Notices by Spindley Q Frog (spindleyq@gamemaking.social), page 2

Mechanically, the biggest problem it suffers from is not providing enough hinting towards what your goals are. Numerous times I've hit up the UHS hint file because I had no idea what to do next, only to have a puzzle spoiled that might have been reasonable to solve if I'd known it existed.

Best characters so far are definitely the tacky demonologist couple from Pennsylvania making a tourist pilgrimage to rural Germany in the hopes of meeting a real live "shatten-jagger"

I just love that this moody game that tries so hard most of the time to ground its supernatural elements in reality and history has these yokels crashing in and _actually being psychic_

like you have to get a tarot card reading and dream interpretation from her and she gives you a warning from the spirit realm and _it's all true_

and Grace, supposedly the logical skeptic-type, just immediately trusts her more than any other character, _including the woman who worked intimately with the previous Schattenjäger_

Finished Gabriel Knight 2. Say what you will about FMV, not enough game designers today are like “ok so for this part of the game I’m gonna compose an opera, we need someone to translate my lyrics to German, and also hire some jugglers”

“The player is gonna sit and watch this opera performance in German with no subtitles for at least five solid minutes, but if they read the program before the cutscene happens they’ll probably have a vague idea of what’s going on, so we’re good”

Digesting Gabriel Knight 2 a bit more. I think the overall structure of investigation / research focused mechanics works really well, but the puzzles are almost universally badly hinted. I think they recognized this and tried to address it but they didn’t quite get there - the “is there still stuff to do here” button on the map helps sometimes, and during the endgame you get a literal todo list which is perfect for that section.

But I reached for hints a LOT, and I’m hard pressed to think of a significant puzzle that felt satisfying to solve. The storytelling is compelling but the adventure gamey stuff ends up getting in the way as much as it helps.

Two main categories of problem:
* don’t know what my immediate goals are
* don’t know whether they’re achievable yet

The actual puzzles themselves were largely fine I think? Definitely no cat hair moustaches yet. Generally when I looked up hints my reaction was “Oh. Ok.” Not “I should have KNOWN” or “that’s RIDICULOUS”, just kind of, “so that’s the next thing to be done.”

@dosnostalgic if I ever had my phone off silent, it would make this sound when I get a text

today I learned there was an official Wizardry spoon

Finished Psychonauts 2 last night. It's very good!

decided on my avatar if I ever become a vtuber

Jesus: Kyōfu no Bio Monster (Enix, PC-88, 1987)
https://youtu.be/cI5SxMobu2Y?t=2305
Space Quest 3 (Sierra On-Line, MS-DOS, 1989)
https://youtu.be/vQJFHlwSrzA?t=2305

@jplebreton @dosnostalgic I'm curious which one!

Re-reading Dune for the first time since I was a teenager. A _lot_ of nuances I missed / didn’t remember, but I think the biggest is that the whole Fremen prophecy that Paul fulfills? The whole Mighty Whitey come from space to liberate everyone thing? It was PLANTED. Spreading these prophecies is a Bene Gesserit thing that they just do, just in case, so they’ll be able to wield power wherever they go.

@hache House Atreides manufacturing consent by leveraging Space White Supremacy that was exported by Space Missionaries

It’s very easy to leave details out and conclude Dune is “Harkonnen bad, so Atreides does the Good Colonialism and everyone is happy” but Herbert says in interviews that it’s meant to be heavily critical. This is supposedly clearer in book two (which I don’t remember at ALL) but so far it seems a lot more plausibly supported in the text of the first than I remembered