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How does the game fit the theme?
It is impossible for anything in this game to go wrong. Therefore, nothing can go wrong.
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
House tileset provided from https://tilation.itch.io/16x16-small-indoor-tileset, slightly modified. Two songs are not by me, but are under public domain (one through NCS, one through Pixabay). Both can be searched up. One other song was made by no one. Good luck finding it online. Font PetMe64 is available for free at https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml
How many people worked on the game?1
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Comments
SO here's some constructive criticism.
1) The camera. You say that the game is pixel perfect, but all that meant is that moving diagonally looked really jittery. So.... why make it pixel perfect in the first place if the only effect on gameplay is a negative. A smooth camera is way more important and also simple to implement.
2) The art. Visual inconsistency is a very common trap to fall into when using a outsourced tile set and I do think it takes away from the game. The houses walls work alright with the outside and flooring, but the character looks insanely out of place. When the game takes place looking at the player all the time, it's important to make the player look... good. It currently doesn't, and I think it'd be better to spend time making a good looking player over a good looking bird for instance. The bird has animations while the player doesn't.... why don't we play as a bird at that point?
3) The gameplay. Welp it's just "walking" around, which could be fine if there was more to interact with, or if walking didn't hurt my eyes from the jittering. I did like the bird and stuff, but it's severely lacking in content or polish. Overall it feels like there was just a lack of effort to make a FUN or at least relaxing game. More thought needs to be put into making the gameplay loop more polished, then expanding on the environment. The lack of effort is most obvious on the thumbnail, where you just freehand wrote "Tranquility" over a screenshot of the game in some sort of image editor.
4) The sound. The music that you made was... not great but a good attempt was made and I respect that. However, you completely forgot to loop the music. I chose the second track for my playthrough, and was met with silence after getting out of the house. No environmental noise also hugely took away from the experience. A simple bird chirping sound or leaves rustling in the wind are so important for a game that wants you to relax in nature. Walking up to the lake, I should've heard something. Either a calming sound starting, small waves and water sloshing, bugs buzzing.... anything. These sound implementations can take like half an hour and should've honestly taken priority in a game with this focus.
What I did like:
The music box was a cool implantation and surprising in a game made in a week (but it worries me about your priorities when making the game considering all the stuff listed prior)
Birb hehe
The overall environment was pretty if it was a screenshot. It being completely static is a bit eh though. A slight breeze for the trees or a flower or two would make it way comfier.
Textboxes/font felt good
Hoped this helped for your next project. It's important to learn and have respect for your own time/effort, otherwise you can waste time redoing past mistakes that take away from your portfolio.
Quoting the jam overview page, "Game files are not locked for the first 48 hours of the rating period. This is for fixing bugs"
Since the second song not looping is indeed a bug (the other songs do loop)
I can fix it :) and indeed I have.
The camera jitter, however, is technically a feature due to the game being pixel perfect, and so I can't fix that.
The player sprite is indeed very ungood. I suppose it's what happens when the majority of your time in a came is spent playtesting with a rectangle placeholder. Next time I should draw the palyer sprite early on.I really wanted to do the house tileset myself, but then I procrastinated.
Animating the world and giving it sound was something I went very wrong not doing. I should NOT have spent 2 days making a jukebox... or procrastinating...
Thumbnail is the last of my priority.
ULTRATHANKS for the long and detailed review!
I don't know if its something here but the frame rate was really low, I like the idea of being able to change the tune :) although the music volume could be a little lower. I see you did it alone, good job that is a great achievement!
The frame rate is not actually low unless you're playing on Firefox. It's just a slower paced game and it has pixel perfect graphics meaning the framerate looks way slower than it actually is