Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1791https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=61393rd Entry: My third entry covers the Waterfall area/chapter as well as what I read about the game -- knowing that I would not be finishing it directly on my own within this log. I will spend some time covering each: for chapter 3, some of the specific bosses or mini-bosses, and for the game as a whole, the alternative ways to play the game. The Mad Dummy encounter was interesting. There was no way to directly damage him other than to have him unintentionally damage himself. This was an interesting way to emphasize the pacifist mechanic, in that you as the player are disempowered and must rely not on your MIGHTY FISTS (yes, at this point I'm still wearing the "tough gloves," which feature a combo-punching attack) but on your agility and defense. Thundersnail was another interesting mini-game, one that can be manipulated to accrue a vast quantity of gold if you're so inclined. It's essentially a snail racing bet where you can influence how quickly your snail moves. A bid costs 10g, and a win gives 9g ... seems like a bad deal, but if your snail *barely* loses the race, you'll get 30g as an apology for the confusion. Technically, I believe you can do this as many times as you like. Lastly, the obvious and important battle here is with Undyne, a bad-ass skeleton. Her spear attacks are fairly deadly, and there definitely was a little bit of dying on my part before I figured her out and sort of memorized her attacks. What's more, after she dies the first time, she gets put back together again -- totally true to her name! Each time she revives, though she comes back weaker. Eventually, she dies in a totally gruesome fashion. Yikes. Okay, so I read through some of the other ways of playing the game and got a brief sense of the story. The player can pursue 3 routes in general: neutral, pacifist, or genocide(!). I would say that my play-through was essentially neutral ... I spared some monsters and killed others, mostly based on my connection to the creature encountered and/or the degree to which it was a pain in the ass to spare the monster. The pacifist route requires that the player kill zero monsters. Ever. Period. This ends with a unique encounter, a boss that you wouldn't otherwise meet. Furthermore, many little easter eggs are unlocked after you complete the game, and you can walk through the world you've "saved." The other option is the "genocide" route. The player must kill EVERYTHING. MANLY FISTS FOR ALL! This unlocks after completing the first area: the player gets a tracker showing how many monsters are left to be slain. Fights become *significantly* more difficult. One last thing to note: each time you reset the game, it doesn't *entirely* reset. Some history is preserved, and the way that the player is treated depends on what happened in other play-throughs. The completion of the pacifist route offers a "true reset" ... but completing the genocide route makes this "true reset" actually incomplete. It actually changes the outcome of the story in the pacifist route. Yeesh.Thu, 07 Apr 2016 09:55:28 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6139&iddiary=10715https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6139Entry 2: I don't have as much to say for this entry, as the mechanics are basically the same as what I covered in the past regarding combat. I will say that I tried a few different options other than BEATING THINGS TO DEATH WITH MY MANLY FISTS for some of the fights. Most of the combat, in terms of dodging things, is relatively easy, but tandem monster fights can make things rough. My second day featured the second "chapter" of the game, in which the player has to progress through Snowdin with the accompaniment of two skeletons (one of whom is oddly fat) named Sans and Papyrus, named after their fonts. Sans is helpful while Papyrus tries mostly unsuccessfully to defeat you. Meanwhile, Sans jokes at this brother's expense. The puzzles here were somewhat fun but largely unremarkable in terms of difficulty. The chapter concludes with a battle with Papyrus, who is surprisingly strong. I opted to engage him in combat but ultimately to spare him at the end of the fight -- the poor guy seemed like he wanted to fight, and who was I to take that pleasure away from him. Anyway, he was entertaining enough to be spared. The chapter also featured a significant number of dogs. The first one, Doggo, was so weak that I decided to spare him. The second notable battle was against Dogamy and Dogaressa (collectively named Dogi), who I decided to fight. Their ax attack was pretty painful, and I ultimately destroyed them. I took down Dogaressa first, and after that Dogamy's attacks became quite weak ... but he seemed so down about me offing his lady that I put him out of his misery. Lastly, there was an adorable dog named "Greater Dog," who appeared at first to be a tiny yappy dog but rose from the snow to reveal an impressive physique. I defeated him as well. Reaching Snowdin later, though, and talking to some of the townsfolk, I felt a pang of guilt upon hearing one of them talk caringly about the dog couple I had killed earlier on. Each year they would give each other bones under the Christmas tree (monsters celebrate Christmas??). But honestly they shouldn't have been in the woods trying to kill me. Rude.Thu, 07 Apr 2016 00:51:14 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6139&iddiary=10713https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=61391st Entry: This entry will cover my experience playing through the first "chapter" of Undertale. Undertale is a PC (& Mac, but in my case PC) game developed by Toby Fox in Gamemaker: Studio and released on Sept 15, 2015. The player navigates a child through a subterranean environment populated by an odd array of monsters. In the fictional world, there was long ago a war between humans and monsters, and the monsters, having lost this war, were banished to the underground. According to the story, people occasionally fall into the underground world, though few if any are ever seen again. Let's discuss the narrative a little bit before covering mechanics in detail. In the opening sequence, the player encounters a seemingly innocuous flower creature, who introduces the environment, warning that the underground realm is incredibly dangerous and that many monsters may try to destroy him. The flower introduces player to the idea of gaining "love" to increase his or her hitpoints, and it offers to do so. But alas, perfidy! The flower creature reveals its true nature and attacks the player's heart, reducing it to a critically low level. Suddenly, another creature intervenes, rescuing the player and offering to guide him to safety through the subterranean lair. This new creature identifies itself as Toriel, and it takes an extremely protective position in relation to the child, guiding him by the hand and explicitly showing the solutions to puzzles encountered. Toriel seems quite needy, and she(?) worries excessively about the player's safety. As she guides the player around, Toriel also introduces the player to the notion that enemies need not be killed to be beaten: instead, they may be persuaded or compelled to leave. Mechanically, by the way, this seems to be what's at the core of the game: it is possible to overcome obstacles in this RPG by means other than violence. Anyway, Toriel eventually leaves the player on his own (though she IMMEDIATELY calls him to check-in), and the player must solve a few short puzzles to reach what turns out to be Toriel's house. At the house, Toriel tells the player that he is now "home" and that he should not attempt to leave to reach the surface and return to humanity. When the player protests, Toriel decides to destroy the path in the basement of her home to keep the player trapped there in safety. The player must confront Toriel and defeat her. Interestingly, the player essentially cannot lose this fight. Toriel will reduce the player to low health to test his resolve, but at a certain point, the next attack performed by the player will kill Toriel, freeing him to continue his journey to his real home. At the very end of the chapter, the player encounters the flower monster once more, who warns the player of the ass-kicking he will receive on his journey. Ok, now onto the mechanics. I mentioned that the player has options to resolve confrontations other than violence. Destroying an enemy results in the player gaining both experience and gold, whereas resolving conflict passively rewards gold but not experience. Thus, violence makes the player technically stronger, but typically at the cost of many other lives. Aside from attacking, players may interact in various ways -- for instance, laughing, taunting, consoling, joking, etc. -- with the creatures he encounters or simply try to flee the encounter. To be honest, though, this mechanic didn't really do anything for me. The responses were typically narrative-driven and didn't spark my interest in terms of technical or mechanical challenge. Some of the ways to resolve conflict peacefully were humorous the first time, but after that they became tedious; attacking, on the other hand, was a much more active and engaging experience. The combat system is another interesting feature of this game. The player times attacks similar mini-games in other titles (e.g. smith-work in Fable, shooting rhythm in NBA2K, etc). When the player is attacked, he must move a small heart icon around a board, evading enemy attacks that vary in pattern based on the enemy encountered. This effectively simulates the experience of dodging incoming enemy attacks and adds a compelling skill-based element to the game, regardless of whether the player pursues an aggressive or peaceful attitude towards encounters. Lastly, one criticism: the art style does nothing for me. I understand that this game was made with a limited budget and small crew, making the accomplishment quite impressive, but I definitely don't derive much aesthetic pleasure from the experience. As a result, I don't feel that invested in the characters I encounter, and I don't mind slaughtering the monsters that populate the underground. Yay!Tue, 05 Apr 2016 16:39:23 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6139&iddiary=10702https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=61183rd Entry: For this entry, I will talk about chapter 3 and the sandbox mode in the game. Chapter three starts with a riot. The player is transferred into a new prison and things are clearly a mess. There are 90-something prisoners rioting and a load of injured guards. It's important to immediately start hiring doctors or getting paramedics to treat the wounded. Part of the compound is ablaze (again!). After treating some of the wounded, I sent riot police into the various parts of the compound under the control of the prisoners, accompanied by paramedics. Interestingly, the prisoners would target the police pretty much exclusively, leaving the paramedics to heal my troops. Simultaneously, I had to deal with the fire in the other wing of the prison. It was a total mess. Soon, though, the reality of the motivations for the riot was brought to light: corruption. It turns out that the prison administration was destroying documents that would have secured the release of prisoners, keeping them in the prison and ensuring constant money flow for the prison. The prisoners had rioted and taken the administration as hostages, warning that if their headquarters were attacked that they would kill everyone there. I don't think that there was actually any way to stop them from doing this. Given the situation, I definitely felt some empathy for the plight of the prisoners, knowing that they were being cheated by the system. They didn't have a lot of recourse, with their connection to justice outside of the prison cut off by the administration. Nevertheless, I had to squelch the riot, meaning that a great many prisoners died in the process. The riot police definitely kicked some ass in the process of retaking the compound, and a great many prisoners died -- along with a few of the police. I hadn't necessarily anticipated how well-armed the rioters would be. To be honest, I finished this mission as quickly as possible. The alternative part of the mission involves rebuilding the prison after the riot, which seemed like a nightmare ... and somewhat unrealistic. In reality, I assume that most of the prisoners would have been transferred to another facility while repairs were underway, but that wasn't an option in the game -- something I found unrealistic and annoying. As I said in the beginning of this response, I also tried the sandbox mode. Unlike the campaign mode, the sandbox mode is definitely more about the battle against finite resources. At the beginning of the game, there are so many things that you need to construct with limited tools. The sandbox mode was instead about optimizing the order of construction. First priorities were housing, food, power, water, and administrative offices. The player, though, has to be careful not to build any one thing too big too quickly. Otherwise, it's very easy to run out of resources. But after building a few of the necessities, it's easy to lose your control of the facility without knowing why ... the psychologist for this reason is incredibly important, someone I neglected to hire early on, which caused problems (a small riot). Over time, certain things become more and more important. For instance, starvation and overcrowding are things to be avoided obviously, but the prisoners needs pretty quickly turn to things like entertainment and family visitation (the latter being something I forgot to anticipate originally). Later, though, things like literacy and work become important. It's also very difficult to build a prison efficiently from the outset. There may be a way to best optimize the layout of the compounded, but it's hard to do that while also rushing to deal with each new crisis that comes up. Anyway, I had fun with this game, and I thought it overall did a good job reflecting some of the problems of the prison system as a whole.Thu, 03 Mar 2016 14:44:13 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6118&iddiary=10679https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=61182nd entry: This time I played through chapter two. The player is transferred to oversee a new prison, and the introduction to this one is pretty intense: the prison's dining area is totally ablaze. The player must first deploy emergency fire crews to subdue the blaze. After that, a character -- who turns out to be a mob boss -- is discovered grievously wounded in the wreckage. He is taken to the medical wing and his story is revealed. Two other characters (his son and step-son, if I recall correctly) come to see him, and the mob boss says that he suspects that one of the two is responsible. The player then goes through the process of clearing the wreckage and rebuilding the two destroyed facilities. After that, the player is then told that numerous narcotics have been discovered in the storage area. The game then reveals the story of Anthony, the mob boss's son. Turns out that he was the one who was sleeping with the wife of the guy executed in chapter one. This was an interesting feature. It connected the experience of these two seemingly disparate facilities; in fact, the death of the son sets up the conflict between the two rivals responsible for the destruction of the cafeteria and kitchen. Without the good-looking heir to the family business around, these two goons are the potential next-in-lines. The rest of the story plays out as the two fight for supremacy. One attempts to ambush the other in showers, attacking him with a knife. The potential victim, however, anticipates the move and hires an assassin to strangle his enemy with some piano wire. The assassin succeeds, but in the process both the assassin and his target die, and the other potential heir is seriously wounded by a slash across the chest. This part of the story really highlighted how dangerous the prison system is. Many people in the facility are there for violent crimes. At the same time, there are all sorts of people there for non-violent crimes too. In the game, you can house all sorts of prisoners at a single facility, ranging from minimum-security to super-max security, which in reality is sort of ridiculous -- but at the very least, this highlights something interesting. In reality, violent and non-violent offenders may be housed in the same facility, and for non-violent offenders, this seems like a bit of unjust punishment. There are two prevailing theories about what prison time means: it can either be punitive (punishing someone for breaking the law) or palliative (helping someone become a better person who will not break the law again). Most definitely the US has a punitive system. Over the years, prison sentences for all sorts of offenses have been increased -- with the intent to dissuade people from committing crimes in the first place -- resulting in a large prison population (around 3% of national population). Violent and non-violent offenders are housed together with little to do. Many prisons don't provide funding for educational programs, with the emphasis being on the bottom-line. It's easier and less expensive to have a single facility, and many prisons are run for profit. Those corporations don't care whether people are rehabilitated ... in fact, the more likely they see recidivism, the more likely they are to stay in business.Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:46:04 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6118&iddiary=10674https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6118First entry: To start off, I played this game a little bit differently than I did "This War of Mine". I researched the former a little bit before getting started. This time, I just jumped right into it. The game throws the player into a campaign mode, in which he/she (he) takes over administration of a prison that is already up and running. The game introduces the player to some of the basic mechanics through a tutorial. In general the game follows the patterns/expectations of a resource management game, with the primary resource being money. Money is used to construct buildings (cells, cafeterias, guard towers, walls, etc) that allow for the efficient management of both prisoners and personnel. Now, to be fair, in the campaign mode, money seems to be fairly trivial. The player starts with an enormous stash in chapter one. I think that the campaign probably has a different focus than the resource management aspect. The game's art is fairly generic and lighthearted. The characters (inmates and staff) look akin to Lego characters, bobbing up and down as they walk around the prison. They don't have much detail as everything is portrayed from an overhead-45-degree perspective, mostly zoomed out to keep an eye on everything. Pretty quickly, though, shit got real. The first "mission" for the player is to construct an execution chamber for an inmate convicted of a double homie. Yikes. Through a series of polaroids the player is given the story of the murderer: correctly suspecting his wife of infidelity, the man returned home to find the woman and her lover. And he brought his loaded gun! He blasts the two of them in their faces before fleeing the whole situation (this scene, and the others in the story, are depicted simultaneously through polaroids and scripted actions on the part of the little Lego NPCs -- with almost comedic gore in my mind). He goes and confesses his crimes to his priest, who advises the man that he must turn himself in; although the law may not forgive his actions, God would, so long as he came clean. As the group travels to the execution chamber, the security chief opines that there would be no forgiveness for his crime, that the man knowingly and intentionally went there to kill the two. Possibly the game here is trying to make some moral claim about the entire judicial system, the punitive measures inherent to incarceration. The game starts with the most extreme instance of that system, in which the state takes the life of one of its citizens. Interestingly, this didn't really feel like a player-driven decision ... the entire experience of building the execution chamber and killing this guy was directed by the tutorial. This may have reflected the detachment of the system as a whole. But ... I don't know. I'm not convinced that was exactly the message. The characters involved in the actual exection -- the priest, the chief, the murderer -- all express heartfelt sentiments ... but as tiny, goofy Lego people. I felt it detracted from the overall message and made the experience feel more flippant. Next time ... chapter two?!Tue, 01 Mar 2016 21:43:42 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6118&iddiary=10666https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6092Day 3 Entry: At this point, I've actually gotten very near to the end of the game. Not quite there, but close. For this play session, I started a new game with Marko, Pavle, and Bruno, and I subsequently added Katia to my group of survivors. This set of people, it turns out, are fairly bad-ass. Marko has the scavenger perk, giving him 15 storage slots (up from Pavle's and Katia's 12). This makes him incredibly valuable. At the beginning of the game, I played quite cautiously, avoiding conflict as much as I could. I also prioritized getting an axe, which turns out to be an incredibly useful tool, allowing the player to chop up useless furniture both in the sanctuary and outside of it. Furthermore, the axe is a useful combat weapon, so I had the dual advantage of keeping my scavenger armed and allowing him to break down materials he encountered. I still looted the Quiet House for its easy resources (a morally dubious decision), but this time did not murder the elderly couple -- keeping my group relatively happier. Happiness, as I played it, was treated as another resource -- if I could afford to sacrifice a little to gain another valuable resource, I would. I treated theft throughout the game as a double-edged sword; if the group was feeling low, I would avoid it -- otherwise, I might take the opportunity. The game really turned once I managed to reach the warehouse. This place was, from the outset, incredibly dangerous, containing three armed soldiers. On my first visit, I managed to sneak attack and kill one of the soldiers after he started chasing Marko. The soldier had an assault rifle and a bulletproof vest. I then managed to take high ground to kill the other two soldiers as they came to investigate the noises they had heard. Now I had enough weapons to arm my scavenger and my base at once. The rifle proved exceptionally useful for other locations loaded with resources and controlled by enemies that the game deemed OK to kill, such as St Mary's Church and the construction site. It was amazing how dramatically the difficulty of the game diminished once I had a real weapon. It's not that Marko was never wounded in any of these encounters, but he was never critically wounded. I had stocked enough medical supplies to allow him to recover from any wound. The radio also proved an invaluable asset. It made me aware of shortages, the items which I could sell at great exchange rates. I saved most of the tobacco I gathered in unrolled form, and I would make cigarettes only on the actual day that the trader visited (which was conveniently predictable). Bruno, being sort of a louse, would crush cigarettes if left to his own devices, so I needed to limit his consumption. The radio also gave important weather warnings, allowing me time to build heaters and prioritize consumables. The visiting trader also was incredibly important for providing basics in exchange for the valuable but useless items I collected while scavenging. I unloaded gems, shotguns, and cigarettes in exchange for building materials, water, and food. Self-sufficiency, at least to a limited extent, proved invaluable. I built 2 animal traps early on, and I always kept them operational. I eventually also upgraded my garden to be able to grow vegetables, but the intensive water requirements were problematic. With four mouths to feed, there were times that food became somewhat scarce -- those were the times that I was driven to steal from innocents. Again, due to the penalty to the general well-being of the scavenger in particular, I would try to avoid stealing, but if it came down to survival, I had no qualms about it. Oddly enough, it was ultimately water that became the greatest challenge, but that was a function of running out of construction materials, leaving me unable to make water filters. Part of this was maybe mismanagement on my part -- the real shortage happened at the time that I upgraded my garden and then had to build heaters to deal with the winter -- but part of it was an issue of communication within the game. The requirements of the garden, for instance, included 10 units of clean water, an enormous investment in scarce times. The requirement of "clean" water for the garden didn't make intuitive sense either. One last thing that I will mention is that this game did an incredible job taking relatively flat characters and building player investment in them through mechanics. The time investment and commitment ensures cautious and rational play to avoid danger and death. Now, at Day 35 and having received news of the arrival of international aid about a week ago, I am close to escaping the war. But this didn't happen without a fairly cutthroat attitude about survival.Thu, 28 Jan 2016 13:36:45 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6092&iddiary=10634https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6092Ok, so for the second day of play, I had my bearings set more effectively. The game taught some punishing lessons in my first day, and now I had a better feel for the strategy and the potential pitfalls I might encounter. In terms of making building priority, I focused on the necessities: food, water, and a place to sleep. I played cautiously at the beginning as well, focusing my scavenging on the abandoned house, which appeared to be a low risk option. The map warnings of "caution" and "danger" seemed more legitimate after realizing how easy it is to die in this game. What's more, the game has the incredibly punishing mechanic of auto-saving your game, as well disallowing multiple save files. Deaths in this game are therefore permanent. The longer that I played, the more invested I became and the more carefully I played, knowing that I could lose everything with a single mistake. I also tried to test the moral system of the game a little bit. Early on, I gained access to "Quiet House," a place largely untouched by the ravages of war and occupied by an elderly couple. I opted to murder and rob them with Pavle. Really, I just wanted to rob them, but the old man threatened to call the police, and I acted to protect my character. Upon returning, Pavle was depressed and Katia was sad at the news -- meanwhile, Bruno remained unaffected. This was an interesting glimpse into their personalities. Pavle, as the murderer, felt the weight of the deaths most heavily. Katia seems to be an empathetic figure, saying that she felt sad for the people who died. Bruno, meanwhile, seems mostly egoistic, instead talking about how Pavle did what was necessary. As a result of the interface, I could tell that sad/depressed was likely a dangerous state for the characters. The very next day, however, two children came by the house, asking for medicine. I had just collected a bunch from the elderly couple I'd offed, so I decided to help them. Predictably, Katia and Pavle responded positively, while Bruno reacted negatively. One thing that bothered me, though, was how dramatically Pavle was impacted. After opting to share the medicine, he felt sad rather than depressed, nearly cancelling the impact of the double homicide he had committed by beating two people to death with his bare hands. Really?! Several nights later, I was attempting to scavenge at a supermarket when I encountered a soldier and a scavenging girl. I went about my business in secret, hearing the situation between the two escalating as the soldier attempted to rape the girl. I opted to bust through the door as he attacked her, stabbing him with the kitchen knife I had crafted in my shelter. The decision to do this was motivated by the assumption that it would improve the moods of my characters and -- more importantly -- that I could probably loot a gun off of the soldier. While I did manage to stab the soldier, it wasn't enough: he turned around and shotgun-blasted Pavle to death. And that was the end of my second day. I will say that the game promotes behavior that is egoistic more so than anything else, and it follows roughly a consequentialist moral system. For every decision, there are consequences. For every action, there are consequences. And often those consequences are severe. The save-feature, in particular, promotes gameplay that is at once cautious and highly self-interested. It only takes a couple of scavenging trips going poorly (as in not finding necessary resources) to put your entire group in mortal peril, and so every move must be planned and optimized.Thu, 28 Jan 2016 04:01:11 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6092&iddiary=10632https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6092So quickly, I decided to try this game on Android rather than on PC (which I think everyone else is using), just to have a different perspective on the game. Let me give a quick summary of gameplay. The player has control of three characters from the outset of the game. Characters may be scrolled through or directly selected to complete actions. With a character selected, the player may interact with various objects within the game space. Some objects may be directly used from the beginning, and others have restrictions/limitations based on the material that the player possesses. Characters possess certain traits -- such as carrying capacity, unique skills (cooking, bartering), health and physical characteristics, emotional states, and so forth -- which impact their ability to perform certain actions. The primary game objective is simply to survive for some uncertain amount of time without dying of malnutrition, illness, exhaustion, or physical violence. The game has a decidedly dark and dreary aesthetic, although not something that is unpleasant to view. The characters and environment appear hand-drawn or painted, and the animations for their behaviors are simple yet complete. Ok, so for my first play-through, the game took a little bit of adjustment to understand. The interface wasn't entirely intuitive at the beginning, so I definitely made some silly mistakes. Some of the character traits made sense automatically (good cook, for instance), whereas others don't really have a clear meaning (smoker?). During my play session, this character trait didn't appear to have any impact on the game ... I even found a cigarette, but there doesn't appear to be a way to use it. The game follows a loop in which the player has control of all of the characters during the daytime -- trying to produce enough material to keep all of the characters in good condition -- and into nighttime, when the player may opt to send a character into the surrounding area to scavenge for more resources. I admit that I restarted the game at the end of the first night upon realizing that I had effectively squandered the day acquainting myself to the interface and the importance of various objects within the sanctuary. And I also definitely quit after the second night as well, when one of my characters was mortally wounded during a scavenging operation. I will talk about each of these experiences at greater length, but it is important to note that both of these outcomes taught a punishing lesson. The first lesson was the importance of selecting what to build and prioritize. At the end of the first day, I had upgraded the workshop needlessly, leaving me in dire straits once I realized how hard it would be to recover more resources in the outside world. There wasn't a lot of clarity to how much each character could actually carry and recover in scavenging missions, but I soon discovered the truth: not much. I could tell then that food and sleep were very important things to attend to, and I hadn't prioritized them very well. The game simply let me make the mistakes without much of a tutorial, and I quickly felt the consequences of my errors. After restarting the game, on my second night, I sent one of my characters to a new scavenging location that had been unlocked. At this point, I had recognized the need to prioritize food and somewhat rare resources. However, I hadn't yet run into any unfriendly NPCs. Well, this was the night that I would. I unfortunately found myself detected by another NPC, who ran away. Brazenly, I continued to loot the area. A couple seconds later, two characters ran down the stairs with knives and proceeded to beat my character to the edge of death. After that, I had had enough for my first day. I am pretty sure that I was being punished for stealing, although I thought I might be confronted non-violently to begin. Instead, I was brutally punished, again paying the price of my actions. So far, the game appears to follow a fairly consequentialist ethical structure, with mistakes being represented by diminishing stats and potentially death. We will see where this goes in future sessions ...Wed, 27 Jan 2016 00:54:06 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6092&iddiary=10626