| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Cleverness | #423 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Playability | #487 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Theme | #1153 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback is anonymous.
Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
Controls are listed within the game menu. WASD/arrows to move, e to interact, space or enter to progress dialogue.
The main mechanic is a looping narrative, in which you can learn more about characters and chose different answers to receive objects to burn in a fire in a hidden underground cave.
The secondary mechanic is a secret value which is tracked to receive a 10th object which will break the time loop, rather than escape it.
I was the solo programmer on this with help from friends when needed, as well as using a new dialogue system so not everything is currently working without bugs. For convenience you can return to the title screen by pressing "P", or to an ending screen by pressing "O".
Thanks for playing
Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Extra Notes
Hope you get good rest between play sessions!
Absolutely love the artwork! Little creepy but some of them very cute. Love the racoon tail as a screen transition!
Gameplay, not much going back and forth to speak to people. Not a great reader and this seem to be more story heavy for my taste.
Again, love the art and with some polish on the ui (maybe show what items you got?) and the dialogue to display the text different and also make the options stand out more, you then have a great foundation to expand this universe.
Best of luck to you
Thanks for taking the time to play!
Would you have any feedback for expanding mechanics beyond narrative choices? I had thought about things, but given the time ran out of being able to develop anything else. At some point you had been able to jump and wanted to do something with exploring vertically and catching the little spirits, but didn't have time to create a jumping animation/vertical space without compromising on other things.
Hope the past few weeks have gone well, still love the background on Forest of Calamity :D
The art style was just amazing! I has such a unique vibe, which is sustained and elevated by the writing. Reading the GDD also made me like this better, as I realized what it was truly trying to tell me. Truly a fantastic experience, and I would love to see more.
A couple of more notes (which I am pretty sure are mostly due to time constraints):
- 10 minutes felt too long, and I think in the first loop I was unable to return to Don after earning three items, which left me confused on what to do next.
- I feel like I broke the loop with Taddle at one point. He told me something along the lines of "here you go", and then I couldn't move anymore.
- I am on the fence as to wether a more clear interface where I could see what I was getting and what impact it would have on the ending I got. On the one hand, I think it would make it more game-y, and less of an experience, but I am unsure wether that would be something that you, as the author, would want. :)
Thanks so much for your kind words! There are elements here that I think I would like to continue, I like the beginnings of a bunch of the wider thoughts being explored. I wrote a bit about them in my post mortem posts, after visiting the Garrison monument and thinking.
For your notes (which thank you so much for taking the time!)
I went back and forth on 10 minutes, particularly as it was the first amount of time I chose, and got various amounts of feedback on it. It's how the very broken going back to Don via Clarence came about, so you didn't need to wait it out if you chose to skip. The countdown is artificial either way, and multiple folks who played it spent the whole 10 minutes so I chose to leave it that way. It's meant mostly to put pressure on the idea that you have to fix this as quickly as possible. But healing doesn't work that way, it takes as much time as it will and no outside and arbitrary pressure can change that.
Poor Taddle, my broken child LOLOLOL. I think if I do something like this again (beyond carrying the knowledge forward) I would set up seperate bools for each loop; my folly was my lack of planning on how many there would be and trying to sneak in tiny conversations here and there at the end to pull it tighter together. I learned about half way through about Yarn Commands, which is how the animations are called (and is the most common cause of that issue). The final ending sequence was broken up until the last half hour due to my badly managed code! Makes me sad 'cause Taddle's story is all about being forgotten and unheard, so I feel I did them a disservice in not taking as much care as I should've debugging them.
I am very much on the fence about interfacing more information. Part of the issue is balancing games literacy; when I've handed the project to folks who don't play games and they ask what WASD means, it's always a challenge to think about how much info to provide. Would knowing the secret value for the breaking of the cycle help them? Or would it be more confusing? I fully admit it was put together in a 'good enough' sense, so I'd be delighted to know if you had anymore specific thoughts on what you would've found helpful or guiding while playing!
If you're comfortable, I'd love to hear about what you felt the game was telling you! I've mulled over it's meaning to me over the past week, or what I was even trying to say, and come to more conclusions that I think I thought of going in. It's something I love so much about making a project like this, so if you're up for sharing, I'd love to listen.
Hey, happy to reply to this!
When it comes to thoughts about interfacing, I think it would come down to a lot of iteration, to be fair. At the moment, I would say that maybe adding more and more information after each loop (so in loop 1 we have zero information, in loop 2 we see what items we are carrying, on loop 3 we see how "good" they are...) might be an interesting compromise. But again, it might not work at all!
As for the deeper analysis, I have to say that there was a sense of beautiful lyricism. The main theme I was getting was environmentalism. There was a clear correlation between the words of the characters and the idea of guman-driven climate change. The fact that the characters felt like spirits and their design brought to mind a lot of Japanese media about post-industrialization, and that was the reason I was very happy to find out through the GDD that they were based on actual rivers and creeks. I felt the "base" story being told was one of recovering by caring, both for yourself and others, with a metaphor where that applies to the world around us, not only to other people.
Hope that makes sense and works for you!
It does! Thanks for taking the time to write it out. The only feedback that is currently in for the items is the flames change colour based off their 'value'. I think exploring being able to look at them would be a really interesting way of exploring their relevance to the characters. For Ashbridge in particular, the change of context for the letter I think would be nice.
I hadn't really thought about the connection until speaking with a friend, but there's definitely the falling in the sky of Spirited Away conversation with Kohaku and remembering who he is aspect to the characters. Since I made the designs before I decided they were rivers or really any stories, it was fascinating how well their designs ended up lining up. Garrison is violent and sharp, but chooses to be calm and comforting and so is a place that others can feel safe and protected. Ashbridge is an amalgamation of others, and so carried the ghosts of others inside them. Taddle is forgotten and unknown, wearing a mask to hide their vulnerabilities.
It was a super healing project in so many ways! It makes me happy to hear that the intended reading of the story came though, that's super cool :D
So I return to this comment because you said something here I found fascinating and it put me on a trajectory all throughout the week: lyricism. So much so that I ended up buying a book as soon as I saw, which was Game Poems by Jordan Magnuson, which describes game design as lyrical practice. I've just started it and so far feel like I have had multiple game design epiphanies around the conversations I was attempting to touch on in this prototype, largely around the value of lusory attitude and openness within players to experience new concepts through play! It honestly feels like something in the back of my mind I've been gnawing on for the past decade clicked into place.
I highly suggest it! It's available for free online as a pdf as well. Thank you so much for describing the project that way, it has been a wonderful week of thinking about game design again :D
Impressive artstyle, rich dialogue. What more can you ask? Astonishing project!
Thank you for giving it a try! I never even thought about trackpads, shame on me. Dunno if I am able to continue it, I am a very limited programmer, I just can't see myself coming up with new ideas for different enemies and the game would become quite boring. But we'll see, I've put the source code public maybe some kind soul wants to cooperate in the near future.
No shame in missing something you didn't think about, cause now you know to think about it next time! You're a better programmer than you were 3 weeks ago. Give your brain some time to rest and digest what you've learned, things might come for this project or they might not.
I made my game idea generator for that reason, and it was super fun and helpful whenever I got blocked (and as someone who has struggled with code, was very easy to make as it's basically a bunch of arrays and a debug log LOLOLOL).
If it's a genre you like, keep chipping away at it. You made a fun little thing, and I think it came out really well
I appreciate hearing that so much, it means a tremendous amount to me. It always brings me joy to see folks start making games because there really can't be a better feeling I have experience than seeing your game running and someone playing it (despite the horrifying shame of seeing all of the tiny things you missed and wishing you could rebuild it RIGHT NOW just to fix them). It's exciting to poke through your back log, I hope you keep jamming and creating!
Very beautiful and atmospheric game. Love the attention to detail, the animation and the writing.
Got stuck while talking to Taddle. It seems some of the dialogue branches are bugged but this didn't stop the game from being very enjoyable. I wish you best of luck with the full project, I'm sure it's going to be amazing!
Taddle is hardest; they were the last to be added. I think it's just one node that connects you to the Taddle best tree which is why, which was an oversight while I was going back through hastily trying to knit things together a bit tighter to make the content easier to get to after folks were having trouble going through more than one loops' content (I would say there's roughly 2.5 loops? The third has a lot of overlap with the 2nd unless you make very specific choices). It really would've helped if I had flowcharted things out first, but by the time I really thought about it I was too deep to think about trying TT___TT
Thanks so much for your kind words! I really love the vibe of Gossip At Terrestrial High, the palette especially! While I can't play it as I'm on Mac, you folks at Team Wet look like you put so much into it, and it looks from what I can see really great. I LOVE the Invader Zim callout in the GDD! Hope you folks keep working together, I'd be interested to see what you all make next
Yeye, I get it! I was also feeling the absence of a flowchart while writing 'Gossip' haha. Can imagine the looping nature of 'Wonscotonach' makes building the script even more difficult.
And thank you very much! I definitely want to do more with 'Gossip At Terrestrial High' so making a Mac version is going on the list, so you can play it in the future =)
"You're going to be fine, just remember to breath"
This game is a genuine work of art that gives the player space to reflect on themselves and the history of the land. The game is brimming with sweet joy and catharsis and is an experience I recommend to everyone. I have added this game to my "Things I'm Moderately Interested In" collection, which I can assure you is the highest praise possible from me. Bravo.
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