Hey everyone! I've recently finished de-bugging my storygame for the Manifest Destiny contest, Ruins of Anzar, and intend to republish it officially soon. First however, I'm hoping I can get a few people to beta read it (or beta re-read it, if you've already played once) before making it public again. Is anyone available to give the story a play through and give me some feedback on the new edits?
In addition to general feedback, I have a few specific questions for beta readers:
1) Did any of the puzzles seem counterintuitive, or was the answer not obvious enough? I don't mind some being difficult, but the answer should at least make sense in retrospect.
2) Does the difficulty level of 4 and maturity level of 2 seem accurate?
3) Would this game benefit from having an in-game hint book guide? This guide would include multiple hints for solving puzzles before revealing the answer. Alternatively, would this game benefit from having an out-of-game hint guide, such as the walkthrough forum thread used by many other games on this site?
4) Was it clear how to use the constructable items, or should that have been explained better?
For those of you who played the first version (the one entered into the contest), here's a list of the things I changed:
1) Items such as the torch and hatchet are now constructable directly from your inventory.
2) Unlocking the secret passage is now a more involved process, and requires using the lens at the specific scene, rather than having read the scroll automatically open the link.
3) Some puzzles now have flavor text describing how using the incorrect item fails.
4) Most items now have descriptions, and the map's function is more obvious.
5) Many specific bugs and typos were fixed.
Finally, I'd like to give a big thanks to the people who have already played the game and given me feedback, especially mizal and Camelon. Your responses were very helpful!