Bad Accidents Playtesting

[Eli_teamruby]

The November-December Bad Accidents playtesting period is open. Anybody is allowed to participate. PM me your impressions or comment them down below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k0BC1B ... p=drivesdk

PS: there is no art, music, or background art yet. This project has run off of my imagination for 2 years. Music will most likely be starting soon, if I ever do it, and background art will most likely be starting soon too. I left parts out of this demo, such as important story points and scripting that gave away what the big, final picture looks like.

The game has an "extras" folder. In the folder is 2 of the game's short stories, which show up on crucial points in the story. I tried to make this demo as spoiler-free as possible. If you're interested in helping with the final project, please feel free to DM me. I don't have a budget but would be willing to trade writing/dev skills for art and assets.

The game is a horror game written in the style of Stephen King and told in a fashion similar to DDLC.

[OldNoEyes]

So I played through the Alpha Playtest file for Windows, and here are my thoughts:

* If you need placeholder backgrounds and character sprites, the Creative Commons forum page here on Lemmasoft has some you can use. It can really enhance your demo if the people playing through can get a sense of the scene changes, the character expressions etc.

* You mention Doki Doki Literature Club and Stephen King as influences on this story, but I don't get a strong horror vibe from this demo so far. Usually, you want to establish horror overtones or undertones quickly (unless you're trying to trick your readers).

* There's a writing tip that I like to keep in mind when writing dialogue: characters should speak realistically, but not slavishly real. There's a lot of back and forth between characters that only moves the plot forward slowly, with very short responses. Though it's realistic, it doesn't make for well-paced fiction. You might want to condense conversations and boil them down to the most interesting parts.

* There's a significant amount of swearing and minor grammar issues (capitalization, lack of periods, etc.) in the text. I don't give a fuck about swearing, but when it accumulates, it starts getting annoying. As for the grammar stuff, the primary reason you want to take care of that is to look professional and read smoothly. If your text has grammar problems, your potential readers are less likely to take you seriously.

* The projector-like video of "Bad Accidents" along with the sound effect is really cool.

Hope this helps. Good luck on your project!

[Eli_teamruby]

So I played through the Alpha Playtest file for Windows, and here are my thoughts:

* If you need placeholder backgrounds and character sprites, the Creative Commons forum page here on Lemmasoft has some you can use. It can really enhance your demo if the people playing through can get a sense of the scene changes, the character expressions etc.

* You mention Doki Doki Literature Club and Stephen King as influences on this story, but I don't get a strong horror vibe from this demo so far. Usually, you want to establish horror overtones or undertones quickly (unless you're trying to trick your readers).

* There's a writing tip that I like to keep in mind when writing dialogue: characters should speak realistically, but not slavishly real. There's a lot of back and forth between characters that only moves the plot forward slowly, with very short responses. Though it's realistic, it doesn't make for well-paced fiction. You might want to condense conversations and boil them down to the most interesting parts.

* There's a significant amount of swearing and minor grammar issues (capitalization, lack of periods, etc.) in the text. I don't give a fuck about swearing, but when it accumulates, it starts getting annoying. As for the grammar stuff, the primary reason you want to take care of that is to look professional and read smoothly. If your text has grammar problems, your potential readers are less likely to take you seriously.

* The projector-like video of "Bad Accidents" along with the sound effect is really cool.

Hope this helps. Good luck on your project!

Thank you so much for your feedback. I haven't put any of the horror elements in this demo because of major plot spoilers. When this is fully launched, it will be 100% free. I don't intend to make money off of selling the game because that's stupid. If anything, it will probably be merch. Thank you for helping.

[Eli_teamruby]

So I played through the Alpha Playtest file for Windows, and here are my thoughts:

* If you need placeholder backgrounds and character sprites, the Creative Commons forum page here on Lemmasoft has some you can use. It can really enhance your demo if the people playing through can get a sense of the scene changes, the character expressions etc.

* You mention Doki Doki Literature Club and Stephen King as influences on this story, but I don't get a strong horror vibe from this demo so far. Usually, you want to establish horror overtones or undertones quickly (unless you're trying to trick your readers).

* There's a writing tip that I like to keep in mind when writing dialogue: characters should speak realistically, but not slavishly real. There's a lot of back and forth between characters that only moves the plot forward slowly, with very short responses. Though it's realistic, it doesn't make for well-paced fiction. You might want to condense conversations and boil them down to the most interesting parts.

* There's a significant amount of swearing and minor grammar issues (capitalization, lack of periods, etc.) in the text. I don't give a fuck about swearing, but when it accumulates, it starts getting annoying. As for the grammar stuff, the primary reason you want to take care of that is to look professional and read smoothly. If your text has grammar problems, your potential readers are less likely to take you seriously.

* The projector-like video of "Bad Accidents" along with the sound effect is really cool.

Hope this helps. Good luck on your project!

Also, I may or may not have a horror sequence after the demo... Or that I cut out of the demo... (The second one). It had spoilers so I had to cut it out.

[Eli_teamruby]

So I played through the Alpha Playtest file for Windows, and here are my thoughts:

* If you need placeholder backgrounds and character sprites, the Creative Commons forum page here on Lemmasoft has some you can use. It can really enhance your demo if the people playing through can get a sense of the scene changes, the character expressions etc.

* You mention Doki Doki Literature Club and Stephen King as influences on this story, but I don't get a strong horror vibe from this demo so far. Usually, you want to establish horror overtones or undertones quickly (unless you're trying to trick your readers).

* There's a writing tip that I like to keep in mind when writing dialogue: characters should speak realistically, but not slavishly real. There's a lot of back and forth between characters that only moves the plot forward slowly, with very short responses. Though it's realistic, it doesn't make for well-paced fiction. You might want to condense conversations and boil them down to the most interesting parts.

* There's a significant amount of swearing and minor grammar issues (capitalization, lack of periods, etc.) in the text. I don't give a fuck about swearing, but when it accumulates, it starts getting annoying. As for the grammar stuff, the primary reason you want to take care of that is to look professional and read smoothly. If your text has grammar problems, your potential readers are less likely to take you seriously.

* The projector-like video of "Bad Accidents" along with the sound effect is really cool.

Hope this helps. Good luck on your project!

Lack of periods and capitalization is intentional. If there was a spelling error, though, please tell me.

[Autumnotopia]

Hey, congrats on getting a demo put together and sharing it with people! That's always a great first step to take as far as making a game goes, and it can be harder to put yourself out there than people would expect haha.

Even without the art/music assets, I think there's still a lot you can get out of sharing something like this and asking for feedback! Playing through it a few things struck me.

1) I agree with OldNoEyes, the opening text/sound effect was cool!

2) It can be hard to get a good balance between 'this spoils everything!' and keeping the readers interest. Right now I feel like the demo plays it a little too safe. Ideally, a demo will give the player a little taste of what they can expect from playing the whole game, and right now I think that it's fair to say there's pretty much zero horror going on. As a horror fan, if you hadn't of told us that the genre was 'horror', I wouldn't have guessed. That's kind of a bad sign for a demo! I want to be excited about spooky things.

You mention DDLC as an inspiration so it's possible you're maybe aiming for a stealth horror game, but even so you tend to want players to have SOME kind of idea of what it's going to be like. I liked DDLC for what it was, but I wouldn't have been interested at all if I didn't know that there was a twist. DDLC also threw in some minor hints that helped keep the interest up before the big reveal(I remember a good early game shocking thing was the word choice in the poem creation minigame, it wasn't dramatic but it was enough to make you stop and go 'hm that sure is a strange word to appear in this happy fun game')

It can be hard to come up with a suitable 'end of demo twist', but that's probably what you should aim for if you're interested in releasing the demo more widely when you have more assets. Some small gut punch at the end that leaves readers guessing would really make a big impact I think!

3) Overall your dialogue feels pretty good! But there's a couple of spots that struck me as being a little out of place. Probably the most notable for me was Yuki's reaction to Lucy calling her immature. Like if I was sitting at the table and saw that interaction happen in front of me, I would be super surprised at how extreme the response was. Moments like that can be really useful for building character (Does Yuki have a strong negative association with someone calling her immature?), but I feel like it was just glossed over by everyone (including Yuki herself) in favor of talking about how rude Lucy was being. Extreme reactions are good! But when things like that happen, it can help to spend a bit of time to let that moment sink in with the audience. Because it wasn't elaborated on, it made it hard to tell if it was perceived by the characters as being a strong reaction or just strange writing.

(The other spot that felt similarly '???' tonally for me was the commentary when you put on the t-shirt. Clearly the event referenced was pretty important for Yuki! But it feels strange for her to mention it so casually and matter-of-factly)

That said, I look forward to seeing the progress on this! Good work so far!

[Eli_teamruby]

Alright everybody. I have done some advanced proofreading, as well as weeks of writing. The result will be livestreamed Thursday, January 23rd live on Reddit's Streaming Service, RPAN, where everybody will get to see the whole story for the first time ever, including the spoilers I cut out of this demo. Follow me on Reddit if you want to see it, as I'll be posting the stream link on my profile when I'm live. My username is u/EliReadIT.

[Eli_teamruby]

Hey, congrats on getting a demo put together and sharing it with people! That's always a great first step to take as far as making a game goes, and it can be harder to put yourself out there than people would expect haha.

Even without the art/music assets, I think there's still a lot you can get out of sharing something like this and asking for feedback! Playing through it a few things struck me.

1) I agree with OldNoEyes, the opening text/sound effect was cool!

2) It can be hard to get a good balance between 'this spoils everything!' and keeping the readers interest. Right now I feel like the demo plays it a little too safe. Ideally, a demo will give the player a little taste of what they can expect from playing the whole game, and right now I think that it's fair to say there's pretty much zero horror going on. As a horror fan, if you hadn't of told us that the genre was 'horror', I wouldn't have guessed. That's kind of a bad sign for a demo! I want to be excited about spooky things.

You mention DDLC as an inspiration so it's possible you're maybe aiming for a stealth horror game, but even so you tend to want players to have SOME kind of idea of what it's going to be like. I liked DDLC for what it was, but I wouldn't have been interested at all if I didn't know that there was a twist. DDLC also threw in some minor hints that helped keep the interest up before the big reveal(I remember a good early game shocking thing was the word choice in the poem creation minigame, it wasn't dramatic but it was enough to make you stop and go 'hm that sure is a strange word to appear in this happy fun game')

It can be hard to come up with a suitable 'end of demo twist', but that's probably what you should aim for if you're interested in releasing the demo more widely when you have more assets. Some small gut punch at the end that leaves readers guessing would really make a big impact I think!

3) Overall your dialogue feels pretty good! But there's a couple of spots that struck me as being a little out of place. Probably the most notable for me was Yuki's reaction to Lucy calling her immature. Like if I was sitting at the table and saw that interaction happen in front of me, I would be super surprised at how extreme the response was. Moments like that can be really useful for building character (Does Yuki have a strong negative association with someone calling her immature?), but I feel like it was just glossed over by everyone (including Yuki herself) in favor of talking about how rude Lucy was being. Extreme reactions are good! But when things like that happen, it can help to spend a bit of time to let that moment sink in with the audience. Because it wasn't elaborated on, it made it hard to tell if it was perceived by the characters as being a strong reaction or just strange writing.

(The other spot that felt similarly '???' tonally for me was the commentary when you put on the t-shirt. Clearly the event referenced was pretty important for Yuki! But it feels strange for her to mention it so casually and matter-of-factly)

That said, I look forward to seeing the progress on this! Good work so far!

Yeah, so basically, I'm playing the whole thing live in a week from this Thursday, from start to finish. I'm coding everything, and if I leave a detail out, I leave a detail out. It should have the main storyline, though. Also, I'm coming out to say that this game has multiple playthroughs with tons of secrets before you actually get to the end. That being said, this was never going to be a full-length game, as I lack the skill or effort needed to write 6 hours of story, so what I show will most likely be what is the final draft. I'll be talking about it all, and following it, I think I'm going to release it on itch.io, even though it lacks most of the art and sprites as well as a lot of bgm, I honestly don't have the patience to continue this for 2 years when I have basically the entire story completed. I'm probably going to work on getting the art that I need if the itch.io launch is a success.