Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure

Started by Mr Underhill, Wed 17/12/2014 10:39:56

Previous topic - Next topic

mkennedy

You might want to add an option to wait for the player to click before going to the next dialog. Once the little girl was talking so fast that I couldn't fully read what she was saying. Also maybe a way to view your score and alignment. Will the good or evil choices you make in dialog or actions have significant effects on gameplay? Was a pretty cool demo.

Mr Underhill

I added the dialog thing to our feedback sheet. Right now the stats thing is just there for fun, we'll see if we actually develop it into an actual functional mechanic once we start producing. The good and evil will probably have effects in the game, altering some situations but not the outcome of the game itself.

Mandle

#82
I just played the demo for about 30 minutes on a computer where it works fluidly:

The positive side: The graphics are flawless! The animations are beautiful! I was excited and ready to let the demo take me for however long a ride it had in it, and leave me yearning for more...

But...

I'm going to hide my negative comments so as to not influence others, as they are just my opinions, and also because...

Spoiler

...this might get quite long I'm afraid:

I'm going to list from least to worst issues (and once again: These are mostly just my personal feelings. If nobody else comments negatively on these same points then you can probably just disregard what follows: )

(1) The demo still contains a lot of glitches with certain voice acting interrupting each other, even with the same character interrupting themself at times. There are also glitches with speaking character animations continuing even after the player has clicked to skip the speech and the voice acting has ended due to the skip (the little girl)...I also encountered a glitch interacting with the "hypercollumn" (and I still can't figure out what's wrong with its geometry after having looked at it for quite a while) when I tried the gear interaction with it and it must have overlapped with the exit screen hotspot and Buzz walked off the screen even though he had just started his response...
    Any potential customer is going to be turned off if even the short demo has glitches: It does not bode well for the integrity of the full-length game.

(2) The demo starts partway into the story and actually spoils the opening act by just telling the player what happened previously. WHY would you do this?! Why not just start the demo from the START of the game?! Were the first sections not ready yet, or not interesting enough for a demo?
    So...I'm suddenly thrown into a world and situation I know nothing about except for the vague allusions in the first cutscene. I don't know where I am, who I am, or even what my goals or motivations are. There is no backstory except that the Necronomicon made my cat speak and I'm trying to reverse that. Is this the main goal of the game or just the first imperative that gets me investigating? I have no idea! Nobody told me!
    There is a point where I'm supposed to tell Margo who I am and I'm given a list of choices: I don't even know which one is true as I don't know who I am. I guess I'm the librarian as that choice led to her not challenging my "lie", but I could just as well have been an undercover cop for all I knew...
    I felt zero immersion right from the start because of these problems. I also felt disappointed by having a potentially dramatic opening act already spoiled for me. BUT I thought to just keep slogging on as the graphics and animations were too charming to resist. The voice acting is also really, really good but...well...I'll get to that in the next point...

(3) Was this demo translated from another language other than english? A lot of the responses were quite clunky and lacking in basic grammar ("I don't need to show her a photo of Attractive Guy."...shouldn't it be "an attractive guy" or have we already given him this nickname?). In a few cases the onscreen text and the voice actor said different words: This is always jarring to the player and hints at a lack of professional polish.
    Also, did the voice actors play or view the game before their performance, or receive direction on how their lines should be spoken? There were cases where this did not seem to be so...For example: "There is that woman over there on that bench...". It seems the line should be read "There is that woman...", pointing out to the cab driver a potential customer, but it's just read completely flat so it seems Buzz is just randomly pointing out Margo without reason...
    A lot of the humour fell flat for me because of these reasons, but of course humour is a personal thing so maybe it's just me (Kitteh was pretty funny though mostly)...Also, to paraphrase "The Incredibles": If everything is a joke, then nothing is:
    Guys...not every line of dialogue or description has to be a joke. It really wears on the player. Sometimes it's fine to just say that "It's a taxi." instead of adding "Oh, and obviously it's yellow.". Pace your jokes out and they will stand out, instead of the gems just getting lost in a muddle of also-rans. Pick the ones that are actually funny and cut the rest.
    There is also a case where Buzz is telling me how Buzz feels about something (I think it was the mysterious door) as if he is suddenly the narrator instead of himself...
   
(4) Parody vs Taking The Piss...
    I'd imagine that you are aiming this game at Lovecraft fans, and as a hardcore Lovecraft fan I started to feel more and more that you were taking the piss out of the source material rather than showing a healthy respect for it as a parody.
    I lost patience at the point where Buzz shows the Necronomicon to the Gentleman and they talk about how it's patterned like an argyle sweater instead of being all scary-looking and shit. The "Evil Dead" movies knew when to leave the key horror elements intact, and when to do the comedy bits: That's why they are classics. If you are going to make all the key horror elements into jokes then no Lovecraft fan is going to have respect for your work. Are you going to have the Mythos entities also be bumbling comedic characters? Is Dagon going to show up wearing a Groucho-nose-and-glasses? Is Cthulhu going to speak with a lisp?
    Please....I beg of you....Keep the scary stuff scary and base the comedy around bumbling Buzz trying to deal with it, instead of making a farce out of the mythos. Maybe I just speak for myself here, but I have a feeling I speak for most, if not all, Lovecraft fans.
    Make the game "Reanimator" style...Not "Repossessed" style...PLEASE!!!

(5) This is the point that caused me the most frustration:
    Breaking the fourth wall is a risky and delicate thing in adventure games. By its very definition it breaks immersion, and adventure games live or die by their immersion factor, or else we are right back playing "Collosal Cave" again...
    If it is done once in a while and the jokes are real zingers then 4th-wallers can be good for a tension-breaking laugh and then left off of for the good while needed to reimmerse the player back into the game.
    But, jesus guys...It seemed that every second line was a 4th-waller, and most of them were not zingers.
    You even had Buzz several times directly remind the player that they are playing an "Adventure Game"...
    A few here and there, maybe about 30 mins apart in gameplay, are edgey and cool. A dozen (or more) packed into a short demo get tired and just force the player back into the real world where they are clicking a mouse and looking at a monitor screen.
    Immersion into the story and the characters is where the true magic happens in adventure games and why we hardcore fans still search for the gems that provide this. Your game has such beautiful visuals and character animations that you are already halfway there, and it seems such a waste to me to throw this away on cheap jokes and too many 4th-wallers...

    I realize that this is just the demo, but a demo's job is to show the potential player what they should expect from the full game and, I'm sorry to say that, at the moment, and as an interested player and Lovecraft fan, I would not invest my time or money in the full game based on this particular demo.

    I'm sorry if I seemed harsh in this critique, but remember please that it is only my opinion. I only got harsh because I felt a great opportunity for a really special Lovecraft game may be getting lost along the difficult path you are walking in developing such an imposing project...
[close]

That all being said: Best of luck with the project!

The world needs more good Lovecraft games!!!

Cheers!

moloko

Ah, got to love Mandle. It's soul-crushing, well-documented and elaborate, and, as usual, completely true. If you make a game and manage to take everything Mandle says into account, I'm sure you've just made the best game ever created.

Fitz

#84
Hey, I was expecting to be able to donate my soul to the Old Ones after midnight last night! You better hurry or you will FEEL MY WRATH!!! (laugh)

Madle: Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Spoiler

I will admit sometimes it felt there was too much effort into making every line funny -- but it didn't bother me very much. Nor did I mind breaking the 4th wall. I KNOW I'm playing a game. Bad things happen when people FORGET that ;) I think you're being way too serious about this. Yes, there are some technical issues: I noticed the girl's anim not stopping when her audio does -- but it's not like it breaks the game. A simple code tweak similar to AGS's EndCustcene(); should do the trick. Yes, the creators aren't native speakers of English (they're from Transylvania) -- but language issues can be fixed by having a native speaker proofread it. And finally: do you expect this to turn into a full-blown Cthulhu story? Are you offended by Cthulhu plushies as you are by the the silly jokes, almost as if they were a vicious attack on your faith?

Dude, chill ;)

I get it, if you're considering an investment, you want it to be worth your money. But my impression is that the game would have to change everything that it is for you to approve of it. On top of being absolutely, 100% technically flawless in every way. AAA titles with budgets of zillions of dollars won't guarantee you that. So please, cut a handful of creative people some slack, okay? You made some valid points there, but you made it all sound like "YOU'VE FAILED ME! I HAVE TO STOP YOU FROM FAILING ME AGAIN!!!"
[close]

Quote from: Mandle on Tue 05/04/2016 14:49:22Is Cthulhu going to speak with a lisp?

Not sure about the details, but a certain lisper was promised a role ;)

CrashPL

Quote from: Mr Underhill on Fri 01/04/2016 11:19:06
Hehe, good to see people picking up on the heavy visual influence that CoMI is on Gibbous. Yep, I'm a big Bill Tiller fan, and same here: Curse is one of my favorite adventures AND games, ever. Could be that it holds a special place in my heart because it was one of the first games I ever played on my PC back in '97, but it's definitely not just that. The cartoony graphics were INCREDIBLE at the time, and they still hold up enough that a re-mastered version is not necessarily required visually (although that'd be pretty cool, too), and the humor is absolutely top notch. 

Oh and a juicy tidbit: Larry Ahern, co-director of CoMI, said he'd play the demo! Even if I never hear back from him, just that made my whole week/month/year.

Hey, another Bill Tiller fan? High five then! :D I remember playing CoMI around 1997, as I had the demo version on one of the shareware discs (man, remember these grand little things?). Fell in love with the graphics at the first sight - I was so pumped, I just HAD to get the full version! Also - great news with the Larry Ahern as well!
Just finished playing the demo. I heard several issues with the audio playback, though it was already adressed by the others (most noticeably the little girl conversation). Other than that - I really enjoyed playing it, the fluid animation looks even better in action (man, how many key and in-between frames are you drawing, to achieve such level of fluidity?). :D Can't wait for more - keep up the great work!

Mr Underhill

@CrashPL yep, good times. All our "studio" walls are covered in Bill Tiller and Steve Purcell art.

In other huge news, our Kickstarter is LIVE!!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/777841902/gibbous-a-cthulhu-adventure

If you can spare a dime to make Gibbous happen, now's the time. Thanks, this is so exciting!!!

Mandle

Quote from: Fitz on Tue 05/04/2016 18:32:47
Madle: Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Exactly! Which is why I said that if I'm the only person the devs hear these complaints from then just disregard them. If, on the other hand, they hear similar issues from other people then they may have a problem.

Quote from: Fitz on Tue 05/04/2016 18:32:47
So please, cut a handful of creative people some slack, okay?

Yeah, sure...I do that all the time with freeware indie games. But this game is a commercial project, which means the devs are spending their real-life time and money on producing it with the eventual goal of releasing a fun game and turning a profit. This being the case I would imagine they would desire all the feedback they can get, both positive and (especially) negative. I didn't sit for over an hour writing my feedback to flame the devs. I wrote it because I believe the least kind thing to do if you have negative feedback is to "cut some slack" and sit on your hands in silence, especially when a real-life money investment is concerned.

Are the paying customers going to cut them some slack just because they are creative people?

Fitz

#88
OK, let's break it up. Some things you said I agree with, some I don't, no need for another tirade explaining what and why. What KS means for a person and what they expect of a campaign is different for everyone. I pitched in and wish Stuck in Attic best of luck, and if I can help, let me know :)

Meanwhile, Gibbous's campaign took off last night and is nearing  6K  as we speak!


Mr Underhill

Guys, we are very grateful for backers and feedback alike. Let's put the Love in Lovecraft and set our differences aside! For adventure gaming! Onward, point and clicking warriors! Wooohoo!

Problem

#90
I must say I agree with most of Mandle's points. The demo looks and feels excellent and I really like the atmosphere and the visuals with their "dark yet cartoony" feel. But breaking the fourth wall the way it's done in the demo is really getting old and annoying and completely takes me out of the game. And that's a pity, because there's a lot to like here. I will still back this Kickstarter, and I think this could be a stellar game if you focus on its strengths. Of course it's always a fine line and impossible to please everybody. But for me, full-length games that try to be funny all the time usually fall flat (short games are a different thing). If you want me to care for the characters, then it's a good idea to play it straight from time to time.

Anyway, you still have my support and I wish you good luck with the campaign! :)

Mr Underhill

Quote from: Problem on Wed 06/04/2016 12:32:36
I must say I agree with most of Mandle's points. The demo looks and feels excellent and I really like the atmosphere and the visuals with their "dark yet cartoony" feel. But breaking the fourth wall the way it's done in the demo is really getting old and annoying and completely takes me out of the game. And that's a pity, because there's a lot to like here. I will still back this Kickstarter, and I think this could be a stellar game if you focus on its strengths. Of course it's always a fine line and impossible to please everybody. But for me, full-length games that try to be funny all the time usually fall flat (short games are a different thing). If you want me to care for the characters, then it's a good idea to play it straight from time to time.

Anyway, you still have my support and I wish you good luck with the campaign! :)

Hey there! First of all, thanks for backing. Now, I don't want to seem like I'm defending the demo too much here, but maybe I should elaborate on some points, like the 4th wall jokes.

The demo is relevant to what Gibbous the final product will be like more in the sense of production values - art, animation, music, voice acting (this latter very much depending on how much funds we manage to get). Other than that, it's a very "compressed" experience, if you will - we tried to load it with as much stuff as possible, including animations, music, jokes - and 4th wall jokes, you are right, work when they are few and far between. Believe me, I am very aware of that, and rest assured there won't be a quota of at least two per screen or conversation :-D Again, this is supposed to give you a taste of what's to come, and cramming so much into a couple of rooms inevitably leads to some negative expectations that we don't exactly want to fulfill.

Pacing ourselves for the full length game will be essential. The story itself exists in a draft version, but I haven't elaborated on it yet for several reasons, one of them being that not getting funded would probably mean no game. Thus, the demo has been written and produced sort of in a vacuum. It still is representative for the quality of the experience, but so, so much is subject to change that I won't even start listing points here. We are very much looking forward and listening to feedback, and will tailor the game accordingly.

Again, thanks for backing, and I hope it's a little bit more clear now. Hey, I'm an animator, I'm doing this PR thing by the seat of my pants :)

Mandle


Fitz

#93
Agreed. The attention to detail was amazing. I remember seeing the process of drawing and animating the fairy, and being in awe of how much work went into it -- and it's such a tiny animation in the game. Kitteh's animations are super fluid, too.

Quote from: Mr Underhill on Wed 06/04/2016 12:55:36
Other than that, it's a very "compressed" experience, if you will - we tried to load it with as much stuff as possible, including animations, music, jokes

That was my impression of it: a showcase of your general style and artistic direction. Back when demos were a thing in the mainstream gaming industry, games would routinely thrust you right in the middle of the action with little to no exposition. Here's your gun, shoot the pig cops. Why? Who cares? Demos for "Soldier of Fortune" or "Mafia" would have you play some of the later missions just because they were the most fun. Not to mention the actual beginnings of both games were very underwhelming.

Mr Underhill

Thanks guys!

One more point on Lovecraftian stuff: rest assured, Gibbous will not go for the low hanging fruit "lol Cthulhu is weak or cute" thing. We do have fun with the Necronomicon but it cuts off at the Old Ones. I will be detailing this in our first update, which tackles exactly that - Lovecraft and Comedy. Mind you, the cute Cthulhu has been done before, and well (Cthulhu saves the world), but it's not the case with us. I can't go into a lot of details without spoiling stuff so I'll just say there will be a huge contrast between humans (where all the comedic stuff will stem from) and the supernatural entities. Trust me, I'm a huge Lovecraft fan myself, and I'm not taking this spoofing thing lightly - we're trying to do everything so it stays respectful to HPL's original work, just be a little playful with it. It's a hard friggin' task trying to balance everything, keep Lovecraft fans from getting offended, making it friendly enough for people who only know Cthulhu from the plushies... I am very much aware it won't be easy to deal with all that. But overall please keep in mind this is very much a work in progress, there aren't many things that aren't subject to change, and any and all feedback is welcome and carefully saved and taken into consideration.

Mandle

Quote from: Mr Underhill on Wed 06/04/2016 15:02:50
We do have fun with the Necronomicon but it cuts off at the Old Ones.

After the comedy with the Necronomicon, if you take the Great Old Ones seriously and make them scary as shit, it will surprise the player and take them off-balance in a most delicious way...

That would be a delight to experience indeed!

Give the player their comfort zone in that this is just going to be a silly parody of the mythos...Nothing that rough...Just like the plushies...

And then rip that comfort blanket right out from under their asses and plunge them into some hardcore mythos horror...

OMG...THAT would be a legendary thing to pull off indeed!

mkennedy

Will it be possible for the player to die in this game? That would certainly be a dark turn. But you better not do anything to poor little Kitteh, or us cat owners will be most upset.

Mandle

Quote from: mkennedy on Fri 08/04/2016 05:47:46
Will it be possible for the player to die in this game? That would certainly be a dark turn.

In the world of Lovecraftian horrors, you're often lucky if you just die...

Mr Underhill

Haha, Mandle's got a point...

Well, mkennedy, I'd love to answer that, but it'd be a little too spoilery, and I really have to watch my big fat mouth, it tends to develop a will of its own when I get over-excited about the plot. But I can assure you, we are huge cat people here at Stuck In Attic, and while we don't want to make a lot of socio-political commentary with Gibbous, the one thing that we will add as subtext to the game are our pro-animal rights views. Not that we're people that spraypaint your fur coat or flip your table over when you're having a steak, but we do love animals a lot and we think they deserve much better lives than we as humans are allowing them.

I just re-read that paragprah - please don't imagine we are actual huge cat people lumbering around our sleepy town, crushing cars under our gigantic paws and scratching at buildings. Although that would be pretty badass.

Mr Underhill

Mandle, this video should address how Gibbous will handle Lovecraft and comedy. Let me know what you think! ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiK7dpJMNWI

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk