BETA
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Otherworld
by IlonaW
A browser-based crafting game, where you can intimidate others, travel, cook, and make babies. The game currently has almost no graphics save for the water and stomach icons, which turn from happy to sad when they're low. The game is played in the browser and requires registration. If you confirm your email address, you can have multiple characters (currently up to 7). It's allowed to cooperate between your own characters. You can also dominate other people's characters or make babies, which grow up into children you can use as free labor. Other players can take over child characters and start playing them.
What I'd like to know is if being text based is a complete deal breaker for most players, and would adding graphics add appeal to the game? I'm a professional graphics designer and I have made digital art since 2003, so I could produce art for the game, but it's more important to know if the core mechanics are functional enough, because there's no point in putting lipstick on a pig if the foundation doesn't work.
There's now a short tutorial for new players, which involves traveling through 3 locations with travel requirements for each path.
The visual appearance has changed somewhat. There's now a background image and rounded corners for divs. The resource deposits view uses a table to organize the elements. There's a small walking animation for traveling, and when you lead other characters, there are multiple walkers on the screen. There's also a simple visual map that shows you which way the neighboring locations are.
Currently speed mode is on, so actions are faster than they used to be. What used to take 1 minute now takes 10 seconds, and so forth. This is not intended to be permanent but will remain turned on for testing purposes, for now. The majority of actions have javascript timers that show progress in real time instead of a static number that only updates when you refresh the page. You still need to refresh the location page for the results to be calculated, though.
There are still some pages that are missing divs (mainly error messages for illegal actions). I will eventually go through them all and make the visual look consistent across the board.
Eventually also traveling and sailing will have javascript timers that update in real time.
Later it will be possible to purchase items with the points you get from finishing quests.
Roasts
Mike 1 week ago
Mechanics Game GraphicsI'm not into text-based games, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Good:
-Everything seems to work properly and is easy to use.
-I like the features to interact with other players on many levels.
-The quests are good to get into the game and feel rewarding.
-The systems (e.g., crafting) have plenty of content and look very polished.
Needs work:
- Consider giving players the option to create a temporary account without providing an email address, at least for the beta.
-The pace of the game is too slow for my taste. I'm rather impatient, so 5 minutes feels like a long time to me.
-The game feels empty. I was reading about NPCs, but there seemed to be none around.
-Graphics would be nice. A map to see where you're going would help a lot.
I think this game has potential. If you manage to get players into the game so that the social features can be used, it might be an interesting experience.
Good:
-Everything seems to work properly and is easy to use.
-I like the features to interact with other players on many levels.
-The quests are good to get into the game and feel rewarding.
-The systems (e.g., crafting) have plenty of content and look very polished.
Needs work:
- Consider giving players the option to create a temporary account without providing an email address, at least for the beta.
-The pace of the game is too slow for my taste. I'm rather impatient, so 5 minutes feels like a long time to me.
-The game feels empty. I was reading about NPCs, but there seemed to be none around.
-Graphics would be nice. A map to see where you're going would help a lot.
I think this game has potential. If you manage to get players into the game so that the social features can be used, it might be an interesting experience.
IlonaW 1 week ago
Hi, thank you so much for reviewing my gameIlonaW 1 week ago
Aw man, I wrote a long reply but it only posted the first row and then apparently deleted all the rest because there was an emoji and apparently that breaks the system. Let's see if I can summarize it from memory. - I could allow players to create one character with an unverified email address. They can't really do permanent damage, since there is no permadeath in the game, but the other day (before I put a cap on characters) someone created 11 characters and beat up a couple of people, creating 200+ events in the chat. - I could potentially edit the game so that 1 minute turns into 10 seconds and so forth. Currently the shortest supported timer is 1 minute, but it's changeable with programming, it just requires a bit of work. I'm mainly concerned that since all characters share the same world, if one player crafts all the items, there will be nothing left to accomplish for ones who come later. Some sort of deterioration can be a solution, and also when characters turn inactive and go on vacation, their inventory is inaccessible to others. Since machinery is available to everyone in a location, some sort of breakage/upkeep would have to be introduced, as well as buildings turning into ruins after a while. - About NPCs, currently when someone has a baby, it turns into an NPC after 7 days and can then be used to gather resources for you. The NPCs have no dialog trees, so it's true the world feels empty when PCs aren't saying anything. I'm not experienced with writing dialogue, so I'm going to have to think about how to make the game feel more alive. - I agree a graphical map would be good. I'm going to have to think about what sort of a visual look to go with. I suppose I could create placeholder graphics and upgrade them later when the kinks are ironed out. Again, thanks for taking the time to review this. I really appreciate it.
