This is just my first impressions as I played the demo, since some devs find such things useful or interesting - I tried to call out the bits that made me happy as well as the irritants, but I admit, noticing the things that are "right" is much harder than noticing things that seem out of place: an important survival trait, but makes being encouraging difficult. Still, calling them out feels important, as not knowing what people liked might otherwise lead to those nice things getting cut out.
- My monitor's 3440x1440, largest it allowed when windowed was 2048x1080, so less than 2/3 of the width, 45% of the area
- Music's kinda loud for my tastes - I'll change the volume ingame [I couldn't, so just turned my headphones down a tad].
- Loading-screen story seems inconsistent style with the game I saw in the playthrough. I imagine it's just a placeholder, though, since there'll apparently be an intro later.
- Loading screen disappears before I've finished reading it.
- There's no Esc-menu, so I can't change sound settings ingame, nor bring up that intro page again. OK...
- Ankh cursor - very Ultima
- Walk anim seems slow to start, and feet slide, rather than walking, initially.
- Butterflies, flies, sparkles around the moon gate, shadows of birds - all good use of particles
- Bleh, no WASD. I know the Ultimas didn't, but... I'd definitely like at least the option!
- Clicking within about 6ft, the character doesn't even move.
- Doesn't move to the point clicked, but to within a few feet of it - making exact positioning hard or impossible. Gets more accurate when walking longer distances though.
- Lots of good-looking animated scenery.
- Nice that camera can be rotated, but not being able to change the angle relative to the ground is painful, since the angle feels... very awkward. I understand why - it's to keep the view distance reasonable. But when zoomed right in, perhaps the camera could drop down to that you can see further "forwards", at least as far as when you are zoomed all the way out? Partly it may be because I'm using ultra-wide screen.
- Ah, C (character info) is where what I would expect to be the Esc-menu lives. No settings, though.
- Not sure why I=Inventory screen is separate from C=Character, since it's all in the character page, too - I wouldn't expect to ever use the inventory page.
- Nice intro area, clearly guides the player towards the house, but gives them time to get used to just moving and looking at stuff. The fact that it has so many particles, animated things, and water all in that one screen makes it a great way to visually set the standard for the game.
- Not completely sold on the billboarded instructions, mind. It's somehow more immersion-breaking than having pop-ups or "readable" signs.
- I see birds. I thought the changelog said there was no passive wildlife added yet?
- Dialog background and outline makes the text much more readable than it was in the walkthrough video.
- Can't select dialog options with number keys, sadly.
- Mouse seems just a tiny bit laggy - mouse acceleration setting?
- I like the river water. Looks good!
- Mouse cursor doesn't change over selectable text items (or world items? Hard to tell, yet). But the background of the selectable texts does at least light up, giving feedback that you're going to select it.
- There's apparently a guy called Corven, and we're in the world of Corvenia - is Corven the ruler of the world, then? (Knowing that Corv is lead dev, I'm expecting it to get Lord Britishy here... but I think even LB only claimed to be ruler of the nation Britannia). Oh, apparently that text that named Corven has been replaced with "The Seer" rather than "Corven", or else I'm misremembering the playthrough video.
- You can't walk away mid-conversation, and can't exit conversations. I'm curious what happens if you get attacked while conversing. I'll have to try it
- It irritated me that I could not access the "My world?" speech item after I selected the other option. If a speech branch appears, it should not really disappear again, I feel.
- Ah, interactible world objects don't get a different mouse cursor, but they do get a nameplate pop-up.
- After moving the barrel, I cannot get the "move/cancel" pop-up to reappear.
- Camera turning is very sensitive.
- Clicking the door to get its interaction menu to pop up, I can then click the barrel, and its interaction menu also pops up - the door's does not disappear.
- I can't move while any interaction menus are open. That makes sense, but perhaps instead they should just close once you get too far away.
- I can move the barrel to be embedded into the wall of the house. Even up by the roof, so the crow lands inside the barrel.
- Pathing is good - lets you navigate to somewhere even when the route to get there takes you offscreen. However, sometimes he wiggles about during the path, as if uncertain. Trying to get somewhere unreachable, sometimes he walks as close as he can, then just sort of wobbles there a while.
- Good roof-disappearing when entering the house.
- The spacing between the items in the interaction menus felt too large, and weird, to me, but they're growing on me.
- In paper-doll, outlines seem missing for legs, feet, chest and shoulders. No they aren't, just faint against the white stone of the road.
- Slightly saddened there isn't an actual paper-doll (a copy of your current avatar displayed on the inventory screen).
- I like that Esc works to close menus.
- Creepy, I'm putting on an old guy's leather pants.
- Seems like fire-then-ice works well... ice-then-fire melts the ice. Makes sense
- Walking over stuff doesn't pick it up, and there seems no key to auto-pickup.
- Health/mana don't seem to regen, at least not yet.
- Can path all the way down to the beach from the start area. Nice beach. Lol, while I can't walk into the ocean, I walk *over* the ocean if I path from one promontory to another. Probably ocean should be unwalkable.
- Steep slopes seem unwalkable - good
- Got turned around and lost... a compass, map, and/or minimap would be useful.
- Ooh, I found a mine, nice bit of fog there. I won't go in, probably quest related.
- Ow, dire wolves are tough for me this early
- Ooh, health and mana don't seem to recharge... I need to be more careful.
- Nice looking waterfall!
- I like that you wade through rivers, rather than on them, though would be nice if there was a little splash.
- OK, back to the start. Let's find this town.
- The back button in the quest description does nothing - though the back button on the quest log menu does close that description, and clicked again, closes that menu.
- Yay it's Cabirus.
- Heh, "Name", "Job"
- Double-quotes all look like open quotes; single-quotes all look like open-quotes or apostrophes. This is a result of it really being ASCII rather than Unicode behind the scenes. Consider implementing "smart quotes"?
- Sicabol's hatchet does not seem interactible but does have a description nameplate. Not sure if bug, or if some non-interactible items are meant to just have names, as Easter eggs. Would be nice if mouse cursor changed to show interactibility.
- My cat just sniffed at the butterflies
- Roof disappears when outside windows (cool), but not when outside doors, even if you should be able to see in.
- OK, let's see what's not nailed down in Cabirus' home...
- It's Darkmoon!
- I see his name before asking it.
- I put the bucket on his head so I can steal stuff.
- Sometimes I click stuff and move it, even without the context menu. Just happened with a stool, happened a few times with the barrel earlier.
- The cursor can become lost on a large, high-res screen - a little brighter might be nice?
- Nothing stealable, oh well.
- Desert/beach is a good idea, discourages exploration...
- I REALLY like that it's open-worldy enough that I can keep going off on my own to explore for a bit before continuing with the quest. No real exploration rewards yet, though I did find a ruined roofless shack near the beach.
- Approaching the cemetery - ooh, I see dead people! Nice level layout. Clearly designed to be seen with the camera at a certain angle, but it seems natural to turn it to that angle because of the angle of approach, etc. Cunning level design.
- Ooh, I get to make a moral choice! Or do I? What happens if I try to talk my way out of this quest? Nice, though her claim that "we are all doomed" seems a trifle melodramatic. Honestly, why does she feel that one more unproven guy helping solve her problems will make that much of a difference, when her entire village should be working towards that goal anyway? She has no reason to believe me any kind of a hero at this point in the tale.
- I wonder if the dire wolf I met was their monster... we'll see. Doubt it, but still...
- Only one readable gravestone so far.
- Haha! That jump was unexpected! The Kraken looks somehow a little too... CGI? Fake?
- I wonder why the corpses are naked. Is that ever explained? Naked and in a ring of stone.
- Like I said earlier about walking over ocean: I can walk down to the left of the Kraken's pool, then walk right over the center of the pool.
- Let's see what Margaretha says.
- Damn, you don't get the option to back out of saying "I will find the creature" this time.
- I am saddened that even though she tells you to go back to talk to Cabirus and Darkmoon, you get no new conversation from them, can't tell them about seeing their Kraken.
- Yay, only main quest NPCs means I can loot all the other houses! Dang: locked, empty, empty...
- Was nice to see a streetlight that could be turned on/off, but sad that the candles and lights in houses cannot be.
- Because ultra-widescreen, I find myself running sideways instead of forwards, to see further. This is unexpectedly nauseating (motion sickness) as I run over the undulating hills.
- Hello Kash. Moving the barrel onto the fire... doesn't catch fire, oh well, probably a good thing.
- Kash a couple times says "he is willing to listen" rather than "he will be willing to listen" or "he will listen".
- Roof of the second house (next to the locked one) is missing now. Even when I'm not in it and not near any windows.
- It's weird that him giving you the key is essentially unavoidable in his conversation if you follow it all through. The option to piss him off and get him to refuse, then steal the key anyway is kinda missing.
- Yay, mana potion at last!
- The load screen flashed up again, but I didn't get to read much.
- Routing got stuck behind the door trying to leave his home.
- Kinda feels like I need to warn people about the big cauldron of poison. Or pour it out. Or something. Leaving it untouched seems really wrong, but there's no option to do anything. Frustrating. I'll see if I can warn someone. No, nobody has new conversation options about the giant cauldron of poison on their village.
- Even now, Cabirus greets me with "Greetings stranger!". Humph.
- This world is lush and verdant
- Kash suddenly, casually, has a broken leg that he didn't mention before? Or did he and I wasn't paying attention? [he did, but only very casually]
- I ran from a bear... combat music hasn't stopped playing, but I don't see the bear any more.
- "Big swamp lake"... it fits on one screen. Pond, perhaps?
- The cave was not interactible at first, I had to walk away and back up to it.
- Nice cave. Let's see if I can negotiate with this werewolf...
- ...wow, I did not expect that
- I get why the conversation is not quittable, but it would be nice, the second time you spoke to him, if you could exit the conversation sooner. Or if he had a different tree once you have the key.
- I went through that conversation three times, so now have three keys.
- Long load screens are long. At least I've finished reading it.
- The M key is interesting. It zooms you out, with the camera above you. then the mouse wheel rotates the camera down. Not sure what this will be when it's done, but looks like some level of camera-angle control might happen. Good
- The human skull that he kicks out the way is either a joke, or a clear clue that he's a bad guy, but it's hard to tell which. If intended as a joke, I'd remove it, because the uncertainty there breaks the humor.
- A compass would be nice. What I'd been thinking of as North is apparently East.
- Not a fan of the way bodies *immediately* fade into the ground.
- Hrm, undead burn easy.
- OK, did not expect that. I suspect it may be possible to complete this game as a pacifist. Nice
- The corpses being naked and in a ring of stone was never explained. Her new husband naked and dead somewhere with what looks like a woman. And Isabella wasn't at all weirded by that?
- I didn't run the game as admin, but it still ran fine.
- Regretting not saving at any point, would kinda like to try fighting it, but too lazy to replay just for that.
- Save-load could be nicer UI (menus draw over each other etc).
- Only now, in a second playthrough, do I notice the notification pop-ups about quest completion, etc, in the bottom left.
- Autosaves would be nice.
- Oh hey, let's try a speedrun.
- Main menu text at 800x600 is very small.
- Looks like the fred conversation can't be avoided.
- Conversation text at 800x600 is unreadable (pushed off the screen to the right).
- Response text at 800x600 is unreadable (truncated either side: "time? But I don't").
- Interaction text at 800x600 is unreadable.
- Damnitt, Atler's key isn't there. Makes no sense that it would only appear after talking to someone.
- OK, Margaretha? No, she won't talk to me beyond one line. The heck? Same with Isabella. Same with Kash. It seems really weird that I *must* talk to the drunks at the inn, but OK. Maybe I first need to grab the armor, in order to be given the quest to talk to her. That's kinda weird, since if I talk to her with the quest, she doesn't particularly care whether Fred sent me, but more whether I came through the portal.
- OK, now I can talk to her. Would be nice to be able to exit the dialog earlier: I don't need to know who Isabella is, nor that she won't discuss the second problem until later, nor that she thanks me. She's told me to talk to Isabella, let me out to talk to her!
- It feels weird for pathing to take you through the river when there's a bridge right next to you, but OK. The alternative is either to prevent rivers being fordable, or, as it was up at Fred's, making the riverbanks a few feet either side of a bridge be too steep to ford, so the pathing correctly makes you take the bridge.
- While (looking at the extracted text) there's apparently a dialog option for "I have the Ether Amber already", he still doesn't have a key on him, and still won't discuss the key with me. So I need to go get the quest to get the key, for the key to appear. Bleh.
- Even after Kash has told you about Arlen, if you leave that conversation before actually getting the quest, Arlen still doesn't have the key and won't talk about it.
- Using the locked mine gate (without the key) makes the wolf that's attacking me turn passive, though combat music doesn't stop. So now I have a dire wolf companion. Cool! Awr, he doesn't follow me very far before returning to his post.
- Does it work with the bear and the cave? Yes! Soon as the interact menu comes up, he stops attacking, and just follows.
- I like that quest gates like doors and forcefields let you use them in order to use their keys, rather than having to go to your inventory, then use the item in there on the gate.
- On leaving the cave, both the bear by the cave and the dire wolf by the mine no longer exist.
- Even if the only stealable items so far other than the initial armor are potions, I am glad they exist.
- The swamp "lake" is correctly unwalkable, but pathing around it does not seem to work: he gets stuck trying to walk into the lake.
- Very rarely, random pieces of scenery glow gold. I think I saw this in the walkthrough video as well, when the player left Fred's place to approach the first wolves.
- Awr, you can't fight the lava guy in the demo
The rails, the guidance that the level design gave, were good. I never needed to check the quest log to know what it was that I needed to do, and I always knew when I was exploring "the wrong way". It didn't stop me, but it meant that, seeing Kash before I should, I avoided talking to him because I knew it was "the wrong path". It does seem weird and wrong that I *must* do all preliminary steps before stealing the key. Ideally, I'd be able to steal and bring the Ether Amber to Kash, get talking to him about how he hurt his leg, offer my Amber for him to treat with Wolfsbane (or whatever the herb that he used was, I forget), and complete the first stage without talking to anyone else. This then means that all future interactions with the other characters would be more like "yeah, I'm already looking into that, I spoke to Kash." or "Yeah, I already sorted that problem for you... what was the second problem you mentioned?" But making this kind of nonlinearity would be very hard, I admit.