Bit Blot Forum
Aquaria => General => Topic started by: Xenofur on December 09, 2007, 05:46:41 am
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I'll start this post with a disclaimer:
I'm not here to praise the game, because i honestly haven't played enough to have an opinion on whether it's good or not. I certainly do not think it's bad. What i'm going to attempt here is provide honest and constructive criticism.
First off, what i did so far:
I downloaded the demo. Installation was nice, i like how you put the game in a directory i the start menu that's actually called after the game and not the company. More comfortable and shows where your focus lies. I disliked how the installer kept the bar at 10% for 90% of the installation, because it progresses by file, and got stuck on your huge data file. It left me dreading how long such a small install could take, and how much data the uncompressed game will take, as i clicked through the previous screens so fast, that i did not even notice when it said that.
I usually go for "Configure" first, so i did just that. Keep however in mind that many people will start the game first and many people have quite varying setups of differing power. This i will have to complain about your defaults:
Fullscreen: This can take considerable time to enable when cold-starting a game, especially when memory is low. Your game is quite demanding, so please do not make this a default option. The sanity of your users will thank you.
Vsync: I know what it is. Who else does? There needs to be some kind of explanation for it, a tool-tip, as is customary in Win32 user interfaces. Additionally: This is an option you only want to enable on powerful machines, as tearing only occurs massively when you go above the refresh rate of your screen with your fps. Thus, label the tool-tip: "Activate this on fast machines to minimize graphics tearing." Default it to off.
Framebuffer Effects: Explained in the bottom right and has that text in grey. Good, perhaps bold "Framebuffer Effects" in the notes.
Mipmap: I can guess on what it means, but even i don't know for sure. Explain it somehow.
Resolution: Good choice. Maybe consider selecting the desktop as default resolution, but the one you have is nice in any case.
One thing i disliked: I can't move the configure window. Please never make windows stuck in the center of the screen like that, it's just rude.
Clicked save, clicked dive.
Loading bar, nice. However, it never reached 100%, but went into the game at ~75%. Make it reach 100% somehow, then fade over. It feels nicer to the user.
The line effect on the bitblog logo (i use 640x480x16) just looks lazy and ugly due to distortion. Please make it take note of the resolution and scale the texture so the lines look uniform.
Main screen: Lovely, like the swarm thingy. The texture of the aquaria logo draws an ugly horizontal line through the screen, transparency needs tweaked there. Options and Mod buttons are too dim, i only saw them on the third start of the game. Perhaps make the text glow a bit with plants or something. The green water plant behind the R looks unnatural due to too strong stretching.
Options menu: Barebones, but nothing missing i could point to off the bat, aside from graphics options. I guess you didn't want to go to the trouble of integrating them properly into the engine. Shame for those of us who like to tweak them to match our tastes and hardware, as we're now forced to start/quit the game multiple times.
Personal opinion: The face in the option screen looks down-right ugly. Sunken lips, beady (i think that's the term, not a native speaker) eyes, pale conflexion, but nothing that hints at it being stone. It seems like i'm looking at a drowned person. Could at least have given her a smile. Smiles do a lot make even uglier persons more beautiful.
New Game:
The intro text is rather confusing. I won't go into too much detail here, but DO grab people who've never played the game, plunk them down in front of it, have them watch the intro, then ask them to tell you what they saw and heard. You will find it greatly differs from what you intended. One example: She mentions inhabitants of the cave, yet there are no plants nor animals to see, only dim, small shadow of background fishes.
The intro is also missing something else: There is NO emotion. At all. Does she welcome the player, is she happy about the chance of telling her story? Is she sad about what's going to unfold? She seems emotionally speaking, dead as a fish. If you can't think of anything else, at least make her smile at the player. She is visually not particularly endearing, and that will need to be off-set by personality.
When swimming around, she flips left-right. However that is VERY abrupt. At least add one transition frame to make it more fluid. When standing still, make her slowly straighten her position to up-right, instead of reamining at an impossible angle. Additionally, maybe have her align her angle to a surface, if she's sufficiently close to one. Also have her move her head around to look at whatever the mouse is pointing at, it will deepen the connection between her and the player. The "swim boost" ends too abruptly when holding the left mouse button, have the additional speed fade out slowly. The sprite also seems to skip backwards a bit when the boost ends, that feels quite unnaturally. The spiral animation is also rather choppy and skippy.
Re swimming animation: She seems to flip-flop her legs around rather un-motivatedly and like sticks. It would be nicer if she would move them in a more sensous (?) wave motion, like a dolphin would, or like the people in Seaquest, which i dimly seem to remember.
After swimming around for a while, 5 minutes or so, i found out: I won't be able to play this game. The reason being: My index finger hurt from constantly pressing the left mouse button. This game sorely needs a "travel" function. Maybe have a double-click act as a trigger to have her constantly follow the mouse instead of only when the button is pressed. In my opinion this is rather important.
"You have found a new map token." What. I didn't see my sprite touch anything aside from one of these jellyfish. Does that mean jellyfish give me maps? Obviously that's not the case, so perhaps make the text "you've discovered a new part of the map." or something less confusing.
"Hold right to sing." Hey, this is neat. *swims up to the top of the cave to have less visual clutter and makes a few melodies, then goes on exploring*
Hm, small cave with a rock and a plant, nothing to do. *backtracks*
*passes the skull* "Hey another plant, wonder what's up with those. *goes on and leaves that map*
Oh hey, i can stick to walls, but hmm, it seems to only work sometimes. Would be nice if the game gives a direct hint as to when i can stick to a wall.
Middle-mouse to look, neat, pointless, but neat. Also, ow, trying to move while looking leads to finger pain.
"Sing the same color note as the plant[...]" Colour? *notices jellyfish, tries to sing reds* Eh? *notices green plant that was blending with the background* Oooooh! *makes it pop, gathers recipe* Hmm, so these plants drop recipes? Best i backtrack to gather the contents of the previous plants too. I notice the cursor shining when going over the skull, try singing a bit and clicking on it, but nothing happens.
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This is really ugly here. Rule 1 of any visual narrative and teaching experience: Show, not tell. In retrospect i was probably supposed to notice how singing makes the first plant pop next to the skull, but as the toom was too big, i didn't and missed the chance to learn something in an intuitive manner. Then i go on and find another plant, but as there are no cues around, i fail to learn what singing does to those.
The second plant would have been the *perfect* chance to tell the player to sing, if he, due to bad level design, managed to not notice how to pop the first one. Instead however, the learning experience leads to tedium, due to backtracking forced by the fear of missing something important ot valuable.
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I go on, am surprised at the game telling me about the swim boost, as that was literally my first movement in the game. Find the plants. At that point i would've liked to hear a little comment from ... What is her name? Aquaria? I can't remember having been told her name before. But seeing how she seems to be rather (http://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/emot-geno.gif) anyhow, i can't bring myself to actually "care" about her. Anyways, i would've liked to hear a comment from her about how they reinvigorate her or something, instead of the game blandly going: These are health kits, lol.
I take care to explore the map completely, going upwards abov the shooting squids and find another recipe, yay, the first genuine piece of gratification in the demo.
Then i go down and find the red crystal. AHA, save points, they look beautiful. ^_^
Oh, right-clicking on them. Hmm, cursor shines... Wait, what. Ooooh! *goes backtrack to the skull* After all, it might be something important! :D *arrives at the skull, right-clicks it* Ok, she sits down? *waits a bit* Nothing happens... *clicks to get her up, right-clicks again* Well, that was an amazing waste of time, how brilliant! *goes back-track to the red crystal to save* I hope the rest of the game doesn't involve as much backtracking...
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Second time you managed to not properly teach. You had a perfect chance with the skull there, could've put it in a room before or after a smaller room that should've contained the first singing plant, and could've told me to right-click it then, perhaps mention that it only lets her relax a bit. Instead the whole thing turned into a massive pointless ordeal that rather turned me off the game.
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Ok, game is saved, my hand hurts and i've got enough material to write a book on this, let's get outta here for now.
*hits alt+F4, nothing happens*
FGSFDS!
*hits ESC, then quit game, clicks yes, watches black screen and waits for the game to quit, gets assaulted by music and the main menu*
WTF!
*rather annoyed now, hits Exit, yes, waits again at the black screen, then: AD screen*
Ok, what the christ. Did i accidentally download something from Popcap games? I just want out of here!
*clicks Exit, listens to her ... moan?*
Ok, awesome, pity-grab combined with soft-porn...
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Quitting the game should not be an ordeal in itself. When i quit the game, i want out, period. Alt+F4 should never be disabled, ever. The ingame system menu should either offer only an option to completely quit the game; or an option to Quit to Main Menu and one to Quit the Game. At least rename the Quit Game button to Quit to Main Menu, so i am prepared for more delays in getting back to other things.
Also, don't throw ads at me when i quit the game. Seriously. I know it is a demo, i downloaded it rom a link labeled demo, and the installer itself says demo, even the start menu entry does, and i think i saw it ingame too. I repeat, i must be blind and dumb to not notice this was a demo and that i'd need to buy the full game to get more.
However: The screen wasn't that badly designed. Do yourself a favor and make it pop up after going through the content of the demo. I may want to buy it *then* and would appreciate a click link to the purchase location.
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Conclusion:
I hope the above stuff is useful to you and will deliver one last admonishment: You look at the game with the eyes of people who *know* how it works. Everything makes sense to you and there is no question left. Which makes you the worst people on earth to decide on how to structure a tutorial. ;)
Take hints from Introversion, read their blogs, learn how they use input of people who've never before touched their game to give it a *sensible* interface and learning process that can be picked up intuitively.
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Fullscreen: I feel that not playing this game in fullscreen take away from the overall ambiance. Also, every game defaults to fullscreen, not just Aquaria.
Vsync: VSync, despite the opinions of some, is NOT detrimental to your frame rate, unless your computer is already struggling. If your computer is already struggling it is likely do to another option. Also, tearing does not only occur when you're above the refresh rate of your screen, it also happen when you're below it. Therefore, without this option on there is going to be tearing, unless you have it set in your drivers.
Mipmap: It's hard to explain in a tooltip. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap) However, it increases performance and quality, which is why it's on. If you don't know what it does, leave it be and play the game.
Resolution: They are limited to 4:3 resolutions at the moment, so selecting the desktop res. would not work for wide screen monitors.
I'd comment on the rest, but as you've said it is all based on opinion. I feel I should point out though that the game was made to what in the designer's opinions is appropriate. It is their loading screen to design and their transitions to design, and I agree with their decision. I myself feel that the way things work in this game are done so to make them as smooth, fluid and awe inspiring as possible.
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"Fullscreen: This can take considerable time to enable when cold-starting a game, especially when memory is low. Your game is quite demanding, so please do not make this a default option. The sanity of your users will thank you."
Yeah, no thanks. This might be your opinion, but don't assume that this particular opinion represents all users. Personally speaking, starting a game windowed is incredibly, incredibly annoying.
"One thing i disliked: I can't move the configure window. Please never make windows stuck in the center of the screen like that, it's just rude."
Rude? Poor choice of words.
"Main screen: Lovely, like the swarm thingy. The texture of the aquaria logo draws an ugly horizontal line through the screen, transparency needs tweaked there. Options and Mod buttons are too dim, i only saw them on the third start of the game. Perhaps make the text glow a bit with plants or something. The green water plant behind the R looks unnatural due to too strong stretching."
You think this might have to do with you running the game at 640x480? The menu looks terrific on my computer at 1024x768.
"The intro is also missing something else: There is NO emotion. At all. Does she welcome the player, is she happy about the chance of telling her story? Is she sad about what's going to unfold? She seems emotionally speaking, dead as a fish. If you can't think of anything else, at least make her smile at the player. She is visually not particularly endearing, and that will need to be off-set by personality."
No, she's serious, and she's setting up her story as if it were incredibly important to her. Smiling would not be appropriate.
"Quitting the game should not be an ordeal in itself. When i quit the game, i want out, period. Alt+F4 should never be disabled, ever."
Your opinion, of course. Do you have the full version of the game? This might be a valid complaint if you were a paying customer, but not for a free demo supported by advertising.
"Also, don't throw ads at me when i quit the game. Seriously. I know it is a demo, i downloaded it rom a link labeled demo, and the installer itself says demo, even the start menu entry does, and i think i saw it ingame too. I repeat, i must be blind and dumb to not notice this was a demo and that i'd need to buy the full game to get more."
No offense, but is this the first demo you've downloaded? The exit screen promoting the full version is practically canon for demos. You're getting a taste of the game for free, and in exchange you need to look at an ad for as long as it takes to click the quit button.
"Take hints from Introversion, read their blogs, learn how they use input of people who've never before touched their game to give it a *sensible* interface and learning process that can be picked up intuitively."
Bit Blot, I have complete faith in you that you'll keep the interface exactly the way it is, as it's perfect. Xenofur, most of your complaints are matters of personal preference. I would hope that you understand this, and also accept that other people (including the developers, obviously) do not share the majority of your opinions.
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Theres always one...
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Fullscreen: I feel that not playing this game in fullscreen take away from the overall ambiance. Also, every game defaults to fullscreen, not just Aquaria.
It doesn't help much on weaker machines, where the switch to fullscreen takes a good amount of ram-munging to complete and can literally take up to a minute.
Vsync: VSync, despite the opinions of some, is NOT detrimental to your frame rate, unless your computer is already struggling. If your computer is already struggling it is likely do to another option. Also, tearing does not only occur when you're above the refresh rate of your screen, it also happen when you're below it. Therefore, without this option on there is going to be tearing, unless you have it set in your drivers.
This is not opinion, this is fact:
If you have a screen running at 60 Hz, and Vsync enabled, then the gfx card driver will cap the fps at 15/30/60. That means as soon as the game drops under 60, it gets capped at 30, as soon as it drops under 30, it gets capped at 15, etc. Try it out. Run Fraps, ensure your gfx card driver is set to have Vsync disabled, then play around a bit in games and find one that runs at ~55. Then enable vsync both in the gfx driver settings and in the game, you'll find it suddenly runs at 30.
Also, granted, tearing can happen below 60, but it happens VERY seldomly and usually isn't even noticeable.
Lastly, the above two options rely on the answer to one question:
Is your game targeted only at people who have powerful hardware, or at everyone?
Depending on the answer, regard or disregard what i wrote.
Mipmap: It's hard to explain in a tooltip. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap) However, it increases performance and quality, which is why it's on. If you don't know what it does, leave it be and play the game.
Kinda missed the point there. I know VERY well what mipmaps are, have done so 10 years ago already and i use them in my own 3d engine. That's also why i say i cannot know exactly what they mean in this context. HOWEVER, most normal players won't have a clue, and to be honest: They will think it's gfx candy, which will make the game slower, thus disable it and potentially shoot themselves in the foot. Thus at least a note should be in there that disabling it would lower performance AND make things ugly.
Resolution: They are limited to 4:3 resolutions at the moment, so selecting the desktop res. would not work for wide screen monitors.
Simple solution: Letterbox it.
It is their loading screen to design and their transitions to design, and I agree with their decision. I myself feel that the way things work in this game are done so to make them as smooth, fluid and awe inspiring as possible.
I'd say you missed the point here as well. Mainly since the loading bar is anything but smooth, and because the bitblot logo is in lower resolutions anything but awe-inspiring. ;)
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"One thing i disliked: I can't move the configure window. Please never make windows stuck in the center of the screen like that, it's just rude."
Rude? Poor choice of words.
How so?
It forced me to quit and restart it multiple times while writing the op, for example, and may force people to do the same while referring to forums when they have problems or are trying to get it to run smoother. I can't think of a better word to describe that.
"Main screen: Lovely, like the swarm thingy. The texture of the aquaria logo draws an ugly horizontal line through the screen, transparency needs tweaked there. Options and Mod buttons are too dim, i only saw them on the third start of the game. Perhaps make the text glow a bit with plants or something. The green water plant behind the R looks unnatural due to too strong stretching."
You think this might have to do with you running the game at 640x480? The menu looks terrific on my computer at 1024x768.
Sadly not, the noted points even appear when i run the game at 1024x768x32.
"The intro is also missing something else: There is NO emotion. At all. Does she welcome the player, is she happy about the chance of telling her story? Is she sad about what's going to unfold? She seems emotionally speaking, dead as a fish. If you can't think of anything else, at least make her smile at the player. She is visually not particularly endearing, and that will need to be off-set by personality."
No, she's serious, and she's setting up her story as if it were incredibly important to her. Smiling would not be appropriate.
Ok, upon being told that, it makes sense. Maybe i'm dense in that regard.
"Quitting the game should not be an ordeal in itself. When i quit the game, i want out, period. Alt+F4 should never be disabled, ever."
Your opinion, of course. Do you have the full version of the game? This might be a valid complaint if you were a paying customer, but not for a free demo supported by advertising.
I fail to see how ending an application in a non-annoying manner is a feature that is only granted in a full version. Software that does that get's only one treatment from me: I take what i want from it by killing it via the task manager. Additionally: Can you use alt+f4 in the full version? I would be surprised if that was the case.
"Also, don't throw ads at me when i quit the game. Seriously. I know it is a demo, i downloaded it rom a link labeled demo, and the installer itself says demo, even the start menu entry does, and i think i saw it ingame too. I repeat, i must be blind and dumb to not notice this was a demo and that i'd need to buy the full game to get more."
No offense, but is this the first demo you've downloaded? The exit screen promoting the full version is practically canon for demos. You're getting a taste of the game for free, and in exchange you need to look at an ad for as long as it takes to click the quit button.
You're looking at it from the wrong angle: Most people will want to use the demo to determine whether they want to buy the game. In that regard the demo should be as nice as possible to people, or it will only make them want to not buy the game.
On the other hand, yea, i don't get many demos. Most demos i have are application software, like flashfxp, mirc or total commander. They also throw ads at me, but they do it before running and afterwards behave nicely and politely.
"Take hints from Introversion, read their blogs, learn how they use input of people who've never before touched their game to give it a *sensible* interface and learning process that can be picked up intuitively."
Bit Blot, I have complete faith in you that you'll keep the interface exactly the way it is, as it's perfect. Xenofur, most of your complaints are matters of personal preference. I would hope that you understand this, and also accept that other people (including the developers, obviously) do not share the majority of your opinions.
Bit of an apology needed here. I was unclear. I did not mean to say the interface is bad, but only mentioned that as that was what introversion took out as their main achievement. Bitblot would need to do the same, but apply it to the early tutorial stages of the game.
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Meh.
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Meh.
Up to this point i was ready to buy it as soon as i could get to the bank on monday, just so you have incentive to actually improve or do better on the next game. Shame, really.
Note: It is not the fact that my input was disregarded, but the attitude itself that made me reverse my intention.
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Wow, I never thought I'd see the day that someone took more time to critique the freaking menus and installation to the game than I actually saw those windows for.
This "critique" is nothing more than the most ridiculous nit-picking I've ever seen, coming from an extremely unfortunate soul who apparently went into the game trying to pick apart every stupid little detail possible.
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Meh.
Up to this point i was ready to buy it as soon as i could get to the bank on monday, just so you have incentive to actually improve or do better on the next game. Shame, really.
Note: It is not the fact that my input was disregarded, but the attitude itself that made me reverse my intention.
The problem is that your complaints are so miniscule and nitpicky that they're very, very hard to take seriously. (By the way, it would seem to me that somebody who couldn't afford $30 on a credit card on the spur of the moment wouldn't likely have the cash to buy the game now or a week from now. I would have much, much more sympathy for your concerns had you actually purchased the game. As it is...)
I should also point out that 1) I have absolutely no association with Bit Blot, and 2) after lurking on these boards for months, I registered solely to comment in this thread.
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What, you know what mipmaps are now? You said in your first post that you didn't.
You still insist that page tearing seldom happens below 60fps yet you're aware that if the frame rate drops below 60 it gets capped at 30? Ever wonder why they cap it at 30? I notice page tearing without VSync on, I don't notice a frame rate of 30. The developers obviously care more about quality than overly high frame rates, as I do. If you disagree, turn it off.
I'm going to let your post sink in the forum now.
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I'm interested in improving the game for sure. I mean if we didn't care, we would have released it back in the spring. I think there are still a few things we could tune up while still keeping the game's soul intact. But overall I think it works far more than it doesn't.
I haven't read all the posts here yet, my reaction was more to the general negative vibe in this thread of people getting aggressive with each other. I just don't think there's any need for that either way.
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@ Alan:
I live in germany and my banking account has well in excess of what would be necessary for this game. However credit cards are a rare occurance here. :)
Also, yes, many of my complaints are miniscule, but for one, attention for detail in all matters is what seperates a mediocre product from a great product, and furthermore, not all of them are. For example the fact that continously holding down the left mouse button causes my finger to hurt considerably is not miniscule and i can't imagine i'm alone in that.
@luciferin:
Regarding mipmaps, I said "in this context", which is also what i meant in my original post. ;)
Simple math is what creates the 30 fps cap, not deliberate choice.
However, i have to admit that this is more a case of opinion. I for one am more hampered by delayed input response (yes, i do notice massive differences between 30 and 60 fps in terms of responsiveness), than by small display inaccuracies that i pick up on subconsciously at best.
@LMN8R:
I went in to see if it was fun. I found it to be fun, but hampered in the up-start by small oversights and yes, miniscule mistakes that are common to indy products.
Note that i have not said once that the game is a bad product. :)
@Alec:
Wonderful, thank you for this reply. :D
As mentioned above, i agree it works, but it could use more polish. =)
Regarding aggressive vibe: I tried to not be agressive, however it's 0700 am and my german curtness may make my posts seem more harsh than i intended.
Also, apologies for having taken your posts as aimed only at mine. I hope it's understandable how this misunderstanding can have happened.
I'll be going and getting the full game on monday if only as thanks for you showing me that you do care about input.
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I suppose we all came of too aggressive and curt in what should have just been a difference of opinion. I'm glad to see you're the first one to turn cheek and notice this for what it was. I'm sorry I came off so harsh when pointing out that I simply liked things how they were.
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I think the main thing is everyone in this thread cares about the game a lot, whether or not we agree on the finer points. I certainly appreciate everyone taking the time to think about, examine and talk about the details.
Whether or not I'll agree with your opinion is another matter though. ;)
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A few of your complaints though just aren't an issue with me - the logo looks fine for me, there's no graphical glitches on the title screen like the ones you mentioned, everything is clearly visible. My loading bar does reach 100% before it disappears, even if just for a split second. The game loads up quickly.
I didn't have any issues with the face in the option panel or menus. I thought it looked fine, I had no trouble distinguishing it as stone.
I haven't had any issues with playing the game hurting my finger or hand. *shrug* Just lucky I guess. =P I do admit to being slightly annoyed that the game didn't tell me how to open up the plants until after I had already passed some, but overall, not a big deal for me. And the 'Map Tokens'. It comes up a bit out of the blue, but I also suspect there's another purpose to those later on.
A lot of what you wrote though just seems more on the lines of your personal tastes. I've played much clunkier games however (some for quite lengthy periods of time), so some of this doesn't bother me at all. Hell, it's quite streamlined compared to some stuff I've played.
There also are some parts where the game leaves you to figure some things out for yourself. (Unless there's a tutorial message a bit later that I haven't played up to yet). Like riding a seahorse. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get the thing to get moving.
Anyway, just my opinions on the matter. I hope you enjoy the game. :)
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How so?
It forced me to quit and restart it multiple times while writing the op, for example, and may force people to do the same while referring to forums when they have problems or are trying to get it to run smoother. I can't think of a better word to describe that.
Alt-tab works if you need to stop playing and write down comments about the game immediately.
@ Alan:
I live in germany and my banking account has well in excess of what would be necessary for this game. However credit cards are a rare occurance here. :)
Fair enough.
Also, yes, many of my complaints are miniscule, but for one, attention for detail in all matters is what seperates a mediocre product from a great product, and furthermore, not all of them are. For example the fact that continously holding down the left mouse button causes my finger to hurt considerably is not miniscule and i can't imagine i'm alone in that.
Your suggestion of a double-click to move strikes me as more aggravating than simply holding down the button. First of all, it's more clicking, which is less user friendly, and second, it's less accurate. In a car, you press down the accelerator to move forward and take off your foot to stop accelerating. In other video games, you press the forward key to move forward and stop pressing the key to stop accelerating. Aquaria uses this control scheme (familiar = intuitive = user friendly) by using the left mouse button in a similar manner as an analog lever or a key on a keyboard. Ergonomically speaking, there are enough breaks in the game itself that holding down your finger on the LMB to move shouldn't cause a problem. As far as I'm concerned, double clicking in general is bad ergonomics, despite the fact that it's become intuitive thanks to years of double clicking in Microsoft products.
Bottom line: there are very few games in which your character automatically moves forward, or where you can toggle a movement button and have your character run indefinitely. Imagine an FPS or RPG where movement was a toggle! I think the game would be infinitely more frustrating if I couldn't simply stop moving by taking my finger off the left mouse button but had to click or hit a different key or whatnot.
If this is really a problem for you, Xenofur, then you could either get a trackball (use your thumb rather than index finger), a gamepad (an Xbox 360 controller works perfectly with the game), or simply take more breaks. (Or, Bit Blot could implement double-click to move as an option. I personally don't see it as a worthwhile expenditure of time, but that's just my own opinion.)
There also are some parts where the game leaves you to figure some things out for yourself. (Unless there's a tutorial message a bit later that I haven't played up to yet). Like riding a seahorse. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get the thing to get moving.
I love the intuitiveness of the game and the fact that it doesn't beat you over the head with tutorial messages. Instead, the hints come as part of the narration. Xenofur earlier commented that the game needs to show, not tell: that's exactly what this is. I'm not commenting directly at you, Zaratus, but I'm impressed with developers who have the courtesy to not treat us like we're idiots and give us a bit of leeway to figure out things ourselves -- or at least hide the help so that we feel like we're figuring it out ourselves.
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After swimming around for a while, 5 minutes or so, i found out: I won't be able to play this game. The reason being: My index finger hurt from constantly pressing the left mouse button. This game sorely needs a "travel" function. Maybe have a double-click act as a trigger to have her constantly follow the mouse instead of only when the button is pressed. In my opinion this is rather important.
I didn't really read the rest, just wanted to comment on this portion. You can also use your keyboard to travel around, I use it with my mouse and it alleviates all stress that would come from solely using the mouse. >:D
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I must voice my agreement that the singing tutorial was confusing. My experience: "Oh, okay, use right button to sing. But why am I supposed to sing?". Two rooms later I get to hear that you need to sing to the plants, causing me to have to backtrack to the other plants (or, in retrospect, I could have just not done it, as the stuff is available in great quantities later).
It's easily fixed by giving the information of what to sing at (the plants) at the same place where you tell how to actually do the singing. Then again, it also taught me to backtrack, which has been useful later... Take a stroll back to the start after you've learned how to lift rocks!
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While many of these critiques do come off as nit-picky to me, I would very much like to be able to move the game (in windowed mode) around on my screen. I am running Windows 7, so perhaps it's a weird bug with the OS? Otherwise fullscreen mode is beautiful, I haven't yet had a single problem with that, the intro screen, start menu and gameplay do not appear warped in any way.
Secondly, I almost always test out all controls before diving into the game, so I didn't have as much as a problem with singing/interacting with the environment as it seems others might have. The controls are very intuitive. I can see how it would be frustrating to pick up at the start, but the controls seemed rather straightforward to me. One thing I discovered (that I might have liked to know earlier) is that songs can be sung using number keys 1-9. This only makes the gameplay 8074 times easier!
My final thoughts are, after having played rather far into the game, is that it starts off slow but gets you hooked about an hour or two in. In retrospect I like that much of the storyline is driven further by exploration, as it mirrors Naija's own restlessness. However, when first starting off, I had to wonder where it was going! Now of course I can't put it down. This is only my own opinion; I am very aware of my own impatience. ;)
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While many of these critiques do come off as nit-picky to me, I would very much like to be able to move the game (in windowed mode) around on my screen. I am running Windows 7, so perhaps it's a weird bug with the OS?
Nay! says the man with Windows XP.
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I would very much like to be able to move my mouse out of the window. I wish it would only "trap" the cursor when I was holding down a mouse button. Or maybe have an option for that.
I guess I got used to alt tabbing though. Quite nice how it would pause the game when I did so too. =^.^=