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The Apprentice's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #755 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Playability | #801 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Theme | #1246 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Artistic Style | #1697 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Playability: Game softlocked when I went outside. Theme: How does the shadow theme come into play? I'm not seeing that. Cleverness: Its a simple point and click. Nothing very unique here. Artistic Style: Super simple art style, not a big fan of it. I do appreciate the music.
- Very solid game, the story is compelling and interesting ways to work in the theme. Good puzzle mystery. Art leaves room for improvement but outlines are perfect and get the job done in a game jam. Good music choice and sound effects.
- A fun adventure game!
- I really like the idea of approaching the themes with a Visual Novel! I do thing that the usage of both shadow and alchemy is a bit vague within the game itself, especially when it comes to the shadow being a character that just appears to be within the house unknowingly. The dialogue and the transition to the book is fine, but the dialogue about the apprentice and master seems a bit rushed. The art is super simplistic and does its job, but definitely could use polishing especially out in the yard scene. All and all, good effort!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ukMhCVLba7OAD5uMBCxDkfwOvWQbZUmWh_wPMnwUzPM/edit?usp=sharing
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ukMhCVLba7OAD5uMBCxDkfwOvWQbZUmWh_wPMnwUzPM/edit?usp=sharing
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
YES
Tell us about your game!
Point and click visual novel
Extra Notes
Hello,
Thanks for hosting the game jam. This will be the first time we attempted to make a game like this and it's the second game I've made using Godot. I've learned a lot but have a lot more to learn. The code is a mess! Lots of strings and reused code. My next step is to optimize the code.
I haven't had much time lately but this game jam forced me to get people together to make something!
Thanks
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Comments
I like the idea of gathering the elemental materials from around your house, and the whole thing is very on-theme for this jam. Using the elemental symbols as hints was a nice touch.
I almost got stuck just trying to leave the room, but eventually realized that I needed to wait for the next line of dialogue to start in the book, rather than clicking through, which would restart the dialogue. After I found all four elements I got stuck with no dialogue starting anywhere, except for the bucket which was happy to repeat itself.
I also used Dialogic for my game. I'd never made something with dialogue mechanics and I way underestimated how difficult it is to get all the logic figured out so that it works no matter what order people interact with how many times, and that's in addition to figuring out what's a bug that's completely my fault, and what's a bug that has to do with a quirk of Dialogic. But it's pretty powerful, and once I figured out how to send signals from it, call functions, set variables, etc, I'm glad I decided to use it.
One thing I wish I figured out earlier was to gate all dialogue calls with:
if Dialogic.current_timeline == null:
to only call the dialogue if there's not one already running.
I also had the issue that I really wanted to use the same button to start the dialogue as to continue and confirm dialogues within the system, and at first I was getting stuck with dialogic simultaneously restarting a dialogue when I was pressing the button to close it, which I solved by getting the dialogue end signal and creating a timer where a dialogue couldn't be started for .1 seconds after a dialogue had ended. That seems like something that the plugin should handle automatically, but, it's still in alpha after all.
This is a fun point and click adventure game! You say your code is a mess, but honestly don't worry about it being a mess, just focus on getting it to work and making sure you understand how it works. Did you make this dialouge system yourself, or was it an addon?
I did notice some bugs when playing. The first time I tried I got stuck in dialouge after clicking on the door with Shadow before I got all the ingredients. I restarted and tried again, but the second time I went to approach the door after getting all the ingredients and there was no dialouge. The third time I played, I got to the dialouge with shadow but I couldn't continue the dialouge after starting it
Honestly good first attempt, while I couldn't really manage to get to the end, it felt like there's a good amount of potential here
Thanks for playing. I used dialogic. Currently the dialog timelines are bugged. I think I figured out why and will be working on resolving it.
Thats great! I know you can't update the game during the game jam, but after the game jam is done you should try updating the game, I'd love to check it out again after you resolved the issue