There's not a lot to do but drilling, and contrary to other games' standard tools that you can use by holding down the mouse button, here players have to spam-click. Also, I don't know why but the author has decided to limit item stacks to 5 items each, making the process of collecting the 200 requested nodes kind of annoying (I haven't finished that). There is no reward feeling in general.
Instructions: the positive thing is that the author has included them (which shouldn't be taken for granted), the negative thing is that they consist in a raw wall of text that only appears when a player enters the world. So if you close them by accident or you want to double check something, you must close and re-open the world. I appreciate the irony about the jackhammer not working properly to justify the left click spamming, but... heh, it's not gonna cut it.
Controls: I get it, we're on the moon and, actually, the first time I've jumped I was positively impressed by this nice touch. But after a couple jumps, you just don't want to jump anymore, ever. It slows down gameplay so much, as if the collecting in stacks of 5 wasn't enough. Also, there is this dark mood in the game, I wasn't sure if monsters were gonna spawn to kill me or anything (maybe related to the title). Felt a bit like Slenderman, without being sure if there was actually a threat outside. That could be seen as a nice touch, but I've closed and uninstalled the game before having an answer (so I'll just have a look at the code)
The stack limit was introduce to make the jackhammer's battery last about as long as your inventory, but thinking back a 50 limit (the amount needed to be collected) would make more sense, and then just decreasing the inventory size down to just the hotbar or so. Default behaviour of 99 would have made more sense and been less tedious.
The wall of text nature of probably could have been reduced if I'd had time by introducing (a) a datapad with the instruction written on (b) step-by-step instructions and (c) phased instructions.
You got confused about the reference to clicking being about the jackhammer.. it's actually a reference to how only the button texture side of the airlock doors works. The jackhammer definitely needs continuous action though.
As for controls: To preserve realism I want to keep the gravity, but I think an idealised mapgen would have some slab height nodes so you can just would up most slopes. That would reduce the need to jump greatly.
As for the mood, I think it relates to the almost complete lack of saturation in most the textures, including how the sky is black instead of blue like the earth's and has no clouds. The moon is stark like that. Maybe the secret of the moon, if it actually existed, would be the monsters..
I agree it's very unfinished, actually the project was a huge learning process about just how long proper game development takes..
I've been playing a fair bit of Hades Revisited recently, and the way the player experience problem with low gravity is solved is by giving you a pair of weighted boots to reduce your jump height. That would probably work for SoTM. Not that SoTM is planned to come back - just a thought.
There's not a lot to do but drilling, and contrary to other games' standard tools that you can use by holding down the mouse button, here players have to spam-click. Also, I don't know why but the author has decided to limit item stacks to 5 items each, making the process of collecting the 200 requested nodes kind of annoying (I haven't finished that). There is no reward feeling in general.
Instructions: the positive thing is that the author has included them (which shouldn't be taken for granted), the negative thing is that they consist in a raw wall of text that only appears when a player enters the world. So if you close them by accident or you want to double check something, you must close and re-open the world. I appreciate the irony about the jackhammer not working properly to justify the left click spamming, but... heh, it's not gonna cut it.
Controls: I get it, we're on the moon and, actually, the first time I've jumped I was positively impressed by this nice touch. But after a couple jumps, you just don't want to jump anymore, ever. It slows down gameplay so much, as if the collecting in stacks of 5 wasn't enough. Also, there is this dark mood in the game, I wasn't sure if monsters were gonna spawn to kill me or anything (maybe related to the title). Felt a bit like Slenderman, without being sure if there was actually a threat outside. That could be seen as a nice touch, but I've closed and uninstalled the game before having an answer (so I'll just have a look at the code)
In general, it's highly unfinished
The stack limit was introduce to make the jackhammer's battery last about as long as your inventory, but thinking back a 50 limit (the amount needed to be collected) would make more sense, and then just decreasing the inventory size down to just the hotbar or so. Default behaviour of 99 would have made more sense and been less tedious.
The wall of text nature of probably could have been reduced if I'd had time by introducing (a) a datapad with the instruction written on (b) step-by-step instructions and (c) phased instructions.
You got confused about the reference to clicking being about the jackhammer.. it's actually a reference to how only the button texture side of the airlock doors works. The jackhammer definitely needs continuous action though.
As for controls: To preserve realism I want to keep the gravity, but I think an idealised mapgen would have some slab height nodes so you can just would up most slopes. That would reduce the need to jump greatly.
As for the mood, I think it relates to the almost complete lack of saturation in most the textures, including how the sky is black instead of blue like the earth's and has no clouds. The moon is stark like that. Maybe the secret of the moon, if it actually existed, would be the monsters..
I agree it's very unfinished, actually the project was a huge learning process about just how long proper game development takes..
I've been playing a fair bit of Hades Revisited recently, and the way the player experience problem with low gravity is solved is by giving you a pair of weighted boots to reduce your jump height. That would probably work for SoTM. Not that SoTM is planned to come back - just a thought.