Hello Steam Community, Three Minutes To Eight developer is here. And before we dive into the feedback, I want to express my honest gratitude to everyone who has supported Three Minutes To Eight. Your enthusiasm, your feedback and support really mean a lot to me. So far, Three Minutes To Eight has collected very mixed reviews since its release. There are people that absolutely love it, and people that dont which is okay. Creating a game that everybody loves would be the holy grail. Positive or negative, Im beyond thankful for everyone that chose to play my game and took their time to provide me with valuable feedback. Anyways, while it's always tough to receive and read negative reviews especially as a mostly solo developer with little resources I still see it as a valuable opportunity to learn and improve both the game and me on a personal level. I'm committed to taking your input to heart, trying to make the game the best it can be. So, since its always important for me to listen what players have to say, I'm working on a patch with a few fixes (to be released early next week). All in all, I'd like to share some development insights regarding a few points of this game and its intricate mechanics to give you a better understanding how certain things work in Three Minutes To Eight and why. In summary, the most disappointing points coming from the ones that left a negative review, can be summarized in two things:

• I don't know what to do.
• I cannot skip dialogues.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO

The game starts in a state of confusion, like the protagonist, who must find out what's really going on, starting with just a few clues. The design of the game is that every narrative is doable within the very first run (given that you know what to do), and all the 10 endings are co-existing at the same time.

How is that possible?

The articulated design is based on "triggers". For example, a trigger could be a certain event, items that the player can find, or something that a character says. Once that trigger is unlocked, you can follow a specific narrative, and a series of elements become available, especially on dialogues with NPCs. For instance, and this is not much of a spoiler, at 19:45 there's an explosion. The notes (and the journal) notify the player about it. That's a trigger. After the explosion you can basically talk again with the NPCs; and while most of them will give just a generic info about the explosion, there are a few that will give a very specific explanation, unlocking another trigger (and again: the notes will be updated with the new info). This applies to every narrative. When an event, a dialogue, or an item triggers something, a note is added to the journal allowing the player to talk further with characters and discover more about that path. This is basically the core loop of the whole game, and maybe it becomes clear only at a certain amount of playtime. Also, the voice at the intercom, after some runs, starts to give hints like "follow the patterns", "talk with people", etc. I know this is not the standard way of how adventure games are usually developed, but I thought that this sort of mechanism was also part of the charm of this game, what makes it truly unique and original, despite the fact that repeating similar things many times can be boring for some people (especially in 2023, where we are bombarded by something new every 10 seconds). However, even in the repetitions, the game has many surprises and incredible things that happen. No run is really identical to the previous one. All in all, my big guidance through TMTE is: Always check the notes, once a note is added; you can talk with characters about it, or youll find new elements in the surroundings thatll help you advance the game.

I CANNOT SKIP DIALOGUES

First of all, let me clarify that its possible to skip dialogues per se. I'm not forcing anyone to listen (or read) a full dialogue again and again! But it seems to not fulfill the expectations of skippable dialogues to the fullest. I'm writing this for the people who haven't played the game but read the reviews that say its not possible to skip dialogues. From my perspective, what the reviews probably are saying is, that you cannot skip a WHOLE conversation. You'll have to keep pressing a button to skip each line until a conversation is done. I know that going over a dialogue again and again, even if you skip line by line, can be frustrating. Unfortunately, it is not possible to skip an entire conversation due to the particular nature of this game. If we implement a way to skip an entire conversation, we risk one or more of the following:

• a variable cannot be triggered (breaking the game or blocking the player from progressing)
• not receiving an item (making it impossible to finish a narrative)
• players are skipping a crucial information which they haven't read before (what apparently could seem the same dialogue, can have different lines based on the narrative path the player is following; if the player skips a conversation entirely because they thought they read it already, they could miss something important)

Considering all the risks above, I decided to go with a "skip line by line" feature instead of "skip the entire conversation" which could ultimately break the game. However, I intend to simplify or enhance the "skip the line" method by reducing the "safety time"; which refers to the intervals between appearing lines. Currently there's a safety margin before you can skip a line to avoid voice acting audio files to overlap each other, etc. But I'm working on reducing that margin as much as I can without breaking the game. Long story short: the new patch will make the skip of a dialogue way faster! All right, this is it for now and I hope I was able to shed some light on the quoted topics. Furthermore, I'm working on a few other improvements and fixing a few minor bugs for the next patch. Keep an eye out for it to drop early next week. With all that being said, Im still happy with how Three Minutes To Eight turned out, being a somewhat special type of game that has some unique things going on if you look closely behind the curtain. Still, Im always eager to hear what you like and what you don't like about the game as well as your suggestions on how I can make Three Minutes To Eight even better so feel free to leave a review or share your thoughts here on the discussion boards. It really helps me, and everyone involved getting better at what we do! Thanks a lot. Yours, Nicola

[ 2023-11-02 12:38:08 CET ] [ Original post ]