Thanks and good to know not to bother with the game.
It is kind of weird as this is clearly building on the system they used in Book of Hungry Names. While I understand the need to increase the cost as the baseline is higher here (2/1) than in that game (1/0), the implementation is just baffling. In that game, the system incentived towards coherent builds while here it seems the only optimized build is to be someone who is in good enough relationship with the characters that they don’t mind the player character being an amoral thief who is constantly asking people for money.
I will preface my post with the fact that I really enjoyed Day For Night. I binged it and immediately started another playthrough. I almost never do that with IF games (the immediately starting another run part). I liked the writing quite a lot, and the characters were pretty memorable.
But I do think it needed more time for bugtesting and polish. I encountered so many technical issues as I played, many, if not all of which have hopefully been fixed by now. Unfortunately I didn’t think to document them while I was playing, so I can’t really collect them and send them in.
The way increasing stats work is very punishing to anyone actually interested in roleplaying, since money is so scarce… unless you’re roleplaying a greedy jerk. I got lucky in my initial playthrough I chose dexterity as my good attribute so I could pass most of the important skill checks without having to flush so much money down the stat gain drain. I think an easy way to alleviate this somewhat is just make increasing stats not cost so much. The discount quests do help. It’s probably way too late to overhaul it into a system like Night Road’s, but it would improve the player experience quite a lot.
Again, I really did enjoy the game despite these problems. It was neat that not only could you choose the gender of the romanceable characters, but that each gender had a unique portrait. Storyteller mode is also always nice to have, so I know exactly what stats are getting tested.
Thank you to everyone who’s played so far! It’s great to hear the appreciation and also the constructive feedback on some of the balancing or wanting more content along the romance ending paths.
I’ll put up a longer post-mortem in around a month detailing my full thinking and the process on the game, but on the topic of balancing I’ll say, spoilering for those who don’t want their experience colored: I did want this to be a game where being a bastard had some distinct advantages and where even a “good” Hunter might feel some temptation to act in morally compromised ways to get by, especially in the early game. By the final chapters, most players should have a sufficient amount of cash through residuals and gigs alone to accomplish most of what they’d like to do, and there are many ways to bypass stat checks entirely in the final chapters or temporarily increase your stats through pets, for example. My goal is that most players should be able to achieve everything they want in the story by the end without ever choosing to steal or manipulate people into giving money, and doing either consistently should really only be required for achievement hunters.
That said, I do see that the balancing can be too severe, punitive, and steep at the moment particularly in the early game, and it’s not always having the intended effect for everyone. Over this week, I’ve rolled out several fixes for issues along with some initial feedback tweaks, but I am also working on a larger update to address some of the global feedback, which I expect to roll out over the next weeks.
For folks who concluded that the game might not be for them due to the balancing, I hope that might be an occasion to give it another shot!
In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy the game and I am fascinated to see how many people get some of the less likely endings and outcomes such as keeping Epps chained up as a zombie in your guestroom, or winding up a blood doll for Gabe Cross.
I think you very much succeeded in what you set out to do, as far as making it tempting to compromise your principles. I know I was. Now, I’m kind of a fastidious rule-follower in real life, so for my self-insert character that usually took the form of sneaking into places I wasn’t supposed to be rather than pilfering donations from a church or hijacking a sports car, but heck, if saving the megapolitan area where I grew up from a cabal of bloodsucking has-beens isn’t an end that justifies the means, I don’t know what is!
I’m all for selfish/“evil” paths giving you material benefits over doing the right thing, especially if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Like, people become villains for the bennies, usually, they’re not just ruthless for the love of the game.
All that being said I did make it through with just residuals, gigs and side hustles and didn’t have to rob anyone or bilk cash out of my friends. If I do another playthrough I’m definitely gonna build for Manipulation and demand fair payment for my work instead of just being my friend group’s free labor.
Regarding the money question, I did not steal anything except the car - no regrets or ask my friends for money, and I found myself with more than enough money to be able to upgrade quite a lot of stats. I liked that it felt earned. There are also a few opportunities to lower the cost of some things.
I think that the 'living on the edge, constantly tempted to cross a line for the sake of survival" thing is an essential part of Hunter. If you constantly feel tempted to maybe steal even though you don’t want to be a thief, that’s good imo. Hunters live on the edge.
- Minor typo fixes and wording improvements throughout.
- Fixed an issue with purchasing the Lancer Evo not correctly setting the car as owned.
- Fixed an issue where player was not getting paid after successfully completing Lumina gig in Comeback Story chapter.
- Fixed an issue where ordering food and drinks while out for karaoke with Renn was resulting in the wrong food and drink order (nacho lovers rejoice)
- Rebalance of stat upgrades, to create a curve so that lower stat increases cost less than higher ones, generally slightly lowering their prices across the board.
- Improved the consistency of the discounts being applied to stat increases.
- Rebalanced gigs to offer more money on both success and failure and slightly debuffed the amount of fame some were offering on failure.
- Rebalanced stat tests in ch9 and 10 slightly higher to reflect the greater ease of increasing stats throughout the game.
playing for the first time and Rosa leaving because i Robbed the safe is fine, but saying im just as bad as the monster strikes me as laughable. You mean the monster that tore through this place like a hot knife through air? The same monster that was killing people so fast even security cameras could only catch a blur? The monster that was moving so much it never stood still for even a moment while slashing through bodies like there were paper mache?
That monster? Surely taking less than a thousand dollars from a safe isn’t on the same level of criminal activity, Rosa. But sure, take off. You should’ve done that from the start anyways. And take the guy who had a shelf fall on him too. idk why hes even still here.
I am near the end of HtR Day for Night, and I ran into what seemed like a bug when going to see Audrey, so I just clicked through all the choices without reading, trying to die so I could reload and try something else. I didn’t die, but when I got back to my house I went to bed to load a game, and… the entire save system is broken? No matter which of my four backup saves I load, it just takes me to right back before I went to bed. Trying to load a save from the options menu doesn’t do anything at all as far as I can tell. I am super screwed if I can’t reload a game, I somehow came out of the Audrey chapter with basically no health, willpower, or money, so I’d really, really like to reload. Anybody know what the problem might be? I’m on mobile.
In this case, I suggest reaching out to support, as I have not had any significant issues with the save system flagged to me thus far and it may require deeper investigation to see if it’s a scripting issue or a Choicescript issue.
In this case are your backup saves at the head of a chapter or are they other saves at your home in Hollywood, and have you verified that no quest menu progress was retained? (ie the quest with Aubrey is not active again in your menu)
I’ve tried loading from the start of a new chapter, from my home, and from the menu. All do nothing, and none of them update the quest menu. I’ll submit a request to support, thanks.
Some cars aren’t showing up in the garage. I’m trying to get the achievement for owning the seven cars. I managed to steal the red Ferrari and bought all of the affordable vehicles, but then the buying option disappeared, so I couldn’t buy the other cars. I currently own five cars, yet only three appear in the garage.
During Rowan’s quest in Act 2, I managed to convince the hostages (Arbo Board people) and save them. However, during the debriefing, my character mentioned finding them but unable to save them, and they still trapped there.
In Renn’s final quest in the Nevada desert, when Epps’s corpse attacked Renn, I used the chainsaw blade, the best melee weapon in the game (I have maxed-out melee skills). However, the next scene was messy and confusing. Suddenly, my character was holding a shotgun and shot Epps’s corpse in the shoulder, and Epps’s corpse then managed to kill Renn, who I was romancing in this playthrough. I reloaded an earlier save to try a different option.
I’ve encountered the same bug as the two previous people. During the quarry in Rowan Hirst’s mansion, I rescue the two missing people inside the basement theatre, but when I return to Arbo I tell him that I left them there.
Just a reminder: the best way to make sure your bug report is seen by someone who can fix it is to email support@cog. Include screenshots or as much detailed information as possible.
Aletheia’s point is super important, it’s hugely helpful to have a screen cap and receive it through official channels since we get a much clearer idea of your game state.
That said, in this case I was able to identify what might be causing the issues you both flag above and have sent in fixes, so no need to report again for now. Thanks for playing and reporting.
After losing my save I’ve finally found time for a new playthrough, but for some reason I’m doing 100% the exact steps I did the first time to save Rosa and kill La Abeja, yet she keeps killing Rosa and escaping. Did the requirements for this change? I experimented with a bunch of options but nothing worked. My build is top stat Charisma, high Manipulation/Composure/Wits, low Strength, using the Sig, collecting info from the survivors and grabbing the crowbar and clapping monkey items.
