Last round of entrant feedback before I get to the comp! Here’s Loose Ends by @Draconis and Elizabeth Tricou. Check out Brian’s review here.
Some things I liked
- The writing and story is hands down my favorite part of this game. Great work; I haven’t interfaced with the Vampire: The Masquerade franchise before but I didn’t feel lost or out-of-the-know while playing.
- The icons, while not without their faults, were a great addition. As they are now they’re more ornaments but it’s a nice change of pace to see these. More IF games should incorporate icons.
- While this may be due to the game drawing from an existing IP, the world feels large and interesting to explore.
Some suggestions
Pacing or reducing the number of options shown.
Off the bat, I’m hit with 5 different options for dialogue in the first scene while diving deeper into the case with the client; one of these choices open up 5 more dialogue options, some of which don’t disappear. Later on IIRC I see 8 choices come up to me. I understand there’s a lot to cover but at the very least the number of choices shown should be managed.
For example, the discussion with Varkonyi at the beginning can be segmented into sections devoted for a specific question.
Explaining what the icons mean.
Since they’re only applied to certain choices, I assume they indicate some particular meaning about said choices. But so far I can only assume that they’re related to the traits we chose in the beginning? It’d be helpful to know more about what exactly they’re signifying. Though the star icons in the inventory that indicate what items you haven’t examined yet were good.
Giving more details when thinking about the current situation.
I like how I get a quick summary of who I am and the status of my relationships but it feels a little misleading that I don’t get a quick summary on the current stage of the case. Giving a quick line or two about what I need to do next might be helpful, especially since there’s so many things to remember.
Wrap-up
I can tell a lot of effort and care went into making this entry. I’m excited to see how the game turns out!