a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I have played eight hours of One Hour, One Life (OneHOL); let me tell you: I did not have eight lives.
I have lost count. I love the game very much, more than I have a game in a while. I present below some of my Cold Takes (cold, because I have not figured out how to start a fire):
1. First, a story.
There was an old man. He was by far the wisest old man I had come upon in my countless lives (of not knowing how to start a fire).
This old man moved with surprising dexterity and purpose. In a matter of seconds he had provisioned himself with the materials necessary to start a fire. He used the coals
from this fire, now extinguished, to light a kiln. To-and-fro he moved, amassing materials for some great project. I tried to keep the great lesson he had taught me (making a
fire) in the front of my mind as I watched him combine materials for some purpose whose complexity was far beyond me. Eventually, the old man, after having gone away for
a while, returned. I had been at his side all along, coyly following this vessel of intelligence and wisdom when he needed to gather more materials. Had he noticed me at all?
I had seen him working for a long time now. Maybe he would make me an apprentice. He stood in his spot, close to me, lingering in place for a while, I leaned closer to listen,
expectant. What would he say?
"someone took my dam hammr"
He promptly turned into a pile of human bones and I was too shaken to remember the fire lesson at all.
2. Okay. I like that this paleodiet of berries, baby bones, and grief has forced players to improvise. "Do you know the three laws?" The first time I read that it was a wonderful
moment of players trying orally to pass on survival skills to the young. In a more advanced settlement, I saw players take on apprentices, because gathering and crafting
certain materials is such an abstruse process that unless a player learns from another, figuring out things yourself will be long and painful. Besides, you only have the luxury of
doing so when don't need to worry about hunger. It's a wonderful process to have players take on the role of mentors and students by necessity.
But, perhaps, it is a little too frustrating in the end.
3. The crunch of existence is such that eventually, certain Eve's will simply stop taking care of the babies. It's not that there isn't food, it's just that this baby is going to be
burdensome even when it matures. Explaining things takes too long. The will to come together is there, but the way of passing knowledge is too burdensome. This last thing
is the most concerning.
The difficulty of mentoring might not be an issue in and of itself, but the game-player interactions are making things more difficult than they have to be: I have lost items
because I could not click or find them again after accidentally putting them down. (Perhaps a system of layers to choose foreground and background objects.); Picking stuff up
out of containers it also frustrating and requires precious time; The way the game displays information is also burdensome. Maybe the recipes can remain contextual and
opaque as they are, I can see the purpose in that, but having the description of an item appear at the bottom-center of the screen makes it difficult to know what *anything*
is. You just don't look at the bottom of the screen very often.
The above is only basic player feedback. So I will leave the only useful piece of information here: I may be extremely dumb. Or I may not be. But even when I knew how to
make things, the sheer panic of what to do next before I starved kept my thinking all fuzzy and haphazard. I have played 8 hours and I still don't know to fetch water from
ponds. I know which tools you need, I'm just not entirely confident making those tools.
I am not complaining! I am just reporting this to developer Jason so that he may decide if this player experience sounds about right. The only things I truly know with certainty
is that the game-player interactions can be frustrating, but all of the rest is magical and frustrating at once and I am not decided on how I feel about all its parts. But I love it very
much.
Last edited by Doctor Flintrock (2018-03-03 10:11:23)
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BAHAAHAHAH
I'M THE SMITH FROM THE FIRST STORY
Jesus Christ, I was so mad - kept telling people to stop raising babies but no, they imploded the place.
The new kids kept stealing my smithing bowls for watering - EVEN THOUGH WE HAD FIVE POUCHES.
And then as I was about to finish everything, someone mistook my smith's hammer for a hatchet.
I found it in a later life among branches.
Initially I was working on tools for the village, but after about 30 minutes of working AGAINST the villagers...
I actually started working on making a knife - in fact I finished the knife later on.
But by that point we had a new generation of villagers and they were all really nice so I never used it.
It's still there, the knife. It's hidden behind a tree. No one has found it yet.
Last edited by TyrantNomad (2018-03-03 14:57:03)
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