Review of Blackthorn Manor - v0.01
Welcome Mr. Graves, the Manor at Blackthorn Hallow beckons.
You are asoon-to-be-Stephen King broke but aspiring writer with middling prospects. Lucky for you, you're now also the inheritor of an old-fashioned haunted house or so says this mysterious unsigned letter that was delivered to your door. Congrats?
Well, it's convincing enough apparently since one way or another, you end up packing your bags and head off to inspect your new mansion over in "Sunshine Bridge". Cliche premise with a writer and anonymous inheritance. Decent room to branch out from here.
Here are the numbers.
Story: 3/5
Protagonist inherits spooky manor and finds out he has what you might call a few "unregistered tenants". Several plot threads here to explore: the MC's writing career, the old Blackthorn family, the cast of ghosts themselves and the mayor wanting taxes. Looks like you can't escape death and taxes after all. Maybe Ethan needs to charge the ghosts rent.
Jokes aside, I think there is something to be said here about not having a strong plot hook that keeps you invested. Early days but after arriving at the mansion, why is the protagonist (and by proxy, you) invested? So far, he's not cursed, trapped, sworn to revenge, the "chosen one" or whatever else could chain him down but he's characterized so far as a guy who's just sort of poor and went to the manor because he's curious.
It really is down to how much of the story is going to be the set dressing or background to exploring the love interests but so far, there's a zoo full of characters while our MC doesn't really feel like he has his own yet.
Grammar: 3.5/5
Caught a few spelling mistakes here and there. A lot of lines here also stop and split sentences between text boxes which you could argue is a stylistic choice so this isn't necessarily bad but you are going to give some people an aneurysm.
Graphics: 4/5
Koikatsu graphics with shading so it is easily better than average. Some character models look memorable, a few of the ghost ones come to mind, but some of the ghosts and most of the town characters look generic and unremarkable. Mixed bag but not everyone needs to be a super-model either.
Where Blackthorn Manor excels is the UI design and font choice. There are great for an early version and give Blackthorn Manor a feeling of polish.
Animations: 4/5
It looks like a few stock KK animations. I'm not sure the short 5x speed jerking animation in Eleanor's scene counts as stock or custom but it made me laugh so it did its part to earn the humor tag at least.
Sound: 4/5
There's a few points with chunks of text and no audio. Still, the majority of this build has fitting enough royalty-free BGM.
Final thoughts. Introduction has a strong Halloween feel with the pumpkin orange UI and the spooky music that makes it feel like this game was supposed to release in October but it is a horror themed game after all. The difference between Ethan and his thoughts is hard to notice currently since it is only a little change in the corner of the text box. A font change, text color change, italics, punctuation or something else here would probably help make them stand out from each other.
It is a sandbox game which can be a deal-breaker for some so here is the warning for that. There's also a bug I noticed in current release related to that where the town exploration dialogue choices seem to lock themselves after being selected once. Reloading back to the choice selection menu or using rollback doesn't work. Probably an easy fix.
Lastly, the rooms in the mansion have huge lighting differences and the flashbang that was walking into the kitchen and bedrooms the first time. It's understandable with the limited assets available but there is something about walking out of the spooky dark entrance hall into the bright daytime kitchen that needed bringing up here if only as a warning to save someone else's eyes.
Overall, it has standout potential. For me, it did start to drag early on a little but it's an initial release anyway. A short enough game right now that I recommend trying it and making up your own mind.
TLDR: Good start to something that could really standout. It has its flaws but it has a good amount of polish for a fresh dev.
P.S. Recommend that the developer opens an Itch page for the game (if it doesn't exist already) and link it to the thread. Another platform to reach more players.
Welcome Mr. Graves, the Manor at Blackthorn Hallow beckons.
You are a
Well, it's convincing enough apparently since one way or another, you end up packing your bags and head off to inspect your new mansion over in "Sunshine Bridge". Cliche premise with a writer and anonymous inheritance. Decent room to branch out from here.
Here are the numbers.
Story: 3/5
Protagonist inherits spooky manor and finds out he has what you might call a few "unregistered tenants". Several plot threads here to explore: the MC's writing career, the old Blackthorn family, the cast of ghosts themselves and the mayor wanting taxes. Looks like you can't escape death and taxes after all. Maybe Ethan needs to charge the ghosts rent.
Jokes aside, I think there is something to be said here about not having a strong plot hook that keeps you invested. Early days but after arriving at the mansion, why is the protagonist (and by proxy, you) invested? So far, he's not cursed, trapped, sworn to revenge, the "chosen one" or whatever else could chain him down but he's characterized so far as a guy who's just sort of poor and went to the manor because he's curious.
It really is down to how much of the story is going to be the set dressing or background to exploring the love interests but so far, there's a zoo full of characters while our MC doesn't really feel like he has his own yet.
Grammar: 3.5/5
Caught a few spelling mistakes here and there. A lot of lines here also stop and split sentences between text boxes which you could argue is a stylistic choice so this isn't necessarily bad but you are going to give some people an aneurysm.
Graphics: 4/5
Koikatsu graphics with shading so it is easily better than average. Some character models look memorable, a few of the ghost ones come to mind, but some of the ghosts and most of the town characters look generic and unremarkable. Mixed bag but not everyone needs to be a super-model either.
Where Blackthorn Manor excels is the UI design and font choice. There are great for an early version and give Blackthorn Manor a feeling of polish.
Animations: 4/5
It looks like a few stock KK animations. I'm not sure the short 5x speed jerking animation in Eleanor's scene counts as stock or custom but it made me laugh so it did its part to earn the humor tag at least.
Sound: 4/5
There's a few points with chunks of text and no audio. Still, the majority of this build has fitting enough royalty-free BGM.
Final thoughts. Introduction has a strong Halloween feel with the pumpkin orange UI and the spooky music that makes it feel like this game was supposed to release in October but it is a horror themed game after all. The difference between Ethan and his thoughts is hard to notice currently since it is only a little change in the corner of the text box. A font change, text color change, italics, punctuation or something else here would probably help make them stand out from each other.
It is a sandbox game which can be a deal-breaker for some so here is the warning for that. There's also a bug I noticed in current release related to that where the town exploration dialogue choices seem to lock themselves after being selected once. Reloading back to the choice selection menu or using rollback doesn't work. Probably an easy fix.
Lastly, the rooms in the mansion have huge lighting differences and the flashbang that was walking into the kitchen and bedrooms the first time. It's understandable with the limited assets available but there is something about walking out of the spooky dark entrance hall into the bright daytime kitchen that needed bringing up here if only as a warning to save someone else's eyes.
Overall, it has standout potential. For me, it did start to drag early on a little but it's an initial release anyway. A short enough game right now that I recommend trying it and making up your own mind.
TLDR: Good start to something that could really standout. It has its flaws but it has a good amount of polish for a fresh dev.
P.S. Recommend that the developer opens an Itch page for the game (if it doesn't exist already) and link it to the thread. Another platform to reach more players.