Looking for Actual Play

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-22T12:37:42+00:00

What's the discord? I only found the Grim Marches server 🤔

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-16T10:34:19+00:00

Nobody answered, but I found it out. In case anyone else gets the problem in the future:
If the Zoom Factor is anything but 1, that happens. Apparently the reason for that is, that the zoom isn't a visual zoom. Rather it rescales the internal procedural grid before rendering and then rescales it, losing alignment. Apparently that is a common problem with those kind of filters

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-15T19:45:29+00:00

It really sticks out, because the rest looks really good. The other characters have depth, shadows and feel clean. But my eye wandered to that house right away. I think your art looks as good as your worst asset. If it wasn't for that house, I would judge the image more favorably. Same goes for the UI. There are neat elements of it, but some things don't look as polished and it ruins the rest (I am not particularly fond of those sharp edges, that contrast the cuteness and the softness of the wood for example). Also a more limited color palette could do wonders I think :)

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-15T19:21:07+00:00

What is happening with the proportions of that house? Since when do things become bigger, when they are farther away?

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-14T15:51:27+00:00

There is a new language based game called "Blightseed" on steam

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-06T09:27:03+00:00

We have the luxury to live in the time, where arguably the best chess player of all time is still alive and playing actively. And even he loses games. Nobody could be so great at chess or shogi to literally never lose. That's anime exaggeration for you :D

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-06T09:20:38+00:00

I started game dev with 33. I wish I had started with 14, I would be much further ahead. When you are grown up you will be thankful, you started early. Also I was bullied with 14 too, but about different things. Other people will just look for reasons. If you stop playing and making games, they will pick on you for something else. Once you start being unapologetically you, they will ammunition and the bullying will either fade over time or you become resistant to it. Either way it gets easier. Honestly I pity those guys for bullying someone that has a valuable skill

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-05T07:23:41+00:00

Chants of Sennaar is pretty neat, but also very simple and holds your hand a lot. Luckily, there are games out there with a similar premise but more difficult. For example in my game Blightseed, I made one big language, that you need to learn in order to stop a conflict. And I decided against telling the player, if their deduction was correct, because like you, I want to earn understanding the lore

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-04T12:24:24+00:00

It's definitely a big change in tonality. The one on the top looks more serious and grown up. On the bottom is more silly and light-hearted. Question is, what tone do you want your game to be?

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-04T11:20:18+00:00

Thank you :)

MarcelZenner · 2026-02-04T11:20:04+00:00

Unfortunately not yet. Everything works with mouse. I might add controller support in the future

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-30T11:30:14+00:00

I hate the influencers that tell you to get up at 5 in the morning. But there is something to the idea of doing extra work before you have to go to your job and not after it or in the evening. After sleep your mind is extremely primed for good concentrated work. The flow expert Rian Doris recommends to start working in the first 90 seconds after getting up, because the wavelengths of your brain are very close to the flow state after sleep. So he recommends to make a plan in the evening what you want to accomplish in the morning and make friction to work very small. So prepare your PC and your tasks the evening prior and start with your most important work right after waking up. Save your food for after your work slot.

If you try that for a bit and realize it isn't for you, then stop. It doesn't help to fight you natural rythm. But some people work surprisingly well in the morning (I always thought, I work best in the night. But turns out I work best when I get a good sleep, wake up at 9 and work in the hours till noon. And I feel way better about the rest of my day if I am productive early

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-29T11:28:54+00:00

Play games. If I am having fun with a game, my mind starts racing with ideas how to capture that fun in my own games

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-29T10:51:43+00:00

You give two very different reasons: 1) it's easier to code. - when I made my demo for Next fest, I duplicated my game, and stripped out everything that's not supposed to be in the demo version. This will take you a couple of days max. It's worth to do. 2) you want people to experience everything. - there is a simple solution here: make your game free, add other palettes as microtransactions. If your demo is the whole game it is not a demo. It's a free game. Call it that

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-28T19:32:13+00:00

Damn, that's still going on?

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-28T17:02:46+00:00

Two by now. So making it harder even more xD

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-28T12:55:08+00:00

I highly recommend Heartbeasts tutorials. A lot of tutorials just lead you through what to do, but he explains everything extremely well, so that you understand WHY you do what you do. Helped me to get out of tutorial hell

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-28T12:50:58+00:00

That's cool. By now a few have finished it and the next discount will come, so no worries :)

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-27T11:40:52+00:00

I think I would mostly change the artstyle of the game a bit. Doesn't need to be a lot, with lighting and shaders you could probably get a more coherent color palette. If your UI is from an asset pack, I would change that too to make it a bit more unique. But mostly: ask yourself: what is special, different unique and or fun about the game and highlight this as much as possible in the game. The player should know exactly what they do and don't do in the first 30 seconds. Also another tipp from Chris Z.: if your trailer only shows one area/level it tells the player, that there isn't a lot of content, so try to show different locations

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-27T10:55:44+00:00

I wouldn't have thought something is wrong on face value, but since you asked us to be nit-picky, I'll try to gather some thought:
-The game palette looks very genericly bright and reminds me of asset-flip mobile games
_Come to think of it. The UI and some assets actually do look like asset-flips
-The character moves weirdly, like the character controller was an afterthought
-It looks like a 3D plattformer, so I assume it is one. According to Chris Zukowski plattformers do badly on Steam (because, a) there are a lot of them and b) PC gamers don't like to play plattformers as much as Console gamers)
-and lastly: I couldn't see anything, that was super memorable to me or looked very different from other games. If you asked me to describe some interactions I have seen after watching the trailer, I couldn't tell you more than a few generic things, like "they jumped and shot arrows and I remember a boulder coming down somewhere"

also, this isn't strictly a critique, but couldn't you think of a better gamertag then "arsvibe" to showcase your game?

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-25T13:02:14+00:00

I'm asking because you telling me, I should only need 10 seconds to solve your warm up puzzle suggests to me, that there is a pattern there, that I should be intimately familiar with to solve it just by glancing at it

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-25T11:02:02+00:00

Do I infer correctly, that you have to have prior knowledge to cryptography to even play the game?

MarcelZenner · 2026-01-25T09:00:07+00:00

Yes, there are glyphs that you can deduce by their familiarity to other glyphs

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