Ringtail (alpha)

Will there be a Linux version?

I'm not sure if this is intended, but the demo ends when I find the hidden raccoon whether I got the mouse as a friend or not. The game looks really good and I can't wait to see more! Is there going to be a PC version, too, when final version comes out?

A very neat project.

I agree with points @GammaFoxTBG's critique, my main issues were the raccoon's speed and the wait time between the sentences.

It would be great if you could fast forward the dialogues. One click shows the phrase completely and the second skips it and forwards to the next, like in many RPGs.

Neat Concept! Very cute art style.

I like the idea of learning languages by exploring.

I did find the Trees blocking the way kind of annoying since the movement speed is kind of slow. I had trouble speaking to the crow in the tree, and the crows in the lake.

Ideas:

Maybe add a progression indicator? Ex: You learned 78% of the crow language.

Make the racoon speak? If the raccoon is looking for it's child, make him ask the crows. (Maybe not every time but per area).

Make objectives unveil themselves as you learn languages:  Ex: a crow tells you to tell the bear blocking the way to wake up. This tells you to learn the bear language to progress to the next area. It makes the next objective unveil itself by using your main mechanic!

(These are just ideas. Doesn't mean they fit with your game.)

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Good job! I'll keep an eye on the project!

Really cute game! Very bright and atmospheric, I think the general premise of having to learn language from other creatures and use it to piece puzzles together is a really awesome idea, and I think that this could come to be a really interesting game.

Wanted to give some design feedback for you in its current state, so I apologize for the following wall of text.

The map is big and expansive, so that gives a lot of wiggle room for you to put things in, which is definitely something that will help in the future. The overall traversal workload is pretty high, so you may want to consider reducing that. What I mean is that, the map is big, and the raccoon moves very slowly, so if I think "Wait, maybe I can understand that crow near the beginning of the game now" or "Did I miss a crow somewhere?" it can take a lot of time to get over there. This may get a bit frustrating for players later on when you inevitably scale things up and you have to move around even larger spaces. So either increasing the movement speed, or creating other traversal options down the line would help greatly (shortcuts, open up new paths to loop, etc.) I suspect you probably have plans to approach this down the line, but just thought I'd bring it up.

The text system looks very clean and well-polished, and I think the way you encrypt the unknown language is great. The fact that you can also change text speed is a great QoL addition as well. One critique of it I have is that characters like your guide raccoon could probably use larger speech bubbles to allow you to process bigger strings of text. Perhaps have it wait for the player to interact again to resume the next chunk of dialogue. It's a bit hard to keep track of the conversation when you're fed one half of a sentence, and then reading the next and trying to keep it all together in your head as you read. The text speed is definitely a good start to help that though.

The map layout so far is good! I think the way you've designed it to carefully guide the player and allow some freedom but make sure they focus on the starting area is a good decision. The sidewalks are also a really clever idea to be able to give a bit of guidance of where you can go, but also allow players to reconvene if they decide to explore off the path for a bit.

The sprites are very clean and contrasts well, and the silhouette was a great idea, especially to set you up for some secrets in the future. I'm not much of an artist, so take this with a grain of salt, but I would argue that the ground seems just a tad too noisy, and might benefit from reducing the number of the sprouts/grass-patches a bit, and/or mixing in some smaller details like perhaps a pebble here or there. Just so it doesn't take too much of the attention while you're walking, as the dark green ones draw a bit of attention with their contrast while you're walking around already trying to explore and find things.

Overall, I think you're doing an awesome job so far. It's looking really good and I'll be sure to keep an eye out for more updates. If you'd like to discuss stuff further or anything, feel free to message me on Twitter (same name). Keep up the awesome work.