Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Theme 

  Has vibes of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. The game is about people who have hard time sleeping going to the midnight train due to their thoughts. Something of a metaphor for the direction in life and your future.

  Gameplay 

  Gameplay is just simple fetch quest and could’ve used a lot more.

  Presentation

  Nice art. Could’ve used more ambience (e.g. train moving BGS) and the train to slightly shake a bit to convey movement. As it is, it feels really plain. But maybe since it's a metaphor for thinking about your direction in life that it remains so still? It's hard to tell.  I have some issues with some of the "quests." One particular example is the money running away from you feeling like it's padded gameplay. Or is it supposed to make me think that the dude don't actually want to treat me anything and he wants to save his money? If so he can have it back. 

  The music is very nice though.

  Engagement 

  Too short for me to have any proper thoughts about it. It was just “OK”

  Total – 55/80

• PRESENTATION
  

  Graphics are all custom created and they look a treat. Everything is very polished and fits seamlessly with everything else, even the default window skins (the only thing that aren't custom created).

  The sound is very well done, but I would have liked a bit more atmospheric sounds to truly sell the experience of being on a train. What was there did add to the game a lot, though, and nothing was jarring or stood out as odd.

  The music was also very well done, and fit well with the scenes in which it was presented.

  The writing had some grammatical issues - mainly using the wrong words instead of the proper one and being a little stilted, but despite that it was a charming read. The characters were interesting despite how little they said, and there was a feeling of them knowing each other from past experiences, which was nice.

  The story itself was a little weird and not spelt out, but it was suitably interesting and made sense despite the fact it wasn't really a big focus.

  GAMEPLAY
  The game consisted of walking around, interacting with the characters and chasing some money.

  You ran a few small quests before confronting the main story point and then the game ended. It was very short but there were no bugs and what was there was framed interestingly enough that it didn't feel pointless.

  You could save but there really wasn't a need for a menu since you only ever got one item.

  ENGAGEMENT
  It was engaging. The art style drew you in, and then the characters did as well. You were left with a lot of questions but you could hazard a decent guess at what was going on. It was left up to your interpretation and I would have liked a bit more meat to the game - more quests and interactions with the characters, which were the best part of the game.

  I enjoyed it quite a bit though.

  THEME
  The theme was learning to let go and move on. It framed that well with the narrative but not quite as well with the mechanics, though being a short and simple game, it didn't really need to meld the two, I guess.

  65/80