A browser game made in HTML5.
Good job this go around!
My gripes: the text pacing. Even at max text speed it still filtered in a staggered manner on the page. 1000 years dungeon.
The transition between the first and second acts wasn't quite fluid. I think cutting down the flirty relationship moments would have helped the transition, although that would have maybe pulled away from your romance subplot.
The expositional dialog. Sci-fi does have expositional dialog usually as a means of exploring the setting, but there were instances where they were telling too often in their sort of emotional catharsis. People aren't always gonna be that explicit aloud in the underlying motivations (and I know that's a problem I have too so you're not alone in that :P)
There was some stuff that felt weird with the tensing, and I think the pacing sort of suffered in the scope of the two acts as well. I think in terms of the game jam project, it might have been cleaner and simpler to cut it off at the end of the first act (and then revisit later if you wanted to towards the second act). That felt like a good stopping point, although I did know of that bit cuz I had seen your outline before.
But I don't want to only attack. You did a good job with the aesthetics and how that was represented in the setting. I enjoyed the little find the objects game (I maybe blitzed through that too quickly due to my keen analytical mind /s) and how you updated the screens to reflected the objects being taken.
I thought you had solid dialog outside of the stilted expositional moments. A reasonable sense of banter, albeit I don't know if that had the narrative space to meaningfully transition into the romantic ending that was hinted at (especially with the importance ascribed to Zima and his loss, which again is one of those pacing elements and derived from the focus of the narrative).
I think the narrative itself was fun and your outline helped give it a reasonable story shape--I just think what we needed to tie it together was more hints (for the reader) earlier on that the father could still be alive/more elements to point to the rival company before the second act to make the introduction to the overall plot feel more organic rather than it feeling like a sort of second act twist. Like it might have been nice to see the message from the father earlier, and then get the reinterp in the second act.
But I think you did an excellent job and a herculean amount of work, solo at that, and in spite of your end of month issues it's still a work to be proud of.
