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SHELLIE'S SECRET's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #1 | 4.438 | 4.438 |
| Enjoyment (Best Game) | #3 | 3.844 | 3.844 |
| Creativity | #3 | 4.188 | 4.188 |
| Sound Design | #4 | 3.938 | 3.938 |
| Aesthetics | #5 | 4.375 | 4.375 |
| Horror | #13 | 3.375 | 3.375 |
Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Do you allow SCREAM ZONE to promote your game via social media?
Yes
What game engine did you make this project in?
Other
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Comments
Wow... I booted up the game and was NOT expecting to love it that much. I even found myself combing through the game files to discover as much hidden underlying context as I could just incase I missed something. High marks all around! Also... Whaaat? The dates on all the files is a really nice touch that I was really impressed by.![]()
Mighta missed a big One Piece level foreshadowing opportunity by not setting them to June 14/15 lol
Really enjoyed playing this game! The ending was just WOW! It's amazing how polished this is, love the aesthetics too!
Wow. I was not expecting to enjoy that! The level of quality and polish you were able to get in a week is incredible. The sound design and the pictures and voices are perfect and so unsettling. And that ending! Really impressive stuff. We both went for early 80's text based horror games but you clearly spent more time on that side of things and it really paid off.
Thanks - yeah, I made a call on trying to double down on a very specific aesthetic and focus on the presentation of that, and it seems to have worked well. Tried to make the font, image dithering, speech synthesis and glitch/bg sound feel just right, so really appreciate it!
Creepy for me, I like it.
I was genuinely surprised by this game. I didn't think I liked text-based horror like this, but this game has me reeling. I have a soft spot for the early '80s style of this game, so it had me fully immersed. The ending tho... definitely not for someone who can't stomach it.
How you made this is magic to me. Excellent, superb work.
Yes, the themes are a bit full on and I hope the warning was sufficient. Im glad it left a strong impression; it's very hard to gauge the effect of something especially when you're writing about things that are serious and risky. Thanks for the kind words!
Even though I'm not a big fan of text-based games, it's a very creative idea and the art makes the game extra scary.
Thank you very much for giving it a go even though this type of thing is not your cup of tea! Can you believe text-based games like this were the main genre of video game 40 years ago?
I just found out! It's crazy!
I liked the art and the aesthetic of this game ¡I enjoy this experience!
Thank you for playing mate!
I haven’t played many text-based games, but I was really drawn to the aesthetic and retro style of this one. The story captivated me from start to finish. Even though I’m not usually good at detective games, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Well done!
Yes! It's ok if you're not good at detective games - this one is a pretty linear experience and the 'secrets' are more around discovering the context rather than choosing the right words. Appreciate the comments!
The atmosphere and the voice was so unhinged i loved it. I like the graphic style it felt familiar yet unsettling. Its a good and interesting game!
Really appreciate it!
excelent job! the sounds , the graphics and the atmosphere in general is amazing!
Thank you very much!
I really like the atmosphere of the game! The text input based dialogues fit really well with the whole vibe, and the audio, the graphics, even the font choice, add up to the suspense. Great work!
Thank you for the praise! I really appreciate it!
The game kept me in suspense and I was looking for words with interest to chat people up. Great concept!
Thanks! The parser list was about 60 words for each stage, with all keywords being hinted at before, during after the stage. It's not a lot and I should have added more, but it's enough to convey the one drama in the game and reveal the "secret" before the end :)
I would say it's quite disturbing... even though I felt a bit lost, I found the proposal very interesting.
Thanks for the feedback! The parser has about 60-70 responses by stage led by the highlighted keywords, some of which turn up earlier or later in the game - the idea being that there's some replay value. But yes, it is a bit circular. You're never meant to extract a confession or reach a goal as that isn't quite what I had in mind. Definitely with more time I would have made the parser experience more branding and guided. Thanks again!
But it turned out great, I thought it was quite out of the box, and that's our motto ;)
If you have some time and can check out our project, even if you don't vote, leaving some feedback would be great
I plan to play every game for the jam and promise I'll get to it :)
holy moly made in tkinter!? that's daring
(can you rate my game?) it has only 1 ratings ):
we got the same aesthetics.
Will check it out tomorrow morning - I'm trying to play em all! And yeah, no engine, just Python and tkinter. Certainly ah, a choice!
This was such a great horror game, the story is fantastic and got me hooked. The artwork really adds up to the experience and I got chills, will be definitely thinking about this game in the future, really awesome stuff!
That's really high praise - thank you! The artwork was done by downscaling the resolution of images and applying a dithering effect, which is how digitzed 'photos' were low enough of a file size to appear on computer screens until the 90s. I'm glad you liked the story and I might write a postmortem soon explaining about what I was trying to go for with this game - keep you posted.
This game is really unique! I like the interrogation machinic it reminds me of the old text rpgs. The Ascii art style is also done well! This is my favorite entry so far. Excellent work!
Thanks - that means a lot! I took a big inspiration from The font of choice for this one was called HOTCOCO.TTF which is named after a Tandy computer magazine and seems to be based on TRS-80 terminals for real. I tried to research the look as best as I could in a week!
Wow, this is so good! I haven't really played anything like this before, but I think it captured the retro feel really well in an uncanny way. I got scared pretty good, haha! And on top of that, the story is really intriguing. Some of it almost feels like an ARG--I'm genuinely wondering if I might be missing something else, maybe I need to poke around more... It's an additional layer that is extremely fun. Well done!
Thanks for your comment and feedback! The ARG elements were fun to create and I'm a big fan of Who's Lila? which is a game I really recommend if you enjoy the vibe of this one. I didn't quite design the game to progress through the interrogation sections as I ran out of time, but those sections do reveal the two intended secrets of the game: who Shellie is and what her secret is, which the game misleads the player into thinking is something else.
This was really really good. I loved the uncanny aesthetic. The minimalist graphical style and use of space. It was genuinely scary. Also, super impressive how well you worked with sound and scripting. As a first time decker user this was really inspiring because it opened me up to what's possible. My submission contains maybe 10% of what I had planned and while I was already going to finish it properly, this made me want to jump into it right now (which is crazy because I'm on about 3 hours of sleep lol). Side note: This IS decker right? If it is, then the fact that you can extend it so much with pygame/tkinter and package it as an exe is a game changer. I also love the really cool touch that was left outside the actual game. I'm not spoiling it because maybe someone else will also think it's awesome but I hope you know what I'm talking about. AWESOME job
Thank you for the feedback. No, surprisingly this is entirely pygame/tkinter with the visual and audio elements designed pretty cautiously to be specific to the 80s terminal look: no engine involved! I'm glad it was a motivator to keep on with These Are The Days because there absolutely needs to be more of that kind of stuff out there. Check out Hypercard Stacks on the Internet Archive if you haven't already! And yeah, couldn't help doing a bit of Who's Lilia-esque ARG stuff, which this game liberally takes cues from.
Nice game . I like the design and story this is really good.
Thank you mate! I will make sure to check out your game too.
Liked the concept, design and sound, all in for that! But it felt a bit hard to follow with the correct topics, maybe I didn't put enough attention to it. Also it feels kinda slow for what I was expecting in a jam project. But just my oppinion. Good job tho :)
No worries and thank you! Yes, text-based games like the ones from the 80s definitely have a slower pace - how did people stay entertained back then, right? I didn't quite design the game to progress through the interrogation sections, but those sections do reveal the two intended secrets of the game. Thanks for playing!