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Demo Discussion and Recommendations
Just finished Foolish Mortals demo. I had the sound working perfectly fine this time. A bit of a longer, detailed feedback here, since I know the developers are on these forums, and maybe they’ll read this.
What I liked
- an interesting set-up, the story was trying to go for something different within the “voodoo in the bayou” world (I always loved this setting);
- visuals are very nice, great use of color. The ocean looks a bit too static, considering that other water is animated, but overall - very eye-pleasing. I’d suggest to add a few more hotspots to examine, so all this beauty doesn’t go to waste, and you can bring a bit more background into the story. Right now - screens are on the empty side, as far as what we can look at and learn about.
- soundtrack is shaping up to be very interesting and has a cinematic quality to it. Impressive so far.
What I’m not sure about:
- puzzles. I think I’d need to try more of them to make an overall conclusions, but for now - the plus side is that everything made sense to me logically, the minus side is that I can’t get rid of a feeling that we are jumping through hoops to get rather simple things. When the solution gets too creative for something that should be easy to procure, it inevitably brings the feeling of developers trying to artificially inflate the difficulty of the task. We can walk in the news office and simply swipe scissors and twine , but we have to forge an ID to get a piece of chalk? This kind of thing.
What I didn’t like:
- Murphy’s animations. He walks like he has a wooden board stuck inside him - hands at the sides and small, quick steps - very odd look. Most animations here are lovely, by the way.
- Voice-over for Murphy and Voodoo guy. Murphy has a decent voice tone for his character, but it seems like it lacks personality? Excited to find the treasure? Sarcastic and wise-cracking? Naive and innocent? Shrewd intellectual? Seasoned adventurer ala Indiana Jones? I feel like he doesn’t have anything to him, and he just reading lines off the paper. What’s his background or aspirations? Things like that can give great voice direction. For now, he just comes across as unfitting in this role, and I immediately thought “I will not be playing a full game with this guy as the lead”.
The Voodoo guy is just overdoing it, and not in a dramatic and intense kind of way, but in a “trying too hard and it’s obvious” kind of way. He definitely needs to take it down a notch and keep it mysterious but not this dramatic - it’s a bit cringe-y.
The rest of the cast are very good. I especially liked fisherman and the gravedigger - they did a wonderful job!Rando QoL note - I’d also consider adding “fast-walking” option on double-click, as sometimes I can be in the middle of your vast, side-scrolling screen with no arrows for immediate exit in sight, so I have to wait until Murphy walks over to one. His general speed is fine, but the ability to speed him up if needed is always a welcome addition.
I hope this helps!
Thank you.
I agree with all those points, especially the voice acting Murphy is a cardboard cutout with no personality and the voodoo guy sounds like a Hammy actor that works at Disney World. I thought the Grave Digger was fabulous right out of a Monkey Island game in the best way possible.
Puzzles were very meh, not terrible by any means but very checklisting and I don’t like those, it makes me feel like I have a grocery list to do
I’ve got a fresh couple of demos to add for your entertainment.
First of all, let’s continue talking about Jules Verne (for those who don’t follow – we’re currently having a playthrough of Return to Mysterious Island), this gent has his own game being developed - Verne: The Shape of Fantasy
It’s a pixel art adventure where Jules Verne (you) works alongside his own creation, Captain Nemo, to uncover some wildly imaginative mysteries. I thought that the game has pretty inventive puzzles and serious style points and overall enjoyed my experience with the demo that is currently available on Steam, should you desire to give it a go.
Next, we got Orten Was The Case.
This one is very artistic and quirky and has really cool time loop mechanic and open world exploration. Imagine that you wake up with no recollection of what happens, wonder around your neighborhood for a few minutes and… the entire place explodes. After which you promptly find yourself waking up right before it happened, again and again. There is a whole bunch of things happening in the world around you simultaneously, including conspiracies and murders, and little by little, solving puzzles, you make your way forward trying to figure out what happened. This probably won’t be for everyone (also, a fair warning, while it’s a puzzle adventure 95% of the time – I did have one “boss battle” where I suddenly had a moment of fighting action), but the concept is so fascinating that I simply had to share it. This is from my “most anticipated list”, as I was absolutely engrossed. For the lovers of all things off-kilter.
Just finished Foolish Mortals demo. I had the sound working perfectly fine this time. A bit of a longer, detailed feedback here, since I know the developers are on these forums, and maybe they’ll read this.
We have read it! Thanks for the kind words about the things you liked, and I’m pleased to see that the full game is already correcting most of the things you’ve suggested improvements on:
- We’ve added in a bunch of background animations; blowing trees, rippling sea, and things like that.
- Murphy is being rewritten quite dramatically to make his character, personality, and motivations more dimensional. I still maintain that the voice actor is great, but he needs the right material to work from, and I think he’ll nail it once we have it.
- A double-click fast walk was added in April, so should have been in the demo you played. It’s not as fast as something like Voodoo Detective, but does help on those bigger backgrounds. Ideally I’d like a jog animation, but I need to be smart about the budget!
We’ll be putting out a new version of the demo that matches the full game closer to release which will have all the improvements we’ve made incorporated. The need to rerecord a whole bunch of dialogue stops us from doing it any sooner.
I’ve got a fresh couple of demos to add for your entertainment.
First of all, let’s continue talking about Jules Verne (for those who don’t follow – we’re currently having a playthrough of Return to Mysterious Island), this gent has his own game being developed - Verne: The Shape of Fantasy
It’s a pixel art adventure where Jules Verne (you) works alongside his own creation, Captain Nemo, to uncover some wildly imaginative mysteries. I thought that the game has pretty inventive puzzles and serious style points and overall enjoyed my experience with the demo that is currently available on Steam, should you desire to give it a go.
Next, we got Orten Was The Case.
This one is very artistic and quirky and has really cool time loop mechanic and open world exploration. Imagine that you wake up with no recollection of what happens, wonder around your neighborhood for a few minutes and… the entire place explodes. After which you promptly find yourself waking up right before it happened, again and again. There is a whole bunch of things happening in the world around you simultaneously, including conspiracies and murders, and little by little, solving puzzles, you make your way forward trying to figure out what happened. This probably won’t be for everyone (also, a fair warning, while it’s a puzzle adventure 95% of the time – I did have one “boss battle” where I suddenly had a moment of fighting action), but the concept is so fascinating that I simply had to share it. This is from my “most anticipated list”, as I was absolutely engrossed. For the lovers of all things off-kilter.
I tried that verne demo on your recommendations and I liked it, some of the puzzles I think could be more involved and a little better but not a terrible demo at all. game worked great with a controller
Just finished Foolish Mortals demo. I had the sound working perfectly fine this time. A bit of a longer, detailed feedback here, since I know the developers are on these forums, and maybe they’ll read this.
We have read it! Thanks for the kind words about the things you liked, and I’m pleased to see that the full game is already correcting most of the things you’ve suggested improvements on:
- We’ve added in a bunch of background animations; blowing trees, rippling sea, and things like that.
- Murphy is being rewritten quite dramatically to make his character, personality, and motivations more dimensional. I still maintain that the voice actor is great, but he needs the right material to work from, and I think he’ll nail it once we have it.
- A double-click fast walk was added in April, so should have been in the demo you played. It’s not as fast as something like Voodoo Detective, but does help on those bigger backgrounds. Ideally I’d like a jog animation, but I need to be smart about the budget!
We’ll be putting out a new version of the demo that matches the full game closer to release which will have all the improvements we’ve made incorporated. The need to rerecord a whole bunch of dialogue stops us from doing it any sooner.
great to hear I’m rooting for you and this game.
I tried that verne demo on your recommendations and I liked it, some of the puzzles I think could be more involved and a little better but not a terrible demo at all. game worked great with a controller
“Not terrible” is what I’m aiming for 
Any demos you tried that caught your eye, if you ever play them?
EDIT: I only recently discovered what a difference does a controller for PC makes in some games… I was missing out.
I tried that verne demo on your recommendations and I liked it, some of the puzzles I think could be more involved and a little better but not a terrible demo at all. game worked great with a controller“Not terrible” is what I’m aiming for
Any demos you tried that caught your eye, if you ever play them?
EDIT: I only recently discovered what a difference does a controller for PC makes in some games… I was missing out.
No this is the only demo i tried recently, but I pretty much play every Adventure game now with a controller. even ones that are not made for them. I use a third party called Joy-to-key. Even the game a vampyre story, I’m playing with a controller so I can stream it to my TV.
Found this demo for Lost In Space The Adventure Game. It’s based on 60s TV show (that I haven’t watched), and while it might be a bit clunky overall - especially control system that favors controller and is a bit unusual for a keyboard user, I felt like it had charm, rather refreshing (amidst current trends of adventure gaming) setup, and potential to be something good. Or at least entertaining.
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