Unfortunately I got softlocked at one point, but other than that, the mechanics of pipes and the general atmosphere was great. The cutscenes are very cool, but a suggestion would be to perhaps use a formspec to lock the player's look direction (I guess there's the downside of showing the cursor...) and speed them up a fair bit, particularly the first one. There's lot of walking, but the atmosphere mostly makes that ok. Probably it would be best however to add either more teleportation or use seamless teleports to give the illusion of a shrunk down space, to reduce walking distance a little and spend more time on puzzles and building the world and sense of wonder.
Thanks for the feedback. The formspec suggestion is interesting, I'll have to try that. For the rest, I agree that the pace needs work, since long hallways are at best an atmospheric element and more likely an annoyance. The original idea was actually to have the puzzles split not into discrete rooms, but 'regions', which in theory could make the hallways serve some further purpose than a delay, or even largely eliminate hallways in favor of wider spaces. The first cutscene was intended to have a slow start for suspense, though I may have overdone it slightly. The rest were essentially a rush job, so I mostly just strung the dialogue together with reasonable guesses for how long it would take to say (I was planning to have voice acting, but that fell through at the last minute) and worked off of that. They'll definitely be reworked later.
Where did you softlock? I know of one point (the room after the blackrod) where it's possible to trigger a minor wire update bug, but that's fixable by replacing a wire segment.
I got stuck in the room with the blonde haired character in the glass tube, where neither doors worked but there didn't seem to be any solution. There were two wire segments that could be moved but both were in place already (I tried all combinations I believe) and a switch which also didn't change anything. It could also be that I just missed the solution instead of it being an actual soft lock though.
That seems to be the case: the glass is actually a forcefield, and you're expected to turn it off, so as to free the other character. It could probably use some better hinting.
Yep, I figured that one out after about 5 minutes of trying different things. Actually, it's very logical (was one of the first things I tried), but turning off the lever isn't good enough, you have to do it with the blackrod.
Unfortunately I got softlocked at one point, but other than that, the mechanics of pipes and the general atmosphere was great. The cutscenes are very cool, but a suggestion would be to perhaps use a formspec to lock the player's look direction (I guess there's the downside of showing the cursor...) and speed them up a fair bit, particularly the first one. There's lot of walking, but the atmosphere mostly makes that ok. Probably it would be best however to add either more teleportation or use seamless teleports to give the illusion of a shrunk down space, to reduce walking distance a little and spend more time on puzzles and building the world and sense of wonder.
Thanks for the feedback. The formspec suggestion is interesting, I'll have to try that. For the rest, I agree that the pace needs work, since long hallways are at best an atmospheric element and more likely an annoyance. The original idea was actually to have the puzzles split not into discrete rooms, but 'regions', which in theory could make the hallways serve some further purpose than a delay, or even largely eliminate hallways in favor of wider spaces. The first cutscene was intended to have a slow start for suspense, though I may have overdone it slightly. The rest were essentially a rush job, so I mostly just strung the dialogue together with reasonable guesses for how long it would take to say (I was planning to have voice acting, but that fell through at the last minute) and worked off of that. They'll definitely be reworked later.
Where did you softlock? I know of one point (the room after the blackrod) where it's possible to trigger a minor wire update bug, but that's fixable by replacing a wire segment.
I got stuck in the room with the blonde haired character in the glass tube, where neither doors worked but there didn't seem to be any solution. There were two wire segments that could be moved but both were in place already (I tried all combinations I believe) and a switch which also didn't change anything. It could also be that I just missed the solution instead of it being an actual soft lock though.
That seems to be the case: the glass is actually a forcefield, and you're expected to turn it off, so as to free the other character. It could probably use some better hinting.
Oh right I had to power the switch while there was no wire connected...
Yep, I figured that one out after about 5 minutes of trying different things. Actually, it's very logical (was one of the first things I tried), but turning off the lever isn't good enough, you have to do it with the blackrod.