Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• This was a tough one to judge because some parts of it were so fantastic and deep and other aspects felt undercooked! I can see the shape of something beautiful here. I was immediately delighted when dropped into the vampire game world - the nostalgia of those older games was so perfectly evoked, from the music to the map screens to the text windows to the writing itself. I was surprised by just how much work was done here - the branching dialogue and what seemed to be tracking, the various locations, the different areas of map. At least a couple of people put a MASSIVE amount of effort in here and absolutely kicked ass at it. The writing really evoked that 90s CRPG vibe I didn’t realise I missed so much. Would have loved to see some kind of inventory system showing me what I had so I felt more in control of my destiny (vs feeling like the game might be lying about whether it cared), and paragraph/page breaks would have made the text feel more readable and less intimidating. I appreciate that I died in the game, and was able to start again. I did have to dock points because the theme of the jam was supposed to invoke computer interactivity, but the emptiness and lack of interactivity of the bedroom made it feel like it was a framing device not in the spirit of the jam - a “proper” game masquerading as a “computer-OS game”. I was really excited when the game pulled away the first time to reveal the bedroom - always loved when I’m tricked - and I suspect there was a lot more planned for this aspect that didn’t shake out. Jam life! If I was scoring based on the main game alone, know that scores would be much higher - the art direction and general programming of those sections were truly impressive. Special shout out to the composer. I absolutely loved every single track and would happily put them in my games. A fantastic effort by so many people - it’s not easy to wrangle such a big team and to pull so much together in less than 2 weeks is a FEAT. Congrats to everyone!
• Evocative writing and a nice little nest of puzzle! Ambitious in scope - would love to see it expanded in the future!
• solid job team! really enjoyed the soundtrack and visual cohesion. I think perhaps some more set dressing at the beginning for hooking the player narratively could have been improved the onboarding.
• I really like the idea here - I think I'd like to see this expanded upon. It didn't really hit the OS theme for me - seemed like a tertiary element, but I do like how you turned this sort of interface into an adventure game. There was too much text for me - either reduce the quantity and/or add some physical breaks between passages, to ease the pace. I think there is something special in this, with some more mechanics and editing - great as a prototype to expand upon.