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“The Corruption Within” 

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@Baron_Blubba - without giving away too much we have steered away from supernatural elements, but I do know that The Colonel’s Bequest was a big influence to my co-dev’s vision of the game.

@walas74 - thanks! Smile Although this came could hardly be more different from Captain Disaster, I really hope you still enjoy it.

     
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CaptainD - 11 May 2021 07:09 AM

@Baron_Blubba - without giving away too much we have steered away from supernatural elements, but I do know that The Colonel’s Bequest was a big influence to my co-dev’s vision of the game.

@walas74 - thanks! Smile Although this came could hardly be more different from Captain Disaster, I really hope you still enjoy it.

Yeah, I know it’s going to be very different. I just meant I trust the creator haha

     

Currently translating Strangeland into Spanish. Wish me luck, or send me money to my Paypal haha

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walas74 - 11 May 2021 07:37 AM

Yeah, I know it’s going to be very different. I just meant I trust the creator haha

Grin

     
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CaptainD - 11 May 2021 07:09 AM

@Baron_Blubba - without giving away too much we have steered away from supernatural elements, but I do know that The Colonel’s Bequest was a big influence to my co-dev’s vision of the game.

Sold!

     

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CaptainD - 09 June 2021 01:24 PM

The Corruption Within is now available to buy:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1395400/The_Corruption_Within/

https://cosmicvoid.itch.io/the-corruption-within

*10% off during Launch Week!*

Consider it bought! Looking forward to playing it very soon.

Edit: Bought.

     

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Purchased. Can’t wait to dive in!

     
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Thanks both! Hope you enjoy the game Smile

     
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CaptainD - 10 June 2021 03:56 AM

Thanks both! Hope you enjoy the game Smile

Thanks, Captain D! I finished the game this morning and certainly enjoyed it. It would be an amazing game to play at a small Halloweeny time of year gathering. It’s a nicely told scary story with a well realized atmosphere, and I felt compelled to keep on playing. The game took me three sittings to complete, and each time I fell into the ‘just another couple of minutes’ trap. One more conversation to have, one more room to explore, one more item to use.
Also, man, the plot that actually happened was totally different than the plot I was thought was coming. Wonderful storytelling prestidigitation!

I do wish there were more puzzles and that they were a bit more difficult. The adventure was over all too soon and I wouldn’t have minded spending more time with the mansion and its inhabitants. I felt like there was a little too much prognosticatory signposting, with the protagonist saying things like ‘I don’t have any reason to [do something] yet.’, where the ‘yet’ very obviously implies ‘remember this, you’ll need it later.’ Just leave it to the player to remember that certain objects which may or may not be key objects exist. Also, toward the end of the game, a couple of the puzzles feel like they solve themselves, such as escaping from the dungeon via the iron maiden and sometimes puzzles were solved by accident such as if you discover the secret name under the rock that is needed to open the treasure chest before you even find the treasure chest. I feel like these were solved in one step, when it would have been more satisfying to let the player solve them in several separate steps and actually push ‘n pull some proverbial buttons and levers themselves.
Other than my desire for a more challenging experience, which I understand might not be everyone’s desire, my only wish would be for the characters to have name plaques beneath their portraits. Each character in the game has a very distinct role to play in the story, but it was hard for me to keep track of who was who, especially when gossiping about them with one of the other characters. I’d probably enjoy the story even more if I played it a second time, just because I wouldn’t have to rack my brains to remember everyone’s name and relationship to one another. An in game notebook would have helped, too, but that might be a much bigger deal to program than simply inserting name plates.

Anyway, thanks for a really enjoyable game! I liked it enough that I’m going to go back and play blahblahblahStompingboots and Void Breach very soon.

     

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Thanks for your feedback, Baron_Blubba! I’m glad you enjoyed the game overall, and that the plot wasn’t too predictable! :-)

About the puzzles… firstly it’s so difficult to gauge just how easy or not people will find certain puzzles, and obviously it’s impossible to hit the sweet spot for every player. Most feedback we’ve had seems to be that we more or less got it right, I guess when in doubt we opted for the extra hint somewhere to make sure we weren’t going to frustrate players. Personally I was worried that people would find it too easy, but during beta testing and early review copies, there were one or two puzzles that people got stuck on and had to ask for help, so I felt somewhat reassured. The two of us working on the game obviously had the odd disagreement and artistic difference, but generally speaking each of us stood our ground on aspects we felt particularly strongly about, while reaching compromises in others.

There were quite a few puzzles that I designed to be more complex than they eventually were created, sometimes only a small difference but in a couple of instances massively different. This was due to the game being created by the two of us in our spare time and having given ourselves a somewhat strict deadline to keep, which we were absolutely determined to deliver on. The amount of Kickstarted projects I’ve seen that looked so promising but failed to be delivered on time or at all… given that we had both been a little nervous about doing a KS in the first place, we absolutely had to keep the project within scope and that necessitated some pruning here and there. One puzzle in particular had to be drastically scaled back as it would have probably taken my co-dev a month to code, plus he felt that visuals would have been impossible to adequately represent in the resolution we used for the game. One or two of the instances you mention of a single-step solution rather than a multi-factored one were due to getting close to the point where we absolutely had to start official beta testing soon in order to be able to meet our release date target, and I agree that ideally having extra steps to work out would have been more satisfying.

So basically yeah, we would have liked to make the game bigger, and personally I would have liked to make it a little more challenging, but we were adamant that the game would be released on time. The estimated completion time varies between 2-4 hours; a lot depends on how quickly people work out the puzzle solutions obviously, but also reading speed, whether they investigate everything thoroughly, etc (like any point and click really I guess). We were very keen to avoid people getting stuck for too long on a single thing.

The name plates is an interesting idea, I’ll see if Aviv thinks he can implement it relatively easily.

     
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Hey Captain D, thank you for that very insightful reply! It’s so cool to me to get to speak directly to the people who make the games I’m playing.

I definitely sensed a lot of what you are saying, particularly regarding the puzzles toward the end of the game.

I just want to say, I realize that I spent many more sentences critiquing the game than praising it, which might make it seem that I didn’t enjoy it. That is absolutely not the case; I was hooked from start to finish, and personal preferences aside, enjoyed it through and through. I also realize that while I and some other folks might enjoy a tougher game, just as many people (and probably more) would rather one that is exactly as challenging as The Corruption Within.

It would have probably been impossible to do while meeting your release day targetes, but I’m waiting for a developer to integrate a ‘hard mode’ into their game, where the ‘hard’ doesn’t make the puzzles themselves more difficult, but removes some of the signposting along the way—using words like ‘yet’ and sentences like ‘I should probably remember that for later’ and ‘This key I just picked up looks like it will fit in that box in the attic,’ and things like that. I think this would significantly add to the feel of player agency, without adding any art or puzzle-inventing or programming to the developer’s workload.

I admire that you set a goal and hit it, even though it meant sometimes reigning your ambitions in a little. I struggle with that, and that’s why almost none of my projects ever see the light of day—I get carried away adding more and more, until actuating the idea becomes almost completely unrealistic. A real artist knows when to put the pen/brush/keyboard away and say ‘I’m done.’

     

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I have just finished it, and also enjoyed the journey. I’ll agree on the preference for a slightly increased difficulty, but this is coming from a seasoned adventurer (as lots of people on this forum are), so perhaps if you were to make your target audience people who aren’t nerding out about adventures all the time - it makes sense that this level of difficulty would be just what the doctor prescribed.

It sucks to choose between creative directives and deadlines. As much as I’d love to stretch the last part for a little - I can only commend you for following through with your goal, and I wish many other developers treated this commitment as serious.

I thought the art was fantastic, and I liked the overall story that went a lot further than I anticipated, and it worked. I have to say that the actual “meat” of said story, when you get to it, turned out a bit darker than expected, but going towards that part was not quite as eerie, somehow. Overall, nice balance - not too horror-y, but also quite chilly. Considering how short is the story and how many characters are involved - they were well-written, a bit too on the nose with their personalities, maybe, but it’s hard to go about it any other way when you have those time/length restrictions. Although, Samuel might have been a tad too altruistic in all his helpfulness. Considering the fact that it took him a long time to scrape funds for a simple outdoor vacation with kids - I’d be hinting really hard at the cut from finding Gutenberg Bible out of all things! Since he did all the hard work - being a man of honor wouldn’t be quite as satisfying. Tongue


I’d definitely agree with BB about losing track for who’s who there a few times (especially all the ladies), and I would have loved an in-game notebook. I do have a tendency to jot down what I think I need if the game doesn’t keep track of it, but if I wouldn’t - I’d be surprised to find that I needed to remember, say, the letter sequence as the character no longer repeats what he read, and it seemed to me (maybe, I’m mistaken) that it was “read it once and commit it to memory” one-time deal kind of thing.


Also - sound was surprisingly grand, and I thought it was a nice touch.  And another thing that stood out was MC’s comments about everything with his occupation in mind - I found it quite amusing. He really has a distaste for a particular color! Grin

Thank you for a good time with this small, charming (as much as horror-ish things can be) adventure.

     
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I backed this game the moment I heard of it because (it’s not the first time I say it and it won’t be the last) I loved Captain Disaster in: Death Has A Million Stomping Boots. Clever puzzles, good sense of humour and delightful English accent. I still hope Captain D. will agree to translate it into Spanish some day…

My hands are full at the moment so I can’t play it right now but I am sure I won’t regret backing it.

     

Currently translating Strangeland into Spanish. Wish me luck, or send me money to my Paypal haha

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Regarding the MC’s comments relating to his own life experience and personality, that was pretty cool. Sometimes I got the feeling that the things he said were giving voice to developer inside ‘jokes’ or frustrations. Like maybe you guys really didn’t like having to use the color green in your game or something, but were required to by something in the programming language or art rendering program you were using? Sorry, I’m really bad at talking nuts and bolts game development—the right terms just aren’t in my vocabulary.

I’m going to nitpick one thing, and it’s not at all specific to The Corruption Within, although it exists in The Corruption Within. That’s integrating Kickstarter backers into portraits and decorations in the game. I think the only person who ever gets a kick (ha) out of that is the person who is being portrayed. For me, it’s just an immersion breaker, a completely and obviously non-organic part of the environment.
Still, if that’s what it takes to get good games like this one made, I’m happy to put up with it.

     

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@DCast - glad you liked the game overall, even if it would have been nice if it were a bit longer and / or more challenging (and I absolutely agree with you on that!). With the story I really wanted to focus on atmosphere but not “horror” as such because… well, personally I don’t like horror. I knew what sort of expectations people might have had with the basic story intro, so deliberately tried to create something that they weren’t expected. From feedback so far I think I pretty much managed that, which is very gratifying. Smile

Finding the right kind of voice for Samuel was quite difficult and I guess in certain ways his character changed a little after we already had the intro written and voiced, which possibly explains a few slight disparities. I was trying to make him someone who would be educated and not desperately poor, while at the same time being able to talk fairly comfortably with both the upper and lower classes. It was rather difficult to find a profession that seemed to fit this bill.

I will speak to Aviv about possibly having a name under the portraits (or something similar) to help keep track of people. I must admit that the whole business of keeping things within scope and on-time were largely down to his efforts rather than mine, it’s not a skill I’m particularly good at.

I had worked with Eric before and knew before we even started the project that I wanted him to do the music. Fortunately he was willing and able, and did an amazing job.

@walas74 - thanks again for your kind word, I think that for Stomping Boots it might be too late to try for a translation but maybe for a future CD game it’s a reasonable possibility… Wink

@Baron_Blubba - I think I had some great reason for Sam hating green that was never really developed because after a while Aviv kept complaining that too many of my descriptions were about the colour green!! Probably I had some event in his childhood giving him a hatred of anything green, I honestly can’t remember now. So it’s something that remains in a few interactions but nothing more.

As far as the portraits go, I think Aviv did try as far as possible to put them into something like period costume, and when I felt it really looked too modern I suggested changes to make it look a little more in period, but I do see your point.

 

 

 

     

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