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A jam submission

Jen's Monster CafeView game page

Can you fix up the shop in time?
Submitted by LastEspresso (@last_espresso) — 1 hour, 30 minutes before the deadline
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Jen's Monster Cafe's itch.io page

Results

Ranked 67th with 3 votes

CriteriaRankVotes
People's Choice Vote#673

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

  • PRESENTATION

    Graphics are a mix of different packs and RTP. Oddly, it all works well together despite being a pretty big mix in some cases. There were some mapping issues (smaller walls than the stuff inside the house, for example) but it didn't stand out too much or cause issues.

    The writing was well done - no spelling, grammar or punctuation errors that I could find. The dialogue flowed well and showed off the characters very well, too. The story itself is interesting and quite charming, as is the setting.

    The music is well used and fits the scenes it was used in very well. I'm pretty sure there was no use of RTP in that aspect. Sound-wise, it's a bit bare - no real noise use to speak of.

    GAMEPLAY The gameplay is very simple - walk and talk. A lot of the game (as far as there was game) consisted of getting items and ferrying them to others, as well as making a few choices and talking to NPCs.

    The main gameplay aspect of the game, however, seems to have been bug-locked - a progress-breaking bug occurred just as we were about to get into the meat of the game.

    ENGAGEMENT While the gameplay was lacking, the story and characterisation made up for that, presenting a charming fantasy world and the sassy half-monster character who lives in it. It's intriguing and I would have liked to have seen what the rest of the game had to offer but alas, bugs.

    THEME The theme was about discrimination and the story aspects showed that quite well, though the gameplay itself didn't reflect it. Mechanics weren't really explained well at all, despite being very simple. Once you knew what to do it was easy to pick up.

    49/80

  • Theme

    Jen is a half-human, half-monster woman that has to deal with racism from humans. She was found by a lawyer because of her good will and finally have a chance to get her life sorted. I think it's a very good theme to work with.

    Gameplay 

    There’s not much to talk about the gameplay as of the moment with just a few battles. The game doesn’t feature the “main” aspects of being a café game which is very disappointing when looking at its core theme.

    Presentation 

    Surprisingly polished for the most part. There is one map that confused me and it was that one area where different monsters were selling items because the path is not very clear or which areas are enter-able.

    Engagement 

    I would love to see this finished. It has a lot of potential.

    Total – 63/80

Team Members
PrincessDanger

Engine
RPG MAKER MV

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Comments

(+1)

I was able to play a good part of the demo (reading Perendi's comment I guess it was lucky that I gave my creme caramel to the human guy in the cafe! XD). I really like the game so far! Jen is really cute! I love her personality. I was so surprised when she took off 'her disguise'! haha 
The story gave a complete turn after that and the game just got so goooooddd! I loved walking through the side street and seeing all the monsters.. some were really cute! :D

Then in Wisteria's shop.. it looked really bad at first.. ohhh myyy godddd... spiders! T_T So many.. it took me a while to gain courage to clean them up to be honest... XD But got it done and everything looks so much better now! ^^ I really love playing this game. I'll definitely be here on the 20th to see what surprises await me in the new update to the game! Good luck on the contest in the meanwhile!

PS: Btw. I got a question- I stopped playing after I cleaned up most of the Wisteria's shop.  I only had the tables to fix and the clock (and well the coffee maker too). Every time I tried to leave the house it would say I had to 'disarm the box' first. How do I do that? I wasn't sure if this was the end of the demo or if I missed something. lol

Developer

Thanks for leaving such a nice comment, Kyattchan! (And I'm so glad you didn't get the curse of the creme caramel.)

The box disarm text is another big mistake I didn't notice until after the IGMC game jam entry deadline was up. It should have disappeared (or in this version it should have shown another demo note) after you check the clock. In the next release, you'll be able to leave freely once Jen changes clothes. 

(+1)

Unfortunately, you get stuck when the lawyer takes you to Wisteria's shop-- the event loops endlessly. Up to that point, I do like it quite a bit though.

Developer

Hi, Perendi. Thank you for playing and letting me know about the curse of the creme caramel.  (It has indeed gone off.) I'll go fix it in my working copy, but for now it's possible to play a little bit longer if you don't serve the lawyer creme caramel at the maid cafe. There's some content left after the bugged shop drop off event, but you'll still hit a demo wall not too long afterward, so it may not be worth replaying for you (or anyone else reading this who ran afoul of this bug) just to see the rest of the event and start in on the first part of fixing the shop.