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DezzTech
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icon Some thoughts about upcoming release of GatEB on steam (+10)  
So I've been thinking lately about the upcoming release of GatEB on Steam and there are a few things that have been bothering me, that I want to share my thoughts about, because I feel they might affect the game's popularity. And since Caravel have probably always wanted the game to be more popular than it currently is (why else would there be a "Press Clippings" forum?), I feel like those thoughts are worth sharing.

As you may probably know let's plays and twitch streams are certainly a good way to give any game some free positive or negative publicity. I'm sure anyone reading this who watches let's plays on youtube or twitch had found at least a few games they like that they never heard about before just because someone they watch played those games (I know I found plenty of games that way). I feel like releasing the game on steam is probably going to attract some attention to it from at least some channels and it would be a good idea to make the player and viewers' first impression of the game as good as possible. This also means that the sooner they get to the "good" part of the game - the better.
And what would this "good" part be? The "good" part of GatEB, I'd say would be the third non-exploration level, The True Court. Why? Simply because that's where the tutorial on movement and roaches and basic game elements ends and the game shifts its focus to actual puzzles. And everyone's favorite part of DROD are the puzzles, right?

And there are 2 small obstacles on the way to the good part of the game. The reason they matter is because some players are probably going to put a "first impression" video of some sort, and the less time they spend on those 2 obstacles - the sooner they get to the puzzles. And maybe they'll even be interested enough to do a full let's play of the game or something. Or buy the game, if they've been playing the demo version. We wouldn't want the "first impression" video to stop right before the puzzle level, right? Another possibility is, if the player even decided to do a full let's play of the game, some viewers might lose their interest in the game before the player gets to the good part. That would also be a bad thing.
So, tl;dr, the sooner the player gets to the True Court level - the better.

Okay, enough with the dumb introduction, let's talk about those 2 "obstacles" for the player.

The first obstacle is...
The tutorial level. ("Play Tutorial" on the main menu)
Why? Why? Why. Does. It. Even. Exist?!
This is DROD's biggest mystery that I have not been able to solve for the 7 years I've been playing the non-AE versions: existence of the tutorial level.

Seriously, think about it: what's this so important thing that the tutorial level teaches player, that the first few levels of the game don't? Oh right. Nothing. Okay, okay, I'll be more serious about this, maybe there *is* something?
Let's list the things that the tutorial teaches the player: basic movement (orthogonal, diagonal, rotating your sword, waiting), orbs, doors, checkpoints, how to restart a room, how to undo a move, how to use the minimap, what secret rooms are, what "hold mastery" is, how to skip the dialogue, battle key, force arrows, ortho squares, tunnels, uh... let's just say "basic game elements", monsters: roaches, roach queens, evil eyes, wraithwings, spiders, serpents, rock golems, brains, seep, tarstuff... whew! That's a long list actually!
You don't seriously think the player is going to remember all of that from the tutorial?

Okay, now let's look at the 5 DROD games:
KDD - first three levels teach the player about basic movement, basic elements like orbs, doors, roaches, roach queens, evil eyes... even mimic potions actually! And there are actual puzzles on the third level.
JtRH - same as KDD, except I don't remember what monsters are there on the first 3 levels. Oh, also Halph. And Slayer. And actual puzzles on the... second level!
TCB even though is not a very good game for new players, has a built into the hold itself tutorial that's about as worthless to the new players as the dedicated tutorial is.
GatEB is a tutorial. Every new element is introduced gently to the player with a good demonstration of how it works and then some good puzzles involving the element so that the player can get used to it.
TSS pretends that the first two levels are a tutorial... but let's be honest, they're a better tutorial than the dedicated one is.

My point is, the tutorial barely teaches the player anything useful. It tells the player how to move. Yea, that's a hard thing to figure out. It shows that you can move diagonally, that's actually nice, but GatEB, which is the game that's going to be released on Steam, does that too. It shows how orbs and doors work, but doesn't even say that you can click on them (GatEB does). It shows a bunch of monsters and kinda shows how they work, except not really, there's nothing the tutorial tells the player about the monsters that the player can't figure out himself in a few seconds. Also, it kinda spoils which monsters are going to be in the game for new players. And even tells players about some stuff that won't even be in GatEB.
Almost everything that the tutorial shows to the player, the player can easily figure out himself. And, ironically, the few things player won't easily figure out himself are written in scrolls, like how to undo or how to skip speech.

So now that I've hopefully convinced you that the tutorial is worthless, you're probably asking now, how is it relevant in any way to what I had said in the beginning of the post? About youtube, let's plays, stuff like that?
Well, the problem is, the player might click on the tutorial and waste time playing it, and as I said, wasting time is a bad thing.

So I propose a really simple solution (that's not just "REMOVE TUTORIAL"), that should be really easy to implement.
Basically, replace the tutorial level with a set of pictures explaining basic things, like how to move, how to skip speech/cutscenes, how to undo. Showcase a few elements and monsters with short descriptions (not too many, as to not spoil them). You can even explain actually useful and non-obvious to new players stuff, like how to backstab!
And don't waste space on screen, you can group a few things into one picture. Have 3-5 pictures with explanations and look at that, you now have the same exact (or better!) thing as the current tutorial, except it wastes way less of the player's time! (Also don't forget to rename the menu option to "View Tutorial" or something, but that should be obvious)


I'm already tired from writing all that, but whatever. The second obstacle is...
Outer Walls: 2S2E
This room features... cracked orbs and a lot of running around for no reason.
Seriously, what is the point of this room, other that being annoying?

Just imagine, you're a new player that just found this game and decided to check it out. You have no idea what to expect from it. In the last few rooms you just learned about some basic stuff and killed a few roaches. You enter this room and... what. Now you have to waste time running around the whole room a few times for no reason whatsoever, great!
If you're a new player who doesn't know anything about the game, what would this room tell you? It would tell you that this game is probably going to make you waste time by artifically making rooms take more time than they need to. Which is not true. But how could you know that? I mean, this is one of the first rooms in the game's tutorial, surely it must represent things to come and set the tone of the game at least somewhat, right?
First impressions can really strongly affect one's opinion on the game, I know I've seen a lot of people who don't like some games (or movies, or books, or anything, really!) as much as they could just because their first impression soured their overall opinion of the game.

Also, this might just be anecdotal evidence, but all the people whom I tried to introduce to DROD (yes, all 7 of them >_>) just... wanted to quit on this room after getting impatient, holding the movement button and dying to a roach in such a way that you can't undo it and then realising that the last time they checkpointed was 200 moves ago or so.
This also includes my best friend who always wanted to play DROD but found it to be way too hard for him. And the thing is, after I convinced him to just bear with this room and not quit the game... he actually loved the rest of the game. This is the first DROD game he managed to almost finish, actually, usually he'd get stuck on level 3 in KDD or level 2 in JtRH. And to think he would've missed out on it just because of that dumb room.

As I said, this might just be anecdotal evidence, but considering the current popularity of DROD, every new player counts. I mean, every new player who might actually enjoy the game.

Um... the solution I propose? Just change this room to, uh... anything else that doesn't involve running around the entire room a few times.


I'm sorry if this post is too long, the thing is, I really wanted to give good reasons to the changes I propose, so I don't come off as some random jerk saying "I don't like this thing, so change it, cuz I'm important" or something.
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EDIT: Oh, and some more very minor points that I've just remembered:

DO NOT refer to this game as DROD 4! Refer to it as DROD: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder. The number 4 is only going to confuse the players ("Why would I start with the fourth game? Shouldn't I start with the first one instead?"). And don't forget to mention, that it is this game, that is recommended for the new players. But I'm sure you know that already.

Can the "DROD starter pack" or whatever it's called holds be redistributed as already installed in the game? That way you can tell the players, "Hey, you want more of the game? We have some usermade holds (level packs) already installed in the game, just click "Change Location" to play them!", instead of having to tell them to import them manually. Not a big thing, just a minor convenience. Also make sure to mention that those hold are playable even with the demo version!

When you're going to release the smitemasters' selections as DLC, make sure to mention the original release date for them so that people won't get angry at you for releasing a lot of DLC over a small time frame. Actually, try to emphasize the original release date, even! Like, for example start the description of the DLC like "Released in 2005, this smitemaster's selection is about Beethro... blah blah". You get the idea.

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[Last edited by DezzTech at 11-14-2014 07:09 PM]
11-14-2014 at 06:08 PM
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Nuntar
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icon Re: Some thoughts about upcoming release of GatEB on steam (0)  
DezzTech wrote: Okay, now let's look at the 5 DROD games:
KDD - first three levels teach the player about basic movement, basic elements like orbs, doors, roaches, roach queens, evil eyes... even mimic potions actually! And there are actual puzzles on the third level.
JtRH - same as KDD, except I don't remember what monsters are there on the first 3 levels.
KDD also has a wraithwing on Level 2. Evil eyes and wraithwings are the only monsters KDD considers simple enough for them to start appearing without a dedicated introduction level. (Of course, wraithwings have complex detailed behaviour, but KDD doesn't require knowledge of this until Level 19, by which time you've had plenty of time to get used to them.)

JtRH has only roaches and queens on the first three levels (as well as, obviously, Halph and the Slayer). Eyes and wraithwings debut in secret rooms in Levels 4 and 5 (and there's another wraithwing secret in Level 11). If you miss these secrets, eyes first appear in Level 7 (with 1N1E as an easy practice room) and wraithwings are introduced (with some helpful speech) in 14:2N.

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11-14-2014 at 07:00 PM
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DezzTech
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Well, I wasted a lot of words saying that, but my point was that the tutorial doesn't tell you anything about the monsters that you can't easily figure out yourself.

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11-14-2014 at 07:13 PM
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Nuntar
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No, you didn't waste any words, I was just adding that information as I found it interesting. I completely agree with your main point.

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11-14-2014 at 07:41 PM
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mrimer
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This is a good discussion DezzTech. Thanks for taking the time to write up all these good ideas.

I agree with the spirit of what you propose.

I agree Outer Walls: 2S2E is lame. I'm completely fine with streamlining it to something...uh...not annoying.

I like the idea of showing pictures for tutorial ideas. But in addition, I think the player should get to play around with the ideas hands-on for a minute or two as they're mentioned. So, I don't feel bad about having the Tutorial. Since our movement controls are non-standard, I think it's appropriate to call this stuff out on the menu before game play starts and people say, "Hey, why doesn't WASD work?" and start mashing the keyboard. The reason there's a separate Tutorial level/option is so this stuff doesn't need to be repeated in each official hold. I don't recall any of the holds discussing movement controls, keyboard commands or screen info either. I think it's fine to take a minute to review it in a Tutorial since the bare interface is crucial to grok from the first level or two.

I like the idea of having the Starter Pack preloaded. Currently, the .dat file setup doesn't allow having that and also allowing you to delete them. This is something I've outlined for us to fix for the Steam release in order to allow DLC packs in general to work more cleanly than they do now.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 11-21-2014 01:03 AM]
11-21-2014 at 12:59 AM
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JamesBond007
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icon Re: Some thoughts about upcoming release of GatEB on steam (+1)  
Europeans actually have a disadvantage on Steam. It's basically a 1$=1€ case. I saw exceptions for this rule, but I'm not sure who sets the prices on Steam - the publishers (in this case, Caravel) or Steam itself.

GatEB on GOG cost $9,99 (not counting current 50% discount). If possible, try to avoid €9,99 in Europe. After checking current exchange rates, I think more suitable price will be €7,99.
11-21-2014 at 02:33 PM
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DezzTech
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mrimer wrote:
I like the idea of showing pictures for tutorial ideas. But in addition, I think the player should get to play around with the ideas hands-on for a minute or two as they're mentioned. So, I don't feel bad about having the Tutorial. Since our movement controls are non-standard, I think it's appropriate to call this stuff out on the menu before game play starts and people say, "Hey, why doesn't WASD work?" and start mashing the keyboard. The reason there's a separate Tutorial level/option is so this stuff doesn't need to be repeated in each official hold. I don't recall any of the holds discussing movement controls, keyboard commands or screen info either. I think it's fine to take a minute to review it in a Tutorial since the bare interface is crucial to grok from the first level or two.

Oh, that's a good point. I forgot that when I introduce people to DROD I always just explain the controls myself.

That said I still think the tutorial level should be shorter at least. Having both the level and pictures would be a good idea actually, because there's some stuff in the tutorial that's just written on scrolls. What you can do is move those explanations to the pictures that are shown before starting the tutorial level, and remove the rooms that had those scrolls. Also, I really don't think the tutorial level should show any monsters other than roaches, because, first of all, spoilers, and secondly, for the new player, the only important thing to show is how to kill monsters, there's not really any difference between killing a roach, killing an evil eye and killing a roach queen in terms of what killing move to use. You just put your sword over them and they die. There are of course differences in their behaviour, but they're not that important to a new player. You can just tell the player in the pictures that there are other monsters in the game that act differently. Maybe even show a few of them, but not too many, because as I said, spoilers.

Also, I just noticed that GatEB doesn't show the controls at the start. I know you literally just said that the tutorial is there so that you don't have to tell players the controls at the start of each game, but I think that GatEB really should tell the controls since it is aimed at newer players. I mean, it is weird that TSS does that, but GatEB doesn't.

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11-21-2014 at 06:01 PM
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Jacob
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I could certainly add movement instructions to the first few rooms of GATEB and I could change Outer Walls: 2S2E to something less tedious.

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11-21-2014 at 06:06 PM
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khrusty
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JamesBond007 wrote:
Europeans actually have a disadvantage on Steam. It's basically a 1$=1€ case. I saw exceptions for this rule, but I'm not sure who sets the prices on Steam - the publishers (in this case, Caravel) or Steam itself.

GatEB on GOG cost $9,99 (not counting current 50% discount). If possible, try to avoid €9,99 in Europe. After checking current exchange rates, I think more suitable price will be €7,99.

I recently bought GatEB from Caravel for slightly more than 10€. The exchange rate was respected, but the (french) VAT increased the price. I don't know GOG's stand on this issue however.
11-21-2014 at 06:16 PM
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Jacob wrote:
I could certainly add movement instructions to the first few rooms of GATEB and I could change Outer Walls: 2S2E to something less tedious.

As long as we're suggesting easy changes, I think The Rasarun Court : 1 South 1 East is probably a bit too big and mazelike for what it's intended to accomplish - it could be replaced with a smaller room that's sort of a combination of what it is now, and King Dugan's Dungeon 2.0 : First Level : 4 North 1 West, which clearly shows that roaches can't move past force arrows the wrong way.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 11-24-2014 09:45 PM : added another room image link]
11-21-2014 at 10:54 PM
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mrimer
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Jacob wrote:
I could certainly add movement instructions to the first few rooms of GATEB and I could change Outer Walls: 2S2E to something less tedious.
Thanks, Jacob! Yes, please.

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11-25-2014 at 09:06 PM
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Jacob
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Hi all,

I am working on GATEB now.
If you have further suggestions for ways the hold can be made more user-friendly, new challenges, changes to the help documentation etc, now is the time to chip in.


Thanks!

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02-19-2015 at 08:37 PM
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Dragon Fogel
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Glum Cove 7N, 1E: You can't get to this roach until late in the game; I'd recommend making that more explicit, with a scroll or small cutscene, so that people don't waste time trying to figure out if there's a secret path to it. In particular, I thought I might be able to get to it after Gunthro gained the ability to move through the shallow water, but I couldn't; the message should probably note that even wading through the shallows wouldn't work, even when you can first get there. Either that or hide a scroll in some shallows to reward the players who do try backtracking.

More generally: Shallow water is one of the more non-intuitive gameplay elements. Every other type of tile is consistently treated the same way by land creatures and land-based players; it's either ground they can all walk on, or ground none of them can. While I'm not sure what to do to make this clearer generally, with respect to GatEB I'd recommend putting in at least a tooltip whenever a new monster appears around shallow water. I don't know offhand where this happens; I remember it was explained that guards could go through shallow water, but I don't remember what happened with any other creature.
02-19-2015 at 10:03 PM
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The passageways that the Tuenan Captain takes in the Inner Chambers level don't make a lot of sense geographically: in 1N, he leaves to the east, yet in 2N he comes from and leaves to the North, but then in 2N1E he comes from and leaves to the East. None of these originating passages connect; they always lead off-screen and into rooms Gunthro never enters.

I think that in order to connect these passages better, it might be better to install some extra passageways or tunnels leading towards those rooms so that the Tuenan Captain exits in the direction of the next room, ideally near the passageway he needs to be in for the next room, so that it's more clear where he's going to be later and it doesn't seem like his passageways teleport or cross over Gunthro's areas.

--

Finally, you still get the same entrance text about chasing down the Tuenan Captain if you re-enter the Inner Chambers entrance after meeting with 6th Patron. Could you use a text variable to replace this entrance text after the meeting to indicate Gunthro is just checking back for work left undone (i.e. 1E)?

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02-20-2015 at 04:57 PM
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Chaco
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Oh, one more thing: Just for convenience's sake, could you add checkpoints under each of the 13 secret scrolls so that when gathering the letters for the Spider Cave quest, you can restore directly to each scroll in a ready-to-read state, instead of possibly to a half-solved room state?

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02-21-2015 at 04:22 AM
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The very first thing you see when starting the game is a cut scene.

I'm pretty sure that audio quality in that cut scene is worse than at any point in the rest of the game. (The quality of the recording, not the voice acting.) I don't know quite how to describe it, but it's very noticeable it's a recording.

Hopefully the audio could at least be edited a bit to sound a little more polished? Or possibly just rerecorded, no idea what the situation is with the voice actors. As part of the introduction, it's a little off-putting.

[Last edited by starwed at 02-21-2015 06:05 AM]
02-21-2015 at 06:04 AM
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Chaco wrote:
Oh, one more thing: Just for convenience's sake, could you add checkpoints under each of the 13 secret scrolls so that when gathering the letters for the Spider Cave quest, you can restore directly to each scroll in a ready-to-read state, instead of possibly to a half-solved room state?

The problem with that is that then the scrolls would be hidden under large X buttons on the restore screen. Which is the easiest way to track them down. Having to potentially half-solve a couple rooms is a lot less time consuming than having to walk everywhere to find the scrolls.
02-24-2015 at 07:19 AM
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DezzTech
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I'll just leave this here:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=965454

This isn't exactly about GatEB specifically, more like about DROD in general;

Main point of interest:
Spreading the good word -> Gaming Websites;
Rest of the post is kinda irrelevant;

Apparently contacting gaming websites and telling them about your game is a totally normal thing that indie developers do? Why hasn't Caravel done that yet then?;

Oh, I guess you could also contact popular youtube letsplayers who like puzzle games. I have no idea who that would be though, since I don't exactly watch many popular letsplayers. Anyone here knows any?;

(Of course, do all this stuff when the game is close to release);

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04-14-2015 at 09:04 AM
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