I should probably post this in the long Kerkerkruip discussions thread, but I’m afraid I’ll forget before I’m finished reading…
I think the blindness effects in Kerkerkruip are cool, and I like that blindness isn’t all that big of a hindrance in the game, plus no problem from smoke, flash bombs, reflections, glaring lights or phantasms! But there are some inconsistencies that bother me:
When you’re blind, you can read scroll labels, but you can’t read the scroll labels themselves. Perhaps the game could mention that scroll labels ARE written in braille…?
When you’re blind in the drawing room, you can still examine the drawing. This is kind of weird, though I’m glad for it. Any ideas for how to make this plausible, or to compensate for making the drawing unreadable?
Speaking of the drawing room, maybe I’m just lazy, but wouldn’t it be nice if the “remember” command mentioned creatures you have only seen in the drawing?
Yes, they’re written in braille. I could mention that somewhere.
Hm… I guess that should not be possible. Luckily, starting from version 7, it is now impossible (I think?) to become permanently blind. (I guess you can become permanently blind from wearing a cursed blindfold if the Temple of Sul is not in the dungeon and no scrolls of remove curse are left.)
It might be okay if the goggles of blindness had a balancing benefit, like a spirit bonus… it could even be permanent like the post-pain bonus. Or you could get an attack bonus when fighting in visually distracting circumstances. But there’s no need to do that with the blindfold - the player knows what they’re getting there!
Another alternative would be to replace (or supplement) the scroll of remove curse with an essence. I don’t know all the essences and effects in the game now, so maybe there’s already some other way to remove curses?
Remembering enemies seen in the drawing: I don’t think you can see where the enemies are in the drawing, right? And that means that they shouldn’t be in the remember command. (I guess there could be a separate “you also know that the dungeon contains…” section, but I don’t think it would be worth it.)
The cursed goggles of blindness are supposed to be bad! Trying on clothing or weapons when you don’t know whether there is a way to remove curses in the dungeon is risky, and should be risky. The possibility of getting royally screwed is part of the game.
