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[Nakomus]

I've been playing Cogmind for a couple weeks now and feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the basics. This seems a good time to share my some of my thoughts and impressions from the initial learning experience. This necessarily focuses on areas that that were unclear or confusing to me, though the overall experience has been good.

I had trouble getting my head around branches, both in terms of presentation and mechanics. I'd skimmed some of the devblog and other online information before buying the game, so I had some idea there was a main path and alternate levels, but I don't think I entirely grasped how that was meant to work. I understood from information in the forums (and my own unpleasant encounters) that the mines and other branches were dangerous, and I should try to avoid them, so trying to avoid going to the mines became the focus of my early game strategy. Initially I was only aware (learned from the forum, I think) of the contextual clue that exits with mining equipment likely lead to the mines, so my strategy was limited to only taking innocent looking exits, which did not seem to work very well.

After a few games I learned from out of game reading that signal interpreters could identify where a exit led, and by extension, distinguish between the main path and branches. This seemed a clear solution to my branch problem, and so my new mission in life became to acquire a signal interpreter as soon as possible in the Materials. Once I found one I would hoard it in my puny starting inventory until I found a potential exit, then equip it (sacrificing one of my two utility slots) and leave it there. Eventually I realized I could deactivate it when not standing next to an exit to conserve power. This worked well enough for avoiding branches, but hampered my effectiveness otherwise. If I also managed to find a storage unit, this meant that both my utility slots were tied up until my first evolution.

Quite recently through further out of game reading I learned (finally!) that branch and main path exist use a different glyph. I play in ASCII, and branch and regular exits don't generally appear on screen at the same time, so I had never noticed that they aren't the same symbol. So I can now cast aside my signal interpreter dependence in the early game. However, even knowing that they are different, I cant seem to reliably remember which is which. I have to toggle over to tile view to check what kind of exist I've found. In my most recent game I forgot to do this (thinking I had the glyphs figured out) and ended up in the Caves by mistake. I was well geared up and supplied, so this actually turned out pretty well, and I found some interesting new lore, but it

This may represent purely my own idiosyncratic experience, but I feel like a more explicit UI callout would be helpful here, perhaps for example the tool tip could read "Main: ?" or "Branch: ?".

My general confusion on this topic was somewhat compounded by not being aware of the world map for a while, so that when I did find my way into a branch it was difficult to piece together the connectivity between levels and understand when I was going up a depth. This is particularly important because of the relationship between taking exits and evolving; initially it was entirely unclear when taking a particular exit would lead to evolution or not.

As a much more minor suggestion, something like a game to game persistent version of the worldmap that would populate with discovered branches as you explore the complex would be helpful to me. It would fill a role as a spoiler-free crutch for meta-game knowledge of which branches connect where, how deep they go before they connect back to the main complex. As the community grows this kind of information will probably be available via Wikis and guides, but those sort of resources tend to hard to use as references without encountering accidental spoilers.

Though on reflection I suppose if this a feature I really desire, I could just parse the "Route" section my score files and then use a graph visualization library to display them an external utility.

I had some other thoughts and a few more minor issues, but I think this post is sufficiently long as is, so I will leave it at that for now.

[mindreader]

The exit is not always different between branches and normal exits.  To be certain requires you to successfully run the right command on a terminal, use a scanner, or just say screw it and find out the hard way.

You shouldn't necessarily avoid them.  Often times there are amazing things to be gained by delving into side areas, even the caves.  Also there are amazing deaths to be had there, but if you feel reasonably well equipped you will usually be able to survive, and who knows, maybe even come out ahead (even way ahead).

It might be nice low priority change to, when you enter a new area, pop up the world map, update it with the new room to make it clear how you progressed, and then start doing the normal area entrance animation.  It would be reminiscent to some old school level transitions.

I will say I did not discover that scanners could identify exits at all until a week or so ago (been playing for a couple months).  I read the description early on and then never read it again, and only realized when I read a stair finding guide here on the forum.  That said I do not feel the need to permanently carry a scanner around with me.  Sometimes I pick one up and wait til I get to a stairwell, pop it in to figure out what the exit is, then destroy it, because they are rather common.  Ultimately a slot is too important to waste all game on  identification.

[Kyzrati]

Quite recently through further out of game reading I learned (finally!) that branch and main path exist use a different glyph. I play in ASCII, and branch and regular exits don't generally appear on screen at the same time, so I had never noticed that they aren't the same symbol. So I can now cast aside my signal interpreter dependence in the early game. However, even knowing that they are different, I cant seem to reliably remember which is which. I have to toggle over to tile view to check what kind of exist I've found. In my most recent game I forgot to do this (thinking I had the glyphs figured out) and ended up in the Caves by mistake. I was well geared up and supplied, so this actually turned out pretty well, and I found some interesting new lore, but it

This may represent purely my own idiosyncratic experience, but I feel like a more explicit UI callout would be helpful here, perhaps for example the tool tip could read "Main: ?" or "Branch: ?".

You don't need to remember which is which, because they are only shown as a different glyph if you've already identified where the exit leads! In which case it will already have a popup (and shows the name of the destination in the scan window)

This part of the design is very intentional, because as Cogmind you don't know where these places lead, and unless you put effort into determining (or for whatever reason are unable to determine) where they might take you, you'll have to deal with the consequences. (Hacking branch access locations at a terminal is a relatively common and easy way, too.) But like mindreader says, all branches are valuable in their own way.

I'm sure the world map goes unnoticed by new players for a while, and while there is a tutorial message telling you to open it, most players seem to ignore those (but as stated elsewhere, I don't want to use modal messages that force players to pay attention to a tutorial...).

If Cogmind were "gamier" in its theme, I like the idea of making it part of the level transition, but as is I prefer to stick to going to the next area as quickly as possible without pause for anything else in between.

Showing the map automatically would be a nice reinforcement/teaching tool for newer players (something I'm sure would be absolutely required in a AAA game), though once someone has learned about the map, opening it whenever is pretty easy and allows them to control the flow of the game. And Cogmind is all about player control, in order to keep the sense of immersion intact.

As a much more minor suggestion, something like a game to game persistent version of the worldmap that would populate with discovered branches as you explore the complex would be helpful to me. It would fill a role as a spoiler-free crutch for meta-game knowledge of which branches connect where, how deep they go before they connect back to the main complex. As the community grows this kind of information will probably be available via Wikis and guides, but those sort of resources tend to hard to use as references without encountering accidental spoilers.

That's a neat idea, though such a feature would unfortunately be quite involved to develop because branches don't always appear at the same depth, or connect in the exact same ways. Plus there is lots of overlap in terms of their pathways (if compared over multiple runs), which would lead to a somewhat confusing interface if done visually (less so in terms of a text-based format, but that's not very cool ). It's not impossible, but I can see that feature taking several days by itself.

Thanks for the feedback.