Since the game was starting to come together okay, I put a version out to a few people for testing yesterday.
The main thing this found was a whole bunch of bugs – I broke mouse control entirely! However, another common point of feedback was that the Found Item dialog was confusing and a bit rubbish, like it not being obvious at a glance which is the new item and which is the old one.
All the clues are there – sort of – but it’s still something that took a while to interpret, and this is stuff you need to be able to parse in a split second. I’ve been revising it today and it’s now leaner and clearer:
It’s a pain in the arse redoing work you thought was done, but hey! If it’s broke, it needs to be fixed. Hopefully this version will playtest better or I might have to reconsider removing the inventory altogether.
Time to code it… again 🙂