*Rage fuelled rant incoming*

So after becoming increasingly frustrated with the horrifically sporadic first level, I took to the internet to see how everyone else was getting on - and it turns out exactly the same!

I (like everyone it seems) had to switch to Easy to at least make the actions of the hostages make some sense, but even then they randomly got up to flee when they were otherwise just sitting still.

That's not the "F this" moment though, that's just happened in the second chapter as I 'failed' the torture scene because they kept asking the same question over and over, leading to me thinking maybe it was one that had to be answered... only for Burden to be ripped in half.

They want you to repeat the same scenario 20 times in a row, with random death and no checkpoints waiting just around the corner? Just hell no.

I don't mind incredibly hard games (I'm a huge Dark Souls/Hotline Miami fan for example) but this is just DUMB. When you factor in the lack of checkpoints, the numerous spelling mistakes, propensity for game crashes/animation lockups AND this weird narrative setup where I (as the player) actually would rather hear some confessions just so I get some backstory.... it's ridiculously up its own ass thinking people will keep going for the sake of the gameplay.

An asterisk doesn't get you around the no profanity in thread titles rule - edited accordingly. Thanks.

Yeah. I watched a movie while playing the torture chapter, which prevented me from getting too bored with the repeated dialogue or frustrated by restarts. Also, I discovered in my last run that begging worked a lot better for me than Vinny indicated it worked for him in the QL. A successful beg seems to give you a health bonus on par with that of a successful lie, but you can beg whenever and lies require getting beat up while you think.

I made it on original difficulty out to the fifth scenario, which features, so far as I could tell, no feedback whatsoever on how close you are to completing your ultimate goal and also is extremely boring. I tried it maybe six times before giving up. Instead of dropping the difficulty to Easy I think I'll just wait for a thorough description of the ending from someone else.

These descriptions of the game make it seem like the halfway point between Work Time Fun and Incredible Crisis with a depressing story.

I'm so bummed the way this game has turned out. The trailer made it look like some dark and twisted adventure game. Thank goodness for the Quick Look though, which totally changed my opinion. :(

I'm surprised Vinny seemed to still be totally into it, unless I'm mistaken? But then again he's into a few super weird games lately. :) If you need a suggestion for something a bit twisted to play instead, try The Fall. He's right about this one, it's an excellent hidden gem.

Eh, I like it even if it's kind of soul crushing

I've beaten the first three scenarios on Normal and it's very difficult.

I actually think it's kind of shitty for the developer to quite literally beg you to play the game on normal since it's such an unforgiving experience. After some time spent playing this I can only imagine they came up with their scenarios, realized you can run through the entire game in 30 minutes and then toyed with it so that each level takes a long time to complete in order to clock in at least a few hours of gameplay.

To anyone that has not played it yet but plan to do so - PLAY ON EASY, for the story. This is an extremely methodical game with a high degree of trial and error rather than critical thinking. I was very excited for it and am somewhat disappointed with the final product. Most of the time playing the game isn't a whole lot of fun.

As a small spoiler: you don't have to actually survive 20 days in the torture level, but it is quite lengthy. Just wait until you get to the third level where you have to figure out two different solutions through quite literally trial and error while on a time limit, while managing a completely separate task with it's own set of invisible stamina bars.

Having finished the game (on easy, with a guide for some parts), I will say that the single biggest problem the game has is pacing. Specifically, the sections are far, FAR too long for their own good. The poking and prodding at the "black box" of game mechanics is interesting... for a short while. The trial and error method of progression is tolerable... for a short while. But when 45 minutes of progress gets wiped because of a bad dice roll or the introduction of a new variable, it stops being fun.

The part that kills me is the fact that in each chapter, there's at least some glimmering element of what COULD have been a really cool game.

And @zggurat, the ending is basically...

I'm loving it so far. It's incredibly hard and random, but it's part of the idea - the trial-and-error is not about finding the perfect sequence, but figuring out what can you sacrifice to get by.

I still haven't made it past the first chapter on Normal or Easy. I just seem to be getting a lot more random variables than Vinny in the Quick Look. Hostages are becoming more tense when I'm charging the hack boost, they're running off when they're neutral, taking to them doesn't calm them down etc. I don't see how this is even possible with the amount of seemingly contradictory mechanics.

The game looks neat, I love the premise and I loved the jam version, but progressing is just far too difficult to be compelling for me.

Maybe one day I'll come back to it but for the meantime it's far too infuriating (and not in a good way)

Oh sorry!! Thank you! :)

Yeah when I watched Vinny I really got the feeling that if you took your time and thought everything out, you could get through it okay, but then i had that exact thing you've mentioned about hostages running when they're supposed to be neutral, or I'll go to calm them and they run.

I really love the art style and the challenge alone makes it one of those games I'd like to finish for the sake of saying I have, but maaaan it's rather infuriating when you have no idea why you failed!

Yeah the Quick Look didn't make it seem very fun at all

FYI, when interrogating people it's standard practice to repeat the same question numerous times just incase the answer changes because the person was lying or leaving out details. This isn't meant to dismiss any complaints but just to point out that's just the way this things like that actually work out.

I think most of people's negative criticisms of this game are kinda off-the-mark, as the game was designed with no checkpoints and such to keep the mood extremely tense. The one huge, genuine problem, though, is the level of total randomization that key moments hinge on. Passing or failing is totally left to chance in some cases, like during Russian Roulette, which I failed again on the 2nd loop with fairly good odds of 1-out-of-5.

After a good dozen failures, I passed the first mission with zero data-loss, no hostage escapes, and no deaths, all on Normal difficulty. A perfect run, probably. But... the second mission... I hope I'm able to get back to it and see what lies ahead, but the fucking randomization...

For those mad about the randomization, it only seems to get worse over time. I'm on the fifth mission now, and while I do like the game, the random elements become more prominent as time goes on, and the dice roll instant failures don't go away. For example, apart from your hack boost, in the first mission all your actions had a guaranteed, concrete effect. If you kicked a dude, he wouldn't be so relaxed. Later on, in one mission almost all of your actions involve some random element, so even if you plan out your moves properly and react to the random occurrences outside of your actions, you can lose very easily just because the guy you wanted to do a thing failed his dice roll, or didn't do it well enough.

For me, the big problem is that the wrong things in this game are random. The content is almost always the exact same, but whether you fail or succeed is purely random. Thus you can fail often, and when you are forced to replay a section for the umpteenth time, the lack of variation and monotony of the things you are doing just grinds on your patience. Apart from that, the game needed way more testing. There's several little glitches or quirks that can cause failure, only adding to the trouble.

That's not the "F this" moment though, that's just happened in the second chapter as I 'failed' the torture scene because they kept asking the same question over and over, leading to me thinking maybe it was one that had to be answered... only for Burden to be ripped in half.

They want you to repeat the same scenario 20 times in a row, with random death and no checkpoints waiting just around the corner? Just hell no.

Did you stop to consider whether an interrogator asking the same question over and over again for no reason until the subject dies is a comment on what torture feels like for the subject? Does having to replay the same annoying sections over and over again feel like torture? Is it arbitrary and brutal for no reason other than to cause suffering?

The issue isn't limited to the torture sequence. The game features arbitrary random elements throughout and doesn't provide consistent feedback in terms of whether what you're doing is the correct course of action.

This game is really entertaining to watch. I doubt I'd ever play it. Way too depressing, and I really don't like replaying content.

I finished this--played it on "Original" difficulty. Restarting chapters over is a fundamental part of the game. I think calling this game "random" is unfair; If a random outcome is persistently causing something bad to happen like a character death or for you to fail the chapter, then you are not understanding something about the system of that particular chapter.

I only watched the quick look but i can see the frustration. However, does it occur to any of you that it's not a game to be played, but a narrative to be interacted with? I mean, the Walking Dead is the complete opposite of The Gods Will Be Watching, with zero randomness but still pretty much just a choose your adventure story?

@themangalist: The walking dead never kills you losing roughly 30 minutes of progress, then makes you see the same cutscene that can't be skipped. (which hopefully is just a bug)

Yah this game commits the awful sin of wasting your time in generous portions. You might know how the systems work but that doesn't mean as much as you'd think. In Chapter 3, you have to find a 3 letter combo followed by a 4 letter combo and it's entirely up to lady luck how many turns it will take you to stumble onto both. So you might spend 45 min on this level only to have to restart and the letter combinations get randomized again. You've gained nothing, you're forced to click through all the dialog again, and if you fail again it's quite literally back to square one.

As a person thats growing older and has a limited amount of time to play games throughout the day my real life becomes a strange version of this game where I have to balance out if I'm going to spend an hour playing Gods Will Be Watching and be exhausted, spend an hour playing something else and be more relaxed, or watch a TV show before it gets dark.

I'm up to the third chapter playing on Normal difficulty. Unlike the general consensus in this thread I'm actually really enjoying it. Some of the more random elements can be frustrating but, so far at least, I've found there's usually a way around it. There definitely is a lot of trial and error and playing the same scenario multiple times to figure out how the mechanics work. I can see how some people mightn't be into that but I quite enjoy it. Great atmosphere and art style too.

@development: The Russian roulette in chapter two really sucks. I found that to be the only torture scenario that is actually difficult because of the randomness. Just make sure you get information the night before so you can lie to him safely at least once, risk provoking him on the first and second roulettes where you have pretty good odds and then confess the rest on that day. The rest of the days are all pretty easily managed without confessing or even lying.

One of the other things that frustrates me about the game (because it indicates how close they came to getting certain mechanics RIGHT) is the inconsistency of rules between chapters. The biggest offender in my mind is the inability to multitask (most notably in chapter 5).

In chapter 5, you are given X number of "turns" to complete some task with a group of characters, but you're unable to have 2 people do different things at the same. If one guy is sent off to explore some area for 2 turns, that time is lost. You can't have the tell the rest of the team to spend those 2 hours resting or scavenging or send out a second guy to explore some different area. Everyone has to sit there quietly, doing nothing, until your first task is complete.

The reason that this is a frustration of inconsistency as opposed to plain dumb mechanics is that unlike the rest of the game, they got it right in chapter 3. The entire chapter revolves around the ability to manage multiple workloads efficiently. You start one guy on a 6 turn job, one guy on a 3 turn job, and tell another guy to rest for 3 turns. 3 turns later, you swap in the resting guy for the person who finished the 3 turn task so that by the start of turn 7, he's rested up enough to take over for the now exhausted first guy (who's been working the last 6 turns). There's still some amount of RNG messing stuff up, but at least you aren't ALSO arbitrarily wasting turns.

I didn't even watch the QL for this game. I said 'fuck this shit' to the original flash game. People's behavior seemed totally nonsensical. If you've got a clear path to escape if you'll just wait for the radio to be repaired, why are people getting depressed?

Lots of people playing this game who clearly shouldn't be. If you are as upset as the OP the game *is not for you*, and that's totally ok. :)

because it's super cold, the food supply is limited (they're getting 1 meal a day in the best case scenario) and 5 hours of sunlight. Also there's that deadly virus.

I was insanely excited for this game, but it's really getting on my nerves, as seems to be happening with others here.
The fact that it isn't "FUN" has to be well defined though. Papers, Please wasn't fun but it might be one of my favourite games of the last years. Being depressing and a psychological torture can be an incredible experience and commentary.
The fact that it's hard should also not be confused with Dark Souls, Hotline Miami (like the OP pointed out) or XCOM. In those games you know exactly what brought you to a fail state and, with that knowledge, you can get better. I'm not sure what I did better the times I got through chapter 1 and 2, than the times I didn't.

I'll play it to the end, but it's a bummer, not in a good way.

@pyrodactyl: Whatever man, I've seen Alive, those dudes kept it together with way less hope of rescue.

That would make sense if the game actually allowed you to progress and didn't stick a massive "Game Over" screen in your face when you hit a certain point.

Good concept but it needs some top notch writing for it to progress into something bigger.

I purchased the game, but now I'm trying to decide if I want to play after repeated deaths in the second chapter. I feel the first chapter was a good length. I died a lot, but I knew what I had to do, and the randomness made it fun. Now, in the second chapter, the game has become a chore. More than 40 minutes in, a bad lie resulted in Burden being ripped in half. Every time I start over, I know exactly in what order I'm going to do things, I just need to get lucky in the roulette portion and with my lying. Mindlessly clicking for thirty minutes just to get to a point where a dice roll determines my fate isn't my definition of fun.

I've been having a really positive experience with the game so far, just finished chapter 3 on the normal difficultly. I get why some people are unhappy with the randomness and difficulty, but I honestly don't think the game would work any other way. Honestly, most of the really cool moments I've had with the game are because of that difficulty. My favorite moment so far was specifically in the chapter 2, after spending 25-30 mins surviving the intense torture scenes, the guy pulls out a instrument that is obviously just blind luck as to whether it will kill you outright or not. So yes, you could look at that and go 'Aw, that's cheap', instead my thoughts were: 'oh no, oh no, oh no, I can't lose my progress', and my resolve to either lie or stay tight lipped dies and I start begging and spilling my guts answering his questions just to hopefully survive. Really effective scene.

Would anyone who has had a positive experience with the game take me through Chapter 1?

http://steamcommunity.com/id/bison/

I've been at it for over an hour and just had three hostages in the first five turns, talking and charging the hack boost do not calm them down, the only guide on steam basically says "Trial and Error".

My general strategy is to charge the hack boost for the first few turns (this SHOULD calm the hostages down), shoot at the guards when they're two spaces away from me, reinforce security when it's at around 70%. The hostages seem to be random from my experience, when Vinny played it in the quicklook they seemed to be a bit more predictable.

EDIT: I just lost all four hostages on consecutive turns, I got the first one to run away by calming him down. I don't know how this game works anymore, how else can you calm them down (other than sending them to the breakroom which has also set them off)?

I don't know I have read tons of reviews and comments on this thing and most people have a massively negative opinion about it. For every positive review I could point you at 5 or more negative ones. Sounds like a highly pretentious art game that is trying to bite off more than it can chew while hoping you excuse it for having terrible gameplay because it is so deep and that makes up for it.

@karkarov: I was greatly looking forward to this because I thought it would be a bit more "open" to different scenario outcomes, instead it's just a binary "Did you succeed? Y/N" and it seems to be near impossible to "win"

I love the idea but something went horribly wrong in the transition to retail game, it was an amazing game jam game. I hope the same doesn't happen to SuperHot.

@generalbison: Most levels can be won when you reduce the difficulty to the minimum. Normally you might have some moral qualms about simply murdering people because it's too much work to manage them, but the cold, hard, calculating nature of this game quickly beats any sort of empathy out of you reducing itself to a pure numbers game.

The easiest solution for this level is such: reduce your hostages to just 1, that is all you need. Kill them or let them run away until only 1 remains. Have Jack negotiate with the security force - this will buy you 2 turns of immobility from them if I remember correctly. After you do a negotiate, charge the hack boost. Then if your hostage is too calm kick him once. Start the loop again.

Basically you want to

Negotiate

Hack boost

Kick/calm hostage

-repeat

This will drag on for quite a while, and you might be tempted to try two charges of the hack boost but that might completely disrupt your rhythm. This is the greatest downfall of this game really. You know the solution and now you'll have to repeat it the same exact loop roughly 20 times with no variation. Nothing will change, you'll just be clicking your way through all the same dialog over and over.

The problem is that all of these scenarios are way too long. The best level in the entire game comes near the very end and it takes roughly 8 minutes to complete - and that is what makes it enjoyable. It's dynamic, it offers several possibilities and it doesn't drag for 30-40 minutes. I'm sure at one point most of their game must have looked like this and then they realized it can be completed in under 30 minutes - which is cutting it short even by Gone Home standards.

@generalbison: You need to watch their mood closely.

If they are too comfy, you need to Shout, Kick, Shoot them or Attack the Guards.

If they are too nervous, you need to Calm Them Down, Charge Hack, etc.

You need to know the affect all your actions have on them, and plan accordingly. I think Chapter 1 is actually pretty easy once you understand their moods and how to manipulate them. Nothing in GWBW is irrelevant! In every chapter pay close attention to your character's animations/stance - this is their mood and the whole game revolves around it.

This isn't true at all though! Not calling you a liar duder just maybe you haven't seen how yet.

There are many ways to finish each chapter with very many different outcomes (who lives and dies, your approach [aggressive, soft ; suicidal, cowardly]), and you can also solve each chapter in many different ways. Not sure how much you've played so far but I can guarantee this for Ch 1, 2 and 3 so far.

It took me *hours* to figure out chapter 2 but now I can get through almost entirely unscathed and save Jack with full health.

It also took *hours* to beat chapter 1 and the first time I did it I had to kill 2 hostages, attacked the guards constantly. The last time no one died! No one escaped!

:D

I know this game can be ULTRA FRUSTRATING but I love it to death so far. You need to have patience, tackle it a little bit at a time day over day and keep applying what you learn. This is *not* a one sitting game, very much like the original GWBW.

you have to be willing to think about what went wrong, and not do that next time. most people must be following the same strategy again and again and when it doesnt work saying fuck this game instead of considering whether they are the problem

im on chapter 5 after about 4 hours of play and with the exception of a russian roulette bullet, am certain that my strategy for each chapter had a 100% success rate, once i had figured out what was going on

chapter one: get down to one hostage, watch them closely, really not much else to it

chapter two: beg when you are on lowest health, alternate provoke, don't think when someone is on the rack.

chapter three: this was really easy, use a bit of paper when you get the results of the antidote to decide what is possible, time management, did this with about 6 hours to spare

chapter 4: have the doctor make 4-5 antidotes, kill everyone but jack and the dog, then relax,

@geraltitude: I don't know how I can watch their moods any closer to be honest. I'm doing everything you said (mentioned them all in my post) but they seem to just have random effects, as I said I've had hostages get too panicked after I've "calmed them down". All I've seen is what's in the quick look, I can't make it past chapter one. I don't think I have the patience to put another hour into this one chapter, it's stressing me out immensely, not fun and I don't really feel like it's worth seeing any more of it.

I realise all of these things, I know the tells and the stages that the hostages go through but my actions don't seem to have any effect. Shouting, kicking, shooting always works at stopping them from getting too comfortable, I just can't calm them down.

@wlleiotl: The problem I'm having is that hostages are getting stressed and panicked and running, charging the hack boost doesn't work, chatting to them doesn't work, how do I do this? Getting down to one hostage makes handling things easier but I still have problems with "calm down" making them more stressed.

@humanity: I'll give this method a go, I'm sure I've tried something similar. So far I'm not finding it fun, interesting or engaging, just stressful and disappointing.

EDIT: Okay, using your method worked first time, I have no idea how but I'm amazingly pissed right now. Thank you.

Thought I should come back and say that I was wrong, the fifth chapter does have a way to tell how close you are to being done. I didn't play around enough with the menus, as I also failed to do any attacks in that chapter until I revisited it yesterday.

Having beaten the game now on original difficulty, I no longer feel like it's too hard or that any particular chapter is egregiously unfair. Of course, I got through the russian roulette section of chapter two on my first try, so maybe I just got lucky there.

I do still think that the game and story are too boring to recommend it.

I will absolutely be playing on Puzzle Mode

It's crazy that this wasn't an option to begin with. Even the writer of the article mystified that the game as it was originally designed was governed by invisible dice rolls.

So after making it to chapter 4 on original difficulty and getting a fail state from one of the dumbest dice rolls in the game I quit for a couple days. Came back today to play on puzzle mode, got further than I'd ever been in about 45 minutes and decided I don't want to play Gods Will Be Watching anymore. Throwing in a mode that completely changes the way the game was designed doesn't make it any better. As someone whose really into the idea of games exploring narrative gameplay, I found this title incredibly disappointing.

It's a hard video game. So yes. It's hard.

My problem is that there's an element to it that is entirely out of your control. I don't know how random the elements of chance are but from my experiences I've had the outcome of most choices be the complete opposite of what it "should" be, what it was established to be.

At a certain point it doesn't really matter what choices you make, which, I guess, is what the game is trying to do, but it doesn't make it any less aggravating and stressful especially for someone that may have mental or neurological accessibility issues.

This is not difficulty to me, this is dumb luck