Okay, I've played for about an hour and have some general feedback.
(1) The art direction and writing are amazing. Really digging the look and feel of the game. The talking rock is great.
(2) Getting started is clear enough, I guess, but I'm really missing the point of the game. I've played MMOs for years and I've played various social games on FB and whatnot, but I must be totally missing the reason for leveling up, petting/milking/squeezing animals, etc. Is there some ultimate goal to this game, aside from gaining more XP or selling/auctioning stuff? I'm just not clear on what we're trying to accomplish.
(3) There doesn't seem to be much emphasis on socializing. I see the local chat for the "zone"/region I'm in on the right hand side, but I'm switching zones every 10 seconds running around so it's hard to start a conversation (or even figure out why I would.)
(4) Figuring out where I am is a little on the difficult side. I see the map, but I have a teleport icon on my rock dude that I can't click on. I got lost in some kind of dungeon (it was underground and had levels.. that's as far as I go for a comparison) for a good 10 minutes before I made my way back out. Not sure if there are quick routes to get back to "important" places like the vendor area (Ti street?) that I've had mentioned in a couple of quests.
(5) Figuring out where to go for certain quests is amazingly difficult. It took me a while to find any pigs for the first rasher quest, then finally I got to a street with 4 or 5 pigs roaming around. Then I was trying to find 5 dirt patches to tend to for another quest I got after learning a skill, and I literally ran around endlessly for a good 25 minutes trying to find ANY dirt patches... I found *one*.
(6) The platformer-like nature of the game and the Flash interface seem to lend themselves to overshooting on jumps constantly. I'm used to playing platformers but I find sometimes I lag out a bit and miss my jumps on a regular basis, especially on jumps where your arc is pretty high. Minor tweaks, I guess, but it would help in areas where you're doing a lot of jumping.
I guess maybe I'm just too used to .. err.. every other type of game I played in the past. I appreciate the art quality and visual diversity, and the esoteric nature of the game is fun. But I'm totally at a loss for why I would continue playing without some kind of obvious goal in mind... I'm sure improving the quest text and mapping/transport would help alleviate some of the more specific issues I listed above, but in general, I've spent the last half hour scratching my head going... "why? what am I doing here?"
Sorry for the ranty-ness. I think the developers and artists have done a killer job in implementing things, I'm just.. err.. not sure why I'd keep playing, heh. Guess that's contradictory, but if it's any consolation, it's probably the first time in recent memory that I've been so torn about my opinion on a game.
Cheers,
-nick
(@nickb on Twitter)