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Red Tape's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #2 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.389 | 4.389 |
| Creativity | #2 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Story | #2 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Horror | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Gameplay | #3 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How did you choose to implement the Theme: Family Secret in your game?
The game is about a boy returning home from college to find his family keeping a secret from him. The goal of the game is to try to find out what they're hiding.
Did you implement any of the optional Bonus Challenges, and if so, which ones?
I mainly did the Home Video and Combination Lock challenges, the Lost and Forgotten one I didn't have time to put in.
Did you create your game in RPG Maker?
Yes
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Comments
this is a fantastic game! my only complaint is that the navigation in the tapes is a little hard, but...thats probably just a me thing, im bad at navigating in real life as well haha..loved the story, loved the presentation, and the sound design was absolutely an unsung hero of this, especially with the mother. fantastic game, fantastic presentation, i think this is my favorite submission in the jam (and i helped make one of them)
Thank you! Yeah, I definitively was trying to do too much with those tapes I think, but I'm glad you liked the game besides that!
yeah!! you are incredibly talented and i am so excited to see what else youll make in the future
Alright, I've finished the game with both endings, here's my review!
Gameplay
Ok, so, it's basically a "walking simulator" combined with a "Text Adventure" where you look at red tinted photos and choose your path through dialogue choices. I really like that the layout of the house changes after you watch each tape, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. And the subtle ways the game guides you. Like the part where you watch the tape and it ends with you finding a box under the bed. And then you can finally access your parents bedroom, so you think to look under the bed and yes, there's a box under the bed that you need to open. It really is a neat way to guide the player.
The one stumbling block is during that Flower tape, where you have to inspect all the flowers. I think the main issue that makes it harder than it should be is that one flower where you can inspect both the Flower and the Leaves. That one is very isolated from the rest of them and you need to take a very specific path to get to it. I think it would be better if you made that flower more "accessible" to increase the chance that the player finds it on their own.
Overall, I think it's good, with one frustrating part. I have considered giving it 4 Stars in this category, but the Flower tape didn't do this category much good.
3 Stars!
Story
Technically, it's a somewhat simple story, but told in an amazing way. Using many subtle dialogue and visual clues. For example, the footbal match the Dad watches where you can see that the "Red Team" is winning and getting closer to victory as the game goes on. And if you get the False Ending, you can look at the TV and see that the Red Team has won. I think you've certainly aced this category.
5 Stars!
Presentation
This was great! The style looks simplistic at first, but but then you notice the animations on the TV, the computer, the disappearing door etc. as well as the way the characters are animated, especially the parents. The red-tinted photos while watching the tapes are also great. The sound effects are fitting too. Basically, the visuals and the sounds fit together very well in this game. Other than maybe the fact that visually the main character himself was fairly static in comparison to everyone else, but you don't really notice that.
5 Stars!
Creativity
The visual style, the way the story is told and the tape scenes certainly display a great amount of creativity.
5 Stars!
Horror
This wasn't an overwhelmingly scary game, but the atmosphere was great. The house layout changing after watching each tape serves to unnerve the player, the red-tinted photos transform what would be relatively mundane scenes into ominous, unsettling locations, the way that the parents grow increasingly more unhinged... it's a subtle horror that makes you wonder what's gonna happen next.
The flower tape undermines that a bit though, as while it's also somewhat unnerving, it goes on way too long and makes the player feel more frustrated than whatever feeling it was probably supposed to evoke. It also feels like filler and doesn't seem to be very relevant, unlike the bedroom tape.
4 Stars!
Theme
You definitely had a great take on the theme, this being a game about
SPOILERS
a "black sheep" that the family disowns and tries to keep them a secret, until they are forgotten. And the main character notices how that happened to uncle Erik in the past and how his younger brother Eddie might share that same fate. Really great stuff!
END OF SPOILERS
5 Stars!
Final Thoughts
Overall, this is my favorite game from this jam (so far). I have a question regarding the story, about the very first tape you watch in the game, where Chris' parents are going to meet the family of Chris' mom. At the end of that tape, they see a truck in the distance heading their way and Chris' mom frantically shouts at Chris' dad to turn the camera off. What was that about? Was that truck driven by "Uncle Erik" and she wished to avoid meeting him or was there something else going on there?
Also, I suppose that "phantom in the shower" was supposed to represent Eddie?
To answer your questions, yes the truck was being driven by Erik! I actually made a script for each of the tapes, but scrapped or altered them depending on what assets I could find. Originally I had planned for the player to be able to walk up and interact with the truck as well, but I ended up cutting that. It was also planned to be revealed that Erik was secretly banned from going to family gatherings, so part of it is that and part of it was Maggie trying to save face in front of her boyfriend.
The scripts is also kinda why tape 3 is the way it is, I was actually struggling to get the assets for tape 2 for a while and then tape 3 got put aside as a result. That and I kept changing the script for 3 and it ended up being a mess... what's in the game now is a lot of last minute decisions, so it's obviously the weakest section as a result haha. I think in the future I'll probably go with my gut and plan out everything before.
I also had a couple different ideas for the "phantoms", the strongest being that they represented the potential judgement of people outside the family. Kind of why the family is so keen on keeping everything a "secret" is because they're worried about what other people would think. But I wasn't sure how to implement that, so it came out more vague. The actual shower monster is either based off Eddie or his dad, you can't see it from his character animations but when I created references for all of them both Eddie and Rick have similar builds. I actually tried to do the same thing with Chris and his mom, not sure it comes across though.
Thanks for asking!