Cognition Demo Thoughts and Feedback

[KatieHal]

The demo of Episode 1: The Hangman is now available! Download it, check out, and let us know what you think! We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on Erica's first (and very harrowing!) 'adventure'.

Download available here: http://raindg.com/title/cognition/

And if you're in Europe and can't access the Rain page, the demo will soon be available via a link on the Cognition website (if it hasn't finished it's upload to our site already).

[dpm99]

Well, I was immensely impressed with the demo. Allowing players to experience two different endings (that I found) was quite a nice surprise. I have to apologize for not supporting your Kickstarter campaign. I had my doubts about whether or not you could produce a quality product on such a miniscule budget. The voice actress for Erica is top-notch, the gameplay “hook” is unique and fun to use, the character models are detailed and beautifully animated, and the game has an atmosphere that compels me to keep playing.

One thing confused me, however: Why was the killer in the “Hangman” episode 1 demo always referred to as the “Cain Killer”? I thought the “Cain Killer” was the focus of episode 4.

I am genuinely interested in eventually purchasing this game. Unfortunately, I will have to wait a while, since I do not support the DRM associated with digitally distributed games. If/when a boxed copy (that does not require Steam, Origin, uPlay, etc.) is ever produced, you will have my support.

[KatieHal]

The Hangman and the Cain Killer are two different people--the Cain Killer is in the demo section of Episode 1, but the rest of the episode has a different focus. More than that would be spoilers!

Glad you enjoyed the demo!

[dkbtf]

The demo is a lot better than I tought it would be. I've backed this game with not big expectations, to support the adventure genre, and now I'm eagerly waiting for the release of this first episode. Sad I've didn't pledged more to this project, who actually deserved it.

For my thoughts about the demo :

The voice acting and music is perfect, very immersive.

The animation is not perfect, but in the vein of Telltale's Walking Dead (who had a bigger budget). But the story and the sounds are so immersive that it didn't bothered me at all (which I thought it would, seeing the screenshots).

I loved the visual of the angel statue a lot, and the visual in general. I've been stressed the entire demo, feeling the urge to move, to resolve the case as fast as I could to save Erica's brother.

So, for me, it's a great job. Great story, ambiance, voices, puzzles...

(sorry if my english is not perfect, it's not my native language)

[Stignato]

Wow! Played the demo twice and loved it. Is this demo a earlier build of the game or the final one? Because i had bad performance sometimes, noticed that because my mouse cursor was really slow sometimes and while i had VSync turned off my graphic card got louder and overheated a bit i think Also i got buggy movement animations while i had VSync turned off, thought why this awesome game has so bad movement animations, but after i turned VSync on it was perfect. I really loved the demo, the only 2 things which could be better would be the performance and the loading mouse cursor. During the video sequences he should be invisible or turned off and the mouse cursor loading times could be better sometimes! I mean the time it takes until you can do something again. Hope its ok that i gave you guys this feedback 

[Jafar]

I guess it was just because it was a prolouge, but the puzzle solutions seemed really obvious to me. Erica pretty much spelled out everything I had to do. (And there was a HINT system? )

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

Also, having to call a man over to shovel dirt for her really hurts her tough-as-nails feminist heroine image.

[KatieHal]

Jafar:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

It wasn't that she couldn't physically shovel it herself, it was that her powers kept acting up & showing her Scott getting dragged into the tomb when she tried to use it (she comments on this, actually). Rather distracting when you're in a time crunch!

Design-wise, we wanted to incorporate working with John and making him a part of what was going on as well.

[Jafar]

I know, I know, I'm just teasing.

[Deloria]

I had trouble imagining a situation in which I were sorry about my brother's being horribly mutilated by a potential serial killer. Moreso because we've not actually seen any of their interactions in a non fatal-last-moment-retrospective setting. I didn't feel as though I got much insight into her character. I loved the artwork and thought the voice acting had some very good moments though. And I appreciate that the moon is an orange portal.

[Say]

Some screenshots for those who havent downloaded the demo yet!

The introo








The game




(Posted on: October 28, 2012, 03:35:26 PM)

BTW, forgot to say this...

I LOVE IT, AND CAN'T WAIT!

[SilverBall10]

I tried the demo and I've seen that in the cellular phone you can

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

click on "TSL EPISODE 5", if you choose "cancel" she says that she downloaded it already!

Does she live in the future??  
She hasn't already played it, though  

I want Episode 5 of The Silver Lining  

[KatieHal]

You found one of the easter eggs in the game! Nice!

Erica lives in something of a parallel dimension, since it's 2011 and she's got Ep 5 already I think in her world days are 36 hours long and they've got about 500 of them in a year, and that's how we had enough time to finish Ep 5 in Oct. 2011!

[sebarnolds]

Hi.

I played the demo yesterday and enjoyed every bit of it. It's great.

However, I won't buy it because of the DRM: I don't buy games that activate online because I want to be able to play my games whenever I want (even in 2020 if I want). The only exception to this rule is for games on promo.

If you ever release it drm-free (GOG or GamersGate ?), I'll gladly buy it.

Also, how do I get a different ending on the demo ?

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

By failing the last puzzle ?

[KatieHal]

Hi Seb--Actually, as of this week, the game is DRM-free at all sites We just announced it in our latest newsletter that went out last night, in fact. So yes, it is available on GamersGate DRM-free.

GOG doesn't do episodic content until everything it released--not even Walking Dead is up there yet! But once the whole game is out, we very much want to get the game on there.

And yes, that's how you get an alternate ending to the demo

[sebarnolds]

Thanks for the quick answer.

I don't really know if this is the right place to continue this conversation, so feel free to move this elsewhere if needed.

I'd prefer buy it on GamersGate but I have a coupon for it on the Rain shop as I am a CSG backer (Moebius). Can you tell me how it handles downloads and updates ? I saw it was Digital River so I guess downloads are limited in time. As I like drm-free, I like having the possibility to have an installer with the latest up-to-date version of the game, wil it be possible ? (not necessarily now, but at least, once the season is over).

Thanks forward.

PS: Don't forget to ask GamersGate folks to update the DRM description to DRM-free.

[snabbott]

Hi Seb--Actually, as of this week, the game is DRM-free at all sites

That should make a lot of people happy!

[wilco64256]

Thanks for the quick answer.

I don't really know if this is the right place to continue this conversation, so feel free to move this elsewhere if needed.

I'd prefer buy it on GamersGate but I have a coupon for it on the Rain shop as I am a CSG backer (Moebius). Can you tell me how it handles downloads and updates ? I saw it was Digital River so I guess downloads are limited in time. As I like drm-free, I like having the possibility to have an installer with the latest up-to-date version of the game, wil it be possible ? (not necessarily now, but at least, once the season is over).

Thanks forward.

PS: Don't forget to ask GamersGate folks to update the DRM description to DRM-free.

Yeah we're working on getting page descriptions updated, and no worries on the Digital River stuff. If we need to push an update through them you won't be restricted from downloading the update based on time.

[Pyyhkari]

Qualitywise, I'm very impressed. The overall mood was well maintained over the demo. The music loop at the midpoint might've been too short and I don't think the game managed to convey the main character's feeling at the very end of the demo as well as it should have. (Voice acting + E.R.'s face didn't uphold the suspension of disbelief for me. I expect many will vocally disagree with me.)

I came here via a link in Pinkerton Road Studios' Kickstarter backer e-mail with no real information outside that, so I may have missed some relevant information elsewhere - but the final note at the end of the demo originally led me to believe that this was the whole episode one ("Continued in Episode 2.") which was a huge letdown. Now I'm in the belief that there is much more to episode 1 than this.

A potential nitpick about a puzzle:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

The phone call to Terence(sp?) got frustrating since I managed to have the walls redecorated with red and gray but I couldn't completely skip ahead to the actual puzzle - unless I missed something (wouldn't surprise me). Maybe give the option on the second time onward attempting to clear the same puzzle?

Overall... this game will end up on my wishlist but won't grace my pile of shame a.k.a. backlog (which has at the moment at least half a dozen other adventure games - even without counting Telltale Games' games) for at least half a year. But I will go vote for it on Steam Greenlight right away.

[wilco64256]

Yeah that's just the demo, the first "act" of the game. It's just got the incorrect image at the end, sorry about that!

[boopish]

I wasn't sure what to expect from this game, so I tried out the demo. The character movement and interaction with the environment is well done. I was grateful for the tutorial, but unfortunately it made no mention of what the briefcase was for. I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure out the briefcase uses the selected item, but it would have been a nice feature to have the briefcase icon change to the selected item. Even just a quick pop up with a description of the three cursor points would have resolved this issue for me. I'm sure this wasn't an issue for almost everyone, but I wanted to be honest.

Erica's special power adds a nice depth to the game and puzzles. The music and voice acting is fantastic. The graphics portray the mood and the environment well. She runs a lot like I do, which is at roughly the same pace she walks. I didn't bother making her run, because I felt sorry for her.

My husband played Heavy Rain, which I disliked because it was graphic, and disturbing. Unfortunately Cognition reminds me of Heavy Rain, so I won't be playing it, but I do wish you the best success Cognition and your future endeavours.