2021-01-29 19:24:44

Hi,

A lot of people are saying they won’t try this because they didn’t like blind quest. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe this developer is anything to do with blind quest. They said in their first post that this is their first audio game, plus the website audio game store is a place where any developer can post there game, so just because a game is on that site doesn’t mean it’s from the people that made Blind quest. Again, I could be totally wrong here and haven’t actually tried this demo yet, but to Tenkarider, if it wasn’t yourself  who wrote the game called blind quest it might be worth confirming you  weren’t anything to do with that game to stop people comparing your game to blind quest.

Paul Lemm

2021-01-29 19:32:40

yeah I do believe this is by a diffrent dev, but as Tenkarider stated on his previous post, it uses the same engine from blind quest. gameplay is mostly the same, with potion replaced with blood vile. I do love the sounds though, man that moment when you turn around is brutal lol.

2021-01-29 19:44:55

Hi @lemm ! Well, I can confirm that I have nothing to do with Blind Quest, but as JasonBlaze states, we use the same engine to make the game, which means it will inevitably look similar to that, rather than making it looking different I rather decided to focus on the original structure and improve it, so I added new features both to the battle and map exploration and spent my energies in enhance on the horror factor, so that the player could enter in the proper mood. In order to experience the difference between the two games, it's necessary to proceed through the demo for a while.

Hello @JasonBlaze ! Thanks for playing the game, haha you turned around, huh? This is where the game starts to enter in the proper mood

2021-01-29 20:30:23

I thought the game was cool, it would be nice if they put screen reader support.

congratulations! and good game!

meet the eternal legend, accessibility group for games and applications in Brazil. main group to bring accessible games to the blind.
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2021-01-29 20:55:04 (edited by defender 2021-01-29 20:56:29)

@Tenkarider
I don't think the genre is the problem, but the scope. After all, visual novels and point and click adventures do still have a following.
But audiogames like this were surpassed a decade and a half ago.  That means you would have to make it really special for most people  to care.
The very limited mechanics of this system tend to make for a boring, slow, almost insultingly simple product.  It makes me feel like I'm being pandered too as a blind gamer, as if you think I can't play something more fast paced or complicated properly.
That said, the games are cheap, the teams are small, and the budgets are very limited, so I do understand.  Just don't expect allot of positive response if you keep going in this direction.  The English speaking community at least has made it's opinion about these types of games quite clear by now.

2021-01-29 21:36:04

Hi @azure ! Thanks for playing, and for the feedback as well! I'll see what I can do for the screen reader.

Hello @defender ! I guess you have a point about that, all I can say is that I tried my best in making this game, if people don't like this specific structure of audiogames then there's nothing i can do about that... in any case the judgement about the games is up to you guys, hopefully after trying them. Said that i can't speak for the whole team but i definitely wouldn't mind if in future they will work on making much more different types of audiogames!

2021-01-29 21:45:37

Will this game be coming to iOS?
As for blind Quest, IA liked it for what it was, but I still think Blind gladiator is the best of your games. The combat was actually quite good in that game, and I was sad that blind quest didn’t emulate that quite as well.
The newest inquisitors game had the right idea, but it’s mechanics were unfinished. Now, if we had the maze mechanics of inquisitors heartbeat coupled with the combat of Blind Gladiator, along with a competent RPG system, man, wouldn’t that be something?

2021-01-29 22:07:39 (edited by Tenkarider 2021-01-29 22:08:20)

Hi @dalen lewin! This game will also be released for iOS, but it will take some time before that happens, at the moment i don't know how much though.
Well a game like that would definitely sound like an RPG roguelike! I wonder which plans they have for the future...

2021-01-30 09:18:54

Well just played a lot of the demo.
With the bosses they get faster and faster and faster.
At some point I run out of this games version of medkits.
In the blind quest series the health generated as you moved, in this one it doesn't.
While this could be welcome since you really didn't used to need to rely on any healing items, the big issue is that while I was able to get multiple items, I would eventually run out especially with the big bosses.
Not every monster has a healing item but again, right now the bosses would suddenly hit me and get stronger.
This meant I had to use an item unnecessarily and so on and eventually would run out.
At the point I am told that the boss gets stronger, I get hit, and it looks like for that time the announcement goes on the game semi pauses.
Maybe a tone rising in pitch like a chime could tell what was going on.
On the subject of more boring point and clicks, I am surprised no one else is doing these type.
Yeah they are simplistic but still current in the sighted world.
I have never really payed anything over a simple game book but while they are basic, concentration in some battles is key.
I'd like the ability to skip past speech though.
As for being told about hitting tab, yeah its a bit repeaty but its good to be told especially when I have chosen a direction as when I have gone one way I sometimes turn round and do the other without noticing so yeah its a good idea to handle that.
For a game its quite good.
However I would have liked ticonblue to finnish a few more arcs rather than trying to develop yet another adventure before finnishing another one.
Fury driver comes to mind, fixing the first one and getting the next chapters out.
Next blindquest, yeah I like that even though its basic and I want the next part.
I don't mind another adventure but if you guys release new stories all the time.
Next testing, ticonblue doesn't seem to ever have a betatesting period.
I am always buying the next games though.
I mean they are crappy and simplistic but I am adicted to this style now.

2021-01-30 10:49:04

well all I have to do is press up arrow loads of times to win fights, no logic, no luck, nothing. crazy! and whenever I dodge keep getting hit, so just using the same style of play, for every single game that being released. Just no logic to it, no action no movement. If you read it about being chased through the forest etc. the description, it sounds like full movement, but it's not. The puzzles seem ok, but the fighting? even in blind quest, all I do is just hit up arrow and I win regardless, no dodging involved.

2021-01-30 11:15:54

I'm personally not into this game genre so I won't be trying the demo. What I would like to see is updates to your older titles. I am a mac user and enjoyed playing Space Encounter a lot. Unfortunately, I can no longer play because the game is not compatible with Bigsur or Catalina. I also enjoyed Audio Speed, Audio Rally Racing, the Blind Gladiator, She Noir and Inquisitor's Heartbeat, all of which are no longer playable for mac users who are running the latest Mac Operating system.

2021-01-30 12:27:13

Hi.
Guys please give the demo a chance. There are actually a lot of puzzles in the game already. The demo is surprisingly long.
@Tenkarider:
I have completed the demo, and it's much better than I expected. I really like the puzzle parts, the story and the sounds.
I have noted a lot of feedback while playing the game, which I hope you'll consider. While reading your replies to peoples posts, I do understand that you're giving an engine which have limits, and you can't properly do much about it. But I hope you'll send the engine suggestions to the right people, so they can improve the games in the future.
Seriously, the story is amazing, the locations are great as well, everything which is happening is just wow and the puzzles are awesome. But the engine makes the game kind of bad, which is not your fault, because you have what you have given to work with.
Anyway, here is my feedback, in a random order:
1. Please make a direct download link on the website. I think people are tired of requesting a download link just to play a demo version. My suggestion: Make a counter on the download link on the website so you can keep track of how many people are downloading.

2. Leveling: It's nice to gain a new level. But what are the improvements? How many XP is needed for the next level?

3. The menus: Please make normal menus instead of the main menu, where you have to press ctrl to start a new game, spacebar to load and other keys for other options.

4. First person mode: At the beginning of the game, you are being told that the game is in first person mode. Or, do I misunderstand that part? The navigation is not in first person mode at all. So, if you want the current movement, then remove the information about the first person mode. Suggestion: Other games have showed us that the engine supports movement, where you walk around on the map. It would be an amazing experience if you actually walked around in the game, instead of the point and click style. Then you could use the point and click style to interact with items and people, combined with real movement. That would seriously improve the game a lot.

5. The control key as an action key: This is not a practical key. This key is usually used to silence the speech in a screenreader. That conflicts if you don't turn off your screenreader which I did not, because I took some notes while playing.

6. When you open up your inventory, pressing the Backspace key takes you to the pause menu instead of back to the game.

7. A way to repeat the game instructions: At the beginning of the game, you are giving all the commands to get started. This is great, but it would be great to have an option to get those instructions repeated, for example in the Pause menu.

8. Not able to skip cutseens: Some of the speech can be skipped by pressing the control key. But, cutseens can't be skipped. This is a serious issue when     having a long cutseen before a battle. I was about to give up on the battle after the dinner, but I'm really glad I didn't gave up, and experienced all the awesomeness afterwards. Things like not being able to skip the cutseens can be so frustrating that people just give up.

9. Most of the battles are way too easy. Maybe set a limit on how many times you can attack before the enemy strikes again.

10. Most enemies "blows" in battles. Hahaha.

11. Syncronize the sounds so they appear when they should, instead of laying the sounds at the beginning of the speech, and some moments later, you are getting told what that sound mean.

12. When the big creature chases you, the game becomes really slow.

13. The inventory menu: 1. It's not all the items you pick up which are shown in the inventory menu. 2. Why can't you use items directly from the inventory menu?

14. Cut out all the long unnatural pauses in the sound files. They are so frustrating, and make the whole experience slow and boring. That goes for most of the games made by the engine, so I don't know if that's an issue in the engine or in the sound files.

15. Make the people talk: I know that's a lot to ask for, but I'll try anyway: Every time you expect people you meet to say anything, the narrator says that people are saying... That's just kind of weird. An easy fix would be to let the narrator say what people are saying, and afterwards say: "says the guy" or whatever, instead of: "You are being told that the guy is saying." A much better solution would be to find other voice actors for those people. I hope you get what I mean.

16. I really hope this game will support secrets, hidden objects, side quests etc. It would be amazing if it had trophies, where you had to go through some serious horror to get those, to find side quests and other secrets. Then, you could cover all that in trophies, so people can see in a trophy list that they still need to find something, and the name of the trophy could give a hint on where to look. Most of those things should be optional,  so people could continue, if they are being scared too much. smile

That's all I have for now. I hope you are able to implement just some of that.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2021-01-30 13:32:30 (edited by defender 2021-01-30 13:52:51)

@Tenkarider
Yes for sure, at a certain point, the game is already made and it's up to people whether they want it or not.
I respect your resilient attitude, and I hope you don't give up on development.  It seems like you could do better without the limitations of this system in the future if you wanted.

@Appleman
Tenkarider is simply one of the new developers who sells games on the audiogame.it platform, they aren't in any way responsible for the previous games from other developers, so they can't improve them.

2021-01-30 13:42:57

Hi.


I've tried a bit of the demo and while it's not my kind of game, I like the story.

I'm gone for real :)

2021-01-30 14:00:21

Hello @crashmaster ! Thanks for playing the demo so far, yeah i designed the game so that you won't manage to have a plenty of Blood Vials in your stock, most of enemies can drop a Blood Vial but the drop rate is very low, except for bosses and few exceptions. As mentioned in the first post the strongest monsters in this game can do a special attack called "Deadly Attack", you can tell when that happens if you suddenly hear the vice saying: "Deadly Attack", aside being a strong attack which arrives suddenly, it also strengthens the enemy or weakens Elyon when they hit you, as the voice says, but only if you get hit from that attack. When that happens the enemy attacks with a different sound anyway. Do you think i should add in the tutorial (the first five rooms of the game) a message which provides you some information about those special attacks?
About skipping blocked dialogues, seems like it's quite an asked thing so i guess i will remove that.
So you're suggesting to keep the Tab message? maybe i didn't understood...
Thanks for the feedback, it's quite good! About the other games there's not much i can do about that: most of them are made by different developers which work in parallel to their own project, they will launch their next chapter when they will actually finish them.
The testing is usally made before launching the demo and before launching the complete game, we can count on two blind professional testers and actually some other testers adds, along the way.

Hi @wlomas ! Hell Hunter is designed in a way that spamming up arrow will just lead you to a quick game over: i added a feature to many monsters of the game that if you keep spamming up arrow without never dodging, after some blow they will stop taking damage, until you dodge, so you won't even manage to survive the tutorial of this game if you fight in that way.
About the chase i added some feature which makes that point more immersed and also translates in actual gameplay.
All i can suggest you is to try the demo and experience it on your own

Welcome @Appleman ! i can understand that, i'm not involved in this projects but the best i can do for you is report this issue and see what happens, ok?

2021-01-30 15:01:35

Hello @SLJ ! Wow, that's quite some feedback! Thanks a lot for playing in first place and also for this big and detailed post! Thanks for understanding, I'll report your suggestions, besides I'm reasoning on what among those point would be feasible to implement for the complete version of Hell Hunter or eventually the next chapter.
For the leveling I guess I could add a button that if you press it in the menu page, then it tells you how much xp you need to get for the next level up
My bad for the first person thing, that was just a text description but maybe I wrote it in a wrong way, if that's misleading I could simply change that piece of text. On a side note I imagined that maybe moving in the map with arrows instead of tab, using the same structure for examine the objects could be a change that could be made in future, maybe for Hell Hunter 2 but that would be a very big change I'm still not sure about how much hard would be to do, though...
Like for experience I could add a button in the menu page for telling again the instructions!
About the point 10 you mean you hear a lot of breathing or something? Well, that's actually the sound of the music in the background... do you think it's a problem?
Yeah, during the chase the games slows down at each step to make you hear the noise of the chains, if you think that's not ok maybe I could tone down the slowdown or remove it completely...
Actually most of the items you get are shown in the inventory but when you use them and let them there, like the books, then they get removed from the inventory. Using an item in the inventory would be a very heavy update for the structure, I'm not even sure if that's feasible in a reasonable amount of time...
Could you please be more specific on which are the sound files with long pauses? I can't tell which ones you mean.
About secrets and sidequests you can definitely count on that! In the complete version of the game there will be at least 3 secret superbosses! And actually there's one secret even in the demo: despite Dracula is almost impossible to defeat, actually it's not completely impossible, and if you manage to win, you'll unlock a secret ending!
In any case I'll consider all your suggestions, thanks a lot again for your post! Wouldn't you mind if I contact you in private and eventually ask you for testing those changes you suggested? In that way i could receive a proper feedback before releasin the complete version.

2021-01-30 18:54:41

Hi:

I was thinking about the combat system in games made on this engine, and something  occured to me. Why does the narrator havde to announce the incoming attacks? Is it really necessary to hear "blow on the right? Why not have an audio cue, such as the sound of the weapon on the appropriate side? Also, a way to block attacks instead of simply dodging?

When the wandering fire strikes the heart of stone, will you follow? Will you take ... the longest road?
Guy Gavriel Kay

discord: tayo134

2021-01-30 19:25:49

Hi @Tenkarider.
Thanks for your positive reply. I'll reply to your email asap.
I'm glad you found the feedback useful.
Regarding leveling and xp: Yeah it would be great if you could press a key in the pause menu.
Regarding first person mode: That's just okay. Just cut it out if possible to avoid any confusion.
Instructions: Yep that would work by adding a key for that in the pause menu as well. Or, just make a normal menu where you could cycle through the choices by pressing the tab key instead adding random keys for each menu option.
Regarding enemy blowing: No. When fighting, the voice says: "The enemy blows." Sounds like that comes from the dragon which blows at the beginning of the game. Does most enemies not strike with their weapons instead of blowing like a dragon?
Chased: When getting chased: If the point is to get away quickly, then for me, it feels unnatural that the game slows down to hear the chains, and not for any other reasons. I mean, you hear the chains anyway when waiting, cycle through the choices etc. It feels like the whole game acts slow when getting chased, but I'm not sure if it's ment to do that.
Inventory: I didn't knew that would be a heavy update. Maybe think about a way of letting the player know, that you can't use the items from the inventory. I'm not sure on how to do that in a great way. But in most games you can use your items directly from your inventory. Right now, I can't come up with any good suggestion regarding this.
Regarding pauses: There are generally a lot of long pauses in the speech. When opening the pause menu, the way it says "100," when you have wan a battle you can't quickly press control to continue before the speech has finished etc.
Sounds really amazing regarding the secrets. I look so much forward to check that out.
Thanks for considering all the other feedback as well. Keep up the great job.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2021-01-30 19:33:45

hm dont try to run this on win7 32bit. it dont start at all. the game give you an error like that this software are not for this version of windows or something

2021-01-30 20:19:10

@defender
Don't worry, I won't give up!

Hello @brad ! Thanks for playing the demo, I'm glad you like the story!

@tayo.bethel
You know, actually I asked the same thing to myself, sometimes it hinders the flow of the battle, according to what @SLJ says it seems that it also covers the sound effect of enemy attacks and actually make them look like they are blowing...? Even it was meant like striking. I Say this because actually all the enemies have their own proper sound effect when they attack and also when they get hit.
So you think it would be better if the dubbed voice wouldn't speak at all? In case you think just the sound effect would be good enough, I might decide to completely remove the voice of incoming attacks... also, what do you think about the voice that says "Elyon gets hit"... would just hearing the pain voice of the player be enough to when you get hit? In that case I could remove even that voice and in this way there wouldn't be a risk of overlapped voices, which maybe could improve the battle flow.
Say I create a poll in this topic for asking about that, could that work to gather some opinion?
About blocking that's more a reason related to the character and the context: Elyon is an hunter, not a warrior, so he's a fast fighter with light weapons and light protections or no protections at all, that's kinda his fighting style, he would rather dodge than parrying, and blocking with weapons wouldn't be as good as a shield, which nowadays would be kinda inappropriate since it's bulky and at the same time it's not like Elyon can walk in a modern town wearing a shield.
On the other hand in the complete version of this game, this is kinda a spoiler I guess, as extra feature you'll be able to select among some special weapons, with slightly different fighting styles and one of them will be able to kinda parry attacks (not exactly), but I won't spoil further about that gimmick.

@mjonsson1986
In the first post of this topic I mentioned that the build is for windows 64 bit, I didn't test it on a 32 bit version, but I wouldn't be surprised if it might not work... I'm sorry about that.

2021-01-30 21:29:52

Hi.
Well maybe something about the deadly attack should be put in the tutorial.
It happened so fast I didn't know it could be blocked, it happened so fast I couldn't dodge.
Maybe a block for some stuff you can't dodge could be good.
On the subject of monsters and bosses, in a lot of games I have played of this style, mostly gamebooks, monsters can drop gold, but bosses drop keys, gold, treasures that can be soled or other usefull upgrades and bonuses, the harder the boss, usually the bigger the drop or even experience points.

2021-01-30 23:04:12

I understand that you may be passionate about the story. I can respect that. I understand it, even. I'm a writer myself. Unfortunately, I don't think I can play your game.
All I needed to do was listen to the starting tutorial, and I knew, this game was just going to be Blind Quest with a fresh coat of paint on it. Some people may enjoy that formula. I don't. I find it limiting and a touch bland.
Good luck to you though. I know some people will pick this up, and I'm glad for it.

Heroes need foes to test them. Not all teachers can afford to be kind, and some lessons must be harsh.

2021-01-31 00:28:30 (edited by tayo.bethel 2021-01-31 00:31:38)

Hi:
Edit: Voice-acting would be a huge plus for games of this type. If you can find good voice actors, go for it. Even ask around on here; people here have done voice acting for games and might be interested.
If the sound effects for monsters and their strikes are already there, the dub voice isn't really necessary. Same goes for when drinking blood vials; the sound of gulping is sufficient. Most games, when they make an announcement of potion consumption, just say how much health was restored, fifty health, for example. The pained grunt of the character is enough to let the player know the character has been hit, definitely. Question, do different weapons make different sounds when they hit?

When the wandering fire strikes the heart of stone, will you follow? Will you take ... the longest road?
Guy Gavriel Kay

discord: tayo134

2021-01-31 02:37:51

@SLJ
About the menu navigation i guess using Tab to shift among the options could do the trick, all i need to know is if people here would like this solution as well: the current menu was meant to be faster to use with a single key pressure, since here people don't like a lot Tab navigation... but if that's not the case i could change it, how 'bout a poll?
Yeah, the chase slowdown thing was meant to be in that way, i mean i manually scripted the slowdown, i could completely remove it then.
The items in the inventory in the very end, for the way the original structure designed them, are just a cosmetic feature which makes you listen their description, i don't know...
Oh, that... the pauses were longer before, i cut them to 1 second of pause between a line and another one for the menu, i remember there were few longer pauses which i might cut further... should i make last even less than 1 second the pauses? About battles i already shorted a lot the flow of experience/drop lines, the problem is that the level up script runs there, if you skip it before that happens, then you wouldn't get exp so i blocked the skip, but i might do something about that.

Hi @crashmaster, since the dragon's breath is a deadly attack and normal monsters really don't have a different trait, i guess i could add to his line the deadly attack information. 
About currency it's out of context since in that place would be euros or something and you really don't interact in that way through the game, not that i couldn't pull out something else... at the moment it's not planned any use of currency in the game but i'll think about it, the treasures would be cool... bosses at the moment give more exp and grant a blood vial at 100% rate, unlike normal mosters which most of the times have less than 20% as drop rate.
Upgrades could be a thing, but i'd try to avoid to focus too much on the RPG features, since i want to make it feel more horror than RPG, we'll see. Thanks for the suggestions!

Hello @spiderManiac ! Do you mean the very first intro with instruction before moving inside the pub? That sounds like judging the book by the cover but actually i think i know what you mean: in that intro there's a brief introduction from the narrator voice, then the instructions and finally the starting plot of the actual game, well i made a mistake... that brief intro really doesn't fit my writing style, in fact i changed that part from how it was written in Blind Quest to make it look like a horror version and, according to your post, you definitely spotted the similar line structure... my apologies for that. there has already been some confusion with "first person" and stuff so i think i'm gonna remove all that crap for good since it really doesn't add anything to the actual experience, thanks for the indirect suggestion! Also, thanks in any case since at least you downloaded the demo!

@tayo.bethel
Voice-acting would be great, unfortunately it wouldn't be possible for our staff, but it's interesting to know you can find some voice acting people around here, still i guess they wouldn't do that for free, right?
Well if that's the case then i'll probably axe all that dubbing, sounds like killing two pidgeons with one stone...
You mean enemy attacks? That for sure; if you're talking about the main character's attacks then in the demo you will only hear the slash sound of his weapons, in the complete version of the game you can expect to hear the sound of other different weapons. Thanks for your suggestions!

2021-01-31 03:23:15 (edited by musicalman 2021-01-31 03:27:26)

A warning for anyone reading this: There will be spoilers here! Too many to count. I'll try not to give more away than I need to, but there are certain things I'll have to point out.

Anyway, hi there Tenkarider
Congratulations on this release!
I'll admit, I didn't think I'd like this, because I'm not a fan of point-and-click adventure. I'm more a fan of the action/fps type of game. But I had a few extra minutes, and I saw this was a really new release, so I decided to check it out. Especially when I saw it involved battling wolves and other scary creatures in a scary forest, which does sound interesting. So I thought I'd at least try it, and I have to say, you've won me over. I'll certainly be watching this!

I am right now trying to fight the owner of the manner, and I have a lot of feedback myself. Most of this has been said at least once before, if not multiple times, and I'll apologize in advance if I critique something you've already addressed. but I'll just put it all out here, and let you do with it what you will.

What I love about this game

I absolutely love the sounds. I wouldn't call them realistic, but they are definitely high quality and terrifying, at least I think so. To be honest, I wouldn't want to change the sound effects at all; the texture of the sounds, if you will, is pretty neat, and I feel like it's a bit unique in the audio game world.

The turning around puzzle was pretty nifty I have to say. It of course isn't complex, but the sounds really amp things up and can scare the crap out of someone who isn't prepared. Not to mention, if you fail at this puzzle, the death scene is certainly sick and gruesome. As well as the scene where you discover you're eating human meat. I don't quite understand what happens there, but that is also a memorable scene for me. I'm hoping to see more like this in the final game!

But I do have some critiques:

Narration

First of all I like the narration being there. I find the tone of the voice a bit unfitting at times, like the narrator didn't quite know how he wanted to say things? But I still prefer it over synthesized speech; I miss the days when audio games contained human voice prompts, since a distinct voice helps set a game apart.

Personally, I would suggest keeping the built-in narration as the primary method of speech. That said, if you'd like to add screen reader or SAPI support, I wouldn't mind. However, timing the sound effects to the synthesized speech would be a very hard task, and I'm pretty sure you already said that. So if you do implement synthesized speech, you could restrict it to the tab/shift tab and other menus where critical timing isn't important. That would satisfy those who don't like the built-in narration.

Various Interface Shortcomings

Some have said that the narration is slow, and I have to agree to a point. The speed of the voice itself is fine, but there are too many instances where you have to wait for the game to catch up. For instance, when I press tab, I have to wait about half a second for the next item to be read. This is a bit of an annoyance after a while, and some Unity games are better than others about that.

I'm a bit curious as to whether the sound files themselves have silence at the beginning, or if the engine is to blame for this. At the moment, the sound files seem a more likely culprit; battles don't have nearly so much delay when pressing keys, so the menu options may need to have some silence trimmed off the beginning of the voice clips. Of course, I'm just hypothesizing.

Another annoying shortcoming is the inability to skip cut scenes. For instance, right before the fight with the manner owner, there's a nice long cut scene that I have to listen to, and I'd really love to be able to skip that. I'd say that every message or cut scene needs to be interruptible with a dedicated skip key. That way, any time you hear a message you don't care about, you can press the skip key and move on. This might take extra code of course, but it is well worth it for people like me who are used to moving quickly.

Battle Critiques

I have to agree that the voice prompts during battle, such as "blow on the left", "blow in the middle", "blow on the right", "you've used a blood vile" and "you are hit!"are unnecessary. All of those events have their own sounds. In some cases the sounds are subtle, but that adds to the challenge. Deadly attacks also don't need to be announced, since if I'm hearing correctly they have their own sounds too. So, I'd say disable those voice prompts, or perhaps add a key to toggle them during battle, so those who really really want them can turn them on.

I'll be honest, when I first realized that the game was going to give me a play-by-play during battle, I almost couldn't do it; the commentary is just distracting. I want to appreciate the horrifying enemy sounds, and try to hear what's happening without voice guidance.

One other thing I would love to see during battle is a better way of giving your life points. Instead of saying 100 percent, less than 75, less than 50 etc. I would love to hear an exact number. A number such as "73" is more concise and more exact than "less than 75". Furthermore, when reading your life points during battle, I don't really need to hear "perfect condition" or "he's lost too much blood" etc. Those descriptions are nice for atmosphere and are totally fine in the menu screen, but during battle they are again distracting, and serve as unnecessary commentary.

One more thing about battles: sounds tend to cut off a lot. For instance, the sound of me dodging or attacking will cut off the sounds of my enemy's attack. While this doesn't break anything mechanically, it does sound a little cheap. As an audio person, it really bugs me to hear the dramatic swoosh of my enemy's incoming attack being cut off by the player's actions, especially since the player doesn't block attacks, but only performs attacks of his own or dodges the attacks coming at him.

Other Comments

SLJ mentioned that the delay introduced while you're being chased is annoying. Personally I can live with it, but a better way to handle that scene would be to perhaps play large creature sounds and chains in the background. In other words, don't play the sounds when you press tab and shift tab, just constantly play them to remind you that he's coming, and then of course stop playing them when he sees you and engages in battle. The absolutely creepy music, combined with his constant chains, would really set the atmosphere well I think, and the delay wouldn't be needed.

Finally some questions

If you've made it this far, I have a number of questions.
1. How do you know whether dodging, attacking or a combination of the two is most effective on an enemy? The game will tell you at times, but for most enemies such as wolves, zombies etc. it won't. So do you use the speed of the enemy as a guide, or do you just have to experiment? Right now I'm mostly experimenting.

2. Can you actually beat Dracula at the beginning? Of course, to advance the story you don't have to beat him, but I was wondering if you potentially could, or if I'd be wasting my time trying.

3. When you're being chased by the monster with chains, he seems to catch you at certain points in the mountains. Are these scripted i.e. he'll always catch you at the same points? They seem to be, at least when I was playing it earlier, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway.

4. Finally, when you get enough experience and reach a new level, what benefits do you get? The game doesn't say. More life points? More attack strength? Normally I'd expect a new level to bring at least some benefit, at least going by my limited experience with RPGs. If there is no benefit, then the experience/leveling system really doesn't have a purpose.

So yeah, that's pretty much everything I was going to say about this game at the moment. While I feel that all of these points are important to the game, I of course don't expect you to get to them all at once. But I'll be interested to see your responses!

Good luck with the project!

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