Completed Pokémon False Order

Aki · Aug 13, 2018

I've played for about an hour (shh I know I'm slow I take my time) but I really want to talk about the setup and tone I've seen so far from this game.
I'm gonna put in a spoiler cuz I'm writing a lot but this is all early game stuff

I get to see my parents at the birth of their child, but they're kidnapped/missing when the game starts. That's a cool through line from the quick character setup opening to the actual game, and I like it. When the game starts, a maid tells me I need protection, but lets me run around the house unsupervised...which I suppose might make sensee when she later mentions she's watching cameras, but the bigger issue is that there are only a couple thing established so far:

>My parents are important/well known people
>My parents are missing
>I'm in danger and need protection

So that's what the story is saying, but the gameplay and characters are leaving me to my own devices to locate my pokemon, which I need for for protection...and no one but that first maid reacts to, or mentions the situation. Even though all the maids seem to know me well, and my parents going missing is big enough that I saw it the news. I actually really like the gameplay aspect of exploring, and piecing together the clues to find the secret room for myself. That was fun and a little tricky! It's just...it feels pretty removed tonally from the story that's been setup?

If this was all due to time crunch because of the jam deadline then feel free to take my critique with a whole shaker of salt, but I think an important factor when writing for the player is to be aware of how many important nouns you're dropping on them at once. I went through to this opening exposistionfrom the maid again to rewrite pretty much line by line and here's what it looks like:

Welcome to THIS ROOM.
We keep important items here like THING (which is probably a refrence and not important because it's not mentioned again) and the SPECIAL POKEMON ITEM.
The PEOPLE who [are the bad guys] are after the THE POKEMON.
Here's the plan.
Outside this room is a hidden exit from PLACE WHERE WE ARE (does not say THIS ROOM).
Take the BOAT to A TOWN.
Go to A PLACE and find PERSON.

This bit I'm fine with. I just need to get on a boat, and when I get off find this person in a certain spot.
I'm gonna go on a tangent here before getting to the rest of the maid's instructions though. Meeting up with this person would have been the perfect chance to explain the plot some more, or just go over what the maid had explained again; instead, the person the player is told to meet is not there, and the person who the player meets with instead has dialogue that really feels like filler. Again, no one acts like this is a serious situation, even though the story is saying that the player and their parents' lives are in danger. Alright, back to the maid's instructions:

PERSON will take you to ANOTHER TOWN
where you can get to ANOTHER PLACE
and do a thing with THE POKEMON.
You will need the SPECIAL POKEMON ITEM to do a thing with THE POKEMON, so here is the SPECIAL POKEMON ITEM!
If you do a thing with THE POKEMON, the PEOPLE can't get THE POKEMON.
Once you return to TOWN,
take the TRAIN to A THIRD TOWN
There you can find your parents.
I have no idea who PEOPLE are, but there is never anything good going on at the SOME PLACE NOT MENTIONED UNTILL NOW
You should also check out the ANOTHER SPECIFIC LOCATION because that's where your parents were

I'm gonna be honest, what I managed to retain from this while playing is about this much:
>Get on a boat
>Meet somebody
>Get on a train
>Don't let the bad guys get the pokemon (I know it's Zyguarde and I have the cube)

And that's not from lack of paying attention, it's just that so many things were mentioned all at once.

Also as a side note, during this dialogue the maid flip flops pretty confusingly about what's exactly happened. First she casually mentions that my parents were killed, which is news to me?! Then she talks about finding my parents in a certain city? She goes back to mentioning the people who killed my parents and where my parenets were last seen?

Sooo how would I have done it differently? Hope you don't mind but I wanna make suggestions so I don't feel like I'm just complaining here. :P

I like the opening section, so I want to keep the gameplay the same. I think I would change the first talk with the maid right outside the player's bedroom so that she mentions right then that she is going to the Secret Room, and the player should meet her there. She doesn't mention where it is of course! Just gives the player a hint that they need to be looking for something specific, not casually wandering the house looking for the pokeball. Then I'd give at least some of the other characters more topical dialogue. The parents of the house have gone missing, and are assumed kidnapped, that should be distressing/alarming for at least some of the staff. Since the dad is pretty important, there might even be like, police investigating the house for clues, in place of the people who I assume are tourists/visitors. A lockdown would be a good excuse for me to not be able to walk out the front door.

Or to give it a really creepy vibe, have the maid mention that she can't talk to the player anywhere but the Secret Room because there are spies in the house, and then have a couple of waitor NPCs hanging around the house who behave strangely; that would make the waitor trainers by the boat an even better payoff.

Cut down the maid's dialogue in the Secret Room. She can mention the meetup with Viola and the stuff about the Zyguarde Cube, but the rest isn't something the player needs right now. Then, instead of the maid sending off the player knowing that they'll be attacked just outside the door, I'd do 1 or 2 things:
1. Have the a waitor or two come down the stairs from the way the player came in, and they attack the maid. She battles them to let the player escape.
2. Have an extra trtainer or two waiting outside, and have the maid follow the player outside and distract those extra trainers somehow.
In either of those scenarios the player still has the same two battles, but it makes the maid character feel more like she's protective of the player character instead of casually letting the player get attacked. Even if the maid is suppossed to not be a trainer, she could try to do something or even get another few maid involved to look like they care about the player character.

Okay, the player gets off the boat and needs to meet with Viola. Why is Viola not there? If Viola knows that she's suppossed to meet with the player, then I think she needs a strong plot related reason to not show up. Considering that the parents are well known, and Viola is trusted enoguh that she's the first person the maid sends the player to in a time of crisis, there's no way Viola doesn't know what's going on right now. I'm thinking either the bad guys got in the way or Viola went chasing some kind of clue about the parents. The Bug Catcher NPC can still meet the player instead of Viola, but maybe he could give the player a letter or message from Viola that explains the next leg of the trip. If there was time to make the resources for this, I think this town and the boutique in it would be a good excuse to include a small story element where the player character needs to put on a disguise to not be recognised by the bad guys; that could even be the required thing the player needs to do before being allowed to leave town for the next section of the game.

Next change is pretty simple: I'd just add a couple bad guy trainers in the cave where the player is taking the Zyguarde Cube. Those guys are suppossed to be trying to get Zyguarde, so whether they know or not that the player has the Cube I think it would just make sense to have them there, and would spice up the cave a bit.

It's big in here!

I haven't played too much farther, so I'll just say that the conductor describing how nice the train ride and the view were going to be was such a tease, I would have loved a small train travel section; even if it wasn't like a train I could explore but was a cutscene where the player meets with someone on the train (Viola? Another Maid or the one from before?) breifly and gets some more plot explained before being dropped off in the next town.

This sign has no text, and these stairs don't have eventing on them so you gotta zig zag up and down:

Cadeorade5 · Aug 13, 2018

Aki said:
I've played for about an hour (shh I know I'm slow I take my time) but I really want to talk about the setup and tone I've seen so far from this game.
I'm gonna put in a spoiler cuz I'm writing a lot but this is all early game stuff

I get to see my parents at the birth of their child, but they're kidnapped/missing when the game starts. That's a cool through line from the quick character setup opening to the actual game, and I like it. When the game starts, a maid tells me I need protection, but lets me run around the house unsupervised...which I suppose might make sensee when she later mentions she's watching cameras, but the bigger issue is that there are only a couple thing established so far:

>My parents are important/well known people
>My parents are missing
>I'm in danger and need protection

So that's what the story is saying, but the gameplay and characters are leaving me to my own devices to locate my pokemon, which I need for for protection...and no one but that first maid reacts to, or mentions the situation. Even though all the maids seem to know me well, and my parents going missing is big enough that I saw it the news. I actually really like the gameplay aspect of exploring, and piecing together the clues to find the secret room for myself. That was fun and a little tricky! It's just...it feels pretty removed tonally from the story that's been setup?

If this was all due to time crunch because of the jam deadline then feel free to take my critique with a whole shaker of salt, but I think an important factor when writing for the player is to be aware of how many important nouns you're dropping on them at once. I went through to this opening exposistionfrom the maid again to rewrite pretty much line by line and here's what it looks like:

This bit I'm fine with. I just need to get on a boat, and when I get off find this person in a certain spot.
I'm gonna go on a tangent here before getting to the rest of the maid's instructions though. Meeting up with this person would have been the perfect chance to explain the plot some more, or just go over what the maid had explained again; instead, the person the player is told to meet is not there, and the person who the player meets with instead has dialogue that really feels like filler. Again, no one acts like this is a serious situation, even though the story is saying that the player and their parents' lives are in danger. Alright, back to the maid's instructions:

I'm gonna be honest, what I managed to retain from this while playing is about this much:
>Get on a boat
>Meet somebody
>Get on a train
>Don't let the bad guys get the pokemon (I know it's Zyguarde and I have the cube)

And that's not from lack of paying attention, it's just that so many things were mentioned all at once.

Also as a side note, during this dialogue the maid flip flops pretty confusingly about what's exactly happened. First she casually mentions that my parents were killed, which is news to me?! Then she talks about finding my parents in a certain city? She goes back to mentioning the people who killed my parents and where my parenets were last seen?

Sooo how would I have done it differently? Hope you don't mind but I wanna make suggestions so I don't feel like I'm just complaining here. :P

I like the opening section, so I want to keep the gameplay the same. I think I would change the first talk with the maid right outside the player's bedroom so that she mentions right then that she is going to the Secret Room, and the player should meet her there. She doesn't mention where it is of course! Just gives the player a hint that they need to be looking for something specific, not casually wandering the house looking for the pokeball. Then I'd give at least some of the other characters more topical dialogue. The parents of the house have gone missing, and are assumed kidnapped, that should be distressing/alarming for at least some of the staff. Since the dad is pretty important, there might even be like, police investigating the house for clues, in place of the people who I assume are tourists/visitors. A lockdown would be a good excuse for me to not be able to walk out the front door.

Or to give it a really creepy vibe, have the maid mention that she can't talk to the player anywhere but the Secret Room because there are spies in the house, and then have a couple of waitor NPCs hanging around the house who behave strangely; that would make the waitor trainers by the boat an even better payoff.

Cut down the maid's dialogue in the Secret Room. She can mention the meetup with Viola and the stuff about the Zyguarde Cube, but the rest isn't something the player needs right now. Then, instead of the maid sending off the player knowing that they'll be attacked just outside the door, I'd do 1 or 2 things:
1. Have the a waitor or two come down the stairs from the way the player came in, and they attack the maid. She battles them to let the player escape.
2. Have an extra trtainer or two waiting outside, and have the maid follow the player outside and distract those extra trainers somehow.
In either of those scenarios the player still has the same two battles, but it makes the maid character feel more like she's protective of the player character instead of casually letting the player get attacked. Even if the maid is suppossed to not be a trainer, she could try to do something or even get another few maid involved to look like they care about the player character.

Okay, the player gets off the boat and needs to meet with Viola. Why is Viola not there? If Viola knows that she's suppossed to meet with the player, then I think she needs a strong plot related reason to not show up. Considering that the parents are well known, and Viola is trusted enoguh that she's the first person the maid sends the player to in a time of crisis, there's no way Viola doesn't know what's going on right now. I'm thinking either the bad guys got in the way or Viola went chasing some kind of clue about the parents. The Bug Catcher NPC can still meet the player instead of Viola, but maybe he could give the player a letter or message from Viola that explains the next leg of the trip. If there was time to make the resources for this, I think this town and the boutique in it would be a good excuse to include a small story element where the player character needs to put on a disguise to not be recognised by the bad guys; that could even be the required thing the player needs to do before being allowed to leave town for the next section of the game.

Next change is pretty simple: I'd just add a couple bad guy trainers in the cave where the player is taking the Zyguarde Cube. Those guys are suppossed to be trying to get Zyguarde, so whether they know or not that the player has the Cube I think it would just make sense to have them there, and would spice up the cave a bit.

It's big in here!

I haven't played too much farther, so I'll just say that the conductor describing how nice the train ride and the view were going to be was such a tease, I would have loved a small train travel section; even if it wasn't like a train I could explore but was a cutscene where the player meets with someone on the train (Viola? Another Maid or the one from before?) breifly and gets some more plot explained before being dropped off in the next town.

This sign has no text, and these stairs don't have eventing on them so you gotta zig zag up and down:

Firstly, thank you for playing the game! From somebody who is new to actually releasing a game, the critiques are much appreciated! I definitely messed up on the hidden room dialogue, everything from revealing a plot twist to going way too far into detail about what needed to happen. I definitely could have split up the journey to Faux way better and not crammed it all into one event. As for not having Viola in the actual game, it was a matter of not having the resources, although I still could have done that better as you explained above. Addressing the suggestions, they are great! They show different, creative ways I can address the issues in this game. Again, thanks for commenting, as it really shows me what areas I have to improve on!

Cadeorade5 · Aug 14, 2018

Hey Everybody, based on the bug reports that I have gotten in the past few days, I have a new patch for you! The patch includes tile corrections and a few quality of life changes, but the overall story of the game is the same. I know that there is much to fix in it, but I believe that for now the same story should be there.
Anyways, here are the links:
Google Drive
Mediafire
The links should also be updated above.

aiyinsi · Aug 21, 2018

I played your game for about 4h and share all the critique Aki gave. Espacially the one about explaining the plot more as the game continues instead of just throwing everything at the player at the beginning.

I had a good time playing your game.

I like the way you get those special encounters. They are really engaging imo. Much more than normal grass/caves would be.
I also like the Pokémon that are availlable to catch. Collecting team members was really fun.

The palace is just a tad too big. The puzzle to find the secret room is really cool and fun. But before I got the first NPC hint 15-20 mins of searching everywhere went by. So I'd suggest to either direct the player more(e.g. by giving more hints/changing the mapps to guide the player) or just making the palace a tad smaller.

The 2nd city you get to(the one you fly to) doesn't have a goal. The bus station there doesn't give a clue that it's going to ride again. Putting a sign or a employe stating that there are techical problems and the player should try again later or something like that would be helpfull to tell the player that he'll need to go there later again but do something first.
I stumbled about the Zygarde releasing event by accident as I was exploring the cave. Adding some bad guys with dialouge there like Aki suggested would defenitely help to add context. That way the player would also know that he'S advancing in the story.

The 3rd city is big. Too big in my opinion. But the main problem is not the size of the city but that the Poké Center is not near the entrance. Almost all my Pokémon were in the red and I didn't know if there even existed a Poké Center in the city. Also I couldn't place the Pokémon I cought there in my party. So I'd suggest either relocating the Poké Center or let the player take the bus back to the cave area. The bus way the player could also choose to train his Pokémon if he doesn't manage to defeat the guys in the casino and the Poké Center would stay central letting the player access it fast from everywhere within the city.
Still this place would profit from beeing smaller imo.

The police officers and people hinting at the casino in the city are a good drive giving the player a reason to explore the city and having a goal in mind.

I managed to beat the bad guys at my second try. And now I don't know where to go ... so I stoped and wrote you this review. It would be nice to know whether the game is over or I need to go somewhere to continue.

Cadeorade5 · Aug 21, 2018

leilou said:
I played your game for about 4h and share all the critique Aki gave. Espacially the one about explaining the plot more as the game continues instead of just throwing everything at the player at the beginning.

I had a good time playing your game.

I like the way you get those special encounters. They are really engaging imo. Much more than normal grass/caves would be.
I also like the Pokémon that are availlable to catch. Collecting team members was really fun.

The palace is just a tad too big. The puzzle to find the secret room is really cool and fun. But before I got the first NPC hint 15-20 mins of searching everywhere went by. So I'd suggest to either direct the player more(e.g. by giving more hints/changing the mapps to guide the player) or just making the palace a tad smaller.

The 2nd city you get to(the one you fly to) doesn't have a goal. The bus station there doesn't give a clue that it's going to ride again. Putting a sign or a employe stating that there are techical problems and the player should try again later or something like that would be helpfull to tell the player that he'll need to go there later again but do something first.
I stumbled about the Zygarde releasing event by accident as I was exploring the cave. Adding some bad guys with dialouge there like Aki suggested would defenitely help to add context. That way the player would also know that he'S advancing in the story.

The 3rd city is big. Too big in my opinion. But the main problem is not the size of the city but that the Poké Center is not near the entrance. Almost all my Pokémon were in the red and I didn't know if there even existed a Poké Center in the city. Also I couldn't place the Pokémon I cought there in my party. So I'd suggest either relocating the Poké Center or let the player take the bus back to the cave area. The bus way the player could also choose to train his Pokémon if he doesn't manage to defeat the guys in the casino and the Poké Center would stay central letting the player access it fast from everywhere within the city.
Still this place would profit from beeing smaller imo.

The police officers and people hinting at the casino in the city are a good drive giving the player a reason to explore the city and having a goal in mind.

I managed to beat the bad guys at my second try. And now I don't know where to go ... so I stoped and wrote you this review. It would be nice to know whether the game is over or I need to go somewhere to continue.

Thanks for the critiques! I've decided to keep the story a lot the same, but I'm working on one more patch to fix a few more things. After you beat the bad guys, go to the 3rd floor of the Lumiose Hotel. I'm pretty sure the bad guys hint at what to do in the dialogue, but I'll look at that too.

Completed Pokémon False Order

Aki

Ace trainer

Cadeorade5

Content Creator

Cadeorade5

Content Creator

aiyinsi

A wild Minun appeared!

Cadeorade5

Content Creator