Great job submitting a game! This is probably one of the most ambitious visual novel esque games I've seen in the jam, so major props. I think you did a good job of keeping the story engaging. That was pretty essential because I got very lost many times. It was really difficult to navigate the overworld. It took a lot of trial and error to get where I needed to go. That being said, with how much you had to pack in visually I could tell what was the bathrooms / locker rooms/ swimming pool etc. which is impressive.
At the end I decided to stay in the school. I looked everywhere and could not find the friend I was supposed to look for. I spent a long time looking but eventually gave up. Overall it is an impressive accomplishment to fit this into the Nokia restrictions and I am glad I got to play it. Thanks for participating!
I enjoyed the gradual build up of the story I was seeing, and the cut-scene art really helped world build. But I definitely concur with the other comments about the navigation issues. I made it to the second day, but then after getting momentarily distracted couldn't even remember where I was supposed to be going.
I love your lo-fi VN look. I was initially expecting all navigation through CG backgrounds like in the cutscenes, like those old PC-88 anime games, or the Steins;Gate one made in that style. Your game is making me want to try making one of those myself…
The floor plan look is kind of unique too, I don’t dislike it, but it is currently quite hard to navigate the areas. Maybe the scale is correct but the rooms and halls feel quite large. Maybe some UI showing what floor/room you’re in, or a more zoomed-out / abstract map menu? I agree that outright arrows telling you where to go would make it too mindless, but an in-game objective menu would have been good.
It took me a long time to find the pool even using the hints on the game page, and I stopped when I was back to wandering around after that. A bit sorry I didn’t get to a point where anything was killing me, but I do still have a lot of other entries I hope to try.
The dialogue feels a bit stilted sometimes, and it’s a lot of tapping, but I can’t say I’d have done much better trying to fit it in that space. Well done on fitting this much of a narrative into such a short jam duration too – cutscenes are a lot of work.
Thanks for trying it out. Thinking about it again, I probably fell into the trap of forgetting how much info I had when testing. It didn't occur to me how easy it'd be to get lost, since I spent a lot of time looking at the full maps during development. Perhaps I should've included the png versions in a sort-of manual.
Not a bad idea, as a lot of old-school games were pretty impenetrable if you didn’t read the manual, so it’s not unfitting… but I do still prefer having it self-contained.
An impressive scope there - the cutscenes are well realised with some great art.
I had a lot of trouble telling where I had to go, though. Sometimes I just missed things in the dialog; but more often I knew what I was looking for but couldn’t tell where it was - I ended up referring to the lua scripts a lot.
I wonder if an arrow pointing in the direction of the next place to go would help there?
Thanks for playing. I think an arrow wouldn't work due to some of the searching being intended. Otherwise the player wouldn't have enough reason to wander and have to avoid the villain. What I actually wanted to do if I didn't run out of time is have a pause menu with saving and hints, as well as a few more scenes that would link together for a better trail of spots to go to.
Comments
Great job submitting a game! This is probably one of the most ambitious visual novel esque games I've seen in the jam, so major props. I think you did a good job of keeping the story engaging. That was pretty essential because I got very lost many times. It was really difficult to navigate the overworld. It took a lot of trial and error to get where I needed to go. That being said, with how much you had to pack in visually I could tell what was the bathrooms / locker rooms/ swimming pool etc. which is impressive.
At the end I decided to stay in the school. I looked everywhere and could not find the friend I was supposed to look for. I spent a long time looking but eventually gave up. Overall it is an impressive accomplishment to fit this into the Nokia restrictions and I am glad I got to play it. Thanks for participating!
Great graphics! I included it in my Nokia 3310 Jam 4 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
I enjoyed the gradual build up of the story I was seeing, and the cut-scene art really helped world build. But I definitely concur with the other comments about the navigation issues. I made it to the second day, but then after getting momentarily distracted couldn't even remember where I was supposed to be going.
I love your lo-fi VN look. I was initially expecting all navigation through CG backgrounds like in the cutscenes, like those old PC-88 anime games, or the Steins;Gate one made in that style. Your game is making me want to try making one of those myself…
The floor plan look is kind of unique too, I don’t dislike it, but it is currently quite hard to navigate the areas. Maybe the scale is correct but the rooms and halls feel quite large. Maybe some UI showing what floor/room you’re in, or a more zoomed-out / abstract map menu? I agree that outright arrows telling you where to go would make it too mindless, but an in-game objective menu would have been good.
It took me a long time to find the pool even using the hints on the game page, and I stopped when I was back to wandering around after that. A bit sorry I didn’t get to a point where anything was killing me, but I do still have a lot of other entries I hope to try.
The dialogue feels a bit stilted sometimes, and it’s a lot of tapping, but I can’t say I’d have done much better trying to fit it in that space. Well done on fitting this much of a narrative into such a short jam duration too – cutscenes are a lot of work.
Thanks for trying it out. Thinking about it again, I probably fell into the trap of forgetting how much info I had when testing. It didn't occur to me how easy it'd be to get lost, since I spent a lot of time looking at the full maps during development. Perhaps I should've included the png versions in a sort-of manual.
Not a bad idea, as a lot of old-school games were pretty impenetrable if you didn’t read the manual, so it’s not unfitting… but I do still prefer having it self-contained.
An impressive scope there - the cutscenes are well realised with some great art.
I had a lot of trouble telling where I had to go, though. Sometimes I just missed things in the dialog; but more often I knew what I was looking for but couldn’t tell where it was - I ended up referring to the lua scripts a lot.
I wonder if an arrow pointing in the direction of the next place to go would help there?
Thanks for playing. I think an arrow wouldn't work due to some of the searching being intended. Otherwise the player wouldn't have enough reason to wander and have to avoid the villain. What I actually wanted to do if I didn't run out of time is have a pause menu with saving and hints, as well as a few more scenes that would link together for a better trail of spots to go to.