Hello awesome people!
I finally managed to write a little bit of an update regarding the progress of Heart. Papers. Border. here:
http://www.laurabularca.com/2017/09/meercating-meows-feed-bach-heart-papers-border-long-overdue-update/
This is a response to the feedback we received, and just for the commodity of not visiting my blog, here is the bit regarding the development:
FEEDBACK
That we have very little content. It is true. We know this. We have a lot of very very very shiny graphical assets that I can’t wait to release, but we do not have the content surrounding them: the quests, the stories, the dialogue, the culturally flavored situations, the rewards, the hashtags – everything. It is A LOT of work to do, and we are seriously considering Steam Workshop support. Meanwhile, though, it is still work that needs doing.
That we do not have any Help or Tutorial. I aimed to guide the player through a story mode/ campaign that doubles down as a tutorial, but I failed, or at the very least I barely just started it. I know I have been ambiguous with the announcements, quests and encounters that I aimed as guidelines, but I wanted to provide a Tutorial that’s in line with Heart’s universe. This is a work in progress that is missing a huge element: the Help application in the SpacePad. We aim to make it contextual and to add shortcuts so you can click and get a good explanation of each mechanic, button, action.
That your actions have no clear consequence. The player travels, writes and gains money and/ or influence, but to what end? The goal of the game is to let the player gain fame and influence the countries she travels to. As her fame grow, she has a visible impact in determining countries to become more progressive and open, until no more borders are needed. But the influence system is not implemented at all. In truth, it is not even designed yet.
That the blogging system is too abstract. Oh man, that is so true. To begin with, we will add more explanations regarding the value of the tags which are color coded. We also really want to design a better mechanic to build the blog post itself, and the dream is to have actual paragraphs that fit. However, this is longer down the road, as I think the influence, location, help and a bit more content need to come first. Oh, right clicking on a hashtag that\s used puts it back in the tag cloud but no one figured that out. UX kills us 😀
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We do have a lot of grand desires in the pipeline for Heart. Papers. Border.. We want to have a proper Journal, we want to differentiate experiences as you play with characters from various countries. We would also love some sort of events and news systems, so that you can visit a place for a festival or even for a protest – just an example. We have a Birthday mechanic to implement and then, of course, there is the whole end game. Content wise, we have 26 countries already mapped, and many of them have jaw doping graphics ready to be added. And of course, Retro Brothers continue to work on the music <3.
I look forward for MORE feedback :)
Thank you!
Lara