Reworded the beginning of the game and sorted out a few things. I'm only an ok writer so it's really hard to fit the concepts I want into only a couple sentences without it sounding too stupid.
"The dream of humans on Europa inspired me to become an astronaut. I worked hard and hoped to be the first but getting the jump seat on a later cargo mission was almost as good. The destination is what matters."
Right now it sounds maybe a bit too positive but it's better than the super negative version I had before. Games with amnesiac player characters are so lucky. In Hapax I really quickly need to catch the player up to speed while also putting them into a specific headspace. Less than 60 seconds to make them care about themselves at least a little bit.
I hope I'm just overthinking things but there's a lot of pressure on this. After the first minute the player is completely on their own and I have nothing I can force, only a few things I can suggest.
This is a super old screenshot of the player's phone. It's one of the additional ways I try to give context/direction, but I can't just make it an info dump. I'm reworking the celestial tracker to be a full orrery map. The current one just spits out your position as a number. It's a very very big number but outside of that no one outside of astronomy would care.
As part of this I double checked the math and I'm pretty sure I have the game's year locked in placed, 2053. Also set in December so I can claim it's a Christmas game. I know the exact second too since the smartphone clock functions but that's not really interesting to most people...
Additionally, I reworked the controls and menus. I'm removing the old inventory bar and now storing everything on the physical player body. You look down and can see your items on your belt. Just grab them as if they were on a shelf and put them back the same way. Curser snaps to inventory slots so it functions like a traditional inventory screen but is way more immersive.
Deleted "inner thoughts" too. I had planned to show text at various points that would give the player character a way to share her insights (I'm overselling it, just thing of witcher senses or the horizon ping). Wasn't that necessary in practice. Also I already had a cursor icon that changes depending on what the interact button will do. e.g. if you can grab the object it shows an open hand and if you can press a button it shows a hand extending a finger, wow. Both systems had some overlap so it was good to just focus on one.
I still have button prompts early in the game to help ease players in, but after that the game is 100% immersive with no UI (if you count a floating dismembered hand immersive). Really great change because I struggle with UIs and this saves a lot of time. Also is just one more thing to make the game immersive in the way I want.
That's it for what I want to share this week. Bye!
