2012 In Review 021 - Silhouette

[Gizmog]

Post-Addendum To PreThoughts: *WARNING* This is a puzzle heavy game. I don't think I get too heavy into spoilers, but you never can tell. If you want your experience to be pure, don't read this first.
Just be prepared to die a bunch of times, don't be afraid to save and reload. It's part of the game.

Pre-Thoughts:
No idea what to expect out of this. I don't remember if it was a contest entry, something the dude just came up with or what. I'm betting it's probably a real RPG kind of a thing, with mysterious protagonists, smoky evenings and generally shadowy stuff. Silhouette is a cool name, though the more I look at it the more I wonder if I'm spelling it right. And vaguely thinking I might've played this. Weird!

During-Thoughts:
Whoa! Bitchin New Game/Save Game/Load Game thing going on here. Definitely would've remembered that!

Died to Slimes. Didn't have a chance, couldn't hurt 'em. Custom battle system is super intriguing!

I might be crazy, but I think this dude has three walking frames. Kind of cool!

You seem to restore to full health after every battle which is a godsend, and you can save anywhere so shouldn't lose too much progress. Some of the enemies I've seen are WAY tougher than me though, so apparently I've got a ways to go.

Not sure this ()Water chest actually gave me something

Oh slime a sliding puzzle I'm awful at these

Really neat the way battles are setup more like puzzles than actual battles. You don't gain EXP or items from fighting in them, they're mostly there to make you go a certain way and get certain equipment first. Super interesting design, very few go this way.

Love the hints, love how saving often is a convenience, very appropriate to the tone of the game.

Sooo stuck on Steelguard and not looking forward to backtracking through non-dodgable non-random battles to see if there's something I missed.

Did break the game a little, somehow triggered a battle, but could still walk around, triggered ANOTHER battle, got some slice errors.

Took me a loooooooong time to find out you can equip gems on sword to beat Steelguy. Was that an option that was enabled when I got the spell slot?

...oh my, I've been missing a crystal for a long time. Teehee!

Post-Thoughts:

Demo's supposed to be over when you've got 4 crystals, I've only got 3 but am good and stuck. I've backtracked from "The end" to the start twice now, found one thing I had missed, a puzzle that was clever but I thought was simply flavor. I'm not sure where to begin on this game. It has a lot of very very cool stuff going for it, and a lot of stuff that would make you decide to quit before you had ever gotten to that. I guess we'll just take it from the top.

First thing you're gonna notice about this game: No title screen, custom load game menu. Wasn't sure what to make of it when I saw it, but soon enough the reason become apparent: This is a game where you're going to die a lot. Every battle is a puzzle, there are no random battles just everytime you walk through a particular room, you're going to fight the a custom battle particular to that location. There's a solution to each of them, be it a choice of attacks or wearing your equipment (another custom system) in the right place. And if you're wrong, you're gonna die. FORTUNATELY, you can (AND SHOULD) save anywhere and everywhere. This isn't what you'd expect coming in, and even though the game over screen warns you about it, lets you know this is the case and allows you to continue, it can be a bit jarring. The custom system makes the save/die/reload process as quick and painless as possible and is the only reason this game is able to be as good as it is.

The game gives you a hint in that this game is going to be different when the first battles are against groups of rats who will nearly kill you until you find the sword, letting you know that battles are always going to come right down to the wire. Unfortunately, it pisses all over this lesson by having a room immediately available full of unbeatable "Tier 14" enemies, which the included hint file says is to "Teach you about tier levels". I'd do away with that gimmick and explain it in the manual, or on a poster or something in the first room. A player who dies that one-sidedly that early is more likely to think the game is broken than to think they're learning something, especially because they haven't had time to learn to save constantly yet.

The custom battles themselves are pretty amazing, though the text only approach has its limits. It seems like it would be really easy to plug in some graphics and animations to really bring it to life, though it's hard to punish a guy who did so much for not going that extra mile and I suppose it would be hard to have 8 rats with their own turn and health gauge on screen at the same time.
You have four options, Fight, Orb, Spell and Item, though the later three only become available if you've obtained and equipped an orb, a spell or an item. Once you find an orb, you can equip it as armor, as an orb, or as a buff to your weapon, and once you've found a SpellSlot you can equip an orb as a spell too. Didn't run into any battles where the spell option was useful, but its a cool addition to the system and it does allow for some interesting variations of strategy.

Storywise the game is pretty barebones. You wake up in a mysterious dungeon complete with treasure chests, yet there's Portal-esque posters on the wall giving you hints and advice and later on scientists and engineering briefs. Weird dungeon! Near the end(?) you'll plant and water a seed, though to what end I'm not sure 'cause I couldn't get anything else to happen. I assume it had something to do with the Bright crystal, which I only found later while I was backtracking. I would've liked the water and seed expounded on a little, 'cause I had no frickin clue that it was actually water and a seed and not like, spells or crystals or something until so much later in the game. I actually assumed the chest was meant to give me a gem and was broken: Another opportunity I could've taken to quit the game.

But I didn't, stuck it out, thought it was pretty cool. The battles are text based, so there's no enemies, hero graphics or backdrops. Just maptiles (the whole dungeon is made up of the same gray blocks), the hero walkabout and some pushable and non pushable bricks. They're adequate for the kind of game this is, though a little variety would've been rad. Music set a nice atmosphere. Generally speaking, a pretty good game. The push-tile puzzle was a little out of place and strange, but well scripted. Had one incident where the custom battle broke, though that might be a result of opening the menu, saving the game and leaving the menu pretty quick, the little "Saved!" indicator in the lower left, having just exited a textbox or some combination thereof.

I'd definitely recommend it to people, so long as they prepare themselves a little bit for what they're getting into. The intro could be a little bit longer to help out in that department, perhaps a "tutorial" or words of advice to first time players before they die and feel like they don't get it. That said, once you know this is a weird, equipment finding puzzle solving kind of game it is amazing for what it is and amazing for all the little touches the author put in in a way that is hard to describe or capture in screenshots. It's clearly unfinished and that is a big bummer, but it doesn't have to stay unfinished so if you made this game and you're reading this review, I hope you tough it out. I'd love to see what happens next.

[Mystic]

Hi Gizmog, thanks for your kind words.

I have been working on this game a little bit here and there since release, and things are going well. I decided to check SS for any more reviews or discussion, and was happy to find the review contest happening! Things like this are heavy motivation for me to continue this work, particularly because some of the things I wanted to show off were not finished in time for HotOHR 2012.

Many of the issues you have with the game during this review have been fixed or reworked since you played. The reviews here, discussion during HotOHR, PMs I got, and playtesting from my friends have led me to reworking some of the "bad" feeling elements while strengthening the stuff that goes well. So, whenever I do end up releasing the "next version" I do hope you'll give it another go.

However, there are a few things I want to ask about, if you don't mind.

Did break the game a little, somehow triggered a battle, but could still walk around, triggered ANOTHER battle, got some slice errors.

Do you have any idea how you achieved this? A few people got it during playtesting and I thought I fixed it. I've never been able to replicate it. There are lots of scripts in the game and I'm wondering if at some point there's a 1-tick opening for battles to occur. However, I'm in the process of completely revamping the encounter rate system (the one built-in to the engine doesn't do what I want) so it may not matter at that point.

I also am not sure how you didn't manage to "complete" the game. It sounds like you did solve the final puzzle, but it just didn't work. I hope to have that fixed as well, since in my testing it always worked, no matter what "order" I solved it in.

Took me a loooooooong time to find out you can equip gems on sword to beat Steelguy. Was that an option that was enabled when I got the spell slot?

Nope, you always can, from the very start. In fact, I'm surprised (and pleased!) to hear that you made it all the way there WITHOUT equipping anything to your sword. I feel like some of the encounters should be impossible without it! I like this because I want to get rid of the idea that each encounter is made to be beat in only ONE way. Each of my playtesters would randomly discover a way to beat an encounter that I didn't think of, and it sounds like you did as well! In the future parts of the game, there will be so many options for you that only one successful permutation would just be completely unfun. Instead, the player is supposed to think about the kinds of stats they might need for an encounter they lost, or elemental abilities, or whatever. My goal is to continue to refine the menus to make this as easy and painless as possible - it's still a little repetitive switching equipment around.

I'd do away with that gimmick and explain it in the manual, or on a poster or something in the first room.

There's one in the second room, no? Regardless I've fixed it up since.

Anyway thanks for your review and it will go a long way into helping me realize the vision I have with this game.

[Gizmog]

I went back and got the glitch to trigger again. It's not the best repro in the world because it still seems to be a matter of luck, but I got it to replicate twice so maybe you can figure it out from this.

Basically, there's a spot right after the sliding ice block room, to the immediate right of the green safety block. If you stand there, and then walk down one block, and then up one block, hitting the escape button a few times every step, eventually you get into a battle but you can still move. It might have to do with what I assume is an NPC on that spot that sets up the "Recall" ability for if you goof up the sliding ice puzzle, but that's mere speculation.

I'll update the review with some screenshots of the spot in question, and hopefully with a little pokin around you'll be able to find it.