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[RichSG]

Hi everyone,

I've just completed a demo of my first Unity game, SORS, and would love some feedback. You can find a link below (requires unity web plugin). It is part text adventure/part puzzle



You are cast as a doctor in a new medical facility, using a new scanning technology to help diagnose diseases. But there's something strange going on here...

teaser website (and link to demo) is here:

www.sciencegamed.co.uk/games/sors

constructive feedback most welcome!

thanks
Rich

[RichSG]

Hi all

New demos for SORS are out for PC and Mac- it'd be great to get any feedback you may have on them!

Download links:

http://www.sciencegamed.co.uk/games/sors/

OR

http://www.indiedb.com/games/sors

thanks a lot!
Rich

[debugchicken]

Played it and I did like it until some stuff happened:
]
-> I never got a feedback that typing "LIFESTYLE ADVICE" was accepted as a command, or if there is some queue of commands. I think there should be a text for each command that does not give an immediate response, like "discharge".Also I typed lifestyle adviced a second time and I would like to get a feedback that I already typed that and nothing will change with a second type or if something will.

-> There are some stuff like, "sleeps 7+ hours" for a very old lady. I don't think this is 100% healthy, for old ladies personally. So there is a problem with incosistence and possibly more unnacurate writings. Its not like papers please which REALLY any people could get and be precise about it because it is such a simple job.

Trauma Center: under the knife, for example, creates a fantastical world to overcome this gameplay-intrinsic-information problem.

[Quicksand-S]

Before I even got to the game, I was a bit turned off by your comment, "If it sounds tough, maybe you should go play Call of Duty. Pulling a trigger is always easier..." Some people like Call of Duty, or shooters in general, and they can be challenging. Challenge comes in different forms, after all. I don't know why you'd put down another game and the people who play it while attempting to entice people to play yours.

Anyway, the game itself did seem interesting so I gave it a try.

-The intro was nice, but I would've liked to be able to skip the fade-out by pressing a key. It would also have been nice later on, when it says "Press Space to..whatever" to be able to press space as soon as the text starts to appear.

-The login is a bit misleading because when you enter your name, capitals and lowercase are displayed as if they're the same but the game records them differently.

-The game froze for about ten seconds when I clicked "See Patients" (By "froze" I mean the application was temporarily unresponsive and seemed like it had crashed). A loading screen might help to keep players from worrying about that.

-The in-game interface seemed to be strangely arranged. The margins around the boxes were all different and I the empty space beside the patient's feet could be filled by something.

-The art is pretty nice, but the upper arms looked too short (ie. they're shorter than the forearms and the arms themselves don't reach as far as I'd expect). The first woman's calves and feet looked thicker than I would've expected as well, but that at least is possible in real life. I like that there was a little bit of variation in the patients' body graphics.

-In the first training session, it seems I'm required to type "Discharge" but the patient's heart rate is surprisingly high and the value beside the heart icon is jumping around like crazy.

-Nice music on the menu.

-The "Lifestyle Advice" section was unclear. The way it's presented, it looks like pressing 1 should give me more options. For a while, I wasn't sure how to actually give the advice. When I typed "Lifestyle advice" it highlighted the text but told me it was an invalid command, so I didn't know it had done anything until later.

-It would be nice if I could press a button to clear the incorrect diagnosis warning, rather than having to click. I also found that I had to click at least twice every time.

-Sometimes it says "Press Enter to..." and other time it's "Press Space too..." I would've preferred for it to be the same button, consistently.

-During the Scanning tutorial, I clicked on the window to put it in focus (I'd been typing here) and it buzzed and added a point even though I hadn't clicked anywhere near the patient (I'd clicked on the console area).

-I found the Scanning part very unclear. The tutorial said that a sound would tell me if a point was useful or not, but nothing actually tells me if that "useful" point is positive or negative, or what sort of health issue it might suggest. The numbers on the graph don't mean anything to me without context.


I stopped during that scanning section but might go and play more later. It's an intriguing game. I have issues with the interface, but the idea is solid and the story seems like it might be interesting.

[RichSG]

Hey mirrorlink / Quicksand-S

thanks a lot for your feedback. It's all really good stuff and I will take it onboard! Again thanks for taking the time out to play and respond 

Going through the feedback -

Played it and I did like it until some stuff happened:
]
-> I never got a feedback that typing "LIFESTYLE ADVICE" was accepted as a command, or if there is some queue of commands. I think there should be a text for each command that does not give an immediate response, like "discharge".Also I typed lifestyle adviced a second time and I would like to get a feedback that I already typed that and nothing will change with a second type or if something will.

Great point. Quicksand-S also mentioned this, and it's totally something I need to add in - maybe a special bit of text or alert to show that you've selected a treatment that will be applied when the it is prescribed. Will work on it.

-> There are some stuff like, "sleeps 7+ hours" for a very old lady. I don't think this is 100% healthy, for old ladies personally. So there is a problem with incosistence and possibly more unnacurate writings. Its not like papers please which REALLY any people could get and be precise about it because it is such a simple job.

Trauma Center: under the knife, for example, creates a fantastical world to overcome this gameplay-intrinsic-information problem.

This is interesting - actually all the info in the game is based on health advice by the National Health Service (the free health service in the UK). I can see where you're coming from though. I think I might either make it clear that you can get answers from the internet because it's actual health advice, or change it so it's more obvious when it's wrong or right.

There are actually only a limited number of phrases, so the other thing I was going for was a bit of a memory game - as you progress, if you make an effort to remember which things need lifestyle advice, you'll get the same ones later on so it's easier. I like this bit because it makes you feel like you're growing with experience and the job's getting easier, would be interesting to hear what other people think of this point though.

Before I even got to the game, I was a bit turned off by your comment, "If it sounds tough, maybe you should go play Call of Duty. Pulling a trigger is always easier..." Some people like Call of Duty, or shooters in general, and they can be challenging. Challenge comes in different forms, after all. I don't know why you'd put down another game and the people who play it while attempting to entice people to play yours.

Fair point! I did the website a while ago (Relatively) and you're right, it's not a very good thing to say (I actually enjoy COD myself). I've changed it

-The game froze for about ten seconds when I clicked "See Patients" (By "froze" I mean the application was temporarily unresponsive and seemed like it had crashed). A loading screen might help to keep players from worrying about that.

This is interesting. I was hoping everything would be fast enough to not need loading screens. Will keep looking at it, but thanks, useful to know!

-The in-game interface seemed to be strangely arranged. The margins around the boxes were all different and I the empty space beside the patient's feet could be filled by something.

I was never good at artsty design....so I'm not surprised the interface looks oddly arranged! Definitely a clean up job I need to do before the next release

-The art is pretty nice, but the upper arms looked too short (ie. they're shorter than the forearms and the arms themselves don't reach as far as I'd expect). The first woman's calves and feet looked thicker than I would've expected as well, but that at least is possible in real life. I like that there was a little bit of variation in the patients' body graphics.

I never actually noticed this, but I can see where you're coming from. I do really like the art though! The guy is awesome. FYI check http://www.james-oreilly.com/ if anyone wants to see more of his stuff! (He's a freelance)

-Nice music on the menu.

Are you being sarcastic? I'm in the process of selecting music atm for the game. So the menu will have music soon! Going with ambient electronica because it has a nice mix of machine/human sounds which fit nicely with the world/player view. Also it creates a nice, relaxing atmosphere for players during their 'downtime' of reading emails between each session.

-I found the Scanning part very unclear. The tutorial said that a sound would tell me if a point was useful or not, but nothing actually tells me if that "useful" point is positive or negative, or what sort of health issue it might suggest. The numbers on the graph don't mean anything to me without context.

This is interesting-  not quite sure what you mean by positive/negative - do you mean healthy/ at risk? If so, both types are 'useful' in that they help you identify if the patient needs a treatment or not. Also the graph point type should tell you which disease it refers to (each disease has its own point types). IT's good to hear this stuffy though because the scanning point is def the most complicated bit of the game and I want to make sure everything is clear to players. Sounds like it could still be clearer, so will go back and have a look at the copy.

As to other points, I agree! Will probably change all button presses to 'space' for consistency (consistency is always good) and put that for  alerts as well.

Anyway, thanks again to both of you for playing!

[debugchicken]

This is interesting - actually all the info in the game is based on health advice by the National Health Service (the free health service in the UK).

Well...

-> You never said the info comes from the National Health Service.
-> You don't specifically say where in the National Health Service "document" the infos are in.
-> The information itself is imprecise. What is 7"+" hours? This can be 20 hours for all I know.
-> Being a medic is not like being a engineer. The number of variables in medicine is way bigger. This means that you can't really pick up a pontual information that is more of a general recomendation and put it in a diagnostic context. Sleeping 7+ Hours can indication something bad depending on the situation.

But I think maybe taking out the "+" sign would aready help a lot.

You would then present: Sleeps around 7 hours a night, but not implying in any moment this is a good thing by itself, like you do on the first two levels.

If you present the information like: "Sleeps 7 hours" and then somewhere else state "7 to 10 hours is a GENERALLY a good ammount of sleep for people of this age and gender", I think it will be better.

And then give more information and the player should decide better which information is relevant or a little off, and maybe give a tool for the player to choose what he thinks is a little unballanced.

--------------
Also I thinks this game lacks a little drama. Drama would help a lot on building interest.

[Quicksand-S]

-Nice music on the menu.

Are you being sarcastic?

No... I like the music that plays during the "check your emails" phase. At least, I like the more sci-fi sounding track. The one with drums doesn't fit as well.

...nothing actually tells me if that "useful" point is positive or negative...

...not quite sure what you mean by positive/negative - do you mean healthy/ at risk?

In the "Console Help" section, it says "Sound indicates if the generated point is useful or not." under "Scanning" and it says "Remember which points are not useful. Due to machine error some error points may appear..." It also gives sound effects for a "Good Scan" and an "Error Scan". There isn't anything about some points meaning "healthy" and others meaning "unhealthy".

Anyway, if one sound means "healthy" and one means "at risk" that still doesn't tell me what the problem actually is. I'm guessing the graph actually means something, but the meanings of the numbers are not shown anywhere as far as I know.

The fact that the machine can give random errors makes it hard to know what's going on because I don't know how random the errors are. If I scan someone and get a positive sound for seven out of ten scans, do I guess that they've got issues or not? I really shouldn't be guessing at all.


I have a few new things to mention.

-It didn't save my progress, maybe because I've typed two different names, one with capitals and one without? If that's the case, I feel like there should be clear warning before it deletes the old save. Ideally, it should save the game for anyone who enters a name. A list of saved users would be good too.

-I feel like tutorials such as this should be optional, or very quick to get through. The first tutorial seems pretty pointless anyway, and the second isn't much better.

-"Connected" is misspelled under the emails.

[RichSG]

But I think maybe taking out the "+" sign would aready help a lot.

You would then present: Sleeps around 7 hours a night, but not implying in any moment this is a good thing by itself, like you do on the first two levels.

If you present the information like: "Sleeps 7 hours" and then somewhere else state "7 to 10 hours is a GENERALLY a good ammount of sleep for people of this age and gender", I think it will be better.

And then give more information and the player should decide better which information is relevant or a little off, and maybe give a tool for the player to choose what he thinks is a little unballanced.

Yes you are right, that would make it better. I think I'm going to re-vamp a lot of the 'lifestyle choice' text anyway to make them more clear cut. Thanks for the suggestion!

Also I thinks this game lacks a little drama. Drama would help a lot on building interest.

Just wait till later in the game There'll be more drama in the later levels (of the full game). In terms of the demo, I think the 2 hacker levels add some tension - I think they're levels 6 & 9.

-Nice music on the menu.

Are you being sarcastic?

No... I like the music that plays during the "check your emails" phase. At least, I like the more sci-fi sounding track. The one with drums doesn't fit as well.

Cool - glad you like it!

In the "Console Help" section, it says "Sound indicates if the generated point is useful or not." under "Scanning" and it says "Remember which points are not useful. Due to machine error some error points may appear..." It also gives sound effects for a "Good Scan" and an "Error Scan". There isn't anything about some points meaning "healthy" and others meaning "unhealthy".

Anyway, if one sound means "healthy" and one means "at risk" that still doesn't tell me what the problem actually is. I'm guessing the graph actually means something, but the meanings of the numbers are not shown anywhere as far as I know.

The fact that the machine can give random errors makes it hard to know what's going on because I don't know how random the errors are. If I scan someone and get a positive sound for seven out of ten scans, do I guess that they've got issues or not? I really shouldn't be guessing at all.

Did you see the example graph screen? I was hoping that would make it clearer the difference between the healthy/'at risk' points, and where they lie on the graph. there should have been a flashing highlighter in the diagnosis guide when the info is first available, so you know it's new. The page looks like this:


If you did see it and it didn't help, or didn't find it, I'll have to make some changes because it's pretty key info to help with the scanning.

-It didn't save my progress, maybe because I've typed two different names, one with capitals and one without? If that's the case, I feel like there should be clear warning before it deletes the old save. Ideally, it should save the game for anyone who enters a name. A list of saved users would be good too.

Sorry about the save. When I tested it it was working fine, so not sure what happened :/ Anyway, I'm going to re-jig the save options to just do auto save and only give the last save as an option. This game is all about choice, and there are going to be several endings and some choices will change how the game is played, so I don't want players to be able to save before a big choice and then re-load and choose a different option.

-I feel like tutorials such as this should be optional, or very quick to get through. The first tutorial seems pretty pointless anyway, and the second isn't much better.

Yeah I might reduce the patients to 1. I think the tutorials are useful for people who maybe aren't as used to gaming as regular gamers. But yeah they shouldn't be too long

-"Connected" is misspelled under the emails.

Thanks!

[Quicksand-S]

Did you see the example graph screen?

Oh, nope. Never saw that. I did briefly look at the Diagnosis Guide but didn't notice that it had multiple pages and kind of expected that to just be a reminder in case I forgot what the tutorial had taught me. I didn't realize reading it was an absolute necessity. That makes me think the tutorials should be redesigned to explain more on their own. The mini guide before you enter the levels should also probably be reworded to reduce confusion as well.

Sorry about the save. When I tested it it was working fine, so not sure what happened :/ Anyway, I'm going to re-jig the save options to just do auto save and only give the last save as an option.

Are you saying there's a manual save option somewhere? I didn't see it. I just expected the game to auto-save as I unlocked things.

I think the tutorials are useful for people who maybe aren't as used to gaming as regular gamers.

In the first one, you just type "Discharge" twice. I would think that's not exactly difficult for anybody who is able to use a computer.

[RichSG]

Again, thanks everyone for your feedback so far. New demos are now available for Windows & Mac!

Download links:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/sors/downloads

OR

http://www.sciencegamed.co.uk/games/sors/


Demo v2.2 Release notes:

Bugs/Issues fixed:

• Removed issue where in treatment room bad scan points added when player clicks on areas of the screen other than the patient bed

Gameplay tweaks/updates

• Added autosave feature. Game is now saved at the start of every level (when the player goes to the email screen). Only 1 save file is available at any time so starting a new   game will wipe the save.
• Changed all button inputs to be ‘space’ for consistency (except intro where ‘enter’ is still used)
  diagnosis warnings can now be removed by pressing space
• updated lifestyle advice text to remove ambiguity
• added ‘loading’ text to diagnosis guide, so when player clicks to see patients, loading text appears to feedback to player that loading is occurring
• evel 2-  when graph scanning first appears, to progress to treatment room players must view the graph example in the diagnosis guide.

[RichSG]

Hi everyone

Happy to announce the next version of the SORS demo (v3) is here (for windows and mac), and it features some key changes which hopefully will make the game even better to play.

Download it from:

Our Indie DB page:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/sors/downloads

Or The SORS website:
http://www.sciencegamed.co.uk/games/sors/

Here’s a list of the major changes from v2.2:

1.  UI – taking advantage of Unity’s new UI system, and getting some help from a great UI artist (@swetq_Stanislav), we’ve got a new UI in place for the email and diagnosis guide screens. This means the game looks nicer, loads faster, and the information is easier to read also.



2.  Scanner reticule – In earlier versions the scanner reticule didn’t give any feedback to players. After some really good feedback on this, we’ve added 2 specific things – the reticule kind of rumbles now when you click (a la Vlambeer, and this talk), to show your input has been registered, and it changes from red to yellow to show the cool-down between clicks. Hopefully that’ll make the process of learning how to best scan patients clearer and easier.

3. Learning curve – Originally the first scanner disease players faced was osteoporosis, however it was clear from player feedback that this disease was too complicated to be the first one players faced. So we’ve added in a new disease – diabetes. Diabetes has a much simpler graph to interpret so should provide a smoother learning curve for players to get used to the scanning gameplay.

As always, we love to hear feedback, so please get in touch if you have any about the demo. Depending on the feedback we get, we’re looking to release the game early Jan 2015.

Thanks for reading,

Rich 

[RichSG]

Bump....it would still be great to get feedback if anyone's interested in playing. The new demo addresses a lot of the issues people brought up before, so hopefully it should be an even better experience for players   

[debugchicken]

Played the new version.

- In the very first email screen, there is RIGHT at the beginning the "unknonw" mail, to trigger the story... I don't think this should start so soon. I would wait for at least the second set of patients to start with the story.
- On the first pacient I saw, the cursor disappeared and was very hard to play with. It reappeared once I clicked "diagnosis guide". I don't know why.
- There is way too much interface to deal with right at the beginning, it may scare people. Its better to hide what is not relevant at given time
- I got a guy who drinks 3 units (I think, of alcohol) a day, and it was considered healthy, but I gave lifestyle advice. Again, the same problem. I don't know how I'm supposed to know this, and I don't think this information is enought to make a diagnosis for every person.

- I'm having trouble. with the scan of diabetes.
  1 - what are the other points that arent blood or glucose ? Next to 900 ? Why are they there?
  2 - what I need to compare is just the highest point of each ? Or the groups of points? I need to comapare in the Y axis right?
  3 - Can points of the same thing be very far?
  4 - What sepparates glucose from blood and for that unknown group of points is the wavelength (X-Axis)?
  5 - How do I Know i have scannied all the points ? Or I don't need to scan every one ?

Cheers

[RichSG]

- I'm having trouble. with the scan of diabetes.
  1 - what are the other points that arent blood or glucose ? Next to 900 ? Why are they there?
  2 - what I need to compare is just the highest point of each ? Or the groups of points? I need to comapare in the Y axis right?
  3 - Can points of the same thing be very far?
  4 - What sepparates glucose from blood and for that unknown group of points is the wavelength (X-Axis)?
  5 - How do I Know i have scannied all the points ? Or I don't need to scan every one ?

It was useful to see how you were approaching the scanning task. I've updated  some of the in game text so that it should be clearer now - particularly the fact that you only need to keep scanning until you can make a guess at the diagnosis, and that what you have to compare are not the individual points but the clusters. All of this is in the new build v3.1.

Thanks for the feedback!

[RichSG]

SORS demo v3.2 released!

Wow. So finishing this game is proving a long slog. But I think we’re almost there. A couple of new TINY features have been added in this demo release, which I think make the game better. They are:

1. Bad scan points appear orange for the training levels, to help the player get used to them. After that they’ll appear the same colour as other scan points, so you have to remember where they are I hope this gets people more used to the core mechanics in an easier way, as before I think it was pretty hard!

2. Choice emails. Players now get emails asking them to choose 1 patient out of 2 to see (and potentially save). You only have age, sex and occupation info to go on, although some patients also try to bribe you. It’s up to the player to choose though! Your choices on these patients across the whole game DO affect the ending, in a minor way.

Known issues with this build:
1. Sometimes the vector outlines (surrounding the interface) don’t appear in the treatment room. It hasn’t happened for a while, but I haven’t fixed it either, so it may appear.

To fix, just exit the level and resume.

you can download the new demo either via the website: http://www.sciencegamed.co.uk/games/sors/

or via Indie DB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/sors/downloads

Please report any bugs you find, all info is very useful and much appreciated!

Thanks
Rich

[RichSG]

So the game is finished!

We have a new trailer. You can view it here: http://richsg.itch.io/sors (you can also download the demo and purchase the full version here).

We've made quite a few changes since the last post, and will continue to update the game where possible when we get feedback.

The major changes we've made are:

1. you can enter diseases/treatments in the console by typing the number, rather than the whole name

2. you can now discharge/prescribe patients by using 'd' or 'p' respectively

3. Error messages have been improved so it's clear what you got right/wrong for each patient! (See screenshot)



4. Lifestyle advice has been made less ambiguous.

5. The number of patients you need to see in the earlier levels has been reduced

6. One of the graph clusters for diabetes has been removed (to make things less confusing at the start of the game)

As I said, any feedback is most welcome. On a personal level, this is my first game so I'm so relieved it's out! The last few weeks have been essentially non-stop testing 

I'll be posting some updates over at our blog if you're interested in learning more (www.sciencegamed.co.uk)

If you like the look of the game, please consider voting for us on greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=402437511

thanks for reading!