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Head North's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Most Compelling Narrative | #1 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Best Use of the (optional) Theme | #1 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Most Innovative Narrative | #2 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Best Use of Ludic Elements (Game Mechanics) To Deliver Story | #2 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Most Compelling Character | #4 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
You have a compelling story here. The way you describe what is happening is solid enough for a player to visualize the scene. The music is also really good for the setting.
However, what appears to be a randomness in some events, don't stick too well. For example, losing the game on the first day because the truck decided to appear there, and the following gameplay, I did the exact same thing and it did not happen. Or the lady, which appears more than one time even if I "avoid" her. I think that each event should only happen once during gameplay.
Another thing I would change is that some days you literally do nothing. It's " sleep, wake up, head north, sleep", with no events at all. I believe that if every day had meaningful events, the game would benefit from it.
But overall, it is a solid and a good game. Very interesting!
Thanks for the review! There are a couple of problems you mentioned that I'm aware of and would have liked to fix if I had time.
You made an interesting comment though about the fact that making the same decision could lead to a different outcome, and that you didn't enjoy that aspect of the game. I guess you could call this a "powerlessness fantasy", in the sense that your fate is mostly outside your control. I think that fits the theme of the game pretty well, but perhaps it should be more of a 50/50 split where you can make stronger or weaker tactical decisions but there's still a chance of failure.
Additionally, it might be more satisfying if the player could actually see the chance of success next to the option they choose. You've given me a lot to think about! 🙂
NOTE: This comment contains a lot of spoilers. As in, a lot. Be aware.
This text adventure is super cool. I like how you just have to keep marching on forwards, regardless of what happens. You can never afford to linger in one place for too long. You just have to keep walking on and on, hoping to find something good. I felt like I was actually in the apocalypse.
What I don't like is that a lot of runs felt like they could play out in roughly the same way. While it was surprising the first time, every time I read that passage about the manic hunters in the truck, I lost engagement rather quickly. No matter how many rations or health points I had, and even when I had another person accompanying me, the run would end there. What makes this worse is that it happened to me at the end of a vast majority of my runs. As weird as this may sound, I would have been down for a larger variety of ways to kick the bucket.
When I did see something more out of the ordinary, though, it was always an interesting thing that grabbed my attention and made me pause to think. Things like the cannibal in the forest, the mysterious lady with a sword in the mountains, the vicious dog, questions of whether or not I'd find rations... all of those different possibilities, mixed with the looming question of what they'd mean were great. I also have to shout out that creepy as hell ambience in the background. Talk about fantastic mood setting.
Good work overall!
P.S. "Meat has a short shelf life out here" is a wonderfully grim, gross, and odd line that I love to death.
NOTE: Also spoilers. Lots of them.
Super useful feedback! It sounds like you were an unfortunate victim of probability. There's actually close to a 50% chance of escaping the hunters in the truck if you run, and additional variations when you have a companion. Also if you manage to get a loaded pistol before running into them, things turn out very differently. With more time though, I would have loved to tweak the probabilities a bit, add a bunch of extra variables, and even find a way to make repeated events less likely when you hit a replay button. Definitely a concept I'd like to revisit.
Huh, so I was just having some very bad luck, then. That's good to know; thank you. I was definitely having issues with repeat results when testing my game as well; random number generators sometimes don't feel as random as they're supposed to...
I definitely do think that finding a way to make repeated results less likely would be a great system to implement in the future, though I have no idea how you would go about implementing that. If you do expand on this concept, I'll be happy to take a look once again! Until then... I have to go up North and see if I can find some more stuff.
Incredible game as always. I love how you limited the movements to moving North, a restriction that allows you to keep the game fairly simple while allowing for creativity.
I especially like the writing's cadence, and how the low resources keep you praying that you'll find food on the next day. I often find the anticipation of what's going to happen next the best part of reading a traditional narrative, and you captured this feeling here very well.