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katy-133 · 7 months ago

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Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn Demo Feedback

Things like general thoughts, reactions, and suggestions for the full game.

Housekeeping/Context: I have around 9+ years of game dev experience as a hobby, having made (directed, written, drew, programmed) 10 games (mainly visual novels or other 2D narrative-driven games) and been involved in an additional 17 games (either as a voice actor, additional writer, artist, playtester, or animator). I've also been a narrative/design consultant for additional games during pre-production. Please keep this in mind, as while I have developer experience, it is mainly in a different medium of games (though they have some overlap with Myst-likes, like Alex Hill). With all that in mind, these are my notes.

First impressions before playing: I love detective games, especially the Nancy Drew series, which I played growing up. They're very nostalgic to me, so seeing Alex Hill's promo art drew me in because of the comparisons.

Pre-rendered backgrounds:

This is the big reason why I wanted to play this. I love pre-rendered video game art and actively search for games that use it. I love that I can see wood grain in the furniture. The view of the inn from outside has this haunting look to it. The ability to explore locations without NPCs gives that feeling you get when you're playing Myst where you feel like you're the last person on Earth (which is one of the major attractions of Myst-like games). Beautiful work.

Performance issues:

I noticed large moments of lagging (frame rate dropping) while playing. These happened in spikes (specific moments, rather than consistent throughout). I was confused at first, as one of the main pros of pre-rendered art is that it tends to have much better performance than real time rendering. Then I talked to Cassandra and saw her hair load in last. I realised that (if I am correct in this) the methodology of the game's design is that the backgrounds are pre-rendered, but all the characters are rendered in real time. I would recommend having the characters be rendered as image sequences instead, to remove the real time rendering from the game. These dropped frames are a major performance issue and I would place optimisation as the highest priority out of all my notes here. If you take away one this from this feedback, I want it to be this. Players who have less speedy PCs than mine will only have greater difficulty playing (I've observed that the Nancy Drew fandom tends to favour laptops and non-gamer setups, so this is quite likely). Let me know if you'd like a copy of my specs.

My specs are (via Speccy):

Exploration:

I love the exploration in this demo. Moving throughout did not feel cumbersome. I could get to where I wanted easily. I love the classic exploration style. I love the design of the cursor. I like how it changes to different icons for hotspots and exploration. It's clear to understand and easy to see in different environments. The moments where I'm given the option to look out a window into the night forest is haunting because I'm always worried that I'll see something outside in the distance. It's great atmosphere.

Camera's perspective:

The camera feels placed oddly-high. The angle appears to be aligned 1:1 with the horizon line, instead of angled slightly lower. This causes the furniture (as it's meeting the ground, not the ceiling) to appear smaller and obscured by the GUI (user interface), because the GUI is placed at the bottom of the screen. This gives an unappealing spacial feel where there's a lot of empty space at the top of the screen, but too much at the bottom of the screen that feels cropped off. My suggestion would be to either lower the angle of the camera or to move the GUI to the top of the screen.

User Interface (GUI):

I love the design of the Main Menu, with the font typeface choice, and the image of the inn at night. It is responsive too (has no lag/no frame rate drops). It was so beautiful, I paused to stare at it for a while because I thought I could see the stars twinkle, despite it being a still image.

Right now, the Settings menu feels unfinished. One of the aesthetic attractions to Myst-like games is that their GUI tends to be diegetic (meaning, the GUI buttons are objects that exist in-universe, or are presented with an aesthetic that feels that way). Currently, the Settings GUI feels too minimalist to be diegetic. It's text with bars. I would suggest something with a more wood or paper feel to it, or something else that invokes private detectives.

The loading screen feels like a default loading screen and could use some more aesthetic polish (like a looping animated logo--or "throbber"--at the centre of the screen).

The in-game GUI like the the inventory is readable, using rendered images of objects as icons (which is good--compare it to Nancy Drew's Midnight in Salem, where the inventory used mono-coloured icons to represent inventory items, making different key cards or documents unreadable to the eye as they were all the same colour and shape). The in-game GUI also doesn't feel diegetic, but rather follows "invisible" minimalist design rules. I wonder if a diegetic design would be more aesthetically appealing, but that is a light suggestion.

I like that there is a both skip button and a hotkey for dialogue lines, as it's useful for replays.

With dialogue options, you may want to consider adding some sort of indicator for the player when there's options where you'll get to pick all of them (you're just choosing which order you're picking them in) and not losing the option to pick the other questions if you pick one over the other. (You could use an icon or do what disco Elysium does and add a "Wait," in front of those dialogue options.) This is a light suggestion, as other games also don't have such indicators.

Gamefeel (aka Game Juice):

Something I noticed multiple times was that (even in Fullscreen mode) if I clicked too far on the edge of the screen (left or right), I would accidentally click out of the game and switch to my desktop. This happened frequently, as I would move my cursor to the edge of the screen to turn as I explored.

Additionally, in the Main Menu, every time I started a new game, I would need to click on the screen (anywhere on the screen) to get the cursor to start highlighting buttons when I hovered over them (I assume this is caused by the game not being "activated" automatically upon starting the game and the active window instead being the Steam window instead). I recommend finding a solution to resolve these two issues, as it lowers the gamefeel, making me feel like I have less control over the controls. Adventure games have very minimal interactivity compared to (for example) an FPS game (as first-person shooters require instant reactions to the player moving the camera and firing at enemies). So any interactivity in an adventure game like Alex Hill that is off in some way (non-responsive) will be noticeable.

Interactions:

I love being able to drink coffee and eat chips in this game. I like the bag sfx and voice acting of the player character enjoying the food/drink. It's the little interactions that make the difference. I hope the full game will have environment interactions like this throughout.

Characters:

In the demo, I came across 3 on-screen characters, the player character, the unseen driver, a phone/text character (Mom), and 2 ghost characters (ghost = writing term for an offscreen character who "haunts" the narrative)--the literal ghost and the (currently alive but offscreen) mother of the ghost. I like the idea of the player character being a private detective that recently messed up a previous case, it gives her something to prove and may be relatable to different players (the feeling of having messed up and being given a second chance and that weight hanging over you like a Sword of Damocles).

With the mom, I got the feeling through the texts that Alex is on close, good terms with her.

The ghost character, Audrey, as well as the ghost's mother I found compelling--I imagine we'll see more ghost sightings and we'll eventually contact the mother as she'll have more information.

Cassandra feels like an old friend who you met at work. I'm not sure what to make of Concillo (the player's boss) in the short interaction I had. I tried to find a character archetype that he fit into to describe him, which was somewhere between "the chief commissioner who gives you your assignment" and "fatherly mentor." Ronnie seems like an interesting suspect, striking me as timid but trying to be a helpful/hospitable host.

Puzzles:

The only puzzles I found in my first playthrough of the demo were the crossword puzzle and the inventory puzzle of unlocking my room. Neither gave me a feeling of classic Myth-like puzzles because the crossword puzzle is optional (doesn't advance the plot) and the design of the door puzzle doesn't feel like a puzzle because you are given the key before being presented with the locked door (usually, it's the opposite) and I didn't need to drag the inventory object to the door to open it, it was automatic (removing my interactivity with the puzzle). I searched around for more puzzles, as I wanted to get a feel of what the full game's puzzles would be like.

In my second playthrough, I found the clock puzzle, which was a compelling puzzle. The hint in Latin, the design of the puzzle box, and the environment's context clues were a nice touch.

Mystery:

A common pitfall I've noticed with Myst-like adventure games is the "finding the plot" problem where the player is dumped somewhere at the beginning of the game and has to spend the beginning faffing around aimlessly trying to get the plot to happen (such as a main conflict of mystery to appear for them to solve). This demo avoids this I'm happy to say. We are given a task (minor goal), we are shown a glimpse of the possibly supernatural element (the mystery/major goal) near the beginning of the demo, giving the player a motivation and something to solve.

It's a compelling mystery--It's either a supernatural cause, or someone is trying to make it look like something supernatural is happening.

Music:

I love the main menu music. It's atmospheric and fitting. The slow piano keys feel mysterious.

The music sometimes cuts out if I linger in an area for too long (while solving the crossword puzzle).

SFX/Voice acting:

The voice acting is good, believable, and fits the character designs. The sound mixing is good (no odd audio levels or audio cutting off or peaking issues).

I like the ambient sounds of the street outside the detective agency, the sfx for touching objects. Those are details that add life to the scenery.

All in all, I'm super-excited about Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn l and have wishlisted the game.

#review #my text #nancy drew

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