I've always loved Papers Please so maybe it could be a mystery game where the objective is to find what exactly your business does by digging through email chains and asking questions. Maybe too much like severance

But more seriously, I think there's a reason the Empire and the corporate world share this kind of abstract speak. It becomes easier to forget that this is two humans communicating.

Has my admin career devolved into me writing increasingly convoluted responses to emails until someone realises they are a cry for help? Maybe.

And it actually kind of worked by limiting the Player's avenues for communication, it identified the Player with the mech more closely. We've all been there when the dialogue options you've got don't give you the one you really want. That's exactly the conundrum Knight Alpha 01 has too!

I think it would have benefited from voice acting for the lines where the mech plays recordings of the previous pilot but I'm glad from the comments people responded to it and enjoyed it. Definitely made me think about narrative in a different way

Something I found particularly challenging was the idea of making the Player POV the mech instead of the pilot. Initially I was in favour of the pilot POV but my team won me over and I liked the challenge of it.

Learning about this in your book 'Writing for Games' was such an eye opener! It is one of my favourite books on the craft of writing and I'm always recommending it to people

@piratesoftware.live

to get the player to instantly grasp what they are being asked of when you are creating the puzzle from scratch. I don't want players to waste time figuring out what the premise of the puzzle is before they even have to try and solve it! Anyway, props for reading all that if you did, I appreciate it

a bit longer if they've come across the game by itself. I still need to learn more about using environmental hints and how to set up what the 'question' of the puzzle is effectively. In Skyrim you can almost instantly guess the 'question' is turning the plinths around but it can be a bit trickier

Something I did think about was designing puzzles for a jam versus a stand alone game. I was worried about putting players off with tricky puzzles if they are playing lots of games from the jam and don't solve them after the first couple of tries. But we could trust in having a player's attention

Crucially, we also now allowed players to go back and explore the rest of the mansion before having to make their choice on the final puzzle. This was based on some feedback and allows players to make a more informed decision. Also fixed some small technical issues that we didn't have time for