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A jam submission

Xeno JarView game page

sim-based alien "discovery" game set in a jar
Submitted by Webow (@webowgames) — 1 day, 11 hours before the deadline
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Xeno Jar's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Graphics#84.5504.550
Overall#273.9253.925
Audio#273.7003.700
Authenticity (Use of resolution restriction)#544.5004.500
Gameplay#702.9502.950

Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Clever idea. I included it in my LOWREZJAM compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)

Submitted(+1)

Really nice idea, with a really atmospheric... atmosphere...

The sound, music, lighting, and even the UI all contribute to a very intense, slightly unsettling, alien vibe and I love it. The tutorial was really helpful, but the text was quite slow. I definitely want to come back to this and see what else I can generate!

Submitted(+1)

The graphism are really beautiful, but I think that you should add an option to speed up the speech. Good job.

Submitted(+1)

I love it, graphics are great - and the font is lovely. Really nice idea. I might've missed something but I had to restart the game after getting trapped in the tutorial, while checking out the tools. Will definitely come back to this game though.

Submitted(+1)

Art is cool. As I understand it, the concept is quite entertaining, in the third attempt after working sequentially with the conditions in a jar I understood how to get xenos. :D

DeveloperSubmitted

Thank you for the feedback. Glad you managed to get some :)

Submitted(+1)

Very polished game. I even loved the little splash animation at the start.

A little biome to much about with is certainly my cup of tea, and I could see myself spending ages tweaking things to see what appears. I echo the same hiccups with others in that Chrome doesn't like to lock the mouse wheel to the game, and scrolls the page, which is a nuisance, and being able to click through on the tutorial would help.

But yes, reminded me of Creatures and Little Computer People in a way!

DeveloperSubmitted

Thank you very much, it's great to hear. 

I definitely didn't design the controls as well as I could have, I didn't foresee that issue at all, which is a shame.

Submitted(+1)

I think all the feedback so far has been on-point! This is a really lovely concept and I like the pixel art a lot.

DeveloperSubmitted

Thanks a lot :)

HostSubmitted(+1)

As has been said, the tutorial is too slow. Even just being able to click through it would be GREAT. While I think I understand what I'm meant to do, I couldn't get any Xenos to appear. Which is a shame as I feel there's a lot of polish and content here! :(

DeveloperSubmitted

Thank you for your feedback, I have certainly learned a lot during this jam. My hope was to make some xenos appear more frequently than others, but I think on the whole I got the balance wrong with this.

Submitted(+1)

This is one of my jam favorites so far!
It looks really cool and fits perfectly in the 64x64 resolution. I like the idea and the realization. The music is consistent. Everything feels pretty polished like if the game would be in a late development phase. The Tutorial could be a lil quicker. But Tutorials aren't that easy, especially in 64x64 pixels ;)

At first I ran into a problem. I couldn't use the scroll wheel cause my browser (Chromium Edge) was still scrolling the entire page. But I figured out when I hold CTRL while scrolling (like you do to zoom in and out on websites) it worked just in the game.

DeveloperSubmitted

Thank you very much!

Yes, I am realizing the tutorial is not quite right, definitely something I can work on going ahead. Thank you for your feedback regarding the problem scrolling in browser and your solution. 

Submitted(+1)

wow, the graphics are great and the concept in general is very unique.   The only critique I have is the speed of the tutorial.  Maybe clicking makes the text appear quicker or something but, since it was your first attempt it was pretty good.  Great game my friend!

DeveloperSubmitted

Thank you very much for your feedback. Yes, that's a good idea re the tutorial, thank you.

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the originality of the idea, but it was quite hard to find the aliens.

Maybe it would be good to give hints on how close the player is to get an alien. Maybe having some indicator that increases the closer the player is setting the right conditions to a new discovery.

For the rest I'm quite impressed by the graphics that you managed to pack in a 64x64 format :)

Good job!

DeveloperSubmitted

Great idea! Yes, I was aware going into submission that I hadn't  playtested the game enough for balancing, but an indicator would be great addition. Thank you very much for that feedback.

Submitted(+1)

Thoughts from playing:

  • Cool and unique game concept.
  • Background music sets the tone nicely.
  • Changing the settings of the jar is pretty intuitive.
  • The font used for dialogue is a bit hard to read. This is fine most of the time since the words can usually be determined by context, but in some cases such as with long complicated words it becomes very difficult to read. This also isn't helped by the dialogue automatically advancing.
  • An alternative to the scroll wheel for control would be nice. My browser still responds it and scrolls the page while trying to play.
  • For as long as the tutorial is it really only focused on telling me how to use the controls, most of which are self explanatory, instead of how to actually play and find the correct settings to get xenos to appear. At a low estimate there are at least 78,000 configurations for the jar so having some direction on what combinations to try and where to start would make it much easier for new people to pick up and learn.
DeveloperSubmitted

Thank you very much for this feedback. It was my first time implementing a tutorial, and I wanted to have a go at making one, but what you say rings true, he could maybe pop up intermittently when the player is close to getting the right conditions. Also, as I mentioned before, time to balance the game was limited,which is regretful, and this of course does not help. As for the scrolling, I completely agree,some other players have since brought this up, for now you can choose the fullscreen mode and this eliminates the scrolling issue (for me at least?).


Thanks again for your in depth feedback.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Awesome game! I do find the text in the dialog to be way too slow though it takes ages to type and then ages to disappear it would be nice if there was a button I could press to speed it up. Overall a great game, awesome idea :)

DeveloperSubmitted(+1)

Thank you! I am guessing you mean the tutorial dialog. It was my first time implementing a tutorial ingame, so that kind of feedback is very helpful at this stage. Thanks again for your feedback.