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A jam submission

Neighborly LoveView game page

A short experimental horror game about self image, memories, and finding peace.
Submitted by DastardlyFool — 6 hours, 19 minutes before the deadline
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Neighborly Love's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
gHost's Choice#1n/an/a
Story#24.3574.357
Aesthetics#44.4294.429
Enjoyment (Best Game)#63.7863.786
Sound Design#83.7143.714
Horror#232.8572.857

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

If you used the SCREAM ROULETTE, what results did you use to inspire your game?
the word: "Buried"

What engine did you use to make this game?
Gamemaker Studio 2

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

WOW..... Was NOT expecting that! The ending gave me goosebumps. The game was beautifully written and the aesthetics were amazing. You did a great job exploring the idea of losing a partner. Honestly still processing, and am still quite speechless lol

I usually like to put a lot of thought into my feedback but I'm still in awe lol...

For some constructive feedback at least, sometimes the text is a little bit hard to read. This isn't a huge issue though as that's not really what I was focused on lol. You've done a wonderful job and have not only made one of the most solid submissions of this jam, but a solid game for those outside the community to appreciate.

Developer

Thank you so much !! I'm really glad you liked it, and I absolutely agree with your feedback, I'm planning to do a big update once the jam is over and fix some visual issues like the text displaying harshly in some scenes !
But I'm glad to hear it didn't hinder the overall experience

Submitted(+1)

ok i can see why this game is top in popularity. its short sweet and it is beautitufll written adn displayed. im really surprised this could be made in a week! amazing work

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

What a thoughtful and affecting game bound by a very original concept. I interpret the game as exploring the very morbid reality of attachment and death - one partner tends to leave the other after life, but this game explores a fun idea. What if you could take your partner with you to the grave, quite literally? The narrative does an excellent job in shouldering the creepy and sentimental implications of this quite well. As a short game with minor dialogue and some basic point-and-click mechanics, what really shines here is how a brief game with a greatly original idea can sort of be bigger than the sum of its parts. 

The attention to detail is great here. The context dialog changes to reflect the protagonist's predicament. The visual presentation uses its minimal motifs incredibly well, with the pamphlet showing how much thought can go behind simple little acts of worldbuilding. Seeing that you created the excellent Any Port In A Storm for a previous jam and were also influenced by Who's Lila? helped make a lot of things click - you have a good knack for uncanny surrealism and morbidity in your approach to games, and I really like it. I hope you're able to continue creating experiences like these as they're very memorable to play. 

As far as constructive feedback, there's not a lot, but maybe with a little more time aspects of the UI could have been cleaned up - can be a little tricky to click the right spot to activate the hole, or add slightly more in terms of visual details. But for a jam game this is about as good as it gets. Incredible stuff. 

Developer

Thank you so much for such a detailed review !! I really appreciate you taking the time to write this, I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm happy to hear we share the same criticisms of the game

I've been trying to work on my surrealist writing for some time so I'm glad to hear It shows through my games (I was most definitely heavily inspired by whos lila while working on this one)

Submitted(+1)

Vibes are off the roof here, but even better yet, it was beautiful. Solemn and quiet beauty. 

Aesthetics were amazing on this one, even when some of the text was bit hard to see at times, I didn't mind at all, cuz like... well the aesthetic was just so banging! I wish it would have gone on longer, given me more time to stay in there! 

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much !! I was actually kinda shocked how pretty it came out

I absolutely agree with the text being hard to read at times but i was far too into the visuals to add a text box (also lazy)

Submitted(+1)

Wow I really like your art style and storytelling. Very impressive given the time constraint!

Developer

Tysm !!

Submitted(+1)

Honestly, I don't know how you made this. Is it rendered in 3D? It's baffling. Really good writing, somehow quite emotional, and incredibly polished. Bravo.

Developer(+1)

Nothing happening within the game engine is actually 3D, all elements are rendered ahead of time, and for instances like moving the camera I just applied a curved warp to the screen and moved the background to create the illusion of a third dimension !! 

Also thank you so much I’m glad you enjoyed it !

Submitted(+1)

I was looking forwards to playing that game ever since you posted the screencaps on discord, and I wasn't disappointed!

The artstyle looks great and I enjoyed the way the writing. They both have distinctive voices and you made them likeable in a very short time, which isn't easy. The final twist was so bittersweet, I feel like I need to grieve people I never met.

The one thing I would change is maybe add a way to close the game at the end, I had to call my taskmanager to exit :P But that's peanuts. I think this might be my favourite of the jam so far.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much !! I'm really glad you enjoyed it, I was going for bittersweet so I'm very happy to hear that

I absolutely agree with the ending screen, after like a minute or so it should close itself, which was a very last minute "im too tired to make this work properly" way to handle that, that will definitely be changed post-jam !

Submitted(+1)

Honestly, FAIR. And it's such a minute detail, it doesn't change anything to the overall quality of the game. :D

Submitted(+1)

Wow just wow! What an absolute journey. How did you even make this in 7 days? This was the best one so far

Developer(+1)

Tysm !! It was a struggle 😭, im glad you liked it !

Submitted(+1)

An interesting horror story and well put together with nice visuals.