[...]Quest Guidance, Wildhollow and Rise of the Argonauts | Cynical Stuff – Casual games development and cynical observations[...]…

Nope, you’re not missing anything at all! The game was in development for a long time, and I had a break for about six months. When I resumed work on the game I decided to refocus some things; make the game a little easier and more rewarding to play. That’s when I realized that the grass was…unnecessary and wouldn’t add anything to the game experience.

From my experience of playing the game the quests weren’t difficult and to add anymore guidance to them would make the game far too easy. It would really dumb it down. You already have the quest text which tells us what quests we’re on anyway. Anything simplifying things further would be removing the challenge completely. I don’t think players are that stupid to need to be handheld right throughout the game, and even if they are, well that’s what walkthroughs are for. Let them struggle a bit with the game, discover what they need to do through trial and error and then consult a walkthrough if they’re really stuck. Exploration isn’t a bad thing. It’s part of the gameplay.

The only thing I had issues with was finding the grass since I didn’t even realise the grass randomly appeared on screens. The moment you told me that I could find grass and that it was hidden I went looking for it and managed to spot some. A simple “find some grass” quest would have let me know that grass was available and I could have worked out from there where to find it. Or even just a comment from one of the npcs about how sometimes good grass can be found which feeds the animals would have made me aware of the presence of the grass.

No! Don’t include graphic indicators. Don’t hold the player’s hand. The game’s easy enough as it is. The difficulty level of the adventure aspects seemed perfect for the genre. Compared to adventure games it was easy. Compared to casual games which spoonfeed you the plot it was fine. Let people wander around and find out who to talk to. There’s not too many people to try and a little trial and error never hurt anyone.

If you’re looking at other games in the casual sphere the two I can think of which have similarish adventure elements are Tradewinds (not the first but all the others) and Chocolatier. They have you going around, doing adventurish things, needing to find the right people to talk to and the right places to go for various items. They have the quest log, just like you do. I found in Chocolatier I’d sometimes forget where someone was and I’d have to spend ages checking every location for the person I wanted to talk to and the travel times between locations made this frustrating. Since you don’t have travel time I don’t think not knowing exactly what to do would be limiting.

I think Chocolatier has the NPCs pop up and remind you what you’re doing if you don’t do it. Could be wrong though.

I don’t think you need graphic indicators of who to talk to next. I think that aspect’s fine as it is.