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A jam submission

Lyre, Lyre: The Extremely Real Adventures of EnephtesView game page

A magnetic text adventure about fast-talking and myth-making in Ancient Greece
Submitted by agnoster (@agnoster), suffering.sappho — 4 hours, 41 minutes before the deadline
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Lyre, Lyre: The Extremely Real Adventures of Enephtes's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#54.2384.238
Game Design#833.8573.857
Theme#1003.9053.905
Overall#1043.6833.683
Fun#1683.5713.571
Audio#2843.3333.333
Graphics#6193.1903.190

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does you game fit the theme?
The theme is "this is not real" and this is a game about making up lies and myths. There's nothing real about your brother's heroism - but maybe you can convince people otherwise?

Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
All code is custom; papyrus textures from the Unity asset store; art is open-access from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection

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Comments

Submitted

Alright, this was such an innovative take on the theme, I really enjoyed playing it. The narrative was supreme and the music and SFX were fitting it greatly.

Sometimes I had weird stuff going on where one word was applied to multiple slots, and in the beginning I was confused about what I should do (I did not realize the "Sing" sign is a button and I thought I have to create the lyrics from scratch. Then I clicked on the Sing button to submit it, the actual word slots appeared and I got the most weird but hilarious results).

Also, congratulations on your 20th rating ;)

Submitted

Quite the innovative take on the theme, as well as having unique mechanics and a compelling story.

Submitted (1 edit)

An absolutely unique experience for me so far throughout this jam, and a really fun one at that.  It really gave me something I was not expecting to enjoy, which was writing all the songs with the hilarious canon that ended up in my head.  The all powerful branch, shiny deer and tree trunk.

Honestly though I ended up with a hilarious canon of a branch murdering everything with the power of a Cyclops.  Which was great. 

Anyway tho mechanics wise this was a pretty well done game with a legitimately interesting story that, at least I hope, made a bit of sense to me, although maybe a bit too much credit to some of my songs there.  There were some interesting reactions and reasoning for new words being added to the pool, a s well as a in story reason for the timer, which was a good addition.  I was worried it was going to just be me obsessing over what words to use throughout and the timer really mixed that up for me personally.


One small suggestion I would make, that could be interesting is some sort of random "bag" or button to use to just get a word, and see what comes out.  Maybe even with a button to input it, though I feel like that would be unnecessary.  It would add a bit to the chaos of he game and I think it would also help with those situations where someone is having trouble deciding.


Overall though a legitimately hilarious game, that I would love to see more of and I am happy to have played this jam.  If there is more then I will be back for the adventures of Enephytes and his tree trunk.

Edit: On the side of more content for the game I did have the idea, and this is just a suggestion, but I think it could be interesting to have a roguelike style mode.  Where you;'re going around spreading the adventures of Enephytes throughout Greece and wherever else.  It could be interesting because it fits the concept of getting new words, and it allows you to instantly get to the songs with more dynamic encounters.  (I'd legitimately play this, please let me know, cause it would be incredible)

A super innovative and creative game! There really has been nothing else like this in the jam--it's an absolute delight playing something that references the classics. Plus it's super funny attributing valiant deeds to your idiot brother. I think the thing I would change is just that using full 3D physics for the tiles felt excessive; I think simple 2D sprites would work just as well.

Submitted(+1)

I think this is the most interesting game I've played this jam. Very cool concept, I feel like this could be expanded into a very unique roguelike, making builds by upgrading certain words. I think it might've been nicer if there were fewer words, I kinda fell into analysis paralysis a couple times cause there were so many options. But overall great work!

Submitted

This game is awesome! So innovative! Felt really cool to play.

Submitted(+1)

This is innovative and different perspective. It was refreshing to see other than a platform game! Thanks

Submitted

I haven't seen anything quite like this before. Good innovation 

Submitted(+2)

This is a very fun game! I haven't seen any other game interpret the theme quite like this and the gameplay is also quite unique. The sound design is good and the selection of words is very diverse and allows for quite a bit of creativity (as well as "creativity").

Some small nitpicks:

  • I love the physics on the words - it makes the gameplay just that much more chaotic - but I did lose a word off the side of the screen and I couldn't get it back. You might want to add walls around the edge of the word bank, or if there are already, make them a bit tighter.
  • I would occasionally be able to add a word to a line without actually using it, which at one point made me accidentally describe Enephtes as an "intelligent intelligent".
Submitted(+1)

I havent finished playing the game yet, but this is genuinely so fun and I love the concept and story, it's really fun to play, and it's super unique!! wonderful job

Submitted (1 edit) (+3)

Super great work. Although I am not familiar with Ancient history and name so I make a little bit research and found that all of those quote and towns' names has references. I really appreciate a game with reality reference and it helps players to dive into the game and feel more connection to it.

I played as the normal way and use usual word but surely players can make funny sentences. The potential of making funny outcomes and branch endings is obvious. The strength and intensity of the words upgraded really show how the skill of the bard improve and the content becomes more exaggerate as the time goes on. This really polished the game.

One big limitation of this game(you might also predict it when you design this game) would be it is a little bit hardcore to those non-English speakers since it greatly requires the understanding in English. Plus the story takes place in ancient Greek and the bard sings in poem structure so the sentence pattern would be much more unfamiliar as general  non-English speaker usually learnt the modern English communication pattern. This would be a natural limitation comes along with text-based adventure game so I think there is no way to change it, while I suggest maybe adding a feature to classify the word would be friendly to the player to search the word. For example, I want to search the word quickly so I classify manually all words in noun, verb and adj/adv before singing the song. It may be better to have this kind of classifying system to help the player. Surely I assume you have more game experience and more familiar in text-based adventure game than me, still I would like to share a game called "文字獄"  that published on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/1035750/_/. It also supports English language and maybe you can find extra ideas or inspiration from this game.

An issue I encounter during the game: After I finish the longer song for wine. I pick up "frightening" word and want to put it in a bottom area, and when I release the mouse button, it just flies out the screen and I can't grab it back. But later on in Chapter 4 after dealing with the bandits, it upgrades to terrifying and both the "terrifying" and "frightening" words come back.

This is just a minor issue so overall I rate this game 5/5 and this deserves more people to play and rate it! How come there are only 6 people to rate it?

Developer

thank you so much for this detailed feedback! we were thinking about having the tiles have slightly different shapes for different parts of speech, but we couldn't make it work with the GameJame constraints. But we'd love to add those features!

Submitted(+1)

I didn't understand everything I was writing as I don't speak English very well, but it was very nice anyway, nice work! ;)

Submitted(+1)

For me this has been the most entertaining game from the jam. Loved the concept and execution. More people should play it :D My proudest verse from the game was:

And his large butt was known to all

Lmao

Developer(+1)

an amazing line of poetry! thank you, this made me feel great to read :)

Submitted(+1)

This is a very unique experience,

but a fun one nevertheless, a really good interpretation of the theme 

I only wish I had more time to put up better songs😂

Great work!

Submitted(+1)

Really unique concept! Really liked the story and enjoyed playing. Loved the touch of having it be like those word magnets on a fridge