The game becomes frustratingly difficult (and apparently slightly glitchy) as the player approaches the Twin Riddle area in the game. Similarly, I 'solved' the Twin Riddle entirely by accident, though I imagine there's some sort of way to tell what its solution is meant to be through in-game materials.
We'll still work on ways to help players learn what they're supposed to do (like informing that it's a puzzle about harmony and not melody).
I have yet to legitimately make it past that section, and the room after it, in a way that felt rewarding for stealthy, minimum-kills play-style type players.
I've added some seconds to the timed lever so it's more possible to get past the guards without killing them.
Other slight glitches started to appear after that, such as an inability to pick-up the ibis symbol drawing or examine the pool near it, so I'm guessing something went wrong somehow, somewhere, in my playthrough, but I'm not sure. It's still pretty dang fun up until that point, though.
I've just noticed that the contact area that triggers the text was ultra-small and the area of the investigation icon was the right size (so you'd see the icon but not necessarily would collide with the text trigger). But I've just removed the snake and ibis documents with the drafts of the right glyphs, because they made no sense, from the content perspective, and now the dials themselves have indications of their right positions (and the hint documents were supposed to point that the puzzles worked this way).
Is the single, floating purple light-source in the new intro-sequence supposed to be of some importance? Being one of the few non-tree and non-glowing-circle-on-the-ground-gateway-things in the area made me curious about it, and I spent a bit of time trying to interact with it. It's somewhere north-east of the initial spawn, a bit south-east of the contract-circle the summoner attempts to call you (whose calls can be a little confusing to follow as beacons due to them spawning in stationary spots along the 'path' in the trees- though the path itself is easy to follow without the summoner's dialogue poppin' up).
It was something related to someone that's been watching you apart from time itself. But we've just removed it because it was confusing and so subtle that wouldn't add much to the plotline.
Entry into the broken fountain room is difficult, but possible without killing the two guards guarding its initial entryway. Not sure if this should be considered a bug, or allowed for those players who would prefer to kill the least amount possible.
Not killing them is supposed to be possible. Although playing by the least killings is also supposed to have a different feeling of difficulty.
Examining the oryx shaped censer in the lower-right corner of the broken fountain room is slightly difficult; the "..." or "?" prompt will frequently not appear when attempting to examine it, though it does produce text when examined. It doesn't seem to be too important an object, but since I hadn't seen it in the previous build I played (and didn't find another object like it in any of the rooms), I wanted to mention it.
I rechecked the texts and investigations' collisions on that room and now they should be fine. (this room also got new graphics for the explosion and now it's pretty cool)
A guard that used to spawn and patrol the hallway north of the lead key's room- he no longer appears. Is this intentional? It does make the first experience in key carrying easier, but it also prevents teaching players about dropping the key and moving away from it in stealth mode to avoid being killed, which might become a problem once players are forced to maneuver around 2 guards with the silver key. Of course, at this point in the game the checkpoints are still very permissive and frequent, so it's not a big issue.
We fixed a bug (the guards were able to see you dirty during fade and would give chase before you could see the room) and created another one. Now it's all fixed up!
Backtracking in the first few rooms is suicide to curious, exploration-oriented players due to guard placement. Consider despawning guards close to doors or changing their walk cycles to allow the player to maneuver out of their path- often the player will simply appear and immediately die due to their spawn position being directly on-top of a guard's spawn position. Again, not a big issue when the checkpoints are generous, and leaving it as-is can push players forward towards progressing the story without them feeling like doors are being locked pointlessly behind them (i.e.- it's not the game's fault I can't backtrack; it's my fault, knowing that those guards are going to be right next to the doors I just went through).
With the fix of the guards not seeing you during the fade and another fix I made on those guards' patrol routines it should be possible to backtrack at your will (also it should be possible everywhere on the game).
Possible Spoiler? Mouse-over. This is only a suggestion, and doesn't really apply if you'd rather the players not care about going through the game with the least kills possible.
We care about the least kills possible. But this would open precedent for some (possibly) frustrating backtracks I guess, since you'd still have to kill the three targets to fulfill the contract (I'm still working in a way that killing only the targets could be the least kills possible [actually there are some rooms that prevent it from happening]).
Possible Spoiler? Mouse-over. Same basis as the above, though I think it'd be interesting to implement. Might be too difficult to do so, however, as it implies modifying the behavior of characters already set to follow programmed paths to walk over to the appropriate door that corresponds to the key they picked up.
This would be really interesting. But unfortunately this out of our capabilities =/
I've added another event related to this that happen if you listen to a whole dialogue (and the same effects, gameplaywise, could be attained by killing).
Definite Spoiler? Mouse-over. This is in regards to difficulty in some areas.
As I've said above, I've made the timings a little more forgiving =]
There's some miscellaneous glitches elsewhere, but since I got to them via a debug function and many of them seem to be in areas that are still being developed, I decided to not give them too much importance. Please let me know if you'd like me to list them, however. I feel like at least mentioning that I'm not sure how to trigger the invulnerability (O key) debug feature in the latest build. Is it currently disabled, a hold-to-use (like stealth), or a toggle? Are there conditions under the which it won't toggle?
If you could list them it would be nice =]
Maybe even if it's something under development you could find things that are going wrong or give suggestions that would help improving the game...
The invulnerability has no feedback, and it's a toggle. You activate the debug log by pressing P and then pressing O toggles invulnerability. I wouldn't say for sure, but it's supposed to work everytime until deactivated or if you start a new game.
Thanks a lot for the feedback! o/
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