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A jam submission

The Tree of DreamsView game page

Climb a magical tree and discover its whimsical secrets.
Submitted by wizstres — 1 day, 2 hours before the deadline
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Play story nugget

The Tree of Dreams's itch.io page

Names and Email Addresses of Team Members
My very first (ever) foray into game making.

Skye - skye.marr@gmail.com

Categories Your Team is Eligible for
Overall, Narrative, Student, Diversity

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Comments

Submitted

The writing did a really good job of making me feel like I was in a hazy, dreamy state. Well done! :D

Submitted

Like the narrative a bunch! Kept me busy when reading the story, well done.

Submitted(+1)

The call back to what I had picked was unexpected and I really liked it.

Two practical suggestions that are easy to implement - make the font darker because not everyone has good eyes and a light font on a light background can be hard to read (in which case make the clickable text a different colour so it will stand out), and add a link back to the start of the game at the end of the game. I wanted to go back to see what happens if I make different choices and to do so I had to reload the file. (In fact, I had to load the game in a new browser window, I couldn't just refresh, because it was remembering where I had got to at the end of my previous game so I had to clear the memory by closing the window.)

Don't worry too much about the comments saying it was too much text/needs images - that always happens with narrative games in jams that aren't specifically for narrative games only. There is a particular audience for this kind of game. If you can't or don't want to add art you can still learn to do a few things to enhance the typography, including reducing the reading width and adding small visual flourishes such as dropcaps (I personally think one shouldn't use Twine's text special effects, such as shaking or fades, unless it's for a very good reason) and incorporating selective uses of colour. I don't know your background but I would recommend learning as much about typography (specifically as applied for aesthetic purposes) as you can. Also, go through entries in narrative jams to get ideas for what people do with text and then figure out how to do it yourself. I don't use SugarCube, I use Harlowe, so there are some differences to the syntax that I'm unfamiliar with, but I actually do a lot of my text adjustments using HTML and CSS, rather than Harlowe code.

This was a good effort for a first game and you definitely have writing talent. I hope you'll continue to make more games and, in doing so, learn how to create more of an active player experience through narrative writing because you definitely have the basics down already (a rich, imaginative, descriptive world, for example).

(Also, as a writer, I want to acknowledge that writing is hard, so well done!)

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for taking the time to leave such an in-depth comment! It's helpful for a newbie like me and I really appreciate it. Will consider these things going forward :)

Submitted(+1)

It was a really interesting read, you have a great style of writing. I quite enjoyed following along. I do think it would be cool if there were some illustrations along the way!  

Submitted(+1)

I liked how whimsical and dreamy it was, especially the feeling of treading on clouds! It was also cool to see a callback to my munching on my almonds, to feel as if the game had remembered my previous choices.

Developer

I'm so happy you picked up on that! Thank you for playing :)

Submitted

Lovely writing. I would've loved some simple imagery or even particle effects to be included next time. The world felt incredibly empty despite the rich writing style. 

Submitted

Nice reading adventure, some loose ends but nice

(1 edit)

Readers would love this game, comment on ours: https://itch.io/jam/sa-game-jam-2021/rate/1248115?before=2#post-4799169

Submitted

Weird game. Small text adventure. Couldn't keep my attention. But Simplicity is beautiful in it's own way. Would add images to make it more engaging.

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the writing, the imagery created was clear despite how abstract some of the ideas described  were. This was real neat, well done~

Submitted(+1)

Really nice story, not much of a reader myself but the story pulled me right in. Would love to see what happens to this in the future, maybe just one thing, would be nice if we could see the tree in the background instead of a white plane.

Submitted(+1)

Good story and it was fun reading. Would be fun to see how it would go on and maybe some more stuff in the future, but overall it was fun and a good story!