Walkthroughs for The Silent Maiden's games

[mokenju1]

Ignosco has suggested to me that maybe it could be useful for the players of these games to have a walkthrough to know if they have got the true ending (the Worthy Bride has two "true" endings so that can be confussing,e.g). Tell me what do you think about that. (I thought that this was the right place of the forum to post this, if it isn't the moderators can delete this topic and point me where I can create this thread.)

[monele]

Well since I've had problems with Silent Maiden, I'm voting yes . What happened is mostly that I kinda forgot I was playing the first part of a trilogy... which means, I suppose, that the true end should not really be a complete ending and that, clearly, things should be shown to "be continued" .
That apart, there are choices that have different effects depending on what you do later. I'm pretty sure I can say there's only *one* path that leads to the good ending... and it ends up being pretty hard to find since you don't forcefully know what's important and what's not ^^;.
It's not really a bad thing, it's just that the game ends up being difficult.

Maybe just having hints might be enough. The worst thing that could happen is that the player gets so frustrated that he stops playing. Honestly, if you weren't there to help me, I'd probably have stopped quite soon ^^;

[mokenju1]

Well since I've had problems with Silent Maiden, I'm voting yes . What happened is mostly that I kinda forgot I was playing the first part of a trilogy... which means, I suppose, that the true end should not really be a complete ending and that, clearly, things should be shown to "be continued" .
That apart, there are choices that have different effects depending on what you do later. I'm pretty sure I can say there's only *one* path that leads to the good ending... and it ends up being pretty hard to find since you don't forcefully know what's important and what's not ^^;.
It's not really a bad thing, it's just that the game ends up being difficult.

Maybe just having hints might be enough. The worst thing that could happen is that the player gets so frustrated that he stops playing. Honestly, if you weren't there to help me, I'd probably have stopped quite soon ^^;

Hmmm... Not really, because when I wrote The Silent Maiden I had not the least idea that I was going to write any sequels

That's the reason that that game had that "Jane Eyre-ish" happy, pseudoreligious ending

The thing is that each one has at least one "good ending", but unfortunely good endings doesn't mean that always you get the murder and he/she is going to pay for what he/she has done. That lets to confussion, like what happened to poor Taleweaver who was replaying the game without no real reason only because Jane had not enough evidence. So maybe a walkthrough could help to clarify this things, better than changing the endings...

And The Silent Maiden is the "trickiest" of the three about dead ends and so on. I'm convinced by now that it was very bad designed .

[monele]

And The Silent Maiden is the "trickiest" of the three about dead ends and so on. I'm convinced by now that it was very bad designed

I don't know if it's truely a bad thing. I mean... old adventure games (mostly investigation ones) were *very* hard because they really put you in a realistic situation. No easy trail to follow, lots of dead ends, many people, many evidences... They were not even meant to be finished in one go. You kinda had to meta-game so you could see everything and understand the whole plot.
The thing is, for some reason, people were not really bothered by that before... they liked their games hard to it lasted longer. But they also didn't have that many games to play I guess .

Anyway, I'm still wondering about this. For info, with your game, I wasn't reluctant to try again. That's because there was obviously an interesting story and a mystery to solve. Also, it was rather short, so it didn't feel like a chore to launch a new game (skip function helping a lot too). If the game kept me for 2 hours before telling me "haha you lose!", I don't think I would have had the courage XD...

Now the whole trick is to keep the player interested and to leave him with hope at all times. Nothing is more frustrating that going in circles and not even being sure you're doing the right thing ^^;...
So... you could give small hints (but I understand this would go against the whole "dead end" trick you're using), or maybe mark important steps. Since the story (for Silent Maiden) is still linear, you might have a point that clearly says "you've done right so far, now go on from this point". At least, this way, you know you've cleared part of the game and can start searching from a more advanced point.
There has to be a sense of progress I suppose.

[mokenju1]

So... you could give small hints (but I understand this would go against the whole "dead end" trick you're using), or maybe mark important steps. Since the story (for Silent Maiden) is still linear, you might have a point that clearly says "you've done right so far, now go on from this point". At least, this way, you know you've cleared part of the game and can start searching from a more advanced point.
There has to be a sense of progress I suppose.

It's a good idea. I'm going to work about that, because it's difficult to find the right balance between a "too hard to beat game" and a "too easy to beat game". Thanks monele .

[monele]

No problem ^^. You might want to see how adventure games did it, since it's rather close to the structure your games seem to use.

[mokenju1]

As a provisional solution, I'm going to upload newer versions of the games with Hints.txt . Because I'll need some time to add the hints to the script in a "natural" way...

[papillon]

Hrm. From what I can remember, most adventure games usually had either a

"Bang, you're dead!"

(that is, the LAST choice you made just killed you - You walked off a cliff, you entered an instant death trap, you put in the wrong solution to a puzzle... Whatever you did, you just need to back up a very short distance and do whatever you did last differently)

or a

"You lack the key to this door"

(that is, you have reached a point from where you can not continue without Item X or Information Y that you were supposed to find earlier. Sometimes facing a challenge without the key will kill you and you have to reload, other times you just can't move on.)

When you've hit a roadblock like that, you haven't been shunted off into a losing path, you are *stuck* on the winning path. You can probably phrase your predicament in a simple question - "How do I get past the twin statues without being shot by the lasers?" - and find help for this problem with hint files. Even way back in King's Quest I they were selling hint books.

Which doesn't exactly make it simple - if you've ever played LSL2 and tried to get off that cruise ship alive, you have probably had to start the entire game over several times - but generally gives the player a sense of direction. They're trying to get THERE, they know what their goal is.

Most traditional adventure games do not branch. They have separate endings only in that they have amusing death scenes when you screw up. The sense of achievement is constant - you're always getting closer to your goal.

Branching games are more confusing. You may not know what the goal is. You may not know if you've reached it. That's one benefit of the ending-numbering-scheme - at least the player is made aware that there ARE other endings, helping motivate them to keep searching.

It might also be useful to display some sort of branching-map to the user at the ending to show them that they are in THIS section of the game and there are THESE other sections to find. (For some games you could have a complete branch tool showing individual decisions; for games where you score points along the way and these points affect what options are available, it would have to be more general.)

[monele]

Well I guess I had in mind the LucasArts games, but I realize it's not a great example either. I just thought of "chapters", which would clearly tell you that you've reached a new part of the story and that everything else before should not have an incidence on what will happen now. Of course, I conceive it might be too much for short games ^^;.

I like the idea of the branch chart ^^.

[DaFool]

I think I had the least exposure to western adventure games (most is with Jp visual novels), that's why I'm still not used to the whole metagame structure thing. I think the Hints.txt will do for now, although I also wouldn't mind a spoilerish branching chart.