Playtest - Stepchild

Hey thanks for the note. I do want to finish it, but the technical issue I’m having makes it really tedious to work on, especially since some of the content I’m trying to manage is difficult to get to without starting a playtest completely over each time. It will be done…I just couldn’t maintain the momentum with a crippled editor UI.

…and saying sandbox/rambling doesn’t work is a little mystifying… FL is SO open world it took forever for me to get hooked into it!
edited by HanonO on 4/19/2013
edited by HanonO on 4/19/2013

Stepchild is back up! Thanks and apologies to Alexis…I literally broke my editor account mucking around with the meta mechanics of StoryNexus.

If any of my veteran testers: (Reaper? Midnight?) could bravely volunteer to get themselves committed to the asylum, I’d much appreciate it. :)

I realize this makes me the dumb kid, but when I figured out what caused the, um, surprising setback, and then avoiding that thing led to punishment, I just kinda got frustrated and felt like building up again would be pointless. My impression is that some folks on this thread figured out how to get around it but I didn’t. A hint system might be nice.

Have you only found one way out of the castle?[li]
edited by HanonO on 12/30/2013

I have but now I can’t get up to my Inn room even though I have the key. It’s weird.

…and then I died in the war. Fun game. Weird game, but fun.

I’ve played through a few games. I haven’t been put in the asylum, though I did go to jail at one point and I was one away from the town of Lunebyn last time the military came for me. I haven’t figured out what the deal is with some of the stuff in the castle, but I’ve been having fun.
A couple of notes:

  1. If you need a signature from the king, you have until nightfall to get it. Though I have the document for signing and was told to get it signed, the option to have him sign it never appears when I go talk to him. Don’t know if this is purposeful, but if it is, you might want to warn about it.
  2. One’s deck tends to “run out of cards” when one is leaving middle school. It’s not awful but I think it costs an action for no reason.
  3. That skipping dinner and servants moving around one takes a bunch of screens and an action or two seems weird.
  1. As per my comment a few posts up, sometimes one pays for a hotel room, it is the proper time of night, the option to go upstairs will still be locked. If there’s something else necessary for the room to be open, tell us what it is.
  2. I got the rat quest the first time I played and haven’t gotten it since. Might want to hint what we have to do to get that.
  3. Sometimes I can see the wall in the upstairs hall, sometimes not. Have yet to figure out what the deal is with that one either. OK, it’s something about green.
  4. That curiosity adds up to hypotheses I get, but what those hypotheses are I’m not clear on. Like, do they collect somewhere? Or unlock something in some other part of the game? If so, what? Being minimalist about hints is actually ok but &quotYou figured something out! The game is just not going to tell you what it is…&quot is a bit maddening
    edited by Spicklehead on 1/6/2014
    edited by Spicklehead on 1/6/2014

Thanks for your detailed feedback! As I mentioned I haven’t worked on this game for a while so there are many parts that I put in and did not polish. When people play and talk about it, it motivates me to to actually get back into it!

  1. I believe the option to have the king sign your note is on his normal card. You’re not going to get it during dinner conversation. He should be able to do it during jousting or while waiting for breakfast, that’s weird if it goes away because that branch should only require an unsigned note object (which I think is a quest).
  2. Yeah, middle school has the main sections of that storyline in there. I intended to put a lot more cards and events that haven’t made it in yet.
  3. You mean if you miss dinner the card that pops up? That shouldn’t charge you an action, but that card needs to fire to adjust some qualities involving your appetite and how many meals you have skipped and how angry the King becomes the longer you stay away. When I dive back in, I’ll look at it.

[quote=Spicklehead]I’ve played through a few games. I haven’t been put in the asylum, though I did go to jail at one point and I was one away from the town of Lunebyn last time the military came for me. I haven’t figured out what the deal is with some of the stuff in the castle, but I’ve been having fun.
A couple of notes:

  1. If you need a signature from the king, you have until nightfall to get it. Though I have the document for signing and was told to get it signed, the option to have him sign it never appears when I go talk to him. Don’t know if this is purposeful, but if it is, you might want to warn about it.
  2. One’s deck tends to &quotrun out of cards&quot when one is leaving middle school. It’s not awful but I think it costs an action for no reason.
  3. That skipping dinner and servants moving around one takes a bunch of screens and an action or two seems weird.[/quote]

[li]

  1. I’ll check that. I didn’t stay in the inn a lot when I did playthroughs. If you have the…i think the jangly brass key? It should be open at the right time. I know there’s ways for your time of day to become glitched. It thrills me that you played enough to need to use the inn!!!
  2. It’s likely you need to hear about it from the town crier first. That was a thing I didn’t polish - he needs to announce more important news before the non-important news. The rat quest is not finished, so I apologize. Failbetter added some new toys and buttons and my intention is to reconfigure the combat system to take advantage of them. So the rat quest is really rough since it has done several different things at different times.
  3. Yep. If you have chlorophobia, you won’t see the wall.
  4. I had someone mention it was exceedingly demoralizing to have built up a good amount of curiosity then have it taken away. My solution was to transform 10 curiosity into 1 conjecture that you wouldn’t lose just as a checkpoint system. Yes, just as curiosity is required to accomplish certain tasks, conjectures are more powerful forms of curiosity and can actually answer some questions for you or give you more detailed information. Currently I only had implemented it in two places: the stained glass window, and the portrait gallery near the king’s study. In my thinking, a conjecture is an unformed question you have that can trigger an object to reveal something you haven’t thought about in a while. I’m thinking when I implement Lunebyn that you will need a motivation to visit there and you might not find it unless you have enough &quotquestions&quot in your head.

[quote=Spicklehead]4. As per my comment a few posts up, sometimes one pays for a hotel room, it is the proper time of night, the option to go upstairs will still be locked. If there’s something else necessary for the room to be open, tell us what it is.
5. I got the rat quest the first time I played and haven’t gotten it since. Might want to hint what we have to do to get that.
6. Sometimes I can see the wall in the upstairs hall, sometimes not. Have yet to figure out what the deal is with that one either. OK, it’s something about green.
7. That curiosity adds up to hypotheses I get, but what those hypotheses are I’m not clear on. Like, do they collect somewhere? Or unlock something in some other part of the game? If so, what? Being minimalist about hints is actually ok but &quotYou figured something out! The game is just not going to tell you what it is…&quot is a bit maddening
edited by Spicklehead on 1/6/2014
edited by Spicklehead on 1/6/2014[/quote]

[li]

Im trying to do the jousting and it keeps saying I need to train with my horse but theirs not seeming to have a way to do it. Is that part of the game not done yet or am I just not see it?

Hey Shyanna - The jousting section is incomplete. There’s currently no way to win it.

[li]

I came across a BIG game breaker today.

I was throw into the asylum and decided to make myself even crazier. I then clicked on the card that lets you meet the man that gives you humiliation/quirks. I went through it the first time with no problems. But the second time I go through the event and finish picking my quirks, I can no longer use any cards, much less see any on screen. I could only use the Interesting String once to advance time towards dinner but I can use Scholastic Review indefinitely.[li]

But since there isn’t an option for me to restart the game with a new character, I am forever stuck in limbo.

Aside from that, it’s a fun game. But I don’t know if I will ever be able to play it due to the above mentioned glitch.

Sorry it took so long to reply. I know there are some holes in the structure and I thank you for your feedback!

I am currently not working on Stepchild as I am busy on another project. I hope to continue development on it in the future. I’m glad you enjoyed what was there!