Friday 31 October 2014

Heroine's Quest EP5 - Break, Enter and Die


This is a pretty short episode due to a combination of frustration and technical difficulties. It seems I am definitely trying to access the Thieves' Lodge too early, but this isn't signposted that well. That room is especially annoying since the game hints at the puzzle solution (pretty ineffectually in my case) even before you really have the information you need to work with.

The puzzle also relies heavily on the look function which frankly doesn't work very well in this game. For this kind of feature to work you need either better art direction, so interactable objects are more distinct from the set dressing or some kind of highlight system.

You also need to be pretty generous with the hit box for these objects, I missed the left antler and received the room look description instead. I then assumed that both antlers were the same object and missed a letter required to solve the puzzle.

Maybe some of these are system limitations, I believe the game is made in Adventure Game Studio and perhaps it is just difficult to have multiple look descriptions or to implement the kind of highlight system I mentioned before. It is probably important to keep in mind that this is a free game which also implies that they didn't have much of a time or financial budget to work with.

I guess part of the problem I had in this episode is that I was not really fully engaging with this game, I recorded the episode after having played Massive Chalice. In effect I was kind of pining after the new hotness rather than wanting to explore Heroine's Quest more fully.

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