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A jam submission

HostageView game page

Escape a prison
Submitted by Denoss — 17 minutes, 57 seconds before the deadline
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Hostage's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Graphics / Visuals#24.0004.000
Does it follow the theme?#64.1674.167
Gameplay / Fun#152.8332.833
Audio#202.5002.500

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Any pre-made assets?
nope

How did you interpret the theme?
Main Character is a hostage and he has to work under pressure

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Comments

Submitted

I like the idea and approach to the theme, the art is top-notch, and have a story company with the gameplay, it's a very nice surprise and a hidden gem, I can see this as a complete game.

However, as many people say, there have lots of game-breaking bugs, I played until day 2 with multiple resets because of some stupid collision  problem, like the image below (I thought I put the bullets into the box but nope, and now I can't get the bullet again)


Besides the manual text, I think that the "bullets number on the clips" is also hard to read with white text and a similar yellow background wall, adding a black outline on the text will help it more readable.

Submitted

The story is quite interesting! Really loved the art as well!

Some complaints though (won't repeat what others said as they expressed them quite well):

-sound design could use some work (some sfx when crafting, putting items in the box)

Keep up the good work!

Developer

Thanks for playing and rating! You're right, sfx could use some work

Submitted

The art and story are presented really well, and it does make you feel under pressure and in danger, congrats! As others mentioned, I wasn't able to progress as well because of the collision bugs, but the idea is great and I would love to be able to play it through, give me a heads up if you make a new version! Great work.

Developer

Thanks for your comment, glad you liked it!

Submitted

so I tried the download link! Nice game, the story and art is good. but I think the textbook is a little hard to read, and also the hitbox of things are annoying, the box is hard to drag things into it and also things will be behind the box so I coundn't find all bullets for the first try. Also I dont have the green part for the bomb(when press space), it is there for the first day but 2nd and 3rd is no thing 

Developer

It's a bug, I'm sorry if it ruined your experience. And thanks for the comment!

Submitted

I cant play on web :( but I will try the download link 

Submitted

Great work, little tips for the future tho:

-Like others mentioned bit buggy, besides that well done on the art and story.

-bit too slow-paced for my personal taste and tedious when it comes to the given tasks.

Developer(+1)

thanks for your comment! You're right, those are real problems of the game.

Submitted

I like the idea and it's a rather scary one! the thing about Jams that I like the most is when there's a really ususual twist to the theme and you did that masterfully! I'm sure the game was supposed to be really cool)

but the game is really buggy, I've restarted three times but haven't lived through the second day. Are you planing to update the game after jam? I'm curious how it ends, very Papers please like experience,  and I do love Papers please :)

but if you are going to update it, please,  I beg you, redo the instructios in the folder, they are barely readable and I didn't get what's the stuff on the last pages were about :D

Developer

We really did take a lot of inspiration from Papers, please, so I'm really glad that you felt this way! I'm really sorry that you had to deal with all the bugs, I am a programmer in the team and, well, probably working morning to night for 3 days didn't affect the quality very well. If you still are curious about how it ends, from the little playtesting I did, the game doesn't bug much on first launch, so you'd kinda have to restart the whole thing whenever you lose) And if you want to straight up get to the ending, player has to be able to make a bomb by combining magazine, battery (it would fall out from the clock between day 2 and 3), some gunpowder, a wick (which lays in the drawer from day 1), and light it up with a lighter, exploding the wall (when the watcher is away getting you food) and running away. This is just what the last page was saying, so sad thing that the manual didnt help much. I decided it would be a funny joke to make it all written "by hand" and with all those illustrations and arrows, but it kinda turned out ruining your experience.

About updating the game, we don't really know yet, but we will sure take a break, that was really exhausting for each member of the team. And specifically for me it would mean probably starting the project from scratch, cause right now it is just a bunch of spaghetti code that barely works, and I barely even remember it.

Submitted

no-no, hand written stuff was funny and the other nod to Papers please!  I smiled when I saw that) but in some places it really needs to be more readable, that's all)

oh, the exhaustion is bad, I know..  I thought  I'd make it in a 2,5 days, but I crunched my way up to the end.. last time I was on Jam I told myself not to do it solo, because it's very restrictive, but it's rather hard to find a good team with some weird and fun ideas, because I don't really want to spend my free time doing  some easy interpretation of Jam's theme, that's not interesting at all :)

I'm a programmer too, by the way) but like a quality product so I have to do all the things, basically) except for the music - I do love a good soundtrack that complement the game's theme well) so I leave the music and sfx to the professionals

and my code within the last 15 hours or so became a mess too, hence the bugs) if I saw this code out of context, I would frown upon that code so badly, mumbling "how, how could someone write that bad?!" so I know what you mean :D

and I'll definitely try to play this game again  :)

Developer

So true about looking at your own code out of context)) In the end I was literally using values for all the methods and other stuff, instead of making variables for it, like "f it, we ball"(i think I literally left this message as a comment somewhere lol)

Submitted

Haha, classic :D

Submitted

Could not play the game it gave this Error:Unable to parse Build/HostageWeb.framework.js.br! This can happen if build compression was enabled but web server hosting the content was misconfigured to not serve the file with HTTP Response Header "Content-Encoding: br" present. Check browser Console and Devtools Network tab to debug.

Developer

I know, the web build doesn't work.. if you tried windows build, I'd really appreciate it.

Submitted

oh, another fellow "I wanted to make an easy acsess browser game, but unity won't let me", just like me :D hi five!

you can remove the webgl probably?

Submitted

Dragging materials around is really hard with how buggy it is and some would be dropped behind the box instead of put in. Other than that it's great.

Submitted

cool game, the art looks amazing and its fun to play. just when i click retry the text of the bad guy glitches and one time i didnt have enough materials to make 10 bullets on day 1. but still a very well made game, great job!

Developer

yeah, the game becomes buggy after retrying.. I literally submitted it 10 minutes before the deadline, so yeah, I could fix some problems. Thanks for your comment

Submitted

Hi, you webgl build seemed to fail (one thing you could try is building for development mode, that sometimes fixes it when your in a hurry). Anyways I tried the windows build and it worked flawlessly. Beautiful art style. Some of the hit boxes for the items are really difficult, especially when trying to put things in the boxes. The clock could do with a visual cause I didn't realise you could click on it xD so i was just scrambling for time. Got a full storyline, so well done on that for making it during a Jam! I Also really like the concept. good job

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Gonna try your game right now. Also thanks for the advice with web build, but for what I know I cant change anything now(

Submitted

I can't. T_T

Developer

Dammit. Its just the first time I'm building web, think I messed something up. But there's also windows build and it has to work