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Homebound's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #10 | 3.521 | 3.521 |
| Setting (or Location) | #11 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
| Story (or Starting Scenario) | #11 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Mechanics | #24 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Use of Theme | #33 | 3.417 | 3.417 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I like how the game was written. Everything fits together quite nicely. I love the mystery of finding out what is wrong to the orbital cities.
One small criticism is that I feel the shame trait doesn't quite fit with the tone. You reveal your shame, and a good thing happens. If it is a happier game, I would say it means the player character has let go of their shame, and accepted themselves for who they are. Since the tone of this game is a bit darker, revealing ones' dark secret usually brings a consequence.
That last line immediately made me think of Sunshine, but really the only scene I clearly remember was of the captain standing the in "Sun" room getting a sunburn trying to understand what happened to the previous crew.
This is a fun creativity game for all ages, really. I'll definitely try this with the kids someday. Although I think it might be "more fair" to have the GM be chosen by "next player on the left/right".
I think I can get behind the "left behind" ruling as a sort of drama inducing horror story twist. Otherwise I would skip it, personally (for the kids!).
Weirdly enough, I only found out about the movie "Sunshine" after I published the game. So it goes.
I didn't really consider the game as being kid-friendly until now; this is definitely a perspective I find interesting. I toyed with the "next player" rotating GM mechanic a bit, and the reason I settled on a first-to-act thing was both to keep the game closer to an improv game than a board game, as well as ensure that each subsequent GM would take their place only when they have something they feel ready and excited to present. However, no ruleset is fixed and the cardinal rule of all gaming is "do what's most fun", and I'm honestly just happy you've got something to springboard off of.
Thanks for the commentary! I'd love to hear the weird worlds you (and the kids) come up with!
I really like the pacing as it's laid out, with the space map. I also like giving scraps of paper and then dealing them out to use as inspiration; that would get so much cool shared creativity! My only problem is with uncovering questions or answers; why are we doing it? Do the questions need to eventually be answered? Is this just a portion that encourages roleplaying, but mechanically is not required?
Thank you very much for the feedback! I want to work on this a little more after all is said and done. The reason I included questions as a requirement to continue was as a means of prodding players forward - to avoid the "there's no reason to do this, so let's not do it" issue. I didn't have a lot of space to explain my rationale (or much of anything!), so I hoped the cryptic nature of the questions/answers would fit with the cryptic nature of the rest of the journey. Thanks for pointing this out as a sticking point.