The Alchemist; A Measure in Measures (Updated 6/10/16)

@Gavorn wow! It’s exciting to see your WIP playtest up so soon after you were asking for help – I don’t mean this as an insult, but rather as a compliment.

I’m so happy for you!

I’m going to make some comments as I go about my first impressions, okay?

    1. I’ve noticed that you prefer large paragraphs over shorter paragraphs. I can appreciate that, but it is easier to read (and it looks better formatted in the mobile version) when broken into shorter paragraphs. I usually make mine no longer than four sentences.
    1. After choosing “the Emperor is good, but his policies are bad”, the first sentence is “Many may consider you to be an idealist, however you personally detest the Emperor’s rule.” <–this doesn’t make much sense to me. My character likes the emperor but disagrees with some of his policies. I may just be misunderstanding the sentence, but it did strike me as odd.
    1. I like the option to play as peasant/noble/alchemist. It reminds me a bit of Choice of Rebel. Nice to see a different origin story for characters, from time to time.
  • 4 being born under signs reminds me of Morrowind and Oblivion (and, to a lesser extent, Skyrim, though Skyrim uses the Stones rather than the stars). I think the benefits might be too big, though; but I don’t blame you for making them so. It would be difficult and probably pretty annoying to code “can use a speed boost once per day” or something–it would involve a lot of temporary variables and such.

  • 5 I really, really like how you’ve done character creation. It is very poetic, rather than boring (like my own :sweat_smile: ) I also like the Germanic-influenced names. I speak German, and it’s always exciting to see names I get to use my oft-forgotten German accent for :joy: Also freckles! I have them myself, yet I always forget them! That’s definitely not a feature I see often.

  • 6 However, you may want to refer to What about PoC, because there were a few comments about people being off-put by overly poetic descriptors for skin tone, also, is there a lore reason that there’s only three skin tones, or was that just for simplicity?

Overall, I think this is a REALLY great start, even if it only really includes character creation. There’s a good deal of substance behind the creation process that made it quite fun for me.

Questions:

  • Will romance options be gender-flipping (since you had the reader select a sexual preference)? EG: for people interested in only females, the romance options will be all female; for those interested in only males, all male; etc.

  • Does the path you pick in the beginning have a major impact on plot or just on how people treat you (like if your parents happened to be minor nobles in Life of a Wizard)?

  • Will this game focus more on interpersonal relationships or on fights? Or, if not fights, then on puzzles? I ask this because of how many stats related to character creation there are. In some games, the stats almost never get used. I’m quite interested in seeing how they will be in this one. :slight_smile:

HOPE YOU DIDN’T MIND THIS GIANT POST OF WORD VOMIT. It really is an awesome start (aside from the difficulty with readability. Maybe it’s just me–I’ve had eye surgery on both eyes, so it’s difficult for me to read blocks of text), and I will definitely be on the look out for more! :smiley:

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