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Young Homer: A Storyteller's Odyssey's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Emotional Engagement | #20 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Lasting Impression | #24 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Characterization | #29 | 3.704 | 3.704 |
| Overall | #32 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Mental Engagement | #33 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
| Overall | #35 | 3.537 | 3.537 |
| Atmosphere | #112 | 3.185 | 3.185 |
Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Really enjoyed this. It looks quite simple but there is a lot going on here and its all very cleverly written and woven together. The audience engagement meter is addictive, and I kept willing it to go higher. Fantastic work!
Very glad the game made you want to keep striving for a higher audience rating 😀 The mechanics of that meter are something that took me a long time to get right. Thank you for the amazing review!
Loved loved loved this. Didn't "win" the first time, which was great actually since it incentivized me to go back and play again and see a full set of completely new storycards. Amazed that you wrote 3 different iterations of each story moment in the Odyssey. And the UI was simple, manageable, and satisfying!
Wow I’m so happy you liked the game, and that you wanted to go back and play again 😀 Picking moments from the story and adapting them for the game was a really fun challenge. I was also rereading the Odyssey as I went along, and kept coming up with more new things I wanted to put in 😅 Thank you so much for your wonderful review!
This is a very interesting entry. I loved the idea of Homer going for a poem jam, and how the build-up process closely resembles the way we all made our games.
Also the level 1 version of the cards are so silly, I laughed a few times. Very well written.
So happy you liked it! The parallel to us going through our mad dash during the creation process was a fun thread to write about 😀 Haha I’m glad you also liked the Level 1 cards. A lot of those ones are my favorites because I was able to really just go as absurd as I wanted 😅
This is probably the most creative game I've played in the jam so far. Great prose, an interesting setup, a cool progression system that you have to strategize with. Grinding up my performance level before focusing on story cards got me above 80 points on the final day. Not handing the player an easy 100/100 victory suggests to me there's a bit going on under the hood here, I'll probably be coming back to this one. Wonderful job!
I’m very very happy to hear that you enjoyed it so much! Yes, no spoilers of how it’s working behind the scenes of course, but tuning the way the game handled the stats and difficulty was really important to me. Thank you for your review, it means a lot 😀
While not typically drawn to text-based games, it's evident that a considerable amount of effort was invested in making this. Gj on the writing! I can't even imagine writing so much in a game. :)
Very glad that you enjoyed the game and the writing! Yeah, it was definitely a lot of late nights in front of a giant Google Doc. Just a lot of organization to keep straight where everything was supposed to go haha 😀
It's a nice concept for a game. Wish there was a way to have a little more control over the parts of the story to include but the game was quite original and fun
Thank you for the feedback, and I'm very glad you enjoyed the game! I'll look into ways to customize the deck further and add a little more player agency 😀
Congratulations :-) the most original game I've played so far - and it's simply brilliant.
Wow I’m honored that you would say that! Thank you for playing, I’m so glad you liked it 😀
Nice and unique concept! I agree that a soundtrack would make it more immersive, but overall I enjoyed playing it, great job!
Thank you so much! Definitely going to look into sound for the next version. I feel like there's a lot of fun stuff I could try with that too, based on how good his writing/performance is each night 😀
The story is amazing goodjob, i like how simple the game is, its so good!
Thank you for playing! I’m glad you enjoyed the story 😀
This was a very pleasant experience!
Cool that you intenionally (or not lol) mimiced the blindness with the color pallette, or lack there of.
I had fun playing this. I did miss sound effects a bit, but hey... Its a Jam-game and thats how it is.
I def think you have something to build on here!
Thank you for playing! I'm glad you picked up on the visuals emulating blindness 😀 I agree, I think sound effects could help a lot. I'll work on that for future updates!
Wow, you have written so much! It's a nice simplistic game that also teaches some Greek mythology. Maybe some music or tavern ambiance sounds could have made the experience even better. I didn't win the poem contest by the way. Somehow my poem actually got worse at the end even with all the polishing and practicing. Amazing entry for the jam!
Haha yes, I ended up spending a lot of my time in Google Docs for this one, just writing and refining all the different levels of card stories and screenplay stuff 😅 Thank you for the great suggestions and comments! It's interesting about the your experience with the poem getting worse. I wanted there to be a random element to the performances, but some playthroughs I felt that too, where it seemed like it became overly stacked against me. I'll work on the tuning of difficulty for the next version!
Also I'm glad you felt that it can teach some Greek mythology- I wanted there to be a bit of real educational value in there behind the comedy and gameplay!
The fact that you managed to accomplish this form of storytelling is impressive and intriguing, the art and font are just two of the many elements that give this submission that rounded off finished feel - I'm looking forward to what you do moving forward with this project as well as what you come up with next! It's a follow from me!
I'm so glad you like the art style of the game! This was the first of the games I've worked on where I created concept design mockups very early in the process, and then allowed many of the game design decisions to be informed by those visual targets. I wasn't sure if it was going to pay off, since I thought it might cause scope creep, but I was pleased as well with how the look turned out!
Thank you so much for the kind words, I'm excited to keep going with this concept and build the game into something bigger and better 😀
The layout of this is really clean and I like the font. I'm a sucker for mythology and the black and white aesthetic gave a feeling of antiquity to the cards. The overall tone was very fun. The setting of a live poem performance really felt like you were up against a tough crowd. Great work!
I’m really glad you like the feeling of the performances! I worked hard to tune the difficulty of them, and add little features to give the impression of crowd reactions. Thank you for the wonderful feedback! I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the game!!
Another GREAT entry in this gamejam. Since I am bit of a history buff I was unsure about the mix-and-match approach to history at first but luckily I quickly into the spirit and got a few good chuckles out of it. I think it might take slightly too long to take off in the beginning but once it does it's great fun. I only managed to perform in the middle 60s but all the more reason to return to this game later. I hope I am interpreting Homers last words correctly that you will keep working on this?
I’m glad the balance of historical/anachronistic worked for you! It was important for me to make sure it worked both for people who know their stuff (always nice to meet another history buff btw!) and those who don’t know anything about Homer or Ancient Greece. And thank you for your suggestion about the opening sequence, I will look into ways to make it get into the action a bit quicker!
Yes, I do want to expand the game with more elements down the road! Especially with all the wonderful feedback I’ve been getting from the jam, there are so many new ideas forming for what the game could become 😀
I really think this could one day be something great (it already IS within its scope!). I might have missed this but it might be good to also have some influence over the shape of the story (which card is played when) and maybe even have additional cards that can be discarded. I think for a full release the system needs to be a little more involved but I see a very bright future for this. Let's say you have already convinced at least ONE person who studied this stuff (ancient history and archaeology)!
Thank you so much! 🥹 I think being able to rearrange story cards would be really engaging! And it would work for the theme, since the Odyssey is often told in flashbacks and cutaways anyway.
I also originally wanted to include story cards of moments that weren’t actually in the Odyssey as it exists today, but would represent things that ended up on Homer’s ‘cutting room floor,’ or maybe were in the poem during his era but became lost to time because archeologists never found the manuscripts. If cards could actually be cut out of the poem, that would make it even better! And conceptually it would be funny too, if you could go the other direction and cut what later became iconic scenes out of the Odyssey, just to please the drunken rowdy crowd at Cafe Xenia 😂
Love those suggestions, thank you!
I used to play a lot of Japanese AVG . This was my first time to play an AVG with different style. The Greece stories attracted me a lot, and the way to raise audience engagement was also fun. It will be better if it has some melodious music and random events during the daily events!
I’m so glad that you liked the Greek storytelling theme- I’ve always been a fan of that writing style and theme, and I wanted add in as many little pieces of that world that I could 😀 Thank you for the very kind feedback! Music could be a great addition to add to immersion. The random events are an interesting thought too- maybe if there could be a heckler in the crowd one day to interrupt the performance, or maybe Homer could wake up sick one day and have a temporary minus to speech. I feel like you’ve sparked so many ideas for new fun mechanics, thank you! 🤩
Such a good game, my favourite so far :). Very well done with the plot and stories. Also, the design was very interesting. I liked the idea that you've picked the Ancient Greece.
What a nice comment! I’m honored you would say it’s your favorite so far ☺️ Very glad you like the theme too. Ancient Greece and the writings of Homer are themes that I’m really passionate about, and I wanted to do them justice 😀
I actually red some Greece poets such as the Homer Odyssey and I actually got quite hook of this game, I love the atmosphere it's to simplistic, the gameplay is so satisfying and chilling, I love the part where Homer making progress through the audience rating, it feels like the game is actually teaching you how to write a good poet! Is such a cool process of learning mistakes, I'm actually trying to get the high score but I gave.
Great game, unique concept, somehow it got me addicted! Maybe some classical music can add the atmosphere!
I’m really happy you like the audience rating mechanic and upgrading the poem each day 😀 And I agree that music could be a good help to the atmosphere. Maybe if it even changed to be faster or slower, based on what kind of story card you’re performing? 🤔 Thank you so much for the feedback!
Great game! First of all, I like the theme of the game. I have not seen any other entry in this jam with Greece as theme. The gameplay was pretty fun: to test different things to raise your rating. I appreciate that you can skip the text, because it is boring to read the same text multiple times. I also think that it is interesting that everything is white/black since it can be connected to the main character being blind (and thus not knowing how colors look). I like that we received tips between the days instead of for example a long tutorial in the beginning. As for improvements, I wish the game had music and sound effects. This would improve the atmosphere of the game. It also felt like I got too few of level 3 cards, so I wish that the game had some form of guarantee to make the randomness more balanced. Good job.
Thank you for your wonderful suggestions! I agree, I think a good soundtrack could help to get even more immersed in the theme. It’s an interesting idea to create more of an assurance of getting high level cards- what if I added something where you could spend one part of the day to get truly random cards, or two parts of the day to guarantee a level 3 card? 🤔
Also I’m glad you liked the black and white aesthetic- the connection to Homer’s blindness was exactly what I was going for 😀
I like your idea. Are you planning to create a post-jam version of the game?
I am! I had a list of features that I couldn’t implement in time for the jam, and now I’ve gotten amazing suggestions from everyone in the jam 😀
I am looking forward to it!
Interesting idea, I was engaged and liked the narrative and wanted to succceed. But it's one of those games where you need to play a load of times to really understand what impact the decisions make.
Text is very slow - it would be better if it showed more quickly so I can read it faster.
I tied for the winning score of 95 and the game didn't acknowledge it. It could do with some sort of tie breaker bonus round.
Wow I actually didn’t take tying into account! I love that idea for a tiebreaker mechanic to settle things 😀 Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback. As to showing the impact of decisions, do you think it would have helped if at the end of the game it showed stats about how many other story cards or upgrades you could have gotten?
Yes that's good. It also would help if I knew how many upgrade levels there are for the storytelling skill.
the game is good but way too much reading
Thanks for your honesty :) I will definitely take that into account if I make an expanded version in the future. If you don’t mind, could you let me know which aspects of the reading bothered you most? Was it the game’s storyline, or the cards playing out their text as you performed them?