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The Octopus's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #2 | 4.231 | 4.231 |
| Controls | #3 | 3.885 | 3.885 |
| Theme | #6 | 4.231 | 4.231 |
| Overall | #6 | 3.904 | 3.904 |
| Originality | #8 | 4.115 | 4.115 |
| Fun | #19 | 3.346 | 3.346 |
| Graphics | #27 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
3.2.2
Source
Yes
Game Description
The Octopus is a narrative management game
Discord Username
Vost, angeldust (Simon)
Participation Level (GWJ only)
Yes, first participation in Godot Wild Jam
Participation Level across all Jams
Yes, first jam ever
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Comments
Resource managers with story is a favourite genre of mine. What I like with this one is the gritty photography art style, the darker tone and that you can either chose to focus on fewer missions or spread out. I also like that (at least some) of the options I missed out on where visible; it makes it clear that my choices have impact.
It may be a bit problematic that all the "muscle" are male and all the "brains" are female (as far as I got), but it is organized crime on the other hand so I'm guessing their workplace does not have a gender equality plan. 😉
Unfortunately the game crashed on me a bit into the 2nd act. I need to get on with other entries while the voting is still going on, but I'm hoping to get back to this one later.
Thank you so much for playing and for your feedback! Glad you globally liked it!
For the gender equality, I think you missed some characters (especially a "brawl" female). But maybe you're right, I guess we could enhance that.
Otherwise, what do you mean by "The game crashed [...] a bit"? What did you experience exactly? Game closed itself? Game freezed?
Thank you again and good luck for the rating! :P
About the crash: It's a bit hard to explain. Most elements faded out to ca 10% alpha and then the game just stopped responding. I think it was just after the part with the priest. I was playing the browser version.
Oh I see, like a freeze during a transition screen... I assume it is linked to the bad performance (refresh rate) that the browser version can induce, or your connection quality maybe? Indeed, we already had similar problems with the physics of the mission sheets being glitchy or the pause menu causing the game to freeze in the browser version (at least those bugs have been fixed)... Maybe next time you should try the downloadable version, if you can.
Once again, thanks for the feedback! Hope you won't experience this bug again!
This was really good! You guys did A LOT with very little (a few cards being drug around), that is highly commendable! The art and music were well done, very cohesive and fitting. In the end as others have mentioned, I think the RNG got to me as well, day 63, shot by the mafia. XD
Great entry I enjoyed it quite a bit!
Thank you very much for playing and for those kind words! We are very glad you enjoyed our game!
Yeah, we are sorry for the difficulty balance... We are disappointed it put an end to many play-trhrough... But hey, getting shot is usually how you end up when you get into Mafia, so maybe... (what a terrible excuse) XD
Really nice game, especially for a first jam! And interesting take for the theme "family". The Mafia atmosphere was on point. The gameplay, narration combined with timer, reminded me of Cultist Simulator, and worked very well. UX, tutorial, and story and were also great.
The main thing that I think could be improved is that, besides the story cards, I don't feel there is a lot of strategy. I basically just put as many characters as available on the first card coming up, then on the second, etc... the main difficulty was just grad-and-dropping quickly, no need to read the cards' outcome and anticipate. Basically the game was forgiving enough to let me play with that simple strategy, and I would have liked situations where I have to make meaningful decisions: eg. I either focus one card and sacrifice another, or play both half-filled. (Though other comments bellow said they found the game hard, probably due to different luck with the rng.) Ideas to make decisions more impactful: Cards with a filled line of character have a "bonus" win-rate / Some cards are not failed when ignored (but become fail-able if you have at least a character) / Some rare cards need 4~5 characters, or have a very short timer, or freeze characters for longer / etc... (Probably not all very good ideas, because it can add unnecessary complexity to the game, but hopefully my message is more clear.)
I would have also liked that the endings take into accounts the earlier decisions you made, like what characters are still alive, or your reputation. And the proportion of endings I reached, so I can enjoy unlocking all of them, and be sure I didn't miss out on anything. :P
Anyway, great job, and I hope you'll keep enjoying participating in game jams!
Thank you very much for that very detailed feedback!
First of all, we're really glad you enjoyed the game and want to know all the endings! :P Your suggestion about putting the number of endings somewhere is interesting! I think I'll make a spoilers section on the page of the game!
Then, we, angeldust and I, totally agree with you. We basically enlarged the scope too much during the development, letting only little time for balancing, or pushing the ideas. Moreover, I left angeldust alone on this part (because he is waaay better than myself at game design and because there were so many bugs to fix), so it was really tough given the tight deadlines. In any cases, thank you for your suggestions, we will think about it!
Great suggestions ! Those were our after thoughs when the jam was over...
Thank you very much :)
The music and art really create this somber atmosphere that sets you in the mood.
I really liked the UI and the drag and drop aspect of the game. Felt polished.
Wow, thank you very much for this positive feedback!
Wow this game really draws you in. Love the atmosphere - the art and music and story were perfect for each other. I really enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing!!
Thank you !
Pretty good atmosphere, the music especially sells the "noire" mob story vibe.
I really like the presentation as well, and the pixelated portraits using photos really look like something with the PS1 style, the story is gripping, and there seems to be quite a lot with a ton of difficult decision making.
The only issue i have , at some point when you get up to 4 simultaneous missions , when you don't have a large enough crew, you can't seem to juggle them fast enough to multitask since you have to go drag and drop them, maybe this could be improved if you could queue your crew members to multiple tasks and only have the stats and rng decide the outcome.
In the end even though i didn't get that far and ultimately got shot :p , i really liked it !
good job to you guys :)
Thank you very much for playing and for this detailed feedback! We are glad you enjoyed the atmosphere and story, that what we wanted to focus on!
Your queue idea is really interesting! At the beginning, we wanted to make it impossible to do all the "non-story" missions, but we changed our mind during development. But I guess you're right, some more thinking about this game feature is probably needed!
Thanks again!
well only sharing my thoughts on the game but glad to be of any help, even if i'm still quite a noob XD
Actually you can do almost all missions. The trick is to do missions with the less people first (to avoid the time penalties you get when you go to mission). Also the mission completion timer reset when you drag your second or third character to the mission, and you can use it to save some time while waiting for one of them to finish another mission. And last, since you get the penalties if the timer is out and nobody was assigned to the mission, better put one character from the wrong type than nobody.
But the multi-tasking idea is nice, I like it :D
PS : Obviously this is easier if you managed to recruit all NPCs and avoid losing them ^^
Oh i see... i didn't try that approach, and i was more trying to always have the "suited" crew member doing their specific job, and filling the slots if it was a multi character mission every time :p then again i'm not good at either strategy, puzzles or in that case management XD
Great game! Well put together. UI worked really well. The theme followed through including the music.
Thank you very much for testing our game and writing such a nice comment! =D
This was really interesting! I've never played anything like it before. I like the interface and controls. They felt very intuitive. I haven't been able to beat it yet but I'll get there!
Wow, that's very nice, thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed the game and thought the controls were intuitive! Otherwise, yes, the game is pretty hard, that is one of the most recurrent feedback (it is really difficult to find the good balance), so don't be ashamed! ;D Thank you again for your feedback!
Wow, that is a ton of content you got in this game!
I managed to avenge my mother! Take that Adam!
Well done, and an interesting take on the theme. :)
Thank you very much for playing and giving us feedback! Your comment is really nice!
Yeah, I guess we got a bit ambitious... We spent way more time in this project than planned (coffee surely helped). Glad you enjoyed it!
Your entry is also very interesting and original! Haven't had much time to rate and comment it yet but I promise I will!
Hey,
nice little game you made, really like it. played and rated. Art was very nice. gameplay was a bit strange at first as this is a gameplay I'm not used to to, but on the way I started to like it. very nice.
please feel free to play and rate my game:
https://itch.io/jam/godot-wild-jam-24-our-2-year/rate/737061
Thank you very much for playing and for your feedback! Glad you liked our game!
Thank for rating to!
I played the game you and your kiddos made, pretty well done! Played and rated, as you say! ;D
Really good concept!
The game feels very deep, so many decisions! And I see a lot of replayability.
The ambience is nice, it captures the mafia tone really good
Sometimes it feels a bit unfair on the missions because of the rng, but I guess that's good because it encourages you to take other decisions if you fail
It is actually hard to beat! I got shot because of bad rep :(
Suggestion: Maybe the story missions should have an accept button instead of drag mechanic
I see good potential :)
(sorry I meant to post this comment here and not on the game page)
Wow! Thank you very much, that's very nice! I am glad you enjoyed the game!
Yes, we tried to adjust difficulty before the last release but I guess our balance wasn't good enough!
Thank you for the suggestions and feedback too!
Good story game. Your BGM is very fit in your game theme.
Thank you very much for your feedback! We focused on the atmosphere, really glad to hear that it works!
I loved that the story progression worked exactly the same as the normal missions. The music really set the mood for the theme.
I felt like I failed at way too much missions with 80% success chance, but I guess that's just my RNG curse :D.
Thanks for you feedback !
I agree 80% chance does seem a lot when in reality it not that much :D Aaaah, gotta love humain brain, right ?
The gameplay is engaging. The audio creates a cool ambience and the UI/UX design was really seamless. Story was a little cliched, but it served its purpose.
The one thing I couldn't stand though were the animations when the missions slid in from the right. May be just me but since they were so slow I ending up reading them as they moved which really hurt my eyes.
Other than that, it was a solid game!
Thank you very much for your feedback!
Indeed, find the good balance between too slow and too fast is very difficult! In any case, you have a point, others share your opinion, it surely a bit too slow!
I liked this - it told enough story to keep me interested, but not so much that I felt like I had to read multiple walls of text. The graphics are a little odd, but they work. The audio sounds nice and fits this game really well.
Thank you ! (yeah we tried to pay hommage to the PS1 graphics ^^)
Cheers !