WAGON

TIME TO EAT

I was looking forward to this game for a very long time! It seems heavily inspired by two of my favorite games, Obra Dinn and Inscryption. For that reason I had extremely high expectations. They were not entirely met- but achieving what these titles do would be a very lofty goal, so I am not disappointed with this game, It is very fun to play once you got the hang of it. I beat the game once so far, but I will come back to it to see what else the game has to offer. This is an impressive project for what appears to me a first game release with fun game play, good art and music, and an exciting setting. I am so happy that we finally have a full version to play. But I have a few criticisms: -the game feels a little imbalanced and too easy. I died a couple times trying to figure out how this game works. I never played a game quite like this and it does not do a lot of explaining, which I respect. However, once I felt like I understood the basic mechanics I beat the game without trouble. i actually never even got to try most of the crafting stuff, I only got to make an anvil once, when I finally had everything together to smith some stuff I had to pack up and go. In the later levels I was way too caught up with maintenance to advance in any way for two reasons: one of my characters died very early of a disease so I had only one character for most of the game, and I had way way way too many oxen. I never understood how to get rid of them. By the end there were 44 oxen and 16 chicken and I spent all day every day chopping wood to heat my 6 pens and the cabin. And they kept reproducing like crazy despite the [spoiler] birth rate curse. [/spoiler] I could have let them slowly freeze to death I guess, but that is not how I like to play games. I tried to trade them but that didn't seem to be an option. For that reason I never built a farm, clothes, most items, the [spoiler] occult [/spoiler] stuff, instead I was chopping wood like a madman. I feel like that I should not have made it through the winter with things that out of control, really. I'm sure there is some ridding yourself of oxen mechanic that I did not understand, but regardless I think since the game offering you so much tech you should have to make strategic use of it to actually beat the game. Instead, a lot of things I crafted seemed neat but not necessary or worth the effort. I feel like the game would gain a lot from an increase or diversity in challenge despite the temperature drop and the late game [spoiler] curses. [/spoiler] The increased duration of camp periods are actually making it easier to farm tons of food for the way. Once you are set up it doesn't really seem to matter if you have to survive 7 days or 36. =another thing is the sound design. I understand the need to use stock sounds for a small project like this, but they are really not that nice to listen to, especially the repetitive ones (like that wagon rattle noise). I might decrease the volume or use them less frequently. Maybe use some instrumental auditory cues for some events if sourcing good quality sound effects is difficult. -personally I wasn't really convinced by that demon puppet stuff, and I didn't see the connection to the rest of the game. Maybe there is more explanation for it in the in the starting area that you can unlock, but I don't know if that would change my mind. I felt it sort of took away from what is and was an already very terrifying situation. Really, I think the game would be more bleak and scary without it, This is just my personal opinion though! A great game overall. I only wanted to write down some constructive criticism because I see a lot of effort and potential. Congrats to the full release!