" as opposed to stopping to switch their tool.
(I would even take it a step further and suggest maybe collecting tools unlocks new actions, as opposed to switching tools. What I mean is, instead of forcing the player to switch a tool and focus on one type of trash, maybe simply having the shovel, axe, and pick in your inventory is sufficient and then the "S" button can interact with grass, trash, rock, and wood. Whereas, when you start and only have the shovel, you can only interact with trash and grass. In this scenario the "S" key is context sensitive and handles the tool switching for you in the background. I don't feel as strongly about this, but it was a thought.)
Since so many people, especially children (who like to play video games) get excited about the animals that will be interacting with us in the paradise, could you put some animal interactions? IE: a squirrel runs up to you and you feed it. A lion walks by. A bear comes to your campsite at night and rummages through your stuff looking for food. You wake up and get him something yummy.
We know that the main character is a brother, but would it be possible to make it selectable (sister) ? That would attract maybe more players, but it would require rewriting to make it gender neutral ?
I'd like to have the option to map the controls to different keys yourself.
I made notes while playing the game, and here's what I came up with:
- Prompt to use the hand tool to pitch the tent any time the player is next to the fire pit until they have the tent pitched.
- Prompt the player clear the garbage until it's cleared, any time they come into the camp site.
- Make the down arrow look more like "press down to continue". currently it looks like a "scroll down for more". Put a box around it? It may just take some getting used to on my part, so take that one with a grain of salt.
- Until the player has used a tool (shovel, axe etc) indicate its use by putting its icon above things it can hit.
- Regarding the opening cut scene - WOW. It did take until the second time around to realize it was a dream that the character woke up from. Could use a "wavy effect" at the end to indicate he's coming out of a dream. Or the alarm clock being IN the end of the dream and then he awakens with a gasp.
Hope these help :)
I just want to say I really enjoyed the Demo...I really a would like to see slight Character Customization...Examples (Male or Female) Hair Color - Skin Tone - Shirt - Pants - Shoes - Hat. I played through the game three times. We need the ability to cook food in the campfire. Say Berry Tea A Cooked Can of Beans, Fiber Stew, just to name a few. Some of the plants could drop stuff like Potato, Carrots...Or maybe you meet someone or a traveler who knows, how to turn fiber into bread or rice? I can't see you implement a farming aspect to the game, but at least allow players to forge for food and then cook something. In all three of my play throughs I made it to Day 8 - there just isn't anything else to do...Other then that I look forward to seeing the updates that will follow...Question Can we possibly pay for like Early Access? I have like 5 Games on steam where I have Beta and Developer Access to those games...I would love to be able to fund a game that I actually enjoy...Especially a game made by Wittneses for Wittneses.
This is from my third session...No garbage remains and everything that could be chopped is chopped - I still had some stuff in the recycler and the carpenter shop. I did pass out a few times and lost some stuff but I ran out of food...
What about the ability the change the colors of the clothes ?
Suggestion : ability to cook basic food in the fire (+10 energy food, like the basic food we find during the cleaning).
Suggestion : make random natural stuff appears every morning (some sticks, fiber, rocks) so we still have some minor cleaning to do (and gather some basic materials). Grass grows after all, sticks fall from trees... well, rocks don't, but they could appear when things grow and dislodge them ?
Fiber could grow randomly everywhere, but get additional chance to grow near existing fiber ?
I really enjoy the updates on Instagram.
I hope the forum will get some life with the release of the demo.
If possible, I would really like to see this game support Linux operating systems natively. This can be done easily by utilizing open source game engine APIs (Vulkan, OpenGL) instead of proprietary ones (DirectX).
What about a roadmap and a feature list?
Thank you for this suggestion! We currently don't have any plans to add Bible characters. Because this project continues growing in scope, we do have to draw the line somewhere!
Is there a way that this game should have some kind of missions that is related to the "lore" of the bible ? Or biblical characters ?
Somethings that if you know more the insight book 1 and 2 , that you could know and do something faster... ?
I wish knew you both ! I think we grew up in the same conditions !
Keep the work ! We will need video game in the new world :)