I haven't played it yet, but according to its description, it's a linear story, that contains an end. There aren't many games that contains story. It's unique in its own way. By the way, the cutscenes, especially a prologue and an epilogue, are important to add if it involves story. If it's possible, please add some cutscenes in-game.
I think the opening sequence where the wizard does a short jumping puzzle/parkour while he chats with the light orb works fine and is more engaging than some cutscene that will probably be skipped by a large number of people. You could add an opening cutscene showing the forest in a bad state and a closing one showing the effect of defeating the last boss. But this was a Jam game, so Wuzzy was more busy creating an actual game not a movie.
Because cutscenes introduce important parts of the whole story. And when he talked with the orb, i couldn't look at the chat box. I lost the important stuff because of it. The aspect is nice, but the conversation should be saved in a log text, to be able to look at it later. (And maybe it should be replaced with voice instead). Oh and, I said that if you wanted to enlarge it to a story-driven one, you could add some cutscenes in-game. It wasn't limited to the Jam event.
Your comment made me realize that even for in this potential game, someone does not want to make a fully linear story one, with some cutscene. It can't be helped then.
Thanks for this review, it made me think! First of all, I won't implement your suggested ideas as this game is finished for me. This was done for a game jam and I'm only 50% happy with the end result or story. But I'm happy with the technology I achieved (like I wrote a complete mapgen just for this game, the heavy use of leveled nodes that have fine-tuned heights (rather than just full blocks and slabs), or how the light orb moves very well).
It was a nice experiment. For a full-blown cut scene, there wasn't time. But I didn't plan one anyway.
I think the game is "good enough" for a game jam but I don't think it has potential; the whole overall gameplay didn't really work out for me. Such is the life of a game dev: You don't know what gameplay is good without trying it.
But still! I like the idea of a camera pan showing the actual forest, I agree that could have explained the story better. It's unfortunate the messages went away too fast for you. I also agree some kind of message log would be nice. You're not the only player who couldn't follow the story at some parts. The game could indeed have done a better job here. Or in general, the whole plot point of "the forest is dying" ... I don't think the game as a whole communicated it well.
I suppose making cut scenes in Minetest is possible but it involves some ugly ugly hackery.
So although I probably don't want to make updates to this game anymore (only bugfixes), these are good ideas to keep in mind for future projects. So thanks.
I haven't played it yet, but according to its description, it's a linear story, that contains an end. There aren't many games that contains story. It's unique in its own way. By the way, the cutscenes, especially a prologue and an epilogue, are important to add if it involves story. If it's possible, please add some cutscenes in-game.
"Cutscenes are important" - why?
I think the opening sequence where the wizard does a short jumping puzzle/parkour while he chats with the light orb works fine and is more engaging than some cutscene that will probably be skipped by a large number of people. You could add an opening cutscene showing the forest in a bad state and a closing one showing the effect of defeating the last boss. But this was a Jam game, so Wuzzy was more busy creating an actual game not a movie.
Because cutscenes introduce important parts of the whole story. And when he talked with the orb, i couldn't look at the chat box. I lost the important stuff because of it. The aspect is nice, but the conversation should be saved in a log text, to be able to look at it later. (And maybe it should be replaced with voice instead). Oh and, I said that if you wanted to enlarge it to a story-driven one, you could add some cutscenes in-game. It wasn't limited to the Jam event.
Your comment made me realize that even for in this potential game, someone does not want to make a fully linear story one, with some cutscene. It can't be helped then.
Thanks for this review, it made me think! First of all, I won't implement your suggested ideas as this game is finished for me. This was done for a game jam and I'm only 50% happy with the end result or story. But I'm happy with the technology I achieved (like I wrote a complete mapgen just for this game, the heavy use of leveled nodes that have fine-tuned heights (rather than just full blocks and slabs), or how the light orb moves very well). It was a nice experiment. For a full-blown cut scene, there wasn't time. But I didn't plan one anyway.
I think the game is "good enough" for a game jam but I don't think it has potential; the whole overall gameplay didn't really work out for me. Such is the life of a game dev: You don't know what gameplay is good without trying it.
But still! I like the idea of a camera pan showing the actual forest, I agree that could have explained the story better. It's unfortunate the messages went away too fast for you. I also agree some kind of message log would be nice. You're not the only player who couldn't follow the story at some parts. The game could indeed have done a better job here. Or in general, the whole plot point of "the forest is dying" ... I don't think the game as a whole communicated it well.
I suppose making cut scenes in Minetest is possible but it involves some ugly ugly hackery.
So although I probably don't want to make updates to this game anymore (only bugfixes), these are good ideas to keep in mind for future projects. So thanks.