(something went wrong with my first try)
My son (9) proposed to add the map to the game WITHOUT the letters (simular to the possibilities in "castaway"-games: you can open a little map for orientation) - I would add: perhaps with the possibility to choose wheter with or without letters...

One more wish:
My son (9) proposed to add the map WITHOUT

Don't know what is different from Sunday's game compared to Saturday's game but it took me over 10 hours to download the game file. I have not had this problem until today. Have no idea if it's coming from the game company's site orGOTD but........ It's after midnight and so I haven't even had a chance to play the game and see what it is like.

Not bad for a free game but after i found F i got a green screen and it froze. Needs more beta testing before publishing. Also i was able to walk in the dirt. Will be uninstalling.

I caught a review that suggested that this community be used to trying out games in development. I think that is a great idea. Especially since we are having a hard time getting games to give away. While I love getting games that are on the market already (LOVE this) one of the things I have been sad about is that no matter what feedback I give nothing will make it into the game since it is already finished. The little hope I have of being useful is if the developer uses the info for their next game.

Having a mix of finished games and games in development might be a really good direction for GGOTD to go. The dev games could fill the gaps and the big games to maintain the audience.

Personally, I am not bothering to download this one as I am not interested in the game.

........................Moderator Comment........................

It has been my hope for a long time, but the only way it would happen is if the community strted to post constructive comments like today. :)

Is a "death" or "shooting" really suitable in a game for pre-schoolers? Violence is considered an absolute no-no. You need to know your market.

There needs to be an option to turn off the sound.

I ran into some clipping when running beside the riverbank.

........................Moderator Comment........................

To everyone who has commented so far today. Thank you for your excellent feedback, and also a big thank you to the developer who has tried to answer lots of questions. It's unusual to see developers contibuting to the comments. I was very pleased to see you here.

I must apologise for the late moderation again. Had forgotten that we had been invited to my father-in-laws 70th birthday once we arrived back from archery, so the 3 hour absence turned into 12 hours. There are three pages of comments to moderate, which will take me a few hours or more to moderate fully. I will work through all of the comments over the next several hours, at least before the giveaway ends. Those with problems will be prioritised.

If anyone is having problems with the game please visit the FAQ's thread over in the game discussion forums. I usually post a link, but didn't have the time to write a full review this morning, so the link wasn't posted. You can find the FAQ's thread in the sticky section of the game discussion forums. For those who didn't find this game to their taste, or don't have young children to entertain, please do check the Weekly roundup of game deals, where you'll find some excellent deals, especially from the game bundle sites.

Obviously a lot of love and attention went into creating this game. Needs a bit more attention to the user interface to make it readily playable and successful though. Some suggestions:
1. Make a help key always visible on the main screen
2. Enhance help so it gives suggestions as to where to move
3. Make clear the tutorial ought to be played (perhaps by a "do you want a tutorial" window at the start) and/or (probably preferable) a quick show of the options & moves
4. Provide a clear option on the help screen for how to get to the manual - you did a nice job creating one, but most people will never find it or know it exists
5. Adjust your help map, which nicely shows where letters are hidden, to also provide navigation arrows that will let you know how to get to portions not shown (eg, I found A, then C, D, & E but had no clue where B was and it was not on the map either. I assume that's 'cause it was off screen on the map, but there were no controls to show me how to bring it into view)
6. Dont make me pick up letters in order - it was extremely annoying not to be able to get C, D, & E after I found them just because I had no clue where B was, nor any "help" on how to find it. If you are going to force order, at least provide a way to get help to find the next "correct" choice
7. Must be some glitches in displaying the words associated with found letters, because I never did get apple or banana showing when I found A, as others did
8. Frustrating to get to doors & not be able to open them, nor know why not or if there are preceding steps that must be taken. Add comment if I keep ramming myself into a door, directing me to another option
9. Fix movement somewhat - like gently keep me on path even if it winds slightly. I spent lots of time walking through things, tripping over bridge pylons, seeing "myself" close but not on paths, etc (though it was cute seeing I could walk on water!). I also wound up many times not being able to move at all, even if there were no barriers. Not quite sure what was up with that.
10. Fix your help tutorial to give more direction. For example, it did not tell me up arrow was to move forward until after I actually USED the up arrow. Also, I apparently did something that diverged from how you expected me to use the tutorial (no doubt by choosing to walk over to see if I could pick up the bone) and suddenly the tutorial stopped being useful....not teaching me how to advance in the game or what the mechanics were, but simply showing me, say, an up arrow key or down arrow key, but even if I continued to use them, I never got any further direction as to how to play.
11. Provide unsolicited help if no progress made in a bit of play
12. Some music might be nice too.

Again, as said, it is clear a lot of work went into this game and you care about it since you are participating so nicely in the user comments here. But you definitely need some more user feedback and beta testing to progress from "good idea" to "successful, popular game". You are close, but need more work, and hopefully will get enough feedback here to help. :-)

........................Moderator Comment........................

Thank you for your excellent feedback Lurkercat, much appreciated. Hopefully the developer will take note of your comments. :)

By the way:
I think it's not the worst idea to "use" this community for testing newly developped games and improve them before selling. As far as I know we are international - once around the world so this would be fantastic...
But perhaps: tell before you do so... ;-)

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It's one of the things I've been trying to get the community to do for the past several years; i.e. giving useful positive or negative feedback to the developers, especially good quality feedback. Such feedback could give the game giveawayoftheday a good name amongst developers looking for beta testers and reviews of the games they create. Feedback can be very useful to developers, and a good way to improve their games and also interact with the community like the developer of todays game has done. It always creates some positive vibes that can mean sales for the developer in the future. I'd always hoped this site would become such a magnet for developers. Sadly that still hasn't happened, but if enough community members start to post useful feedback instead of whinging, it may still happen. The better the feedback, the more developers would want to get their games here to get that quality feedback. A win win for both developer and community member/consumer.

That's a great educational program for the kids. It teaches them the Alphabets in a very easy and exciting way. Greatly appreciate the effort put behind the game. Can't wait to see the next version

........................Moderator Comment........................

:)

Hi Stephen-whiterabbit, developer and all. :-)

Yes, I got the same problems of other members.

1) on the website, I can't find what OSes are supported
2) I found the complete list of commands on the game/developer website and in my opinion that list should be added to the game.
3) download is very big
4) installation is very longer and buggy
5) given that I'm a little kid, I'd like to know what I must do: insert a voice telling something like "ehi little boy, you must find the letter A", and show how that's done
6) when I find letter A, I must be informed I should find letter B and how it's done. And probably some hint on where it is: I couldn't find the letter B even if I HACKED the map!!!
7) the jump doesn't seem a jump (it should go upper)
8) Given that there's a frog that croaks, why not adding the dolphin clickers? (And by the way: a dolphin in a little not salted lake?)
9) The messages are not displayed, when I find the letters

SO: windows 10 x64 (home/standard), 6GB ram, pagefile.sys disabled

Hope this helps to make the game a little better than what it is now. ;-)

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Thank you for your feedback xilolee, appreciated. :)

No comments on the game itself but three cheers for Letters Kingdom for so actively participating in the comments.

The game downloaded like always.
And installed fine in WinXP VM.
Bur the graphic card was not suitable for the game.
In Win8.1 the game started well; click to go to the next screen.
I found the letter A somewhere.
And the letter C, D, E and F(throw with the Ctrl some rocks).
But where is letter B??

It's possible to walk on anything, in the water.
But where's is B ?

Hi Stephen-whiterabbit, developer and all. :-)

Yes, I got the same problems of other members.
0) On the website, I can't find what OS are supported
1) download is bigger
2) installation is longer and buggy
3) given that I'm a little kid, I'd like to know what I must do: insert a voice telling something like "ehi little boy, you must find the letter A", and show how that's done
4) when I find letter A, I must be informed I should find letter B and how it's done. And probably some hint on where it is: I couldn't find the letter B even if I HACKED the map!!!
5) the jump doesn't seem a jump (it should go upper)
6) Given that there's a frog that croaks, why not adding the dolphin clickers? (And by the way: a dolphin in a little not salted lake?)

Hope this helps to make the game a little better than what it is now. ;-)

I downloaded this game, making sure I had my AV turned off. Then when I went to do the Setup, I got an error message that said "Failure to Launch Program".
So, I uninstalled it, rebooted and downloaded the game again and came across the same error message.

Please advise.
Thank you

........................Moderator Comment........................

Please excuse my very late moderation. Please go to the FAQ's thread over in the game discussion forums. You'll find the thread in the sticky section. There are other fixes other than the AV fix. Try compatibilty mode and make sure you have thge admin checked. Please let me know if you require further assistance.

Ok, well, this game really doesn't need to be as big as it is. The color and brightness can be achieved other ways, specifically without the bad attempt at texturing and environmental sculpting, it needs map compression badly. (that's the developers and not so much the engine) Though keyboard controls do have merit as I can see parents/teachers wanting children to learn letters, not having controller support for this sort of game now-a-days for the younger ones is rough. The major kill switch for this game, my character glitches right off the bridge and got stuck on the environment. This is bad and happens a lot during the game. The character glitches again wile picking up the "C" in the pond near a ...dolphin that croaks like a frog? (was that intentional?) Also, not sure how others feel about this but calling a child "Kid" during the help tutorial seems a little unusual. (is that the character's name "Kid") I don't normally do this, I like to give a good review almost no matter what as my mom said bottle the bad and let the pretty bubble out - the idea of the game is great (fantastic even), unfortunately, the execution is miserable. This game needs a lot of work. There's potential but we're going to have to dig a wile for the gold.

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Thank you for your feedback Michelina

tried downloading it but it downloads with 40kbps and I am not gonna wait 5 hrs for a game tha many have said is freezing. Might try later tonight.
Stephen, ever thought about trying OBS for recording, you should be able to record the game using the desktop as source for recording if the game itself won't work as source

Purely FWIW...

Your wife would know Much more on the topic WR, but I suspect at home most parents & grandparents would give kinds in the 3-6 age group a cheaper tablet or old cell phone, before they'd set them down at a reasonably capable PC or laptop. Particularly for younger ages, I'd expect schools might use Chromebooks if they used PC devices at all. The Android Kindles seem pretty rugged, & I've seen them promoted for children.

If that were the case, then I'd expect the market would already try to fill demand, & a couple few searches seem to confirm my guess... Over at the Google Play Store, the [Play Store] suggested search term "abc for kids learn alphabet" brings up quite a few apps. In another search, there seem to be several apps to use with Chromebooks, though not as many as the Play Store. Searching for the same sort of app in the Windows store I didn't see anything. Using Google, searching for Windows software brought up several shareware sites, but on the whole it didn't look promising.

My suggestion then for the kind folks behind Letters Kingdom would be to look at the new development or coding tools Microsoft is just releasing, which let devs more easily port apps to iOS, Android, & as universal apps in the Windows store. As Google is bringing Android apps to the Chromebook, that would have you covered on all the platforms with the minimum amount of work & costs. The current video aspects could be streamed [with handhelds & chromebooks being connected to the internets is a given], &/or converted to animations as in current Android & iOS games -- 751MB downloads are tailored for [old school?] desktop PCs with big hard drives, which are precisely the devices experiencing huge declines in sales.

That said, seems a great idea behind Letters Kingdom -- hope you are successful in getting it into the hands of many thousands of children.

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Thank you for your feedback mike. Yeah you are right, tohugh we have five working PC's a couple that need new HDD's plus two working laptops as well as the kids ipods and pads.; My daughter uses her iPad mainly for her art, but she prefers the PC to other hardware as does my son. My wife is the only one who uses the laptops except when we go on vacation. :)

I'm not downloading this because:
- it is way too large for the program that it is with today's standards
- I have no use for this at all
- it'll make me sick

I watch the videos on the web site and, yes, this game looks dated. My observations based on the videos are as follows.

The color palette for the game play seems way too muted for kids of this age. Usually products aimed at this age level are extremely bright and colorful. I can't imagine this will hold the visual interest of children over other products. I found it boring, whereas other products I've tried for kids I find visually stimulating and playful. The web site itself is much more colorful than the game. The graphics themselves are clunky and confusing looking. Large objects like trees are discernible but small objects (like what need to be found) blend into the pixellated background.

The game play seems overly complicated and redundant. I'm not sure kids of this age will know to toggle a map or will find it useful/fun. Don't get me wrong, I like the map feature, but we're talking really young children. I see the need for a map to help navigate as making this too complicated & possibly detrimental for the intended purpose. If they are so intent on finding their way around the environment, how much attention will be devoted to learning the concepts?

There seems to be a lot of running without reward. Maybe it gets more exciting as it progresses or the videos were purposefully kept sedate, but kids like reward stimulation. This reminds me of those horrible educational games put out on those horribly slow and cumbersome Macs in public schools in the 80's. No one enjoyed them and they were only played when forced to do so.

The camera is very jerky in movement. It's not smooth at all, which may be what is causing so many people to feel motion sick. I've played some runner games and have enjoyed them. What they don't have is jerky camera movements. This was making me a bit queasy just looking at the short video.

None of the videos posted showed the actual reward for finding a letter. The only thing found was a key and it wasn't picked up. Is there something specific that needs to be done to pick up a key or letter? As with similarly designed adult games that look like this, I didn't even see the key. I would expect there to be floating letters over the key spelling "Key". If a kid finds a key, why not take the opportunity to reinforce the letter "K"? Does a child simply run around and collect whatever letters he stumbles across or is there a specific mission, like finding them in order?

Does a small child want to play a game wherein they are "seriously hurt". I find the idea of a human-like dog ("Doug") throwing objects at the small child and 'seriously hurting' him (killing him) to be a bit disturbing in a game aimed at such a young age and whose purpose is to teach the alphabet. Then there is the normal looking dog guarding a letter (are we trying to make kids terrified of dogs in general?) Don't forget the spiked hallway pool "designed to trick players in the game". Really?! Are we trying to teach 6 year olds that a house might be booby-trapped and if they aren't careful they might be tricked into impaling themselves? There are other ways to create conflict & challenge in a game that don't require violence. And what's with the house that looks like there is a raging inferno inside? Wait. Maybe that has a pedophile inside cooking up the last hapless kid who was stoned to death by a werewolf or dived into the spike-ladened hallway pool.

Is there enjoyment in finding the letters? What reward is there other than putting up a graphic of an apple or banana for the letter 'A' (as another user noted). How is this different from a picture book or flash card? And how confusing will it be for a young child to see an apple and banana for the letter 'A'? We know 'A' is in 'banana', but is it explained to the child? Does the child have to find them in order? Is there a story other than a kid falls asleep and wakes up in a nightmare world where at any moment he may die?

There is one video where the child runs past a frog that 'ribbits' at him. Is the frog interactive or just there for atmosphere? Can a child touch the frog and be shown the letter F? Can a child run through the game finding all the letter 'F' objects?

I notice the game writes out the letters on a fake chalkboard and gives word examples with NO explanation. Is a child expected to play this with an adult hovering over them to explain things? Looking at the letter writing examples, I would expect that every first letter of a word is capitalized and all subsequent letters are lowercase. Why isn't there audio naming the letters and pronouncing their sounds?

I understand some of these questions may be answered by playing the game, but as a busy adult, I don't want to have to play every kid's game to find one that is good (if I were looking). The developer should have a clear and concise explanation on their site about the game play, it's benefits, and what can be expected as well as videos that show the learning part of the game play. I didn't see any of that on the site. It is VERY nice to have a demo of a game, but requiring a user to play the demo to learn the basic functions and benefits of the game is counterproductive. It's a kids' game. No adult wants to play a kids' game just to learn the basic functions. We'll play one when we are satisfied it will meet our goals and only then to make sure it holds up to it's claims.

........................Moderator Comment........................

Thank you for your excellent feedback Melika, very much appreciated. Please forgive the extremely late moderation. I'd forgotten that we had been invited to my wifes fathers 70th birthday celebrations.

We're posting maps for the game levels in order to facilitate finding the letters for those who want easier game play :)

Please follow us on twitter and the links will be there soon !

On the first sight it looks funny - especially for me as a bit crazy language teacher. Let's see whether I can use it in my (private) lessons...

As a language teacher, you would be the perfect person to assess this game. Please do let the community know what you think of it. Thank you, regards Stephen