OwNathan
Innervoid Interactive
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2013
- Messages
- 210
I perfectly understand that. While we really wanted to add more choices to the early game, we couldn't really do a lot.It is definitely the case that I expected something different, somehow, even after playing the demo. I think I mainly expected decisions in dialogues to matter more than they do. I was kind of judging the game based on it being "a narrative-driven post-apocalyptic survival RPG," rather than an interactive novel, and that was totally my fault. When I played the demo, I thought all the choices I was making were life and death, but choosing different options only seemed to really change the very next line of dialogue before things got back on the rails. I also didn't realize that the loot locations were respawning when I played the demo.While I can agree on many things with you, Dickie, I feel like you either judged the game a little too harshly or you expected something different.
Oh, and I forgot to mention before that I like the art style, except for Demetra's portrait, so that's another positive.
Like I said, there are things I liked. I liked the event in the glass building with the giant thing that I won't spoil for anyone who hasn't played the game. I also liked the church where you go for the holy relics and the part where I was able to dress up like a monster. The story is all fine, too. I just find the UI so frustrating and the overall gameplay isn't my cup of tea, since I would like a "survival RPG" to involve difficult choices with trade-offs.
This is my fault, a fault I did when writing the original script. But for this remastered we couldn't rewrite everything, we simply lacked the resources to do so. Also, a lot of people appreciated the plot and changing it would've certainly backfired. We added Janeve in the early game, some choices allowing the player to manage things differently, but everything else would've been too hard to implement.
I suggest you to let us fix those issues you mentioned (the map panning has already been fixed, for example) and play at the hardest difficulty. We will also look into fights to avoid this Morale draining issue you found, which it's very frustrating. Maybe you'll still get bored, but maybe you won't and you'll get to the actual ending, which is quite free in terms of choices!
I'm glad you found good things in the game. The only reason this remastered exists is because we couldn't live with the fact of having released the original ICY in its state. We never hoped for this remastered to bring us tons of money, we just wanted to fix our shit, because many people found some quality stuff in the game, but it was covered under bugs and crappy mechanics. And every time someone pointed out the potential they saw, I really felt terrible about how we managed to waste such potential. Now, while the game is not perfect, I'm really happy with the result. Especially considering the fact that the only programmer we had on it couldn't spend more than one or two hours each day to work on the project and despite that he only needed 7 months to create a finished game (with some help, but that's still impressive).
ICY was our first game and we learnt a lot from it, so I hope all people like you that still found the game lacking despite the big update will give us another chance with our future RPGs.