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A jam submission

What Happened To This World?View game page

A Role Playing Book - Yes a book that is a game... Cool Idea right?
Submitted by GoldenDonkeyProductions (@goldendonkey21) β€” 3 hours, 33 seconds before the deadline
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What Happened To This World?'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#141.9372.429
Devlog#161.8232.286
Gameplay/Fun#231.3681.714
Overall#231.4591.829
Graphics/Art#241.3681.714
Audio#250.7981.000

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Engine / Tools
Microsoft Word

Devlog link
http://TBD (Will be an itch.io devlog though)

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I love the originality of your idea! I will say it is not my type of game to play solo but I was able to put my D&D DM hat on a little bit and imagine this more as a one-shot experience for some of my players and I thought it was really cool the way it walked through everything. I enjoyed reading through your ideas and agree with GoedWare, I would love to see a game adaptation.

Developer

Thanks, glad you liked the idea!

It's also not my type of game, and have never actually played D&D myself, but the feedback from all the players who have has been mostly quite good so that's cool to hear.

Thanks again!

HostSubmitted(+1)

This was a little different...πŸ˜‰. Kudos for this originality for a computer game jam πŸ˜‰.

Gameplay
Not quite my kind of game I am sorry. Although I do like board games with stats and dice.
Maybe that was because I was expecting a computer game. But it was a bit fun to try it anyway πŸ™‚. Although I was thinking what it would have been like if you had made a visual novel or a text based game (like in your devlog). Think it would have worked quite well! Maybe another Jam with more time...

Graphics
Nice images  to go with the story πŸ˜‰.

Audio
A soundtrack for download would have been nice to listen during playtime.πŸ™‚

Theme
With the stats enhancements this fits well

Devlog
Good nice explanation why you came to this setup and what your thoughts were.

Not as expected, but still some fun, and curious to see a gamification of this story 😁

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the review!

Honestly it's not my kind of game either, I made it because it was fun to make :) Also loved the audio idea, I toyed with giving people spotify songs to listen to, but my taste isn't music often isn't shared so I decided against it... Like the idea of a soundtrack though!

Glad you liked the idea!

Submitted(+1)

Very nice game…

Submitted(+1)

this RPG fits very good to the THEME, the stats control are a perfect fit to the ENHANCE, im not very familiar with this interactives PDF but is really surprise to see one of those in a jam like this, the hability to create a story like that in this time is very impresive.

Really love to see this work here x3

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot! 

I've honestly never heard of an interactive pdf either but glad you liked it πŸ˜‚

Submitted

I'm a sorta professional DM and have done some tabletop design so I'm probably in the pickiest possible audience for this, but I gave it an earnest shot and it didn't land for me.  Story wise I was intrigued but it seemed like you just dropped the things you were bringing that made stuff unique. Like, I could imagine the first part of the book being full of color, but the later parts of the book could conspicuously be more and more greyed out. That kind of thing. I was hoping for more exploration of why the situation was what it was and the answer to not just be the equivalent of a wizard did it.

Biggest issue though is that there's some fundamental design issues with the combat.  If a battle system has deterministic damage of "atk-def = damage dealt" then there has to be some mitigating factor that introduces randomness, or the defense can never equal or exceed attack values. With infinitely respawning rats, who can't possibly harm a player who has 2 defense, as long as the player buys a sharp stick and a tunic in town at the start they basically can justify to themselves just assuming they have infinite gold - the dice rolling is just busywork when the outcome is already predetermined. And until a player buys a sharp stick, they literally can't harm the rat whatsoever.

The only combat that actually requires dice to be involved at any point, then, is the final one. but 50% chance to do damage, 50% chance to be hit, then 50% chance to get loot... it's just not engaging. I dunno why clicking buttons to do the exact same thing feels more enjoyable to people - with an MMO you've got the visual stimulation and the appeal of the social aspect. Even simpler board games give you a tactile thing to interact with and maneuver around a board.

I think even the simplest fix (attacks do a minimum of one damage no matter what defense) would improve things quite a bit, but the rules around the combat loop are pretty unclear - do you lose anything when you die besides time? If the only punishment is time, you again run into the problem of the player knowing they're guaranteed to get infinite gold if they just roll the dice enough, so the motivation to play things out falls significantly. The burgeoning solo game genre is pretty fascinating to see what designs work  - there are games like Gloomhaven and 7th Continent and Onirim and some dungeon crawly puzzle-books whose names escape me that have proven there is a market for solo tabletop style games. At the end of the day those all come with one thing: the core gameplay loop has indeterminate outcomes, and feel like solving some kind of puzzle.

You mention at the end that you're not sure it's the type of game for you. It's really good to stretch one's design legs and try genres they don't think are for them, but imo if you don't like your game by the end of it, probably something went wrong along the way. I think it's ambitious and cool to try something like this for this jam, even if I don't think it really worked :)

Developer

Haha thanks for all the feedback πŸ˜‚! 

Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it that much, honestly wasn't expecting anyone to make it to the end really. I knew the story and combat was off from the get go honestly, but I didn't really have the time to fix it up... The story actually has quite a lot more development planned but obviously it never happened, just throwing that end page in at the last minute πŸ˜‚. 

It's cool to know I'm not the first person to come up with this idea though, not that I thought I was, just didn't know what this kind of game would be called. I like the minimum damage thing, and I might try and spice up the story / combat a bit once the jam is over, just to make it a bit more fun for anyone who stumbles across it in the future. 

Also agree with the not the game for me reference, but honestly I was kind of burnt out from multiple jams so this was just a chance to try something new... Definitely enjoyed making it either way πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈπŸ˜‚. 


Anyway thanks for playing, especially since you made it all the way to the end! πŸ™Œ

Developer

The devlog can be found here for anyone interested: Why on earth did I make this? - What Happened To This World? by GoldenDonkeyProductions (itch.io)