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FRANKEN JUDGE's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #121 | 4.476 | 4.476 |
| Overall | #326 | 3.984 | 3.984 |
| Creativity | #427 | 4.048 | 4.048 |
| Enjoyment | #1277 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
Ranked from 42 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?
FRANKEN JUDGE was made and submitted as part of the Game Maker's Toolkit 2024 Game Jam. The theme for this jam was Built To Scale. As part of this theme, the duo at Hangover Sunshine felt inspired to take the term literally: "Built, with the purpose, to scale." This concept led to having the player balancing the scales of justice as the perfect judge, deciding the outcomes of each courtroom case. To further emphasize the weight of each decision, your rulings affect your reputation with three distinct citywide factions. These social classes have different values and beliefs, and repeated poor judgments can lead to your downfall. You were built by Frankenstein to weigh in on and scale these court cases, making you theoretically the perfect man for the job.
Development Time
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
"Hypnothis" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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Comments
I am amazed at the game's polish! the art is beautiful, the concept is very interesting, that's definitely something that I would buy and play if it were a full game.
Just letting you know, I noticed a bug when it comes to single-class cases: the opposite card gets chosen. If case involves two classes, it's all good, but whenever the single-class case appeared, I chose the opposite of what I wanted so that I receive the outcome that I need
Hello! Thanks for giving our game a shot! Yes, the wrong card bug. We fixed it! Once the jam ends we're going to get that updated. Thanks for calling that out and also for giving our game a play. Glad you enjoyed the concept!
- S. "Essay"
Awesome! I hope you continue developing the game!
The polish on this game in incredible. It looks great, and the storytelling and worldbuilding is really fun and effective. I love trying to decide for myself what I would do in this silly case before considering how to keep people happy. Feels just like being a corrupt judge, haha.
I ended up failing around day 10 because the peasants kept going down, while the other two were stuck at 100. I think that early on I slightly tipped the scales, and since the reputation system looks at everything at once, it just kept lowering the peasants even though I wasn’t doing anything to them. It was also difficult to fix because none of the cases changed stats by enough to do anything either way. (There also seems to be a bug where the wrong verdict can be selected)
But overall the game was still an awesome experience and one of the best narrative-driven games I’ve played. Nice work!
Hello! Thanks for giving our game a shot! Sorry to hear about that "opposite cards" bug. We got that fixed and are waiting for the jam to end to push an update. Also, yes, peasants start off waaaaay to aggro. Also fixed that in our prepared update. From what I've gotten to playtest with this next update, you have a lot better control of who you want to focus on when improving your rep with a specific faction. Regardless, I appreciate you giving the game some time and also for your feedback!
- S. "Essay"
I loved this game and I truly, truly think you could take it so much further after this jam. Hopefully you work more on this and publish it. I really enjoy this type of game, reminds me of death and taxes or we, the revolution. The art was also extremely nice. Great work! keep it up.
I think all the concrete suggestions I would give have already been given by other commenters, so I'll just say I think this game has great potential and hope you keep working on it after the jam. Procedural narrative generation could be cool here to keep the cases exciting and to have decisions clearly affect the subsequent cases offered.
Oooooo, I would've not thunk of a procedural narrative, or one altogether. I def think it would be cool if the cases were more situationally reactionary versus the altercation of Societal Ranks. Idea was that the Society statistics were a reflection of the situation in the town you're judging, but am wondering if with some sprinkles of narrative if we can make it more impactful. Kind of like a Paper Please situation mixed in with stronger-feeling consequences of actual courtwork. I could totally see a case coming in after every certain number of rounds that take in the narrative of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. We'll snoop and discuss. Appreciate the feedback!
- S. "Essay"
I'm in the process of reading Procedural Storytelling in Game Design edited by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams, so it's on the top of my mind. It's worth at least skimming through if you end up going down that route.
That's a good read! I've used that as a base for talking to game devs about what I do in my research. It's interesting seeing the difference of sifting v.s. planning, though I might be more partial to the planning parts!
- Mica
Really cool and well-made game! I think it's already been mentioned, but just to echo it, 1) peasants were difficult to keep happy and 2) some decisions I picked didn't actually get selected which made me confused about the controls lol. E.g. day 3 or 4, I got a case for clergy about reaping souls and when I picked the one that should have made the peasantry rep/ stats go up, the one that was good for nobility/ clergy got picked instead. Additionally, if you continue to work on the game post-jam (I hope you do!), I would love to see a lil fast forward button.
Again, hope you add onto this post-jam! I think you have something wonderful here!
Aaaaay! Thanks for playing our game and for the feedback! Appreciate the highlights of those couple of lowlights, def agree with all those points.
1) Peasants are way too mad, agreed. We have an update cooked where they don't start off as angry; the realistic approach was not the move lol.
2) Interesting catch. I know about this pesky card bug we fixed where it just didn't pick your card. Not sure of numbers not getting added. I know we fixed that guy and also some other stuff so I'm wondering if that got "auto" resolved. Something that def needs to improve is how we communicate the fun math in the game. Not being able to get rep up because people are too angry is something as a message that is lacking imo. I'm wondering if maybe a bug occurred in tandem with that situation? Regardless, we'll take a look!
Appreciate the time and thanks again!
- S. "Essay"
I think this is easily the best-looking and most cohesively designed game I've played so far. It's clear a lot of attention went into the little details of the visual design. And the writing is fantastic as well.
I admit that even after reading the tutorial, I didn't fully understand the results of my actions and judgments. Reading through other's comments, I see it was common for the peasantry to just generally be unhappy. I swear I tried to make them happy! But still ended up at 0%, heheh.
I also experienced the bug where I would occassionally receive the wrong card, but bugs are to be expected in a jam game.
But overall a very polished experience. I think if I spent a bit more time with it I could develop a better strategy :)
Yo! Thanks for giving our game a shot. We def need to balance the game a bit more and work on the feedback of player action. Can def see a trend with the peasantry just being waaaaay to unhappy. We have an update ready once the jam ends to fix that and also that pesky "wrong card" bug. Appreciate all the love for the design and writing, I did not sleep :,)
Anyhow, appreciate the time you took playing our game and for the feedback!
- S. "Essay"
Sure thing. You definitely did a fantastic job!
Really great; a consistent and stylish visual identity with an interesting theme and a quite literal interpretation of the theme and the thumb-on-the-scale idiom. Fantastically polished, well done!
Se ve muy pro el diseño y las animaciones. Además tiene stats y gestión de número, fascinante. Felicidades por su juego.
¡Gracias por tus comentarios! El arte fue mucho trabajo. No dormí lol.
- S. "Essay"
Te creo, buen trabajo 👌
The game is clean visually clean, the tutorial really helps to understand everything, all and all it's a very clean game
Very good concept!
The art is pleasing to look at, animations are fluid and the audio is calming. Additionally the both thought-provoking and comical scenarios make for a very enjoyable experience.
I could definitely see this game getting very popular in the future!
The game is very well done and polished, nice job! But it was very confusing that whatever i did the peasants reputation would go down and the other two would go up, then when I got to 0% with the peasants I didnt lose as I was supposed to, and the other bug people already pointed out of the game picking the card i didnt choose.
Yo, thanks for giving our game a shot and for the feedback! Some bugs in the project right now make it a bit difficult to get those peasant reputations up. Also yes, the card one, sorry that seemed to happen during your run.
One big issue atm is balance, peasants start off super angry with lower societal values which is why I think they kept going down in your run (gotta get their other Social Ranks high to garner positive support). As for the 0% thing, I think what made sense to us at the time was that the majority needed to be mad, so if the Peasants were at 0%, then one of the other factions had to be below 50% to lose.
Either way, I appreciate you leaving a comment and for giving our game a shot. Brought up some stuff I'm now thinking about for the update!
Cheers!
- S. "Essay"
I love the aesthetics and design of this game so much. It has really nice animations and juice and interesting dialogue.
I ended up winning and coming across a weird bar bug. The game is super interesting but the juiced up animations take sooo long. Eventually I didn't read the cards and text anymore because I felt like it was becoming a drag. I also encountered a bug where sometimes it would give me the wrong card.
Hey, thanks for giving our game a shot and for shooting us a comment. Yes, the animations! A tad too long if you see them over and over again (could imagine seeing the stats slowly move to center screen for the 15th time that I'd go crazy lol). We'll get those reduced for the update. Also, interesting bug you screenshotted, we'll take a look and see what's going on. I think the default Godot scaling of those guys probably broke it and had the slither go off the bar.
Regardless, thanks for giving our game a play and for the feedback!
- S. "Essay"
You're very welcome! Once again have to say the visuals and juice are on point just need to happen a bit faster!
I found myself a bit impatience with the animation, but the game itself has pretty good mechanic!
Yes, totally agreed. We're going to calm that down for the post-jam update. Appreciate you giving it a shot!
- S. "Essay"
Very cool art style and animations! I loved Reigns, so this is up my alley. However, I encountered a bug where the game frequently registered the opposite decision I wanted, so that was a little odd. So like, the clergy and nobility really loved me because of that. Overall, still a fan of what was done here.
Yo! Thanks for playing and calling that out. Game has some bugs we gotta tackle, that is one of them. That bug where you select a card and it gives you the opposite is on the list. Looks like it just randomly happens with some playthroughs (not ideal, def on the high pri). The game balancing is also a little off rn as well. Peasants are very very angry atm which we hope to balance once updating the game. The goal would be to make the Clergy and Nobility not so happy at the beginning since their Societal Values are just very out of wack and high resulting in a positive rep in the early game. Either way, I'm going on a tangent, incredibly appreciative for the love and ty for your time playing through!
- S. "Essay"
I ended up with more than 100% taxation, which I count as a win :)
It does feel like I have to side with the peasants as much as possible or I lose. Could be interesting if there's a rubber banding affect where the other classes start to fall behind really quickly.
Overall though, very creative!
Oof yes, another lil' thing we missed. Taxation should be split among the classes. Right not it's just being treated as: 1) "high tax = bad", 2) "low tax = good". Also yes, the peasantry start off a bit toooooo angry and the others too happy. Think the realistic interpretation was not the best decision for balancing lol. I like the idea of rubber banding and the consequence of just focusing on the two. We'll discuss it and also get to balancing for the post-jam update. Appreciate the time you spent playing our game!
- S. "Essay"
In terms of animations and graphics, it's really beautiful and inspired. The way you utilized the UI is very cool. However, the length of the animations might slow down the gameplay a bit too much. That said, the gameplay is still interesting. Really a good game!
Yo! Thanks for giving our game a shot and for the feedback. Def agree that the animation is a bit much atm, we'll polish it down to the bare essentials to not distract. Appreciate the time spent!
- S. "Essay'
Feels very polished already! Appreciated the nice animations, including the subtle background and UI! I feel like I sided with the peasants all the time but they never showed me any love xD Overall great job!
Yeah, we need to balance that more. The peasants start waaaaay to aggro. Appreciate the love!
- S. "Essay"
Game is very well polished, cool idea.
the first level, the thing i weighed down didn’t go up, and the second level, it did, very confusing, overall, very creative though.
Ah weird! Sounds like the scale bugged out. We'll take a look and see what happened. Sorry for any confusion and thanks for giving our game a shot!
- S. "Essay"
Really cool game :)