Wadjet Eye Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

[MRY]

The achievements are absurd, and a net negative, but per WEG (and seemingly rightly so), a commercial necessity.

 

[suejak]

What's negative about them?

 

[Darth Roxor]

What's negative about them?

They give away "spoilers" in their descriptions.

 

[VioletShadow]

To me achievements are always a replayability sort of incentive. I never look at their descriptions before playing a game for the first time, but I find that its hard for me sometimes to play anything other than RPGs (incline) more than once. Then after playthrough #1 I'll look at them and it'll motivate me to replay. By the way, I'm about three hours into Primordia and I'll just say I can't believe I didn't get my claws on this sooner. :D

 

[MRY]

[SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD]

My biggest concern about achievements is that they changed the way players looked at various aspects of the game. For example, with the kiosk, I tried to write as many possible entries as I could imagine people asking about, which is to say, it was meant to be overinclusive: players weren't SUPPOSED to find all of them, it was just a way to get extra backstory if that was your thing. But thanks to the Know-It-All achievement, players view the kiosk as a guess-the-word puzzle, and get annoyed that they can't find everything. (The achievement was also glitched, which didn't help.) Likewise, depending on how you resolve some puzzles, there is a slight effect at the end in terms of who does and doesn't show up. This was meant to be a small way to acknowledge a "better" solution path, but it wasn't meant to weight the scales too heavily -- so, for example, every answer to the In re Rex case is meant to be a legitimate answer. But when only one leads to the achievement (We're All In This Together), players think they've been cheated if they pick differently.

It's not a huge deal, but I do think it matters.

 

[suejak]

Fair enough. Adventure games have tradition of "points," so it's always been a thing to get all the points, if you're an OCD completionist type. Achievements are just the modern version of that concept.

But I do see your point.

 

[VioletShadow]

Yes, I also see your point. A player experiencing the game for the first time that has previously looked at the achievements would not only have metagame kind of knowledge but it would definitively influence their perception of different parts of the game. Like for example a steam friend told me that

Spoiler

there's an achievement for answering Ever-Faithful correctly on the first try

but since I didn't know that I just continued playing and felt no need to use a previous save or even had any negative feelings about his second quest.

 

[MRY]

Fair point about score. I do think it's a little different, though, in part because of ViolentShadow flags about the spoiler aspect.

 

[Aeschylus]

I think in general the concept of game score (at least in Sierra games, which were the only ones I can recall really having it) was kind of different from the current concept of Achievements. Achievements are mostly completely secondary things or unnecessary (but possibly interesting), alternate solutions to certain obstacles in games. The scores however, while kind of arbitrary in the amounts awarded, were really not the same thing. In the early Sierra games, it was actually fairly important to pay attention to when you got points or not, or you might well stumble into a dead-end. In general, if you did something that didn't get you points, you were probably screwing yourself (like eating the pie in KQ5). Achievements on the other hand are just window dressing unrelated to actual gameplay. I suppose getting a full score is somewhat similar, as it generally included a few optional things you could do (at least in the later games ala KQ6, GK1, etc.) but it didn't really extend to the same level of silly meta-gaming that achievements do.

 

[suejak]

No, they actually provided an entirely disgusting extra layer of silly meta-gaming, wherein you had to check on the points to figure out whether you were doing something the designer wanted you to do or not. And if not, Roberta Williams was probably silently plotting to waste a lot of your time.

So, they're similar, but Achievements are better. I agree.

 

[piydek]

No, they actually provided an entirely disgusting extra layer of silly meta-gaming, wherein you had to check on the points to figure out whether you were doing something the designer wanted you to do or not. And if not, Roberta Williams was probably silently plotting to waste a lot of your time.

So, they're similar, but Achievements are better. I agree.

This extra level of meta-gaming in achievements works only with arcade games such as Super Meatboy. There it's actually not meta-gaming, since the whole thing is skill-related.

 

[Infinitron]

MRY Something that you asked me during the interview was whether I had played through Primordia. The answer is that I actually played it over the course of the interview.

I have two questions/remarks:

1) Is there any thematic significance to the fact that Scraper was not built by his mistress, MetroMind? Or is Sturnweiler just a red herring setting detail?

2) It appears that Horatio has had several "previous lives", in an obvious nod to Planescape: Torment. Yet the game's story doesn't really do much with that - nothing really matters in the end other than his original identity as Horus and his current one. Those initial remarks from Ever-Faithful about previous versions of Horatio visiting him got me expecting that aspect to be more fleshed out.

 

[MRY]

(1) I guess I wanted MetroMind to be what in my fake Latin I call the "mater municipas" -- in other words, mother to the whole city, not just to a particular creation. Also, if Scraper was something she built, things get a lot more complicated with respect to their relationship (is she "favoring" her offspring, is it outrageous that she puts him in the line of danger, why hasn't she upgraded his intelligence, etc.). He couldn't be a Factorbuilt, though, because that created divided loyalty issues, too. [EDIT: Also, one thing I forgot, was that there was some significance to MetroMind not having actually "built" anything. Aside from soldiers, almost all the sapient bots you meet have built something -- Leopold -> EFL; O&C -> Rex; etc. The most obvious non-builders are Clarity (who is almost necessarily a "virginal" ice-queen), Crispin (whose virginal nature is revealed through his constant skirt-chasing), the soldiers (187, Primer, ELF, and Goliath), and MetroMind.]

(2) The suggestion is that each version reached the same epiphany that Horatio did, somehow, and locked the memories again because they couldn't cope. Or that it was an iterative / evolutionary process to move Horatio away from still being a destroyer ("wroth confusion") and into being a builder. It also helped introduce the version concept early in the game, allowing us to riff on it with Leopold and MetroMind herself. Finally, in an early design, the ending was going to be Horatio asking (a la the Matrix) Metromind to relock his memories (or relocking them himself) so he could go back to worshiping humans and tinkering in the desert, with the implication that the cycle would eventually start again.

 

[tuluse]

I just finished the game today. It was absolutely delightful. I loved how dark most of the endings were.

I have a criticism which I don't think has been brought up yet. In general, I think your puzzles were too straightforward. For a puzzle to really capture the imagination and make the player feel smart there needs to be a trick or something unexpected that needs to be done in order to solve the problem. Tim Schafer talked about this in the Broken Age documentary. He used the puzzle to get into the junkyard in Full Throttle as his example. You pull the chain and it opens the door, but you can't get through before it closes. So the obvious thing to do is find a way to hold the chain in place so you can get through the door. The real solution of course is that you lock the door so it can't open, and the can't move so you can climb up it. I felt like there was a lack of this kind of quirk (for lack of a better term) to the puzzles that made them feel more like busy work than doing something fun.

Similarly, but slightly different. I found some of the easy puzzles to be much harder for me than they should have been. I would always think the obvious solution was too obvious and try everything else first. Like the electrical wire on the bridge. I scoured the city looking for something that would let me handle electricity safely before finally trying Crispin and kicking myself.

Actually, I found a lot of the time that I would forget Crispin could actually be used to solve problems and wasn't just there for commentary.

 

[Infinitron]

Actually, I found a lot of the time that I would forget Crispin could actually be used to solve problems and wasn't just there for commentary.

A consequence of Crispin being separated from the main inventory, perhaps. He sort of slips out of your mental category of "usable things" that way.

 

[ghostdog]

A consequence of Crispin being separated from the main inventory, perhaps. He sort of slips out of your mental category of "usable things" that way.

Not if, as soon as you see crispin, you make the "Beneath a steel sky" connection

 

[felipepepe]

I also just finished the game this week, congratulations to Wormwood Studios, was definitely a great game.

I agree that the achievements kind of spoil things... playing unspoiled I got the "bad" ending of uploading the virus to scrapper and retuning home alone, when Horatio repeats the cycle of his previous versions and build Horatio v6. And I was happy with that ending, even if it was very dark. But then I saw the achievements and loaded my last save to try things differently, until I finally looked at a walkthrought to see all endings.

Overall, the game was great, especially the art, story and voice acting. My only gripes would be the excess of number puzzles, and as Tuluse said, the lack of more "weird" puzzles.

 

[MRY]

Thanks guys! That's a great point about the lack of "weird" puzzles. The only one that I think qualifies is the Gamma puzzle: first it looks like three-card Monty where you're trying to find the monitor he's in, then it flips to realizing that you want to find the ones he's not in. Otherwise, though, you're right: the puzzles are pretty straightforward.

If you haven't already, it would be great if you'd rate us on GOG. While most of our sales come from Steam, I think the strong GOG presence we have has been a big part of what's fueled our success (what that it is).

 

[Jaesun]

I have never rated stuff on GOG. I just never remember too. I will do so for this.

 

[tuluse]

I feel like I'm bad at describing why I like things (I'm better at saying why I don't like something), but I gave it my best show.

And GoG fucked up my formatting, all my beautiful paragraphs look merged together. :/

 

[VioletShadow]

I've just rated it and wrote a review that took me like half hour to finish and GoG also merged my paragraphs! So people probably won't even read it

 

[MRY]

Thanks so much! I really appreciate the support and I know the rest of the team does too.

Regarding the merged paragraphs: I had an absurd experience years ago where I emailed a letter to the editor of a newspaper -- a totally snooty letter that criticized a political editorial because it contained a plot error regarding The Iliad -- and the newspaper ran the letter, but merged the paragraphs and replaced the quotation marks with crazy unicode symbols and made the whole thing look like terrible; instead of coming off as a giant of proud condescension, I looked like some madman who couldn't punctuate or separate his thoughts. Sigh.

 

[Shadenuat]

I don't want to pose as some edgy motherfucker but I thought everything in Primordia was good except the gameplay. Settings like this are my favorite thing ever, I have personal reasons to like plots about robots who strive to become more human ect., and there is little in this world like giants ancient machines of destruction in sand dunes which can turn me on. But then the gameplay turns out to be collecting five sticks and sticking them with something else, burning shit with torch and then burning some more shit, and that's the point when I just want to grab a walkthrough or watch an LP video instead (but I didn't, because ROBOT HUMANISM). Some of the activities in the game which actually did make sense (telescope, info kiosk) were fun, but you can't count them as puzzles. Simple guessing work does not equal a puzzle. And neither is "there are 10 people in the room...", it's so old and beaten one shouldn't even consider adding it to the game (it's originality is on par with 3 liters/5 liters jugs puzzle which Bioware used in KOTOR).
I know I am adding nothing to the topic , I just wish next game, if there will be one (and I wish there will be one), will have gameplay and story click together.

I also don't see a reason to include multiple endings in a game if there are clear favorites among them, more positive and developed than others; that way other endings become just a bit complicated failure states.

 

[MRY]

I appreciate the feedback. On the one hand, I strongly feel that however a person reacts to the game is "true" -- so if the gameplay seemed terrible, didn't make sense, didn't seem like puzzles, etc., then that is inherently a legitimate criticism of the game. On the other hand, the criticism seems fairly overstated to me.

What I was trying to do with puzzle design obviously failed for you, but I'm not quite sure how the puzzles didn't make sense. Setting aside a few silly ones (getting into Goliath, for example), I feel like the puzzles did a pretty good job of presenting plausible obstacles and reasonable solutions to them, solutions that tended to reinforce Horatio's skill set, limitations, and personality. I'm also not sure how the telescope and kiosk were "simply guessing work" unless you simply exhausted every possible number and every possible word. I'm not even sure how the kiosk could be solved through guesswork. Finally, regarding the "10 people in the room" puzzle, it's a traditional law-school standardized exam question. Having that be the question posed by Oswald and Cornelius is thus quite deliberate; it's both a subtle inside joke (almost certainly gotten by no more than 10 players) and a bit of a revelation about how robots think about legal reasoning (i.e., that it is a logical, not a moral, operation). I can't recall where Bioware did the 3/5 puzzle, but unless it was as an entrance test to a Star-Warsian MENSA analogue, the comparison doesn't quite seem right to me.

Finally, I'm not persuaded by your criticism of the endings. What's wrong with "complicated failure states"? Surely they're better than "You have died. Would you like to reload, restart, or quit?" While there is certainly one trunk of endings that is more developed than the others, all of the endings offer an opportunity to express an interpretation of Horatio, and it's not like the shorter endings are black screens with text scrolls; each one contains unique painted scenes, voice over, and revelations about the characters.

Bottom line, though, is that I don't like anyone walking away from the game feeling annoyed at it. I'm hopeful that our next project will do a better job along the lines you've laid out; certainly you're not the only person to have raised problems with the gameplay! Alas, it will not involve robots striving to be humans, so you may not feel the same personal connection. :/ I do think its setting is a rich and interesting one, though.

 

[Shadenuat]

Now I feel like I kicked someone's baby. Which I somewhat did, but I don't want you to think that I was annoyed or thought that everything was terrible and ship couldn't be saved. I liked the setting, the characters. I liked the story. Liked the "happy" ending very much. I was a bit burned out and didn't want to make too much fuss and create another wall of text without gathering my thoughts.

BUT NOW I WILL

Compared to a many adventure games, Primordia's puzzles are on the same level, but that's not saying much, because the way developers in those present challenges for players can be so ridiculous it changes our way of thinking. You made a point about Goliath's head. In any other game, I would try and find some logical way of activating it, but in adventure game the moment I saw a particular object I thought "Yeah, it's an adventure game, of course that would work".

I think puzzles are meant to create logical obstacles for the character of the game, and player should overcome them in a creative way. Primordia gets "logical" part alright (except some instances like Robot, or robot in sewers which can only be killed with a Plot), but not "creative". You mentioned Horatio's skillset, but did game mechanics actually worked with that anyhow? Did it even work with the nature of him being a robot? Were there any obstacles solved with the fact I'm playing such a unique character? Take a plasma torch, for example. Wouldn't it be cool if he had that installed in his hand from the beginning of the game, instead of finding it? Now we're talking. I would be walking through an adventure game as a robot with a plasma torch in his arm. And maybe I'd be able to install decoding software on myself, instead of carrying another piece of junk in my pocket. You may think it doesn't make any difference how you present options to the player, but it does, and it would give player some good hints (if I have a torch in my arm, I could use it as a weapon... how about drilling a hole in that stupid monitor; I won't do the same with an instrument, I am thinking differently about it).
And one could use it to create a logical failure state, like attacking someone with it. It's always great when game punishes you for doing something risky and a little stupid, it makes you respect the game. Also makes it feel genuine, because you did it, not the designer who said "well, that's the end, choose an ending" (yes, designer made everything in the game, but you know what I mean).

You could replace Horatio with a talking cursor, it won't change much. I would still go around collecting things, sticking things into things, exchanging things for things and guessing things. You can't replace Ben from Full Throttle with a cursor. Cursors don't ride motorcycles or kick things with their boot.

What's wrong with "complicated failure states"?

Nothing is wrong with them, but them as endings feel wrong. I've read Primordia was inspired by FO and PS:T, I guess by their settings and characters. But you remember there is only one canonical ending for these games? There are some very nice failure states which can happen during the game, and which reinforce the ideas of these games (you can turn into mutant yourself; world can end if you prolong the game too much), and their characters (TNO can't leave Silent King's throne because he is immortal). It's the player who should interpret things, it's the game he played should reveal all what he should know about the characters. Ending should wrap all that in a good way, I believe.
Maybe you felt you wanted to tell some more about the characters, but for the player, it's just replaying one scene over and over without a logical reason, except for another "achievement" ticket. Player is here to "win", you think he'd

Spoiler

throw himself from the roof in his right mind?

Sometimes, for a story, multiple endings work. It's a rare thing when it happens. It means a story is opened to interpretation, for me it didn't feel there is much to interpret after

Spoiler

I've read Horatio's memories

, which was the best reveal in the game and actually felt more like a real ending than any other. Now choosing between that and some other ending would probably work great. Save someone, or solve your own mystery? That is a heavy choice.
Yeah, sometimes multiple endings work. Is Rick Deckard a human or a replicant? In Blade Runner adventure game, you have something similar happening in the game, but if you'd have an option of choosing the right answer in a game based on a plot of the movie, that would be a great choice of ending, I believe.

I'm also not sure how the telescope and kiosk were "simply guessing work"

Kiosk is a guessing work in a sense that it's not a creative puzzle where you use your skills/objects/characters/knowledge, it's more of a minigame, a rebus.
Gimini Rue had info kiosk too. It was used by you and, as player would logically assume, characters in the game to check map of the city, find streets, houses and information. It was a genuine part of the world with no revelations whatsoever, a tool, that's why it worked well.

A riddle about 10 robots would be a puzzle if, say, you had to guess their logic and twist it, burn their circuits, create some Azimov's loophole, using information you know about them and from the game... do something out of the box, instead of solving a "traditional riddle". I'm not even sure "traditional riddles" should exist in adventure games if they don't have some sort of a twist, many of them have been used to the death.

Alas, it will not involve robots striving to be humans, so you may not feel the same personal connection. :/ I do think its setting is a rich and interesting one, though.

For an indie, the job you've done in presentation, characters and setting is outstanding, I just hope it would be more interesting to play.