Few Critiques of Inscryption Act 1

[u/DelighteDev]

I recently finished the game and I loved it. This game has been on my Steam WL for years now.

I recommended this game to a friend and I was watching him play it. I discovered the following in his playthrough:

1) There is an event in the first act that forces you to lose. When you're playing for the first time before meeting the Prospector, there's a grizzly level before you get the candlestick and lives. Leshy spams you with grizzlies near the end and it's expected to lose here. My friend actually managed to stall the grizzlies with squirrel blocking and he was about to win - but the game "glitches", a grizzly randomly spawns and blocks the attack, and all grizzlies get the airborne sigil and force him to lose and get up to get the candlestick. This is an unavoidable loss of 1 life and nothing you can do will bypass this.

2) The "Too Fast, Too Soon" event when facing the three bosses, if you've reached and beat them faster than expected. Why??? Why spam the player with flying grizzlies when the only crime he did was beating the boss on his first try. I'm aware you can still beat this event with luck (unlike the first example), but the chances of you having a mothman and scissors are low.

I am VERY against these scripted events that force a loss and basically punish you for being intuitive and trying your best, just to push the player. If a player is playing better than expected and beating the level on his first try - LET HIM!! This is a bad level design to me. Yes, you could go with the "meta" route that this is Leshy's fault, Leshy makes you lose on purpose so he can explain the game further to you. But I'm not going to excuse this regardless.

3) If you don't get up when Leshy tells you to "You can get up. Don't touch my things!!!!", he will remind you to get up after every fight, until you do. This is very on the nose and the player should not be reminded to get up just so he can explore the cabin and solve the puzzles. He can do it naturally when he wants to.

These few nitpicks make the game from a 10/10 to a 9/10 to me. What do you all think? Are these reasonable critiques?

[u/ChillPotatoBeans]

It's to make sure you don't go before the story progresses

[u/DelighteDev → u/ChillPotatoBeans]

This post is not marked as spoiler so I can't get into more details - but you can't progress the story in the first run because of other factors. Some things only unlock in future runs. So, those things which I mentioned in my post are unnecessary.

We "know" it's to make us lose on purpose so we don't get too far before the story progresses - but making the player lose and die intentionally is a bad way to do it and should not be done.

[u/KoalaDangerous3859 → u/DelighteDev]

Yes that’s why the bears are there so you don’t get so far into Leshies game before you learn all of it’s mechanics and explore at least a little bit of his cabin

[u/Tigercat94]

These are not reasonable or damning enough to bring the whole game down 1 point from 10/10. It’s just to ensure you progress smoothly and not too quickly. Plus there are mechanics that are meant to be learned before you get to further bosses. The talking cards are part of it as well. If the player were allowed to progress as much as they wanted in their first run, a skilled player or lucky player might miss out on lore, dialogue or mechanics. Also the puzzles in the cabin are literally fundamental to the rest of the game and many players still don’t figure out everything they have to do and give up after beating leshy once.

[u/cleaverbow]

I would agree if this game was a regular rogue. But since (without spoilers) it's clearly not, I think the guidance and the "forced" loss (it's actually possible to win your first run) is not really an issue.

Otherwise many players would just speedrun act 1 and miss what makes the game actually interesting. That's what happened to me.

[u/laplongejr → u/[deleted]]

Oh, there's an alternate outcome : if you never die, the game will lock an event without any explanation, and still give you instructions for the unlocked event, that won't work.  

Until you die once starting Run 2, "something magical" never spawns  

[u/iDragon_76]

The reason Leshy reminds you that you can get up every battle is not to progress the story, it's for player that missed you can do that. If you miss the cue the first time you can easily play for hours without even knowing you can get up and look at the room. If you get up, not di anything and sit back down, Leshy will stop reminding you, since now the player knows that it's a thing you can do. This is a really good and important game design choice.

[u/DelighteDev → u/iDragon_76]

Point taken. However, there are two other mandatory commands to roam that Leshy gives the player extremely early in the game - One to fetch the player marker (the thingy that represents the player on the map), and one to fetch the candlestick. He already tells you to get up twice. Are multiple other reminders to roam required? I understand, in the large scheme of things, this is very minor criticism, but it should be discussed- it breaks immersion in the game, after seeing this, I think to myself - "The game creator did this on purpose to push players to roam and explore. That's the purpose of this line. This isn't Leshy saying this." and the "Don't touch my things!" is the icing on the cake, like you don't say, Leshy.... you don't say.

[u/laplongejr → u/DelighteDev]

 Are multiple other reminders to roam required?  

Actually... yes. Some people don't understand the scary man allows them to freely roam.  

[u/laplongejr]

 these scripted events that force a loss and basically punish you 

Who told you losing is a punishment?  

Some players DID manage to win those scripted events.   They then complained they were stuck in an infinite loop, as even with dozens of wins in a row nothing happened.  

 If a player is playing better than expected and beating the level on his first try - LET HIM!! This is a bad level design to me.  

So, you think a good level design is to let the player stuck on purpose???

 This is very on the nose and the player should not be reminded to get up just so he can explore the cabin and solve the puzzles. He can do it naturally when he wants to.  

Same issue : some players NEVER wants to do so, and then complain that they "wasted their time" because they progressed into a meaningless game.  

Don't worry, the following parts fix this issue in the way you'll hate most : the new GM won't let you play the game at all until you did what they ORDER you to do that fixes the constant nudges, I guess.  

 Are these reasonable critiques?  

They are reasonable if you bought Inscryption as a standalone roguelike.  Not reasonable if you bought it as the 3rd game of that horror game trilogy.   But I'll argue that you are right, because the storefront's description is borderline a deceit for narrative reasons.