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That Time I left Home's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Emotional Engagement | #26 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
| Atmosphere | #30 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
| Overall | #41 | 2.440 | 2.440 |
| Characterization | #45 | 2.100 | 2.100 |
| Lasting Impression | #48 | 2.300 | 2.300 |
| Mental Engagement | #57 | 1.900 | 1.900 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
you have a very strong initial concept that could be made more understandable through some writing and ux adjustments.
i enjoyed the art and overall theme, and like the concept of a before/after story, finding things in the aftermath. also the 'look around' effect while mousing around is very pleasant. most of the sound and ambience were well-fitting, and from a theming perspective everything was nice and consistent.
the weakest areas are in ux and the 'meat' of the story. the key theme of any adventure game is 'curiosity' and exploring or clicking something, especially when you specifically ask for it to be clicked should always yield something: wit, exposition, characterization. true you did a lot of basic scene setting, but it was mostly very dry. best example of violating this is clicking on the one tent 'you shouldn't'. then don't ask me to, or be more creative in how you admonish a player. 'someone pushes you out, how dare you!' same effect, but now you're giving story and consequence.
you were going for a suspense story, and that makes characterization even more important. the changes of the 'before and after' should have weight and consequence and give understanding into how characters would react to a monster suddenly appearing. how are they now behaving differently in response to something like this?
on the ux side, i'll echo the other comments about the dialog sound. however, the interaction and progression needed more baking. most interactions didn't need two actions, especially since it was very linear and there really wasn't much dependency on which order you interacted with anything. having to left click and right click was confusing, especially when there often wasn't even more dialog. there was no key difference between 'talking to people' and 'looking around' so just make it one shared interaction. i can sort of feel you making do with the system you were using, but even within that figuring out how to streamline that is a core element of game design.
also, for the 'keep the fire alive game', i'd say the requirements were too tight. basically burning all but one plank with a sliver to spare. think of ways to make it more engaging and give a little more margin for success.
a very good effort, and a nice start to a promising concept.
Hi Chris! Thanks for so many insightful comments. Writing is my weakest area at the moment so i'll be continuing to work on it. The story didn't really get across what I wanted but it taught me alot. This was my first time writing for a game really and it shows. Thank you for all the amazing coments about the game.
For this game, it was difficult as it was just a team of 2, myself with a background in just programming and an artist. However that isn't an excuse for bad writing or difficult to navigate UI. Again, Thank you for all the feedback and I'll be looking to make improvements!
I'm glad you got it working! Very mellow and meditative little short game. I like the handpainted art and the use of color especially; they really communicate the feel of the game effectively. But like others, I wasn't totally clear if there was more to the story that I was missing, because right now it doesn't feel super complete.
This is a nice game with some interesting ideas. Moving in the camp was quite unique. I really like the visuals, a bit like some Photoshop speed painting, it's cool. The color palette is well chosen. Well done in 2 weeks!
I liked graphics/sounds - and I think you used an original way to handle/move - I've played till one end (I don't know if they're more than one) - not sure to have understood the story / if there was something to discover - but the experience (above all for the visual part) is nice
Thanks for playing! Really glad you enjoyed it, its my first time writing something like this, and I don't think I really got across what I wanted, but I think it was a good shot for the first attempt at game and narrative writing!
This was very interesting and the graphic were charming! Not sure I got the ending I was supposed to, but maybe I'll try again another time. Fire puzzle was a nice touch.
Hey thanks for playing the game! I'm super happy that you enjoyed it and go check out https://www.instagram.com/byrnethebooks/ as they did all the art for the game!
The graphics are nice. The typing sound of the text blocks I found very annoying. Also very hard to find the spots where you can interact with objects. Also annoying that you have to "Look around" every time after clicking an object to get the full text. Makes gameplay too slow to keep my interest.
Hey thanks for the all feedback! The dialogue volume can be muted but I completely get what your saying, do you think a toggle would be good in the settings to look around so if that this is enabled it automatically plays the text. And after more people playing I get what your saying about the difficulty of finding the objects. I think that a good solution to this would be having two modes where the player looks around for them or the objects are always shown? I’d love to hear what you think!
It would help if the whole object triggered the ripple to sshow, not just the spot where it shows. In some cases the ripples weren't on the objects themselves, making it even harder to find them.
Personally I would remove the extra look around altogether. If I click on an object it already means I want to find out more about it. Having to click a second time to get to that information is slowing down my game experience unnecessarily.
I’ll definitely take this consideration to speed up the gameplay! And thank you for all the feedback I’m travelling right now but I should be able to deliver on this tonight!
This appears to not be finished (presumably all these boxes aren't supposed to say New Text). I'll come back to this one later in the jam to see if you've got it working.
Hiya, It seems to be fixed in the most recent downloadable version. Could you open the "That time I left home data" folder and send a screen shot, it should include a streamableassts folder, if not could you redownload the game and it should be playable.
This was an issue with the previous build and It should of been fixed with the most recent upload. If you could also try redownloading the game that would be great! Sorry about this, was a complete oversight on my end about how Unity packs its game data and saved files.
I gave this another try and it appears to be working better but still not fully working (unless I'm misunderstanding the gameplay). It opens with the close-up scene of the firepit and the tent, but all I can do is examine those two things. I can't seem to back out to go look at the rest of the campground, unless there's a command I'm not seeing.
Hey, this is a seems to be a issue amongst all players and that the objects are too difficult to find, I’m travelling right now but I should be able to deliver a fix tonight and hopefully you can enjoy the game!
Once I got to the overview of the campsite I couldn't do anything else. "Look Around" did nothing and clicking on things in the scene did nothing.
Thanks for the comment, Just checked the Itch page and its fully bugged. So sorry about that. I'll try fix this as soon as possible.
Hey Morphi, I'd be great if you could try to play again. I think something went wrong with my previous upload and if you could keep me updated that would be great! I think that this was an issue that never arose in development as I could never test on another machine. A fix should be delivered by tonight/this morning! So sorry about this.
Hey, no need to apologize. This is what playtesting is for c:
Redownloaded and gave it another go! This time I'm able to read through the couple of text boxes that clicking on the bonfire gives you (including the command to look around) but there's nothing else that's interactable and the bonfire doesn't do anything after you determine you can't cook on it.
There should be options on the other camps and one in the treeline. To make sure they are appearing could you compare to the video linked on the Itch page? I'd love to also be able to download your game files you if you could upload the folder to see whats up.
I was able to make it further, but finding the spots to click is not easy unless you are slowly moving your mouse around the outer edge of the objects until a ripple appears. I didn't know to look for those without seeing the video. Might be a good idea to have a little "this is how you find things to interact with" type explanation before the player gets to that screen or make the button be the size of the object rather than be on one very small part of it for less confusion.
I completely agree, I think adding a mode where you have to look around for them and having a mode where you can see them always would be a good idea. What do you think? Aswell as extending the distance the mouse needs to be. I think a round of play testing could of resolved all of this but the nature of the game jam 🤷♂️. Thank you for all the feedback so far!!