End of Game Feedback

[cartesio]

How was your time in Cartesio?

Hello everyone! First and foremost, thank you all so much for playing in this game for the last two months, whether you lived to the end or died along the way. Just how much all of you put into this game helped make it what it was, and we're grateful for every bit of it.

However! This was all of our first time modding a murdergame, and we would love to hear back from you on how you thought the game went. What things went well? What went poorly? What should we reflect on, for any future games, in this continuity or otherwise?

Was there anything you felt we could improve on, as mods? Any concerns to make future games a better experience for everyone?

The post will be unscreened, but if you have any concerns you'd rather bring up privately for any reason, feel free to DM or PP them.

Thank you all again for the last two months!

Comments

[linearcrash]

Heads up but my brain is all over because I have a head cold on top of new and shiny things happening. So I apologize if I’m not making sense and will try to word this as best as I can. If you would like clarification or further examples and thoughts, feel free to hit me up here or in private.I would like to talk about a couple things in private though.

Anyways, so I’m going to start with things I feel needs to be changed or tweaked a little bit. And I admit, most of this is coming from someone watching things from the graveyard and trying to keep up. I know my experience differs from those involved.

A lot of the events felt like chaos. While participating in the theater, I was surprised by the amount of people who were involved. From the wording, it sounded like you would only let in a few people in each part, but it turns out it was anyone and everyone could jump into the pool. There’s both good with this and bad. And I feel that the resulting chaos of everyone running in trying the things or being all over was hard to keep up with. I had an easier time keeping up via watching through flatview or keeping a thread open. But when I thought one thread was advancing the puzzle or trying a thing, another thread would pop up with mod responses instead. And I know it’s first come, first serve, but we were trying to organize something and going with a plan and wound up not really necessary or taken into account. I will absolutely say I adore the outcome of how that particular mission went down, but it was confusing.

A lot of events wound up being basically.. Chaos. People all jumping into the pool, trying their own thing and without really any communication between players over what was happening. At times, it felt like people were ran over while they were trying things, or things wound up lost. Des touches on the puzzles and how people were racing to complete the puzzles without giving people a chance to do it themselves or work it out. The same thing happened with the theater, where someone jumped in and finished it without letting anyone plot or plan.

So maybe let characters have time to actually hash things out and maybe encourage communication oocly. And maybe split events up to parts if you want a lot of involvement. Another idea is to consider limiting the number of people who are involved with like swapping out to let others jump in if there’s a lot of parts and puzzles.

Okay, next is about the town NPCs. While I adore Nanette and she feels the most believable, the hoard mentality felt a bit much. The escalation to violence felt unnatural and it honestly felt like the players didn’t have much impact until they spared the festival.

An event that comes to mind is the hostage at the graveyard event. This actually hits on the communication and chaos for me as well (and it gave me a headache trying to keep up with everything), but it also is the best example of the violence being escalated to frustrating to watch levels.

For every action someone did or try, it seemed like the escalation and violence was going to just be amped up regardless. With flying buckets of paint on fire and people trying to use their cars as battering rams, which could have injured their friend and wrecked even more of the town’s beloved history. And every time anyone did something or tried something, there was another tag with the town escalating without giving the players any time to breathe or hash out a plan. Going to take a moment to touch on communication and chaos again, but like… it felt like players were discouraged or didn’t have the time to actually communicate or plan anything out. It was a mad dash of trying all the things until something worked. And I know that wasn’t the intention or what you were going for.

The last thing is the Graveyard. Luna is amazing, and did her best. And I do not regret Nine being executed as early as he was.

However, There was some frustrating moments there. Kay touched on it with the communication events actually. Like shit posting was a lot of fun and figuring out how to communicate what information with what we had was fun and creative, but it was also frustrating at times. It didn’t really feel rewarding.

And most of the information the graveyard had access to was stuff the living found out too. Like at times, anything we wanted to explore or investigate was covered already by the living. Or information we shared at the end, was just an extra confirmation to stuff the living just found out. It maybe could have felt more meaningful if they got our message first and then the extra stuff they found was further evidence and new things to add on to it. They would have known to look for something to give them admin rights and look out for a password.

The dead did grant them admin rights and confirmed some stuff for them, but it didn’t feel rewarding or like we gave them something huge to me. And then the dead didn’t have say in how the ending went.

I was also confused because from the information we had, it sounded like those behind the simulation took people from worlds and scanned their brains in. And that there was a possibility of people returning to their worlds or bodies with the help of the influencers. Also it felt like the point of the program was because the world was a wreck, but it turns out that wasn’t it either. So i’m still pretty lost there.


There was also a huge disconnect with the graveyard at the end there. It kind of felt like we were forgotten, only to get like a congrats message after just having to sit and react. I didn’t get a feeling of relief or yay we did it. It was just over and we weren’t really part of the ending.

I think going forward, it may help if you guys were more strict with the AC and also tried to give the dead something to work towards that’ll feel more rewarding.

Also I think Luna definitely needed some back up. She did amazing with what she had and could do, and I know when things were going we were all rushing in and jumping to do things and all over and she kept up or even communicated to us clearly when she needed us to be herded in a place or let us know when she needed a moment to wait. So she was great and amazing and I can’t stress that enough. She did good, but I think it might be wise to get a fourth mod or just someone to step up if things are stretched all over. I know some of your guys schedules conflicted with things and there was sometimes one mod handling things alone. You all did the best you could and communicated, which was great. And I loved that. Like really you guys rocked with that.

I’m going to just plus one the activity suggestions and a lot of what LB said in her crit.

For positive, I had a blast with the environment. And the puzzles were great. You guys giving us some wiggle room and going along with our creative attempts at making changes over on the living side was amazing. I was laughing for a lot of the game and it was fun. So the game was enjoyable overall and we had a great time. So thank you for all of your work.