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A jam submission

StarfallView game page

Save the forest from darkness!
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Starfall's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#32.8892.889
Visuals#43.1113.111
Overall#62.8332.833
Creativity#72.8892.889
Theme Implementation#102.4442.444

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+3)

I loved this. From the art to the music, it was high-quality work. I loved the movie cut scenes, I'd really like to know how to do those—looked like professional work. I'm really interested in the rest of the story and was looking forward to fighting that Dragon! Great job to your whole team.

Developer(+2)

Thanks so much! I'm glad you loved the creative side, I spent a lot of time last weekend during the jam getting those to look nice.

The art is a bunch of pixel-art layers stacked on top of each other and edited with some motion + sound effects in a regular video editing software. Definitely tedious but I'm so glad it came out well!

Great thoughts! Appreciate it!

Submitted(+3)

That was pleasant and interesting. I found the last jump to be trusting, which, in this case, was beneficial to creating difficulty and challenging the player. I did not see a direct representation of collaboration, and visuals were heavily distorted because the game window was minuscule. For comparison, the PIP floating videos on YouTube are more significant than the game run on my PC.
I loved the music and the flow of the game. It hit the senses correctly. 
I leave impressed.

Developer(+1)

Thank you! I'm really glad to hear thoughts from a studio with great games like yours. The collaboration theme is primarily found in the story itself, of the relationships between the player, griffon, and dragon.

We are in a de-bugging and beta production stage now that the jam is done, so thank you for the feedback about the visuals. Really happy to hear the music was impactful to you.

-Annie

Submitted(+2)

Although playtime was small, the experience was complete. That means something regarding game jams. Whatever you cut or disregarded was well decided and executed! 

Submitted (2 edits) (+3)

Thank you for sharing such a lovely project, and great job working to submission despite unexpected issues (there's always something!). Kudos especially for how well you melded sound with the animation, text, and visuals. Although the gameplay was short, I found myself especially charmed by your game's whole aesthetic and the ending scene. If you continue working on Starfall, I can't wait for the last scene to feel even more rewarding for the player! A nice feature to add might be a few more instructions on controls (the way you signaled using "e" to retrieve stars was very elegantly done).

While playing, I had a question about the visuals. When I first opened the game, the screen was quite small, and making the game fullscreen made it look pixelated (though I'm sure some of that is intentional). I wanted to ask what your ideal resolution is (or would be, with more time).

Turning to the story now, branching narratives are one of my favorite game features! How many different possible endings do you want to build in based on the dialogue choices made by the player character? And I appreciate that I already got to see different dialogue and consequences in just a few scenes :)

Regarding how the textboxes express the narrative, I have 2 pieces of feedback:

1. Some of the textboxes have dialogue a smidge too long to fit on the screen, so players can see a scroll bar on the side. However, we can't actually use the scrollbar, because the game controls interpret clicking as moving the dialogue box forwards, e.g. when the dragon says, "Let's get this little star back, eh [scroll bar]".

2. Some of the dialogue could have been separated more based on clauses/sentence structure, e.g. it seems smoother to divide up the following two textboxes like so: "And it's taken away the forest's" | "only energy source:"



Phew! Thanks for reading such a long review! My last piece of feedback: your audio effects are crazy good. The sudden vhoom when the griffon announces "...skyquake!", energetic music turning on when entering the dragon's lair, the ambient birdsong suiting the forest locale, the beautiful sublime music of the ending...incredible work.

Looking forward to seeing more!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the review! I really appreciate your detailed feedback and shared love for our little story. We're transitioning to a beta production stage now that the jam is over, so I'm excited to start working on some of the suggestions you wrote us.

I'm also very happy to hear you liked the art and music, it was a real grind for me last weekend and I'm glad it paid off for many players. All the best!

-Annie

Submitted(+1)

Hey there! I feel like this game was meant to be a hybrid between an interactive story and a platformer but it didn't have much depth in either direction. The story was quite corny I feel like it would be better if you turned it into a comedy and made fun of yourselves, the characters, and the cheesyness. It also gave several dialog options but I bet the game doesn't have any branches it pretty much doesn't matter stuff happens the same way.

As for the platforming you only had one sequence of platforms and that was it... I mean... Maybe the stars could give you speed/height boosts? Maybe add some traps, enemies, and items? Maybe make it a race where you have to compete to see who gets to the stars first?


Anyway please don't feel discouraged and keep trying, I hope my suggestions help improve any future games you guys do.

(+1)

Hey there! Thanks for taking some time to give feedback.

If it's not obvious, this is still (even now) very much a work in progress. We had some miscommunication with our dev on which version of godot we were using and didn't discover that until the last minute. That left us kind of rushing to get something out the door, though it's not what we envisioned.

Also, you may know this already, but helpful feedback is 1) Specific 2) Objective 3) Positive 4) Conversational. So in this case, "The story is corny" becomes, "I thought X character needs to be more compelling" or "I thought the dialogue needed to be more authentic here [spot]. What did you have in mind?" 

As you're commenting on other projects, just keep that in mind. I always try to think from the perspective of the person getting the feedback and think, "Does this feedback give them something concrete to make real improvements?" 

Thanks again and happy jammin'!

Submitted

My comment on the story isn't specific, it's about the whole plot lines and the tone of the story. Collect stars, enemies become friends, the protagonist is a hidden gem... I mean can't we get a subversion maybe? Maybe an original plotline? An interesting twist? Or at least keep just 1 trope and develop it more considering the time you have to make the game, at least it won't feel so rushed. Alternatively, use a different tone like a Shakespearean tone, or down on your luck, or something strange, unexpected, or different.

Anyway, I'm sorry you don't feel my feedback is not helpful, I did mention the lack of depth, if you had time constraints just try reducing the scope and prioritizing things. I suggested turning it into a comedy then you can make fun of any problems you might have,  suggested you add branching narratives (so choices matter), suggested boosts, traps, enemies, and items, any of them could enhance gameplay. Finally, I suggested a race if you want to go for the pressure route, which could also make the experience more interesting.

If none of it gives you something concrete to make real improvements then I'm sorry, I tried.

Thanks again! Happy Jammin'!