well...its ok~
tho totally no offense but its kinda...dead.
as a 1st game thats very good!
but was it necessary to go this far for a 1st? :(
PS: FPS should be higher for better graphics.
anyway its a good job not bad!
Reviews for "Wayfinder: Episode One"
It was cool...
until I didn't write down the datapad code and got stuck. Would have been a 10 otherwise.
Long intro is long
good game besides that painfully long ass intro .. kills the replay value for me b/c i would not want to sit through 5 mins of that shit again .. add a skip button please.
Hyptosis responds:
There is no intro, the game just starts. You must have clicked credits.
"pathfinder-wayfinder"
well.. since you guys like it.. why can't I?.. anyways.. maybe the titile came from the movie "the pathfinder"..
Pretty good for a sponsored job.
The introduction to the game needs a small bit of work in that it needs to exist. It's your first game and it shows because the objective of the game isn't defined until long after the suspension of disbelief has a possibility of being broken. Even though a puzzle mystery game does not require extensive introductions to the story to work, and this is in fact discouraged, it's still required that the player has a defined objective in mind at all times. When the game begins, there is no such goal and the player is thrown out onto their rear into the game world with no direction or methods. They instead spend time reading the GUI and clicking on objects that do not respond to them. This is an important point. Even if the introduction to the game is nothing more than another character radioing in for a few lines of dialog, a foundation must be formed if the player is to be lost in the world. Your "company" logo does not count as an introduction.
Sound:
The ambient noises are well done. They're unobtrusive to the game play in an attempt to reinforce the "lonely" feeling of the puzzle mystery the player is exploring alone. The combat noises are loud and painful however, not every "future noise" needs to be whiny and high pitched. Some of us play with headphones. Some of the noises- the "recharge noise" in particular- sound like stock noises. It's not a bad thing, just something a person can notice.
Interactivity:
A singular hot-spot method of puzzle mystery doesn't really make it much of a mystery. Once the player learns that any object that isn't relevant to the completion of the game does not produce a response, they're free to click on everything in the world until something does happen. It's like the avatar is blind and deaf, and feeling everything in the world randomly is how they get around. Come now. If it's possible to make hot-spots, it's possible to make soft-spots as well. Adding dialog to objects with no other relevance to the objectives is a great tool for immersion as it represents the avatar gathering information on the world around them- much like what people do.
Gameplay:
The "combat" was little more than a simplistic hack and slash that used clicks instead of hacking at things, with a button. Once I bought a weapon upgrade, all I needed to spend money on was batteries for the force field because even the end-boss needed 4 hits to disable it and the field has an oversight where attacks that reduce it to 0 do not spill over into HP. I was effectively *immortal* so long as I had batteries (which were plenty cheap compared to their useless friends that restored HP.) Trust me, 3 batteries was a much better investment for the boss than some grenades (I used none.)
Gameplay2:
The ruin puzzles themselves however, are why I write. They are terrific. Subtle hints given by the environment lead to ways of thinking that could only come to life if the player actually thinks for a moment about how the pieces fall together. Some of them suffer from visual repetition problems however, and the final puzzle broke SoD entirely as I was forced to take print screens of the game itself in order to record it, just to solve it. A medium could be provided in game to assist the player with this somehow, as bringing MSPaint up meant the immersion was shattered- I knew the solution within seconds, but I suck at Simon Says. The first puzzle with the paint can locked inside the box is somewhat unfair. You- thank god- notify the player that the datapad will be gone forever, but even with a notification or 3 it's still very unfair to do so. A puzzle element required for completion should never ever be fully removed from the world until it is used. Ever. Games get around this by recording them (in a journal usually.)
The voice-overs were a great surprise, and surprisingly well done for most. Some of the voices didn't match their characters, but that's ok. First timers on the mic do that. Min was outright wrong. It either needed to sound more automated, or less. It paused as a robot would but it did so inconsistently. It's a robot.
Hyptosis responds:
Thanks for the detailed feedback, I will try to bare it all in mind when I work on another game.