KickStarter STASIS 2: BONE TOTEM - new isometric adventure in Stasis universe set in deep sea installation

[agris]

i may be misremembering, but even if you hovered over the poi you got an individual rgb strand running back to the character right? i would have appreciated the ability to disable that entirely

 

[Alienman]

This is what I wrote in my review about it, if curious:

The gameplay. Oh boy, where to start? Right off, there is nothing wrong with the fundamentals per se. It has the classic top-down isometric perspective like the older games in the series, and being an adventure game you will find items and combine them – the usual stuff with lots of trial and error. You control by clicking around, and you interact with items by dragging and dropping. Nothing bad here, fairly standard stuff. However, one major thing that brings down the gameplay is the presentation of interaction nodes. It demolishes the exploration aspect of Bone Totem by making everything visible with one simple right click.

The highlight function shows everything interactively on each map, it’s even color-coded – green for description and blue for interaction. This means that you don’t even have to move from the start location for each new area, everything is presented on a platter with zero input required from you. A green descriptive node in another room? No problem, somehow the character you are currently controlling can sense the blood splatter in the next room and describe it. It absolutely annihilates all potential investigations since you know where to go and look at all times. It lessens the gameplay to such a degree that Bone Totem feels more like a visual novel than an adventure game. Baffling design decision.

That is not all. The UI is sensory overload. There are nodes to inspect everywhere, and everything is always available – texts are constantly popping up when you move around the mouse cursor as it’s inevitable that you will hover over something. A better way to design this (in my opinion) is to make nodes only become visible as the character you control moves close. Additionally, only have text pop up if you inspect through right-clicking, and if interactable then show so at this point. It would make the game so much more immersive, and even if it could be considered simple in gameplay terms, it would at least be something.

I do understand that you don’t have to highlight stuff. Even so, it doesn’t change how the descriptive text nodes work. This is with consideration that highlighting is mapped to the right mouse button, which is a pretty prominent button. It tells me that this is something that should be used during play and that the game is designed around it since there are no other visual hints beyond this system.

 

[Pyke]

Makin' games man - always difficult to know what will work for some and not others!

 

[agris]

i brought some 'tism to the ping lines a while back too

1. Visual clutter. Pinging POIs makes a really cluttered visual that can be both overwhelming and pull you out of the moment. I think the visual clutter contributes to both of those things. The flat textured, primary color lines that connect to each POI, and then the rings showing their approximate interaction zone, could be changed to achieve the same result (show players POIs) while lessening the problems. I don't know exactly how it would look, but here's some suggestions
   
   Texture the lines. Rather than a flat textureless line connecting from the player to each POI, something simple that looks in-world (like the drone's laser scan VFX?) only color coded in a similar manner to how they are now: green for read, blue for interact. By switching to something similar to drone's scan VFX, you have a much more diffuse visual indicator that doesn't read like current RGB spaghetti connecting the player to everything in the map.
   
   Change the rings. I don't know if the above would apply to the rings indicating approximate POI location, as in change it from a RGB donut to a textured donut or perhaps something more believable that would be drawing the player's attention in-universe. Building on the suggesting of the drone scan for the indicator lines, maybe the donut/circle is replaced with a small square area made of a laser raster/hologram indicating an area of interest with the color. It's still a simple geometric shape, but rather than RGB donut smacking you in the eyes, the graphic is more diffuse.
   
   
2. Change mouse-over graphics for POIs when ping is OFF. When you mouse over a POI, the RGB spaghetti strikes back! Unlike ping, where I know and understand the value of the drawn lines, I don't see what this line is doing for the player. It adds to the visual clutter, a bright line that constantly resizes itself and shifts as long as the player is walking. It's unnecessary and doesn't add value, while being distracting.
   
   The second part of my argument that the way POIs are presented is distracting and doesn't work well is: text description placement! I don't think this has ever been an issue in other AGs for me, but perhaps because I can actually render BT at 2560x1600, there's a big disconnect between looking at the POI itself and reading the text. I have these bright lines and rings showing me approximately where the POI is, it's relation to me, and my eyes are fighting with that visual while also trying to drag themselves to the bottom of the screen to read the text. I don't think this would be an issue on a small screen like a handheld, but on a big modern monitor, it feels like my eyes are darting all over the screen just to look at the object and read the description. The description appearing in a semi-translucent text box adjacent to the POI itself would vastly improve the experience.

 

[gooseman]

Its strange - I always saw it as an optional thing, cos you had to actually do a very purposeful 'click' to use it. Maybe people felt that because it was there, it had to be used?

I've found myself spamming the highlight button. I think this was mostly due to how quickly the highlights disappear (and specifically the lines that point to objects, which I wanted to always see in bigger rooms). I felt like it should be a toggle instead.
It takes me out of the world, I'm not looking at the actual detail in the level, but at the circles, similar to the descriptions, which focus you on the text box at the bottom. But it's an infinitely better compromise to pixelhunting in highly detailed and very, very dark rooms.
Maybe some other form of highlighting would be better, like an indicator that there are still items in the room, or glinting or something and this could be saved for a last resort sort of thing like the hints if you can't solve a puzzle for too long.
Hand drawn animation and by extension hand drawn older adventure games (I think Broken Sword is a very good example, at least for characters) had an interesting, likely unintentional highlighting effect. I'm guessing it's due to backgrounds and other objects being drawn separately, so the items, npcs and interactables usually had less detail, different artstyle and less or no shading, and stood out because of that. Sort of a cool feature we lost now that games have dynamic lighting.

 

[Pyke]

We did the 'glint' thing on Stasis - it worked quite well - but the scenes in BT were around 8x bigger, so we had to rethink how it worked.
I think that Broken Sword did do something similar in their rerelease. I remember reading about it... or watching a presentation? My brain isn't what it used to be. :D

 

[Pyke]

Seems I may be moving forums... :D

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/animal-use-protocol-from-the-makers-of-stasis-bone-totem.151730/

 

[Jenkem]

what is the proper order of play? Stasis, Cayne then Bone Totem? I believe that's the release order but not sure what is the preferred order.. I already played Stasis and half of Cayne but I'll probably replay them (and start over Cayne) before BT.

 

[Spukrian]

My thoughts is maybe restrict the highlights to proximity somehow? Or have the spots not appear untill you've "discovered" them and instead of lines maybe have small arrows?