Like TurinTur said, the UI could use a lot of improvement. It’s too bad that so little effort went into it compared to the writing. I’ve gotten a few hours into it and so far it’s manageable, but I’m spending so much time manually sorting my cards that it distracting and I can’t completely focus on the actual game.
My card management strategy :
-Hunters on the top left, bottom left evidence and notoriety.
-After that, columns with the attributes, the associated skills and spendable resources (glimmer, vitality, etc)
-In the top mid, places.
-Bottom mid, my cult, funds, agents and other people.
-top right, what I call temporal ‘feelings’ (I think the game call them influences)
-mid right, rituals and lore.
-bottom right, books, items and languages.
…and I lost my game. After six hours or so.
Having a game over kind of sucked, dunno about having a single automatic save slot, this isn’t a fast to play roguelite where I die fast and start again fast. This was a slow and pondering multi hour game.
And it sucked because an expedition made me lose the game. The first two expeditions I did went fine, so I didn’t expect the third one causing my defeat.
The problem is that you don’t have an indication of how long it will be, and some are super long, and the longer they are, the more expensive they are, they require several moments where you have to provide an agent or money, draining more your resources than expected.
In addition while the expedition is on, you can’t use the explore action as it’s already in use, so I couldn’t go to the private club to gain contentment to fight against despair or use an agent to try win money (4 of them were in the expedition!), nor I could go to the auction house and sell an item as en emergency to win extra money. And I didn’t see any button to make the expedition come back.
Committed suicide by hunger strike after 3 hours. Just couldn’t take it anymore.
Beaten to the punch by @TurinTur! Yeah, expeditions are a huge chore and go on and on for indeterminate amounts of time, especially when doomed to fail. You’re often asked for a follower with “Aspect X”, but it’s not always clear what will be asked when starting the expedition. Even when, miracle, I had the right kind of person, it wasn’t enough? Was the number not high enough? Who knows! All the while the expedition function is blocked, all your followers are gone and your cash has been hoovered up.
I’m starting to see some of the sense in the “lore” of the mysticism, but I still don’t think it’s very interesting. It’s still mostly just gobbledygook. Where is the Dickensian sharp wit about the human condition that was in Fallen London? The sense of wordbuilding from Sunless Sea?
Kicking the bucket lets you start over with more favorable conditions, I’m hoping it’ll make things a bit more interesting.
I am in a similar space. I enjoyed the game but now I have played through a couple of times I am good and dont really feel the need to play any more. I wish the game had been procedurally generated in many ways, the hand crafted nature is a bit limiting. I still never really understood how to get each card or indeed where each card is used, I know Tom found the icons clear and easy, I don’t, I am still baffled as to what does what at times.
I also noticed the text was missing something when I played it vs watching Toms stream, whats missing was Tom’s narration reading the text to me. I do wish Alexis has narrated all the lines as well as giving them in written form. This would also have helped the tiny text problem.
To end on a positive though I really had a blast exploring the game working through this abastract world where you can imagine whats going on was really powerful. It was a fun few hours for me and thats more than enough for what I paid so I am good. It looks like its doing well for Weather Factory which is the real win, almost certainly that means Alexis/ they will make more games like this which is great news as I really appreciate the fact they were innovating here.
I seem to be playing a very different game: while some of the basic interactions are the same, stuff changes… a lot.
I only played a few hours, but experienced a dozen demise and one “slight” victory.
I am enjoying it a lot. I am actually glad there’s little online information explaining the system at this point.
Figuring out the system is definitely part of the game. The system being obscure fits in well with the Lovecraftian bent. Stumbling around at first just putting actions and card together because they go together. Seeing glimpses of patterns in your initially uncoordinated actions. Then moving with some purpose (when I study reason I get erudition, which I can study to get more reason), not really realizing the larger goal (why good is lots of reason?). Acquiring knowledge you may need in the next life (in a future life as a inspector I need to boost reason).
…
Inspector Cthulouseau had the opportunity to get in with the higher ups, but this was in his mind a “minor” victory. Pride gave way to prudence and he let the opportunity expire. He spent the rest of his years fumbling around going over old case files. Occasionally researching old occult books until despair got the best of him.
Cthulouseau Jr. like this father before him, went into the detective service. Building on the knowledge handed down he thought he’s progress quickly. He rushed to attain the opportunity his father had neglected. However even as he assembled the definitive evidence for the case that would make his career, the same melancholy as his father somehow quickly overwhelmed him and he gave into despair.
Cthulouseau III, determined more than ever to succeed in the career that so consumed his forefathers also entered the detective service. And third time being the charm he succeeded. He lived out his life unsure exactly what earned him his success but he had learned some lessons. He had learned how to abate the dark musings that consumed his fathers before him. To find contentment to alleviate the despair. Instead of consuming himself solely in his work he took time to engage in his favorite hobby, painting. He cultivated his heath, studying how to keep him vital. He used his energy to take long walks around the city. When the time came, he got his man and used his success to prove himself to his higher ups and lived his life off that success.
Though as an inspector he always had a glimmer, a sideways glance, at the dark things about us he never focused too much on them. Never really ran in occult circles…
However the doctor who cared for him in his later years had more curiosity. Using the income generate from the easy work of his position at the institute he was bent on taking the time to study many forgotten tomes…
(…tomorrow I hope to retain this dream of an image of this fragment of forgotten thought of what I was planning before I paused to scribble this deliousory note of a soon forgotten midnight…)
I guess this has Tom’s 3 Ps: Permadeth, meta-Progression, and Pthulhu.
To be more positive, there are other things I like in the game.
-I like how it takes a bit of time to start. Others developers would have started with a ‘cult leader’, here you follow the typical arc of a normal guy which life takes the wrong turn (or the right turn!) and start delving into the occult slowly.
-I like the way new games link up with the previous ones, pretty nifty.
-In general the game can be addictive, there is ‘on more turn’ feeling, but without turns:
One more book to study and I quit. Wait no, now I can upgrade my Passion! I would quit now, but I’m in the middle of an expedition and I want to know what I discover! Oh now I can turn my believer into disciple! Ok I finally save & quit now… wait no, is that a new magical rite?! etc
Although I really would like an option to ‘automatically go to job and take the money’.
RPS gave this a recommended rating.
My second game went better, but I still lost, again because of Dread.
I played in a conservative way, giving more priority to solve the problems as they appeared and upgrading my character than advancing. That got me up to a point where I had to 5 rites, 4 disciples, 4 nameless agents, I had my victory Mark to level 3, I reached the third Way, the hunters weren’t a problem… finally there was a moment where I couldn’t seem to get Contentment and that was it.
The problem is that I don’t have strength in me to play again, that was a slow and steady grind of attributes, characters, items, and lore. Don’t wanna start all over again. :(
Here are a couple ways to handle Dread. Spoiler blur for those that want to figure this out themselves.
Putting a Fund on the Dream action will give you a guaranteed Contentment Card.
Keep an eye out for times when you have both Contentment AND Dread cards on the table together. You can put Dread on the Dream action with a Contentment card to remove both. As long as you do this and keep some funds on hand for emergency contentment purchases when the Dread action is in play you should be able to keep Dread under control.
You play in such a strange, totally opposite way of me! I have played tons of runs, and when I get a couple of minions, I consider it a major achievement. I go to exploration and trying stuff first, and over time try to learn to pay attention to my basic needs. But, in exchange of my failures, I get an enjoyable game and not the boring clickr you are faced with! I hope I never meet that game.
Some things in the UI I initially missed.
You get a preview of what thing is going to try to kill you next. Click the ever present hourglass to bring up it’s card. It shows you what the next “season” will be. You can get a little head start on clearing your dread, fascination, etc.
It also took me a while to notice that when you explore and have the opportunity to employ a hireling, it shows you on the card which one it is. At first I was spending money to get the hireling to figure out what kind it was and often letting them expire since I had no apparent use for them.
Speaking of hirelings, is there any way to get rid of the offer besides letting it expire? I’m only interested in hiring them if I have some direct purpose for them (since they’re time-limited and all) and it’s really annoying to have the Explore verb tied up with this hireling I have no intention of recruiting.
Are any of you playing this with touch? It looks neat, and like something I could run on my Surface. Does it work?
Very cool, and I feel like I’m only scratching the surface. I really wish I could make everything not tilted though. It makes it hard for me to read.
Once I got to a strange map instead of the regular table while exploring a dream. I have no idea what was going on, but it was certainly interesting.
Occasionally it’ll let me put a card in a slot and not let me start. Like, I can’t actually explore a fleeting memory even thought it suggests that’s an option.
I also really wish it were turn-based. Even with the pause function, having so many timers constantly counting down is very nerve-wracking and cuts into my enjoyment.
I believe that is due to card inter-dependencies. The card ‘can’ be used in that verb/action, just not until some other card is first played there to open other additional slots.