Play game
Holey Unprepared's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #32 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Audio | #52 | 3.607 | 3.607 |
| Overall | #127 | 3.399 | 3.399 |
| Game Design | #167 | 3.357 | 3.357 |
| Innovation | #217 | 3.107 | 3.107 |
| Fun | #247 | 3.071 | 3.071 |
| Theme | #318 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Brilliant job with the art, but the actual gameplay could use some polish. The recipe names were long and more or less impossible to remember. Hence, the game was a back and forth between ingredients and the cook book, but even still, the names had all these weird variations that made it hard to quickly find what you wanted. The difference between two meals was often one description in a huge string of descriptions. Another issue that I had (likely cos my screen is a bit smaller than average) was that the UI didn't render correctly, and the ingredients required to make a meal were often hidden behind different ui elements.
The game looks great, and with some polish could be a lot of fun, but problems with UI and overly complex recipe names made it hard for me to get into it. Serious props to the animation and sprite artist(s) for making amazing looking pixel art. Great job with the lighting too! Also great job to the musician, the music went really well with the tavern style gameplay! Congrats team on making a game!
EDIT:
I just realised that the pages are torn? Was text going under those tears intentional? How is the player supposed to know the ingredients if some are missing? I didn't even realise that was a thing whilst playing, some sort of tutorial might have helped.
The theme was holes, so we put holes in the recipe book, that was our interpretation of the theme and the impetus behind the game. The description of the project states this, and we tried to make it fairly clear that that is the point of the game, is figuring out the missing ingredients based on comparing the known ingredient list to the name and the feedback of the customers. The names always consist of a descriptor about the food, followed by multiple flavors (a list of all the flavors who's strength for the recipe is above the average of the ingredients, followed by the two foods with the most sustenance totals in the meal, so meat and such end up being there when they're in the recipe as they have more sustenance than say a leek, We had a menu planned that would show the flavor profile of the ingredient you were looking at, so that the customer feedback of "too spicy" or "not sweet enough" would give insight into what the missing ingredients are.
We would have loved to have added a tutorial, and had plans on it, but near the end of the jam we were running out of time and had to rushy to even get the game playable so unfortunately it was never completed. This is why a good amount of information can be found on many submitted games' descriptions, because this isn't an uncommon thing to not be able to finish everything enough to have a great tutorial/introduction to the game.
The recipes are always randomly generated per playthrough (Each playthrough based on difficulty a certain number between 4 and 8 ingredients are chosen from a palette of 19 ingredients total, those ingredients are the ones you can find in the level. The recipes are then randomly generated from that subset of ingredients again based on difficulty, with easy having recipes of 3 ingredients, medium 5, hard 7 and hardcore 9, all randomly generated/procedural, and so are the names, coming up with code to take a list of ingredients and turn them into more complex and descriptive names would have likely taken longer than the jam on its own, so we went with a simple but descriptive way of naming things.
I'm really not sure how to play, I tried my best to give what I believed to be the correct ingredients but the customers didn't really like what I was serving them.. But other than that, this was fun to play. The art style is super nice and I really love the lighting/shadows. The game feels pretty polished too which is very nice! Please consider playing my game too :)
Yeah, we wish we could have added more instruction. Recipes on easy have 3 ingredients, recipes on medium 5, hard 7 and hardcore a full 9 ingredients per recipe. So it may be that you weren't putting the right number of ingredients. The book gives you a certain percentage of ingredients, easy gives like 75%, medium like 60% on hard, and etc. Using the book and the name you can often glean a good portion of the ingredients, but other times you need to learn the recipe by reacting to user feedback. Originally we were going to have a menu that showed the flavor profile of the ingredient you're looking at, which would have helped with the "too sweet" or "not savory enough" type responses. Glad you enjoyed it anyways.
ah, that would be it. I was putting only one of each ingredient requested lol
Well no, I don't mean 3 of each ingredient, for example lets say your choices are beets, beef, onion, and potatoes, on easy you may have a recipe that requires 1xBeef, 1xPotatoe, and 1xOnion, or a recipe requiring 2x Potatoe and 1xBeet, summing up to 3 total, not 3 of each ingredient. The ingredients are always in increments of 1x, so if a recipe required more than one of something it'll appear on the recipe page more than once. But even on easy there's 9 slots for ingredients, just the last 6 are always holes on easy for example because there's no ingredient there., because of this it might be tricky to know how many ingredients are needed for the recipe, you may have had the last two items on a hard recipe with holes and only put 3 ingredients in instead of the 5 the recipe wanted. Or you may have put more in that was needed. Either way it needs more clarity, which will be something we'll work on when we continue working on this when the judging ends.
Hey, loved your game, loved your art , music , game design ,a bit of polish and your game will be pretty cool! I enjoyed playing it.
All the best and Good luck! Do check out our game we need the feedback! - https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-3/rate/574293