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Trans-Timensional Tavern's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Uniqueness (Originality of the game) | #13 | 3.095 | 3.095 |
| Theme (How well the game fits the jams theme) | #14 | 2.730 | 2.730 |
| Overall | #15 | 2.534 | 2.534 |
| Balance (Speed of the game) | #15 | 2.068 | 2.068 |
| Fun (Overall enjoyment) | #16 | 2.243 | 2.243 |
Ranked from 74 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Fairly bland and slow. There feels like there may be something worthwhile in the concept, but this just ain't it yet
it has potential, needs more automation, prestige... too slow start, too much clicking for far too long, some timewalls (board)
To be honest, I don't really like this game very much, but maybe I'm just not a graphics guy. I'll try to give some suggestions:
1. Make the core gameplay loop more interactive. Currently there's just decorations and chairs that you can buy with money. Quests seem entirely unrelated to the main mechanic for the most part, and they're completely time gated which isn't great considering you can't speed up time. The chairs seem to be the only production boost, and they scale really harshly so for the most part the game doesn't really have any sense of progression. Maybe like, quests need a certain amount of money to complete and give you boosts? Another currency other than money that you can use to embark on quests to get new stuff would be neat.
2. Make the theme of "time" more relevant. It seems like a lot of the focus on this one is put on the supposed time that the customers are from, but they have no difference other than visual. Maybe they want some food which is specifically from the period they were in so you have to build a new kitchen which cooks that kind of food to satisfy them? Decoration could play into this satisfaction factor too, and this satisfaction could in turn boost the money they give.
3. A better visual indicator that there are workers automatically serving the guests. I was confused for a moment about why there weren't any new things after I bought the worker upgrades but it turns out they're just invisible.
Wish you some good luck expanding this. This has more potential as a long-term game thing than a short-term game.
Honestly, this game is pretty bad. It barely qualifies as a game, IMO. It's not fun to play, it's just waiting for money to accumulate while the quests slowly tick up. The game 'mechanics' barely interact with each other, so buying the decorations feels pointless.
The pixel art is really good, but that doesn't save the game from mediocrity.
It could turn into an interesting game with a lot of work and some redesign around the core 'serving orders' loop.
Awesome start to a game. I liked the eating noises haha. Good potential to have a really interesting upgrade system and more complicated game mechanics as you progress.
I didn’t play through to the end. I really liked your art style, it’s clearly bespoke and downright gorgeous and theme-rich compared to some of the UI-only type of incrementals.
I’d appreciate more instructions and notifications: for a while I was just clicking on stuff. I was playing on a TV with some friends and family around the living room, and we couldn’t really make out what the icons meant from the couch.
Yeah, a mute option would be nice after a couple of play-throughs of the music.
I like the setting and idea. Adding stuff to the bar gives some feel of progress, although it's true that (except for the stools/chairs that act as patron slots) there doesn't seem to be any progress in the game mechanics associated with then... I like how the jobs have a bit of a story-mode feel to them, at least until you reached the last of them.
I agree that gold income should be connected to the era of the patrons so higher cost of upgrades evens out.
Also, wasn't there supposed to be some waiters getting hired? Maybe they're a bit Ninja-like so you never get to see them?
As for the scroll... If that bit never made it into the release (due to time constraints I suppose) then it would have been better to just throw that bit of the UI out...
Thanks for playing! And providing feedback. I’m glad for the most part you enjoyed it and could look past the sparse content and towards what the game was trying to accomplish!
The auto clickers are there but they’re invisible. In fact you start with 2 from the beginning and can add 2 through quests. We had ideas for upgrading them and making them click faster as well (cut due to time). Ideally you would know you had auto clickers / helpers around the bar visually. The scroll was another cut idea that we had forgotten to take out visually. With any luck we will update the game and add more content and balance the game further. Thanks again for playing!
Sorry, gonna be pretty blunt here. Rated everything 1/5 Except for theme, 2/5
First off, flaw at the start, no way to mute sound. Should always be an option.
Now regarding gameplay, there is really not a lot going on. Clicking and loading bars. No real upgrades, or anything that I could find. Gold income never meaningfully increased, despite costs skyrocketing up. Why don't future ages have more gold?
Anyway, I'd like to think I made it through the game. Bought the 100k upgrade, I don't think it did anything.
The whole time there was that scroll symbol next to the gold, so either I missed something very important? Not sure. If I did i'll give it a replay and maybe it'll be better.
To sum up all my issues: Bunch of meaningless upgrades (And by meaningless upgrades, I mean things that make the bar look prettier) + clicking little icons as the only gameplay, makes for a boring experience. I wanted to get the 100k thing in case it unlocked the scrolls but I don't think it did anything.
Thanks for playing! And providing feedback. Honestly with the feedback you gave I’m surprised you made it to the end. With any luck we will update it more to add more content and balance the game!
To address some concerns you had: Yes the content is sparse, but there is a lot going on in the game so a lot of the focus during the jam was getting systems up and running. More content is always easy to add though once systems are in place. Some systems that we spent a good amount of time on were:
- having the ability to have ordered quests
- rewards that can be unlocked (seats, money, more that was cut)
- how things unlock through “research”
- having to purchase the research item that was unlocked
- moving patrons around and unlocking seats
- having things auto click (though they’re invisible they are there. In fact you start with 2 of them just to make the grind a bit less)
All of this was to help make the tavern feel alive and busy. Keep in mind this is all visual too it takes extra time to get that going. I didn’t want to just post text on the screen and call that my incremental game (no issues if that’s what your game is or what you’re used to in an incremental game it’s just not how I wanted mine to be). If that was the case it would have been easier to balance the game and have more upgrades because everything takes less time visually when it’s text.
With another week or two we had many more plans to make a more fun idle experience.
For example:
We wanted new drinks to be introduced as new eras were introduced which would give you more gold.
We threw around the ideas of actually having to brew and cook and store those items and serve the items that were liked from different eras to the different patrons. This idea would allow for hiring cooks, brewers, etc instead of just clickers to serve.
However, we had to ship a game in two weeks. That’s hard! But, we will likely update it to be a bit more progression wise so look out for that! Ideally every quest would have a useful reward but often those ideas were cut (for the jam) because ultimately it was easier to just make it cost money and show up. As for the mute button it would take me no time to add but I’m not able to update the game for the jam yet
The scroll was cut content that we forgot to remove visually. Maybe it’ll come back in an update
I want to give every game a complete playthrough haha. I understand that your game is a lot more visual and graphic than most, and to be fair to you, that takes a lot of effort. If there was a score for graphic design/visuals i would give yours a 5 :) I did like the art.
The time limit is def really hard to make a solid experience, hope to see some cool progress and see where you take the game.