Really cool concept! there were a couple bugs and some things were unclear at first, but I think they are the kind of things that can be easily ironed out with enough time. aside from that, a really cool concept!
Reviews for "Dear Edmund"
Fascinating look into what is more or less the unfortunate experience some people have had to endure. Support the masses and appeal to the overlords and walk a shaky line between them so you neither get fired but keep the common man as healthy and happy and as protected as you can manage from a corrupt and frankly evil governing body.
Reached the game limit with a nice balanced weekly -11% for both sides. Balanced as everything should be... even decay. :D
An upgrade to foresee exact numbers before making a decision could be nice. Perhaps works for 2 weeks rather than permanently. Uncertain as to the limitations and consequences of actions. Dipped into 0% for the DAC a couple times with no real issue other than taking a financial hit.
Also didn't realise you can pay out of your own pocket to keep health in check but that was just my apparent inability to read until I was a few pounds wasted on house upgrades.
Will house upgrades or at least the best ones create a long term rep gain for DAC as they see you as one of them? Makes sense as it might be good over a longer game to have less severe options to help fight bad rep buildup with them.
One last possible addition could be a friend on the inside who is willing to create discrepancies to dodge a future rep hit in exchange for your cash. Every use though increases the likelyhood of them being caught and "dealt with". Adds another layer of moral implication in endangering someone for your benefit.
Overall though, really decent management game. Be interested to see where it goes.
Wow, that's difficult! I ended up losing track of both health and the DAC reputation. Quite a delicate balance. I'll have to keep trying until I can maintain it.
Great game!
EDIT: I was able to beat the game on my second go-around!
Hmm, quite the promising management game with tricky balancing of many aspects, including morality! Reminds me a lot of games like Yes Your Grace, Papers Please, Frostpunk and the like. For the most part it has a pretty solid presentation and cool concept, and I was intrigued to play.
At the same time, however, it had a lot of rough aspects that I felt could use some ironing out:
My biggest problem with the game is that it feels rather toothless and unsubtle. Yes, you need to make decisions to try and keep both parties happy lest you run into a game over, so you might need to make some choices you don't like here and there, but the whole crux of this game should be that it's hard to be good and easier to fall into corruption and I just wasn't feeling that. For example, whenever a choice came up where I can earn some coin by being evil, it was incredibly easy to say no, because what the hell do I need money for? I'm a superhuman who doesn't need food to survive, modifications to my house don't provide me any tangible benefits, and I have no attachment to my wife just because the game says I should! Games like Pathologic and Vampyr have strong motivations within gameplay to tempt you towards evil through selfish survival or even the greater good: this doesn't except in very shallow ways. It's so blatantly and cartoonishly black and white instead of having some interesting grey areas.
Dunno what the whole point of the contracts spilling to the ground and needing to be picked up is? Even though you put them on the shelf, they get erased on a save file being loaded, so they don't seem to have any sort of actual importance. I was also disappointed that despite me picking them up beforehand, the guy berated me for not picking them up when he should've recognized that I already had.
The 'accept/refuse' system is a bit awkward at times in how it is handled: for example, when the guy with your wage appears at the end of the shift, it gives you an option to accept or refuse, but either way results in the same thing of you getting your wage, when you'd think refusing would be spitting in their face and not wanting the wage.
Found the money system rather confusing in that you have street budget and personal funds as separate things: don't know why it can't just be one thing and I was confused about how each of them work. For example, I thought, based on the instructions, I was supposed to be not collecting the money in the safe so it goes towards the budget instead of my pockets, but every time I was forced to collect.
Would be nice if there were some quality of life changes, like being able to speed-up or click to complete text being written out. Speaking of text being written out, it seemed silly that it starts to write out the program code for specifying text color before it suddenly transforms back into regular writing. Some of the menu navigation was a bit awkward as well, like I couldn't find the way to go back in the shop menu to the root, being stuck at the end of one of the branches.
Some aspects of the menu and UI were way too tiny, especially when it came to text: could stand to make some things bigger for better readability.
Best of luck in further development!
MindTheGrease responds:
Thank you for the feedback! It’s still in beta so there are many things that need ironing out such as accepting the wage etc. The main mechanics are in place and through feedback I plan on adjusting everything to a release standard.
Cheers mate
i like that the music gets a little bit inspirational, really excited for the full game