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The Rose & Rhino's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Stealth | #7 | 3.509 | 3.769 |
| Narrative | #21 | 2.793 | 3.000 |
| Kink | #25 | 2.721 | 2.923 |
| Novelty | #29 | 2.864 | 3.077 |
| Play | #31 | 2.650 | 2.846 |
| Overall | #33 | 2.586 | 2.778 |
| Harmony | #36 | 2.721 | 2.923 |
| Sound | #40 | 1.934 | 2.077 |
| Aesthetic | #40 | 2.506 | 2.692 |
| Horny | #51 | 1.575 | 1.692 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
I started early
had the idea kicking since last year, although i didn't reuse anything but the mental theory + setting from 2022's attempt (and even then only half since the movement was completely revamped)
Got the basics of the grid motion down in the last couple days of January, plus some placeholder images that stuck (the tables, the vibe of the environment tiles) in anticipation that I'd slack off the middle two weeks of the month to make up for it. I was correct.
used friendlycosmonaut's dialogue system for the tutorial dialogue
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Comments
The art and story was cute, sadly I ran into a bug and it crashed the game x..x. I got to the part where they were explaining the cups. I like what you had.
that's the second time someone's said this oh no. Did it give any kind of error message? + what are u running it on
Sadly I can't play the game, it crashes when I start learning about the cocktails :O
That's weird. Is it giving any kind of crash report, or does the window just vanish?
oh man
this is quite a twist on the genre. i'm both fascinated to see where this could possibly go and also mildly horrified in the Age Of Covid. but also now i'm thinking about how there is incredibly strong (sometimes even explicit) pressure in min-wage food service to come in even when you're sick. i might need to lie down
i don't want to say "i want more of this", because i feel like that's uttering some kind of monkey paw curse in this particular instance, but i would certainly play more of it because i'm fascinated to see where this little dollop of worldbuilding could be going
i think the conspicuous omission is Consequences; i know i'm getting people sick but they simply leave before i see anything come of that. admittedly i don't know what that would look like though, since the very nature of food service is that you see people for 20 minutes and then perhaps never again
(also maybe resize your assets outside of gamemaker? i think a bunch of your art got nearest-neighbor scaled down in-engine and a lot of bits of outlines disappeared and that made it kind of hard to tell what things were supposed to be)
It's hard to make this kind of thing feel like it has consequences for that exact reason- the goal for expansion includes sound effect feedback and better visual feedback to make it feel like an equivalent value to ordinary score. I suppose I should think of things to spend both values on, but my brain is instantly resistant to the ordinary upgrade formula that it might just become cosmetics. Eventually there would be Real Girl Levels with clear conditions and shit that tie into the story, etc etc etc.
Speaking of the story, the tone is supposed to be pretty lighthearted, but it's very hard to strike that balance in This Day And Age. I think I just have to embrace the Not For Everyoneness and go all in. Rest assured, though, no great plagues getting started here.
also yeah art in gamemaker is hard to get the size right, especially when you're like me and a) don't know how the hell window resizing is even POSSIBLE and b) start on a tiny scale and don't realize you need to go bigger before it's too late T_T the first step is gonna be a test to see if building it bigger and camerascaling it to the sameish size will be effective at all lmao
Definitely the first time I've seen contagion kink. This seems like a good way to implement that, though. You don't normally think about planning food delivery around not washing your hands.
I think this is a cool idea, and the basic engine seems solid. The action queue worked well from what I've seen, and I liked the characters and the writing. If you want to keep working on this in the future, I could see it becoming something special. Plus, hey, your programmer art nails the vibe of the game.
I would have a bit of a wishlist for a theoretical future version - a visual indicator of the action queue, more distinct food icons, sound effects and music, etc. - but as a proof-of-concept thing for a game jam, it's a very solid effort.
A visual indicator of the action queue is my number one thing I regretted not being able to add. I just couldn't wrap my brain around where to even begin, it's surprisingly complicated. Worst comes to worst, I might have to rewrite the whole queue so it's a more sophisticated structure? Depends on if I take an 'the station should be responsible for showing its position, if any' gh-style approach or go for the more complicated better looking classic 'each icon bubble should be associated with an event in the action queue to determine its spawn position and its constantly updated number' style. Neither will handle the same station in the queue twice well. i'm mostly glad the action queue held up at all
Pretty good system for a cafe management game to get done in a month, there's combos and cleanup and vip service! It controls well and it looks like you already have plans to address all of the features I was going to suggest.
I don't really understand how the disease portion functions and if I'm trying to get people sick or avoiding it and if there's any reward or penalty for doing it. I didn't find any associated content besides your hands turning green.
The character sprites and portraits are cute and I like the welcoming color scheme of the game. I enjoyed the variety of personalities in the story, the writing is bouncy and bubbly even while teaching you how to play!
Customers and certain stations on the green side will give you one to three contamination points when you interact with them. (The math needs to be a little fancier to avoid taking any away by accident, but mostly it works as expected.) There's two 'score'-type values tracked in the top right- each customer gives you a set amount of money once you complete their order cycle, but pink-side customers give you bonus points in the other-category-i-forgot-what-i-named-it depending on how many times you interacted with them while contaminated. It doesn't do much beyond that yet, eventually in theory you'd be able to like. unlock shit
had no idea contagion is a kink!
aw, this comment made captcha think i'm a robot.