Hey folks, I'm working on Grazed, an Action/Incremental hybrid. The core loop is simple: you start out super weak, die fast, buy upgrades, and eventually break the game.

Because I’ve played it many times, my difficulty radar is completely broken. I want the start to be tough, but I don't want players bouncing before they realize the upgrades are the whole point of the game.

I'd love your take on two things:

1. Does the early game feel intentionally hard, or just unfair/frustrating?
2. Does the Steam Page actually communicate this weird hybrid genre properly?

You don't need to download anything, it runs right in the browser: https://luciano-bercini.itch.io/grazed-incremental-arcade

Appreciate any honest feedback!

I'm thinking about a small detective/horror game set in a quarantined town, where the player investigates a missing person.

The main gameplay would revolve around NPCs, investigation, information and a bit of immersive-sim design. The idea is inspired by Werewolf/Mafia, Prey, Call of Cthulhu, Pathologic and Shadows of Doubt.

There would be around 15–20 NPCs with personalities, routines, relationships, knowledge and secrets. The player would investigate by talking to people, observing their routines and gathering information.

For example, an NPC might claim they were home all night, but their routine suggests otherwise. You could confront them, investigate their house, ask someone else about them, or use another piece of information to expose the contradiction.

The immersive-sim aspect would come from having multiple ways to approach situations. If you need to enter a locked room, you might find a key, steal it, convince someone to let you in, follow someone inside, or find another way. NPCs would react to your actions and those reactions could affect later events.

There could also be a very basic combat system, mainly as a way to deal with problematic NPCs rather than as a combat-focused game.

I have a lot more in mind but i don't want to make post any longer.

The main thing I'm trying to validate is whether these mechanics are enough to carry an entire game. Does a game focused on NPCs, information, routines, investigation and player choice sound engaging enough?

I'm also unsure about how the NPCs should work.

Would it be better for their personalities to persist between playthroughs while their professions, relationships and roles change?

For example, Carlos could always be friendly but cowardly. In one playthrough he might be a hotel receptionist who knows something about a missing guest; in another, a police officer who knows something about the investigation.

Or would completely randomized personalities make the game more interesting and replayable?

I'd especially like to hear from people who enjoy detective games, immersive sims or horror.

I'm working on a horror-themed FPS where the main character use a screen of water to exorcise malevolent ghosts. The main principle of the combat system is that each successful attack toward a ghost taints the water with miasma, a spiritual pollution that curses whoever is contaminated, but that is treated as a currency to buy items and upgrades.

The base water reserve would be 100 units, and an attack would consume (and taint) 5 units of water, resulting in a tainting percentage of 5%. Damage inflicted by the attack and the resulting miasma points would depend on how well executed is the attack, naturally.

For the effects of having tarnished water, I have three contradictory choices :

1. The non-tainted water remains as regular, usable ammunition. So at 90% tainting, you'll have proportionally only a few attacks left before being out of "bullets". Very similar to how firearms work in shooters. It's a binary state of either working perfectly, or not working at all.
2. The effectiveness of the exorcism drops proportionally as it looses its purity. So at 90% tainting, the damage it inflicts is strongly reduced : 100% - 90%/2 = 55% effectiveness.
3. Being tainted increases attack strength and miasma absorption, but also increases the number of random battles and the amount of damage taken. Inspired by Darkest Dungeon light mechanic, and Fatal Frame 5 wetness mechanic. So a risk-and-reward mechanic, where as contamination rises, you'll essentially get more and more harassed by glass canons piñatas.

The water reserve would be capped at a certain value, but could be raised with specific upgrades.

Drinking fresh water adds to the total reserve, and thus dilute the miasma. So by drinking 100 water units, the tainting percentage would be 2.5%. However, the reserve is capped and the player couldn't simply drink every bottle available.

Drinking holy water removes tainted water and makes the remainder pure, if enough was consumed. The miasma is collected in phials, and becomes usable currency. This act frees space for regular water to fill the reserve, since attacking doesn't really removes water unlike firing bullets.

There's more to this combat system, such as the equivalent of a magic bar, the way exorcism inflicts damage, the status effects, but here I wanted to focus on the ammunition aspect of it. I tried to do something different than traditional firearms, but since I tread on unknown grounds, I need criticism and suggestions to make it functional and remove glaring issues.

I’m new to game design and I have a quick question as I’ve been learning blender to go along with my mid level knowledge of Unreal Engine and I’m wondering about how you should go about scaling your map and all its its objects and assets in your game.

I originally come from the CAD side of 3D modeling where once you make something you can use tools like a parametric timeline to tweak and scale things as you go along.

What I’m wondering is how does a designer go about changing things/assets they’ve already modeled if they have take them larger or smaller as their game grows?

Say for example your character in game is 6ft tall and you model a ship/boat that has decks with only 5ft ceilings in Blender. Are there tools within programs like Unreal Engine for example that let you scale assets to certain XYZ plane dimensions? Or would you have to go back in and totally redesign the asset in Blender since they don’t have parametric timelines?

I guess this might be more of a blender question in a certain sense and I’m gonna ask over there as well, but I’m mainly wondering how stuff like this is solved in the bigger picture of designing the actual game.