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Starvation's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #287 | 2.540 | 3.667 |
| Authenticity (use of resolution) | #307 | 3.002 | 4.333 |
| Gameplay | #318 | 1.963 | 2.833 |
| Overall | #323 | 2.223 | 3.208 |
| Audio | #346 | 1.386 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
I recruited three friends to make this as a four-man team.
The designer created the concept and wrote the script.
The artist created most of the pixel art, especially the portraits.
The special consultant gave critical feedback and provided other support.
I programmed the game and kept things moving along.
Was the resolution a challenge?
We dismissed several game concepts due to the small size of the screen (after cutting away everything beyond 64x64).
We originally planned to have the entire game be voice-acted, but that ended up being too difficult in the time-frame.
That left us providing as much information as possible visually, and trying wherever possible to avoid giving stats in the form of text dumps.
We were not entirely successful (there is a lot of text on screen), but we did achieve the goal of having the player know what choice they are making based on the icons being shown as options, with no text on-screen during the selection process.
The biggest challenge was making a 64x64 game in 1-bit. Our artist did some amazing work in greyscale that we had to alter dramatically given the PlayDate's 1-bit screen. Basic items were fine, but human faces were a serious challenge in the 40x40 space that we thought allowed for a reasonable interface.
What did you learn?
My team worked together very well. We all learned a few things about project management, but I would say this was more of a chance for each of us to use skills that were rusty, rather than a learning experience.
None of us are programmers (except the consultant), so we were really surprised that we could actually finish a game! Even though a lot of features were left on the cutting-room floor, it feels pretty cool to have made a somewhat finished experience.
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Comments
The mother may seem harsh but shes the one who never eats ToT
You made a playdate game woow! ^u^ I had a glitch where I'd keep returning from the store every time a child returned home but it didn't break anything so its ok, shame about running out of time before music but thats just Jams, this is suuuper impressive! :)
Yeah...at about 1am I said to the designer, "did you notice that the mother never eats," but it was way too late for that lol.
Can I ask if you played the .json or .pdx version? The music issue is related to the .json version, because you can't upload music assets to the Pulp web-player unless they're programmed in Pulp's midi interface, and the game uses an MP3 soundtrack. It sounds like I may also have forgotten to update the .json version with bugfixes that are in the newest pdx. [Edit: yeah, the .json and pdx versions are basically different branches now, it looks like I never got the "ignore player input so you can't make the same choice twice" code to work in the .json, sorry about that!]
yeah I imported the json, I couldn't work out how to upload the whole pdx folder? I tried these buttons but they both want the .json Id love play again so I can rate for audio too :)
Sadly the PDX only works with the simulator (which comes with the free Playdate SDK), or on an actual PlayDate.
After hours of installing dependencies, I was able to test the PDX version. I like the song. I ran into a bug, though. I bought the dagger and the game crashed after I wiped out all the children.
Thanks for the report! I don't know what caused it, but you're the first person to do that, including the dev team, so I'll have to check it out.
I'm the first to...wow, what a dubious honor. Here, I was able to reproduce the bug and this time I remembered to save the crash report.
Thanks, that's really helpful! Based on that error report, it may be that no-one has actually had all the children die since we released the "full" version of the game, lol. Perhaps the whole ending is broken.
EDIT: Ugh, looks like a recent update which enabled easy save-games causes a crash when converted using Pulpmill like this game is. I'll look into a fix.
Well, good luck. We were going to finish our entry but not after these awful results.
Seriously, the ratings are absolute trash. I may not be the best, but my graphics work is objectively better than at least 60 of the games that inexplicably scored above me. Yes, I'm butthurt.
one of the first games I reviewed was an incomplete pornographic demo where a maid slowly walks across three screens to find a tentacle monster to sit on. One place above me in the rankings.
I feel you man.
1-bit color is a crippling limit at these sizes, but you did well.
Thanks, I'll pass that along to the artist! We'll hopefully double the resolution after the gamejam and get some more detail. It was really hard not to make the pitchfork for the farm look like some kind of marital aid, so we settled on the current "alien torture device" look and wrote "Farm" on top of it, lol.
With a tiny screen, sometimes it's worth trying to move single pixels around before abandoning a design. Doesn't take much to have a big effect on the object's appearance.
I had trouble figuring out that I had to go to playdate to play this, but once I got everything working I greatly enjoyed it!
The artwork was particularly well done :D
11/10 would send my kids into the forest to get an abundance of mice again ;)
Thanks for going through the trouble, and thanks for the heads-up!
I included a note about using playdate in the game listing, but I didn't realize you could download the game directly from the LowRezJam submission page, which doesn't mention Playdate at all. I changed the download title so it should be clear to new players.
i like the storyboard concept visually! Nice to have it set in old times (my playdate demo is too) the music sounds great its hard (for me) to get professional sounding music on playdate! Kudos.
Loved the premise and monochromatic display. Reminds me of Lucas Pope, like a mix of Papers Please and Obra Dinn! Great use of a console I didn't even know about.
Thanks! Obra Dinn...that's high praise. I hope after a few more art revisions we might deserve the comparison.
How hard was it to get the game running as someone who didn't already have a PlayDate/emulator, if you don't mind me asking?
I definitely had to go out of my way to figure it out from the submission page and there were some steps that I'm not sure most people could figure out. Biggest "hurdle" was having to create an account on the website but after that, i just had to find the import button to use the JSON from the game. There's an on-screen controller which I had to use my mouse for, like clicking A and B and arrows with my cursor, but for a game like this it's not really a problem. Overall not too hard for me but some people might not like it.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the finicky controller. You can click to get focus and use arrows+a+s instead of mouse, but you can't click the mock game screen to get focus (the most natural place to click) because that's used for pausing emulation and pauses the game till you click again.