I've been playing Ascension (a freeware horror game) of late, and am wondering whether anyone else here is doing so.
I'm partway through, and have mixed feelings about it thus far. On the positive side it looks as though there might be some interesting things going on, and questions as to the reality of at least some events (quite possibly all), and I find it to have a decent atmosphere — and even some tension — at times.
As to the negative side, let me first say that part of the trouble that I have with it is that it runs rather slowly on my machine: it's playable, but bordering on tedious; given the symptoms and my somewhat underpowered machine, I suspect that a more powerful computer would see it running rather more speedily.
That said, while the slowness may be an aggravating factor, there are some issues that I think really are at least minor mistakes:
An awkward control scheme (in brief: WASD to move, mouse to point, E to interact (except when it's a mouse click); the mouse may only be clicked on objects within a certain rather small region around the player). \*stabs the control scheme repeatedly*
Saving only at save points, which I've not always managed to easily find, even when backtracking; worst, there seems to be no "save-and-quit" option: quitting loses all gameplay since the last save, which can be rather frustrating when one has something to do and no idea when the next save point is going to come up.
Only some text can be skipped; most text may only be waited out as it appears a character at a time. This would likely be a rather lesser problem if the game were running more quickly, but even then I'd like to be able to skip any text, and there's something to be said for consistency in the interface, I feel.
Occasional difficulty in determining which objects are clickable, especially when combined with the small area in which the mouse may be clicked. This information is apparently supposed to be conveyed by thicker outlines around active objects, but I've found that the distinction is less clear than I'd like.
I occasionally find myself with little idea of where I'm supposed to head next. I suspect that the levels are herding me appropriately, but the lack of conveyed direction still leaves me feeling a little lost, which in turn leads to occasional apathy.
Even so, I do still find myself coming back: I want to know what happens next, what's behind the strange events in the game, what happened in the backstory, and the gameplay is sufficiently enjoyable that I'm happy to keep engaging in limited portions.
So, again, is anyone else here playing this game, and if so, what do you think?
I've been playing Ascension
(a freeware horror game) of late, and am wondering whether anyone else here is doing so.
I'm partway through, and have mixed feelings about it thus far. On the positive side it looks as though there might be some interesting things going on, and questions as to the reality of at least some events (quite possibly all), and I find it to have a decent atmosphere — and even some tension — at times.
As to the negative side, let me first say that part of the trouble that I have with it is that it runs rather slowly on my machine: it's playable, but bordering on tedious; given the symptoms and my somewhat underpowered machine, I suspect that a more powerful computer would see it running rather more speedily.
That said, while the slowness may be an aggravating factor, there are some issues that I think really are at least minor mistakes:
Even so, I do still find myself coming back: I want to know what happens next, what's behind the strange events in the game, what happened in the backstory, and the gameplay is sufficiently enjoyable that I'm happy to keep engaging in limited portions.
So, again, is anyone else here playing this game, and if so, what do you think?
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