I’m in the process of farming Honor and Menaces to try and reach those storylets and options placed so teasingly far away :)
I’ve seemingly run into a dead end: is there a way to “reliably” grind white noise? None of the rank-3 options raise it, Sermon on the Mount’s opportunity stops increasing it at 5, and the post jobs only provide 1-2 temporary possibilities. Am I missing something?
@Agaric: Interesting problem. Honestly, we hadn’t put any thought into enabling Menace grinding. I might look into implementing scaling difficulties in Day 2 grind cards this weekend at the same time I’m looking at Style caps.
Rambling follows:
[spoiler]Really, I didn’t expect the dragon, or such explicit revelation of the monster and the cause of the Longest Day. So far the mood of the story has been quite supernatural and mythic. Prior to 50 Miles, I knew there are monsters, but they are veiled; I don’t see them outright; even the bats are glimpsed but not seen. Of The Longest Day, I knew it’s a catastrophe, but not its nature. I’ve learnt snippets about the Great Jackal, blood-sucking creatures, and other monsters, but they are still beyond my reach and my focus, and the feeling is haunting.
So far, the monsters and mysteries of ZS tickle on the edges of consciousness, so I as the Protagonist never really know what is real and what is dream/hallucination. This subconscious knowledge heightens that sense of myth and menace. So to have a dragon’s identity revealed so explicitly and undeniably shatters some of that haunting, mysterious atmosphere. Dragonslaying in Dixie was fraught and tense (thus enjoyable to play), but … THAT is a monster in the flesh. To me the reader, to put an image and a name to the feeling makes it not so frightening anymore.
I’m the type of gamer/reader who automatically slips into (to use a literary term) secondary belief when reading fiction – I like to experience the story at face value and not speculate until the story is over. So far I’ve not speculated on the identity of monsters (or any of the other mysteries), so I suppose my disappointment comes from this new knowledge that can’t be forgotten now. The mood of the story was more powerful when I hadn’t known the existence of dragons, just knew that there are monsters lurking out there beyond my ken.
Hence my disappointment, though it’s not your fault! :) Just comes with knowing more of the story, I suppose. It was a powerful revelation though, really a bolt from the blue.
I’ve played through a bit of Day 2/Afternoon now - it seems to reveal a bit more of the identity of the monsters. If I’d played Monsters and the Tall Grass before 50 Miles, I think I would’ve been more deflated!
[/spoiler]
That said… so far the most powerful and evocative parts of ZS are Behind the White Noise and the Undertaker’s Trade. I don’t know what to make of Behind the White Noise save that it’s either hallucinatory, or a spiritual/supernatural experience. And I dearly hope it will stay that way for a while!
In fact, that’s the major appeal of ZS – there’s so much mood in the writing. Evocative, sensual (as in stimulates the senses) fragments everywhere. The tiny Menace section in 50 Miles was amazing – also, thanks for including all these little non-critical qualities to pick up, they add an additional layer of depth and mood to the game experience.
edited by Vega on 8/16/2013
Wow, thanks so much Vega! Getting such in-depth feedback is really great and super helpful for us. I hope you stick with us to the end. :D
@Vega: what Becca said: thanks for the in-depth feedback!
I think you’re right on about the menace of monsters being more effective when they’re off-screen. That’s a big part of why they’ve been tertiary to this point in the main plot – although that might change in a big way soon. ;)
I don’t want to spoil anything further for you… but I will say that if you think you’ve got the Longest Day figured out from “Fifty Miles,” you might be pleasantly surprised by what comes next.
Thanks for playing. More good stuff is coming very soon.
Cheers, ZS team - glad that my feedback was helpful. :D I’m definitely hanging in until the very end, the story has drawn me in completely! I expect that there will be more revelations and surprises, but I’m glad that there are still many secrets not revealed yet, and the "haunted" mood of ZS is quite strong. Am savouring this that before more gets revealed with time. :)
Just a little preview from BLACK IS THE COLOUR:[li]
Typo in A Regular Cityslicker: A Religious Thing.
Jack Ishiguro’s surname isn’t capitalized in ‘Charlie’s got his heels dug in…’
EDIT: And in the success text, Miz Nils is called Miz Nails.
Also, in The Religious Perspective from A Regular Cityslicker, it says ‘as a plague’ rather than ‘was a plague’.
edited by Jack Vaux-Harrowden on 8/17/2013
Thanks Jack! I’ll sic our typo assassin on it prontoish.
While I’m putting out hits, then: ‘Ours’ from ‘A Regular Cityslicker: A Wider Lens’. Elena Villalobos’ dialogue in the second paragraph doesn’t have an opening quote mark.
edited by Jack Vaux-Harrowden on 8/18/2013
Some more typos found:
Behind the White Noise > "From Dust" card (Static 8) > "Fresh Earth" choice (final Lilacs choice) > results text: ""Parents should nave have to bury…" - spelled "never". There’s also "git" further down - is it deliberate, or should it be "get"?
(Day 2/Afternoon) A Gunslinger With No Gun: Words for the Dead - starting text > "No disrespect inteded…" - spelled "intended"
edited by Vega on 8/18/2013
‘Git’ is a traditional translation of a Southern-accented ‘get’.
Also, Appropriately Calloused Hands (the failure text for Fixing the Irrigation from Job: Amarillo’s Own Tea House) says you can feel ‘ever grain of the wood’.
In the “Flame of Incandescent Terror” storylet, in the section of text labeled “Hero”, the word “joins” in the sentence “Your joins pop” should be “joints.”
In Fifty Miles South of Lexington: Conversations in the Rain, there’s a typo in Talk To Marcel Cooper. He says “‘That’s not how I was lead to believe’”; it should be ‘led’.
I’ve just finished the first day, and thought I’d offer some feedback. I’m impressed, probably for the usual reasons. I like that you’ve made a Western where I want to find the protagonist a couple of fast friends and a stable space in the community, or at least a means of recompense for hospitality received; that violence is an unwelcome intrusion, not fun, not comfortable; that I don’t want to hurt these people, am not even indifferent.
Comments on some specific mechanics:
[spoiler]The party mechanics are a neat idea, but I got into a tedious situation. I had over half an hour to go, and nothing to do but draw the gambling card, one action a time, over and over. Could you perhaps create a pinned card allowing people to skip to the end once suitable conditions (sub-plots advanced, time latish in the evening) are met? It was particularly frustrating because it wouldn’t have happened if I’d disregarded the advice to prioritise some party activities.
The fight with John the Biter: it’s possible for the game mechanics and the narrative to work against each other here. The text was telling me the fight was difficult, but every challenge was straightforward and I took no damage. I’d played a bunch of cards and fully pursued the sub-plots, maybe because CRPGs have trained me to worry that advancing the main plot will lock other, unexplored content. Maybe you could hold back some of the options on the grind cards until the afternoon, or make some of the challenges in the fight sequence luck-based?
The Spurs and main plots offer a lot of binary choices, even sometimes where I wouldn’t expect one (e.g. steal a necklace or steal a ring). The Mission is far more linear – there are occasional choices at key junctures, but quite often there was only one option (generally: helping the Roughrider), and I couldn’t see why a protagonist who could go either way on the other plots wasn’t willing to consider alternatives here. I found it disorienting; it doesn’t really feel consistent, and it’s made it hard for me to get a sense of what sort of agency I can expect to exercise.
I’m not convinced that the benefits of requiring travel between so many different areas – mostly, a heightened awareness of the local geography – outweigh the inconvenience of having to travel around via pinned card, particularly when it’s rather easy to lose track of where you need to go next. I’m not sure changing the pinned card to a map would much help with this, either.
I like how you’ve handled the Man in Black/Paladin dichotomy. It’s introduced very smoothly with the bread theft (which works particularly well, I think, because most people expect to find Paladin options more appealing, but here, well, what is the Baker supposed to do?), and the rationale offered for Man in Black options has always been smart and thoughtful. I also get the sense that unlike in, say, Mass Effect, acts of mercy and principle might actually come back to bite you.
Finally, thank you for including a Chanticleer who is a baker. (Although iIf they were a dead baker, I would have been even more amused.)[/spoiler]Also, I caught a couple of typos.
a) Card: The Planning Stage
Steal the Diamond Necklace!
‘When you’re ready to try and steal the wedding ring, you may play this branch.’ (Wrong piece of jewellery.)
b) Open Your Eyes (on returning from Rio Secco)
‘The elative dryness’
edited by Flyte on 8/19/2013
Hello! Been playing Zero Summer off and on for a while, and thoroughly enjoying it. One question, though: I’m starting to run into a number of branches which tell me I need a "Key of Dreams" to play them. Is this something one can acquire, and if so, how? Or is it a sign of currently locked content? Would very much like to be able to increase my Pony Express level, as I have completed all available jobs at least twice.
The Key of Dreams is a Storynexus device: it’s a convenient way of restricting content to testers.
From ‘Hallowed Ground’/‘The Murderer’/‘Hard Eyes’:
A shot tears through the air, ripping through explosive gases to slam lethally home – into the sharpshooter. Your trigger finger faster than his.
EDIT:
Also, in ‘The Burning of the Library’/‘Organize the Crowd’, ‘canvass’ (verb) is substituted for ‘canvas’ (noun).
edited by Jack Vaux-Harrowden on 8/21/2013
On the Physical Therapy card during the Clinic session, the money-for-no-gunslinger-reduction option says "one measly greenback", while the option actually seems to cost 2. No biggie, but can cause minor confusion.
(Plus, I got to The Devil’s Teeth in Kurtz during the Fangs of Summertime. It ends with a note saying that was the current end, and I should be expecting more a bit after May 22 Afternoon comes out during Spring 2013… Is that still the case, or the line has just been left there unintentionally?
[li]
edited by Agaric on 8/26/2013
A quick note- I haven’t advanced myself to Afternoon yet (silly completionist that I am), and just purchased myself a pair of Shiny Spurred Boots… only to find out that they are not equippable!