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[DrDerekDoctors]

Hullo! So, I'm making an Action RPG and lately I've become a little concerned about the amount of text in it. The reason for the majority of text is either to provide humour, background information on the setting or - more importantly - clues to puzzles (there are a *lot* of puzzles, it's quite a "thinky" game).

So, would you be put off buying a nominally Castlevania-ey game if, to complete it, you had to generally read the descriptions of stuff you found or signs in the world?

If so, are there any things which would mitigate this?

Thanks,

[ProgramGamer]

The way you're describing it, text in your game seems to be relevant to the game itself, which makes the large amount of it ok imo. Though I guess it would be a good idea to be upfront about the fact that there's lots of reading. Maybe you could have a bit in the trailer about "uncovering the secrets of the world" while showing an item description screen or something, just to make sure people know what to expect.

I know I'm answering this a bit tangentially, so I'll answer your original question: No, I don't mind reading stuff in games, as long as individual chunks are relatively short and as long as it has a use in the actual game.

Finally, what's your game about? Is there a devlog for it yet? Because if you don't, you totally should!

[DrDerekDoctors]

Cheers - it seems your feelings about games are similar to my own. And yeah, I'm gonna be totally upfront about the fact that the game contains scads of text. I do have a devlog - https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=21007.msg664482#msg664482 - but the first 4 pages of it are MASSIVELY out of date (the game has had a ground-up rewrite in the intervening time) and, tbh, until I get some nice graphics for it I don't know if I'll be posting much in it because frankly the game looks like ass at the moment.

To give a few examples of the length of item descriptions:

"Purple Top Hat
Made from nothing but the finest velour and cardboard, this shabby off-cast from a cheap costume hire shop offers scant protection from damage and even less from the elements (by which I mean rain, as its actual elemental protection is zero)."

"Empty Potion Bottle
An empty potion bottle, crafted by a skilled glassblower from a rare and specialised form of glass which is resistant to the thaumaturgical stresses which magic potions exert.
At least that's what the label on the base says. Twenty quid says it's covering up an IKEA barcode.
Some strange optical property of the bottle makes it's shape appear different depending on the strength of the potion inside it. Which is handy."

[Cobralad]

edit the shit out of jokeses

[pulse]

Put as much text as you want in it, just make sure it's skippable. That way both types of players are satisfied.

[Tusky]

Put as much text as you want in it, just make sure it's skippable. That way both types of players are satisfied.

Sounds like you wont be able to skip some of it if it contains clues the player will need to solve puzzles.

I might not be your ideal target audience necessarily since I don't usually take my time to read everything available in RPGs. Also if there is excessive lore I won't dive in e.g. The tomes that are left about for a player to read in Witcher games or Pyre. But that being said there are a lot of people that take pleasure in that.

Personally I would find it frustrating if a clue I needed was buried in reams of text. However if it was made clear where I could find the answer, or the important clue giving text was not to long then I think that would be ok.

[ProgramGamer]

Yeah, reading through flavor text to find clues might not be appealing to everyone. You could always take a page from the Zelda textbook and color hints in a bright color to indicate their relevance. It might also be a good idea to separate flavor text from item descriptions. For example, this:

Purple Top Hat
Made from nothing but the finest velour and cardboard, this shabby off-cast from a cheap costume hire shop offers scant protection from damage and even less from the elements (by which I mean rain, as its actual elemental protection is zero).

would become this:

Purple Top Hat
-Damage Protection: Poor
-Elemental Damage Protection: None
Made from nothing but the finest velour and cardboard, this shabby off-cast from a cheap costume hire shop offers scant protection and leaves you open to the elements.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Sounds like you wont be able to skip some of it if it contains clues the player will need to solve puzzles.

Well, with conversations, you can obviously skip through them as fast as you want. I've actually somewhat ripped off the SNES Shadowrun game with conversations in that if an important keyword is said, it appears in red, and you can then ask people for more information about those keywords (although it's filtered by person so you don't have to ask everyone about everything). Additionally the game logs all their responses so you can easily look up a keyword or an NPC in your grimoire to find everything said on the subject.

I might not be your ideal target audience necessarily since I don't usually take my time to read everything available in RPGs. Also if there is excessive lore I won't dive in e.g. The tomes that are left about for a player to read in Witcher games or Pyre. But that being said there are a lot of people that take pleasure in that.

Personally I would find it frustrating if a clue I needed was buried in reams of text. However if it was made clear where I could find the answer, or the important clue giving text was not to long then I think that would be ok.

Righty, I've given an example below, d'you think that'd be amenable to someone who was a little text-averse?

Yeah, reading through flavor text to find clues might not be appealing to everyone. You could always take a page from the Zelda textbook and color hints in a bright color to indicate their relevance. It might also be a good idea to separate flavor text from item descriptions.

Yeah, this was something I was actively considering. The issue becomes when an item is (for instance) a note, in which case it's kind of *all* flavour text, only with information buried inside it. I suppose in those cases, I could have a summary at the top with the full text below? i.e.

The key to the Primary Tank Value Room. Attached is a note from a criminal called Hal to another called Del indicating that a dead body has been left in the tank.
It's a small, rusted key. Attached to it by raggedly twine is a small scrap of paper, yellowed by age.
The writing on it reads:
"Del,
Found another little lost lamb trying to get to the village. Didn't have anything worth stealing but I'd played my hand by then. I tied a rock to them and dumped them in the main reservoir.
Long story short - don't drink the water. If you need to drain the reservoir - use this key.
Hal"
I think it's fair to say that Del and Hal are a grade-A arseholes, no matter how impressively small Hal's handwriting is.

[Oskuro]

I'd say it depends on how the content is presented.

To me, diving straight into massive walls of text is usually a turn off. But, if the game has taken its time to draw me into the story, then I will be looking forward to reading all it has to offer.

My guess would be to gradually immerse the player in the story, starting with simple straightforward conversations, and then expanding the info dumps as the plot thickens.

Videogames are a visual medium comparable to movies or comics, and those usually take some time to let the audience settle into the story before info-dumping hard. Those that info-dump from the start get... sinned.

And yes, make it skippable, and, more importantly, replayable. Few things I hate more than massive text dumps I cannot choose to skip (or accelerate), yet I cannot revisit afterwards if I've forgotten something.

So.... Reader engagement + convenience should be the key.

[Superb Joe]

nier automata was really good

[qan]

Put off? Not at all. I prefer a good balance of show and tell to keep things interesting. I hope you nail it.

[Superb Joe]

my personal experience watching people play games i wrote for is that the text seems really good in a text file but in a finished product can seem outlandishly long winded. look up subtitling standards for the amount of text they put on screen for films and television and give your stuff an editing pass

[ViktorTheBoar]

More twitchy action = less text

You can't give me too much text to read in Pillars of Eternity games.
In games like Diablo, I just skipped every line of dialog ever.

[seth]

From the two descriptions you provided, I would suggest they are too long-winded.

for instance this description:

Made from nothing but the finest velour and cardboard, this shabby off-cast from a cheap costume hire shop offers scant protection from damage and even less from the elements (by which I mean rain, as its actual elemental protection is zero)

could be cut down to:

This cheap velour and cardboard costume hat offers little protection from damage and even less from the elements (meaning rain, as its actual elemental protection is zero)

While still preserving your main joke.  Brevity is the soul of wit etc.  Humor aspect aside, it's good to be shorter. I really like reading Dark Souls item descriptions because for one I am interested in the world, but they are also really short while still (usually) providing an interesting tidbit.

[poisonknight]

To be honest, when I normally play RPG I don't follow the storry really much if there is a LOT of words. I love a great story but at the same time I don't want to spend most of my time in reading the story. So I think that RPGs with short texts but funny texts is more better than long and rich stories

[NowSayPillow]

I love reading, but I can't stand super verbose games. Say what you need to say, then let me play. This is especially true for action games, the sooner I'm thrust into the fray the better. In fact, if you can tell me what you need to tell me while I'm playing (like Bastion and Stories: PoD) then that's even better.

[Josewhalez]

Yeah, having to read long paragraphs of information just too proceed in a game and to be able to know what I have to do next kind of makes the game a bit boring to me. This is why I've never really been a huge fan of role playing games.

[s0]

im illiterate

[Klogen]

It's fine as long as there's an option to fast forward. And not the old classy "fast forward" where you click and the text just moves 2x faster, but no skip option lol. XD I used to be able to play these gameboy games out of the context without reading and i still was aware of the plot.

Conclusion - text is fine, some people are into lore and explanations, i too sometimes like that. Depends really on what action game it is and how interruptive these texts are

[Froglover]

Can't say that it puts me off as that text is crucial to understanding what,you need to do next in the game. I like when it's short though, maybe a sentence or two. Anything more than that becomes a,bit much