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Grey (Jam version)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #140 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Innovation | #192 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Audio | #285 | 3.321 | 3.321 |
| Theme | #305 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Overall | #314 | 3.339 | 3.339 |
| Game Design | #469 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Fun | #730 | 2.714 | 2.714 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Gray relatively calm everyday life is replaced by darkness that comes like a storm
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Everything but the music is made from scratch
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Comments
The art is mesmerising. It has the same vibe as the escape-the-room games I played before.
I couldn't figure how to properly feed the hungry entity, though. I kept waiting for anyone to trade :( The premise is mysterious and interesting. What prompted the idea? I'm sure once you have improved based on the feedback given already, this game will be fascinating to play.
Thank you for the feedback, to feed, you need to click on the stomach and drag the consumable item from the inventory to it.
As for the idea, I just wanted to make something like a simulator of a trader in the apocalypse for a long time, and due to the lack of experience in drawing, this style and the corresponding gray unusual world accidentally appeared. So I spent most of my time learning to draw :)
I'm not sure what to do. I click on the green bar and objects appear. If I click on the object, it appears in my inventory. I click on the booth that says "trade" on it. I drag the objects over to the left, I click Deal or Cancel and nothing happens. Sometimes when I click an object on the left, I see a message that says "the visitor disagrees." I've restarted several times, but most of the time that I do the steps I've listed nothing happens.
As I've already understood from the comments below, the game is quite unintuitive and it's no wonder you're confused.
Actually, after receiving the items in your inventory, you have to open a window and wait for a visitor (a silhouette will appear + you will hear a bell sound), then click on the booth that says “trade”. The items that the visitor brought are on top, and the price for them is below them. To trade, you have to move items (with a total value greater than or equal to the offer) from the inventory to the cells below.
Ugh so there are some problems with the balancing so I won't really bog you down with multiple sections and will just write one long one. The problem with this game seams to be that you have by large no way to gain resources in any other way than the battery and with every item costing more to buy then to sell you end up creating a negative feedback loop where trading makes you lose resources 90% of the time. Now there is the battery that is from what I understand the only thing that actually can give you resources, so we are just playing the lottery with if a customer will come around and sell us one, but then again "can" there is a good chance that in a simullar way to how the player can sometimes not be able to afford another battery from the get go he can also lose resources by buying a battery. So am I just supposed to stay put and just eat what I've got untill I die from not getting anything new. So probably it would be a good idea to at least make trading items an actuall vaiable option where the customers items are less valuble or make some sort of haggling system where you'll be able to bring the price down couse as it stands now you are passivly and activly losing resources with gambling being the only way to make up the losses at least a bit.
Nice idea in theory. The UI felt good, good sound effects. The most difficult part was getting soft-locked, with no good trades happening and no way to create more items. Like others have said, the randomization feels a bit harsh. But with some improvements this could be really fun!
This is pretty impressive concept for a game, with the emphasis on quiet dread, suspense, and deception coming full force with its trading and feeding game loop, grayscale watercolor aesthetic, and quiet isolated sounds somewhat startling the player. It's an experience that effectively injects a small but long-lasting fear in the player's subconscious.
Some complaints about the game are the UI for the microwave and the stand, the skewed imbalance of the first batch of items compared to the incoming trades, and the puzzling existence of the siren off button.
When starting out, it was difficult to find my first items to start with. That is until I randomly clicked buttons on the microwave, which I didn't know were interactable due to a lack of visual hovering feedback. Additionally, the stand's interactive elements are pretty unintuitive, with only the counter being the interactive element for trading while the entire window is for opening and closing it instead of just the roll-up gauge. This often made me accidentally closing the shop instead of trading, which lost me the customer.
As for early-gaming balancing, the items given by the microwave are often worth little in value, especially when constantly dealing with numerous expensive trades that needed to be exceed in value without individual selection of items to trade. If trading for all items is intended, then having lower value trades showing up more often would aid the early game.
Finally, there's the siren off button, which is the most pedantic critique I have, but still a bit baffling to have, due to the siren been the only indicator of darkness lurking around.
Wow, thank you so much for such a great and detailed feedback. The lack of visual response when hovering is a new issue, I will try to improve it. Also, you may have misunderstood the purpose of the siren off button, which mutes the siren's current sound and does not affect its further activation.
I understand muting the siren for accessibility purposes. I just never found a reason to do so due to its low volume and importance as a gameplay indicator.
Actually, separate sirens are used to indicate the onset of day and night (night - 3 short signals, day - 1 long one), so as soon as you hear and recognize a siren, you can safely turn it off and wait for the next one. But I realized that I also need to describe this in more detail at the beginning, especially because, as in life, the alarm signal (dark saturation) can be longer than the dark saturation time itself, so you probably did not recognize the second siren (daytime).
Cool aesthetic and sound effects for the game. The game mechanics though simple has kept me engaged until the darkness consumed me. With the item dipenser there is always a bit of randomness and I liked it. This kept things uncertain and kept asking myself if this trade is worth or should i wait for a better one..
No bug reports from me. Kudos!! A really unique game :D
Really interesting game, liked the creator and the different items it would give you. The counter going down on a stomahc and having to eat to stay alive really worked with the atmosphere of the game. Nice job on this one!
Very cool game that's stylistic and unique. Initially it is tricky to figure out, but you get the hang of it. The randomness of the item creator and trades feels a bit harsh, there were many times where I couldn't do anything because the creator was out of power and there weren't enough items to afford a battery if someone came by with one. It would be nice if there were more ways to get items or if I could select which items to trade with a local instead of having to match the value of their offer. All things considered, this is a really great submission and idea, I would love to see this game expanded on, the atmosphere and art style really gives it a solid foundation. I will definitely be checking it out again if you plan on continuing development! :D
Thank you very much for your informative feedback. I completely agree with the broken balance at the beginning and am already writing out ideas for reworking this and other aspects of the game.
Very good atmosphere with a unique art style! I would love to see this expanded into a full game!
The dark style and atmosphere are really immersive, and once you get the hang of it, it’s a fun game to dive into!
Agree with the previous comment that the red button's purpose was a bit unclear.
I love this kind of games. Game has a lot for a 1 week submission! Good job! Loved grim atmosphere! Please check out my submission! Hope you will enjoy it!
It has an interesting theme. It's a little hard to understand, but I think it has potential. Keep working on it! :D
took me a bit of time o figure the game out, but when i did it was super fun and interesting. my only gripe is that its a bit unclear what to do exactly, but it wasnt a game-ruining issue at all. nice game!
Took me awhile to understand what was going on but after that, I had a great time with this game, congrats!
I love the art style, its very unique, I would definitely play a full game in this style! It took me a while to figure out how the game worked, but once I did I had fun with it :)
the style reminded me of the Rusty Lake games! cool :)
I like the dark style and atmosphere, and once you get the hang of it, it's a game you'll want to spend time with. There are only a few things I can complain about:
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do things. I knew what I needed to do, but I couldn't figure out how to do it for a long time. Also, every time I tried to click to trade, I accidentally clicked on the metal door and closed it because my brain was too focused on interacting with the human figure.
Other than that, I really like the game as it is now. You said it's still an unfinished game so I believe it has a lot of potential ☺ ♥
art style is beautiful, really love the work that has been done here. it has a great gameplay loop and i could play for hours. good job <: i love it
I really liked the dark setting and i got scared by the dark hand XD all in all good game!
I loved the visuals and the whole idea. My issue is that I don't understand the usecase for the red button and bartering doesn't seem to exist? Like I can only trade when my value is higher than theirs which is sometimes impossible because the generator is based purely on luck and batteries are very expensive. I think the idea is great, but it just needs a little bit of balancing or maybe introduce some other gamem echanic, maybe another room where you can get more items, but it uses your hunger?
Thank you for the informative feedback. I really got into an overscope problem, so I had to finish quickly and cut out a lot of mechanics. As for the balance, I'm glad you pointed it out and I'll be reworking this system in the future.