I also had no idea it was possible to eat the cake, and figured that when the timer went off I had hit some hidden trigger I didn’t understand to advance the game. I had to peek at the source code to finally figure it out.
After dinner, go up to your room, open the dresser, and look at the dresser twice to reveal a game called Utopia which you can pick up. If you talk to Percy while it’s in your inventory, you, Percy, and Aunt Violet will teleport to the lounge where he will give you his uneaten cake.
After dinner, go to your room and look at the bed, which will reveal Megan’s Gift. Pick it up and give it to her. If you have already given Percy the game, it will be just you and Megan in the dining room, and she will be distracted by the gift, letting you eat another piece.
Feelings on the solution:
Once I finally got the answer, I felt like it was a little unfair to expect anyone to actually figure out how to get Percy’s piece. The timing is pretty specific, you’re on a timer, and you have to interact with a nondescript object for no specific reason, multiple times, with no indication anything would change if you used it again. Unless I missed something (I was thorough but may have forgotten something from an earlier playthrough), there was nothing elsewhere in the game that hinted at the fact that the PC has an architecture game sitting around. Maybe something about the architecture conversation could jog the PC’s memory enough to say “I wonder what ever happened to that architecture game I won, I haven’t seen it in years.”
Maybe the intention was to make the first piece a super-secret that only the most dedicated players will manage to find. But the fact that getting the second piece relies on the first makes that seem less likely. I was able to find Megan’s gift without cheating but figured it was either unfinished or didn’t do anything special, since nothing happens if you give it to her without also finding Utopia for Percy.
One additional note is that even once I learned the basics of how to get the cake, it took enough trial and error that I still hit the timer once before completing it. I can see why the action timer makes narrative sense, you’re trying to do something before something else happens (your relatives leave, taking a bunch of leftovers) but from a usability perspective maybe consider letting the player explore freely and advance the story on a trigger they can activate if they give up (“Say Goodbyes” or something on the uncle)
All that said, I like what you’ve got in place so far. The college stuff is going to be fun, I can already tell; the map is nicely laid out and it seems like it will be easy to remember how to get around. And even though it’s a small thing that doesn’t do much at the moment, I appreciate how you got the clothing system working, and even included a Hide button to keep the inventory tidy. I look forward to if/when clothing is factored into the mirror descriptions, and when the sizes affect what can and can’t be worn…I’m very much keeping this game on my radar!
To be quite frankly honest, I was never sure if I liked how the cake ended up working out, but nobody ever said anything specifically about it so I just left it as is. The second being dependent on the first was my main concern. I’ll probably run through the entirety of episode 1 again and improve some things before starting on episode 2, which I’m just about finishing planning out.
A perfect, now I think I’ve been able to do everything. A couple of narrative pieces:
If you want someone to do the same action twice (i.e. searching a drawer), it is good to give them a hint narratively that something else might be there. Something like “You think you see the edge of something interesting sticking out underneath your shirts” or similar will make it much more likely that someone would search a drawer again.
It feels weird to have something you can do (i.e. the extra cake) not have an effect on your waistline/looks. I would have expected a higher weight for that one in a text adventure.
Definitely going to do this, I habitually repeat actions so I didn’t think about adding this.
The cake actually alters Sylvia’s gluttony since I didn’t think that eating one or two extra pieces of cake would contribute to a significant weight gain as compared to habitually eating ice cream or donuts. Still not sure if I want there to be an obvious indicator of gluttony increasing as it is intended to be a more hidden stat.
version 0.1.7 has the suggested dialogue hints and you can now speak to Sylvia’s mom after dinner, and after a couple of turns, to skip to the family leaving and putting away leftovers.
cause we didnt know lol i think it works nice and the difference of lookin in mirror is nice also
you can always set up a message before the end of each ep sayin we should go back and check more things or just skip ahead without doin them or you can drop more hints along the way to make sure everythin gets done i know you dont wanna just give as the answers but if the cake puzzle should teach anythin its that hints are good lol
Yes i think if anything it was a design issue. The cake puzzle wasn’t mechanically well designed enough to be something secret and the overall size of the episode wasn’t large enough to really warrant any complicated secrets that have as few hints as there were.
My current plans for episode two are a little more involved since it’s a larger map and slightly larger scope of time. Nothing super complicated and I think it’ll be easier to get everything, especially if you explore everything you can.
That being said, today’s conversation made me decide to simplify/add hints to most of what I had planned for episode 2, so I’ll probably try to figure out at least one secret thing to hide.
I’ve officially started on episode 2 story content, but I have a few questions for anybody who cares to answer;
Should you be able to skip episode 1? And later down the line, skip to different episodes? There are further questions to be asked about this,
mainly
Should Sylvia gain the max weight and gluttony from skipping, secrets included, or only the minimum to still be able to access any content/route? Since episode 1 was fairly easy and small in scope I think granting the max on both would be fine, but later episodes should have more complex secrets and varying routes. I have some ideas regarding some parts of this but they’re only relevant if people think episode skipping should stay.
Should Sylvia’s current weight be displayed during gameplay, or should it be something you have to check with the scale. I can make the display as complex as live updating with my estimated food weight or just displaying the weight you start a given segment with. Not sure what this would mean for the relevance of the scale other than to force some descriptions. Other than estimating Sylvia’s weight after a large meal or something, it doesn’t serve as anything other than a reminder for the player, I guess.
In the same vein, I was considering displaying the gluttony stat in the mini epilogue between episodes. I do not really want it displayed live as it is intended to be a more secret stat but getting an idea of how much gluttony Sylvia gains in an episode could be good.
I do think I’m going to add a journal of some kind, either immediately or have Sylvia start keeping a journal at a point in the story that makes sense. Probably will be used in a more meta sense, keeping track of her weight and gluttony by episode, possibly some information about important NPCs.
This is all stuff I’ll probably figure out eventually, or until I release something and people say they don’t like it, so preemptive feedback would be cool.
I don’t see any reason to display her current weight during gameplay. It is more fun to be able to jump on a scale and see what it is and check a mirror and see what I look like at that weight.
Gluttony is a hidden stat, and I think it makes more sense to keep it that way. However, I do think that dialogue/narration that changes depending on the gluttony stat is good. For example, at the end of the first scene maybe with a higher gluttony there are a bunch of candy bar wrappers scattered around the room or something similar.
If you are going to include a skip function (which I’m not convinced you need), it probably should give you the max weight and gluttony. The people who use it will most likely be people who already played through the earlier scenes or people who just want to see her at max weight, so giving the max seems to make the most sense to appeal to the people who would use the button. That said, I don’t know that you NEED episode skipping. I wouldn’t use it, but some may.
if its gonna be as big as you say with many options this is prob a good idea cause it can help keep track and see if somethin was missed
ya i agree thats what the scale and mirror are for and ya extra lines would work and be ez to do and if ppl are gonna skip you might as well max them out cause id use that to see if i missed maxin it out and then id go back and try to
I think if skipping is included, it should be later down the line, when there are a LOT of episodes, and you’re just doing it for updates before the full release. Definitely remove skips after full release.
As for skipping, definitely give max weight/gluttony.
Just thought I’ve leave an update for anybody curious. I’ve been pretty busy so I haven’t been able to work on the game as much. That being said, after fully planning the episode and getting started, I did find I have to take a step back from the game and focus a little more on the world the game takes place in. Most of the worldbuilding I’ve done has been in more medieval eras prior to massive world-changing events that led to the more familiar, modern era the game takes place in so I hadn’t figured out how everything like cities, countries, etc translated over.
Not super relevant to most you I imagine, but I found that now that I didn’t like/couldn’t introduce them very well with an incomplete backstory (where they came from, cultural influences, etc). Again, most of you probably won’t care about that much depth for the world building but I’d like to attempt to make complete NPCs since some of them I plan to be significant for the entire game.
tl;dr Not dead just busy, next episode is planned but I’m working on the background worldbuilding first so it’ll be a while
It’s not too in depth as its neither the focus of the game or necessary for it. Just needed to spend the time figuring out the necessary details to create NPCs that are unique beyond their function and general personality.
For closure’s sake, going to say I won’t be finishing this. After predictably losing motivation for a while, when I got around to working on it again, I found I just really didn’t like Quest as an engine. I was only really using it because I liked the interactive map feature despite already having some experience with Twine. Since the last update I’ve also tried a number of other people’s games many of which included AI images, something I have also experimented in. I’ve also heard of Quest’s/textadventures not handling images very well.
Not going to make any promises but if I were to continue doing this game dev stuff, it would be in Twine, potentially including AI images. Hypothetically would start with something smaller scale that I could finish before maybe working on making a twine version of Slippery Slope.
