Play Cutscene
But the Clock is Ticking's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Storytelling & Theme | #10 | 1.897 | 2.000 |
| Visuals & Art Direction | #11 | 2.003 | 2.111 |
| Audio & Sound Design | #11 | 2.003 | 2.111 |
| Cinematography | #12 | 1.581 | 1.667 |
| Overall | #12 | 1.871 | 1.972 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine / Tools
GDevelop, GIMP
How does your game fit the theme?
The hero is feeling rushed to defeat the Dark Lord
Story / Context
No story beyond what you can glean from the scene.
Proof of Real-Time Rendering
You can move the rock on the right side of the screen by using your arrow keys.
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Comments
Nice finished cutscene!
I understand it was challenging to make the text run automatically while staying within the timing constraints. It’s clear that this was tricky. The text does move quite quickly now, making it harder to keep an eye on the rest of the cutscene. Luckily, I could watch it multiple times.
The rain and smoke effects make it feel dynamic. Perhaps the characters could have done a bit more, like changing their posture or showing something above their heads during the conversation. At times, they were looking off-screen for a while, and nothing happened except for the text changing.
The use of bright colors worked well to draw attention to the main focus, with darker tones towards the edges, which helped direct the viewer’s eyes to the characters. That worked effectively.
Adding a few more sound effects/audio music could enhance it even further—even something simple, like a typewriter sound as the letters appear, could be a great bonus.
Overall, this is a solid cutscene entry for our jam. Nice job!
Its cool you finished your cutscene! :D I had to watch more times because the text is soooo fast. The scene itself is nicely written and I loved the interaction very much. It would have been cool to see close-ups of the characters, maybe portraits - also a slight ambience music would have been nice.
This scene really shines in how the dialogues are written :D
Thanks. Sorry about the text speed. I wish I had gotten to lengthen some the pauses more before uploading. Some soft ambient music with the lava might have been nice, but I felt it added a better contrast to the beginning keeping a "realistic" background audio during the conversation.
The assets actually had portraits (below) and I did get them extracted from the character sheet, but in the end decided not to try to add them. (GDevelop doesn't have a built in portrait feature like RPGM and I had my hands full with enough other components of the game.)
I wanted to add dialog to my cutscene but I couldn’t nail the speed and I cut it out. I agree with the comment below that it was very difficult to read some of the longer texts.
I am a slow reader in this case. I would need a little bit slower speed for dialog speed. The dialogs were nicely written. In a short time you put a lot of development and story into a cutscene.
More time would suit this well.
For art - I love the visuals, nice art for characters and background. Also the sound of the air fits to the visuals, which I appreciate.
I wished I could do that too and was disappointed when I found out dialog had to advance automatically to keep the scene within the required 30-60 seconds. (I find it really frustrating when games don't let you read at your own pace.) Even with that, I do feel in hindsight I might have been able to lengthen some of the pauses, since I still had about 10 seconds left at the end. Thank you.
The amount of story you managed to fit in such a short time is really impressive! I really liked the interaction between the characters, the dialogues were well written
The setting also pleased me visually, the rain particles added an extra touch of life and dynamism. At one point, a song that I’ve used in a previous game of mine (Another Life) played, and it gave me a huge wave of nostalgia haha, bringing back memories from a few years ago
Considering the time constraints, you did a great job with the story. I just wish there was a slight delay at the end of the dialogues so we could better prepare for the next one, but it's nothing that takes away from the experience
Thank you. Glad people are liking the rain effect. I worried at first it might be adding too much clutter to the scene since I already had some smoke effects above the lava and the lava itself flowed slightly, but in the end I kept it in. I wager the song you used was the Treasure Hunter song that played right before the hero stubbed his toe. I've used in a past game myself and felt it would be a perfect grand intro/contrast to the hero's reaction.
cool entry, I liked the old master/young apprentice storyline it was pretty wholesome and you were able to add a decent amount of backstory in the short time. The writing was pretty good and the line about the hero stubbing his toe on rocks got a chuckle out of me. the art is generally nice to look at (I dig the npc sprites especially) but I felt the lava style clashed a bit with the rest of the scene and would have benefited from a darker hue. the rain effect was a nice touch and added a lot visually and auditorily, as well as to the theme. it has an excellent sound design especially. another critique is that the text moved too quickly sometimes and I wasn't able to read it all of the time, and since it was so fast I couldn't really look at the rest of the scene as I had to be focused on reading the whole time. Overall, I enjoyed this entry and I think you told an interesting story in the short time, nice work!
Thank you. It was frustrating I had to "guess" an adequate time to pause between text without making the pauses too long to fit within the time frame. (For reference I tended to aim for 4 seconds and calculated that even if I made the text appear instantly, the max lines I could have was 15, so I shortened when I could.) I also probably cut some pauses shorter than I should have because I had read through so many times, the pause felt long. Maybe after the jam, I can edit some of the pauses to be a bit longer. The 60 second limit won't matter then :)
yeah I can imagine that'd be really tricky to figure out, tough to find the balance between too slow and too fast. classic developer is too good at their own game lol. and true you could always change it later, maybe even make it so the player has to click through it if you ever made it into a game or something. nice work tho!!
I gotta say, not much of character focused submission in this jam! I almost wish there wasn't a 60 second limit on the cutscenes. This one would benefit from characters having more time.
Thanks. The original plan was to have two heroes escorting the blacksmith and the second hero asks the first to take a break. They speak briefly then reveal to the blacksmith that the ticking clock is literal -- the dark lord cursed a clock to end the world at midnight. The blacksmith is very concerned because he had thought they needed the gear "a few days fast, not a few hours fast." He insists they give him some of their old gear from their inventory and fight slimes until he's strong enough to fight the dark lord with them because you can never under estimate the power of adding an additional party member. But this was too long for one minute.