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A jam submission

The PoetessView game page

A Sappho-inspired poetry card game
Submitted by inlustria — 6 days, 22 hours before the deadline
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The Poetess's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Novelty#123.5953.762
Harmony#203.4583.619
Stealth#322.6852.810
Sound#333.0033.143
Aesthetic#383.4133.571
Narrative#432.1842.286
Overall#502.6622.786
Play#552.2302.333
Ambition#572.3212.429
Horny#582.1392.238
Kink#671.5931.667

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

This entry is really beautiful. Not very horny or kinky, but it made me think. It felt very sad, reading that only a single of Sappho's poems survives complete among a sea of incomplete fragments. I really felt that in the gameplay, how I kept trying to piece together something coherent but it was impossible with all the blanks. I could feel the passion behind every poem, but the in the end each one never felt complete. I felt that yearning to just have a whole work to hold on to, to see and express something so pure as love. I could not help but think of why sappho's poems specifically had a hard time surviving - of how much queer culture and history throughout the years, millennia apparently,  has been destroyed. This game really made me confront that irrevocable loss, but also made me appreciate how queer love has existed and been beautiful for so long. Thank you.

Submitted (1 edit)

Played through the game a few times and I must say. I've no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Haha. I'm sure there's a logic to the game, but it eludes me. The presentation is nice at least and the music is very fitting for the general feel of the game.

Maybe a short description before play of what you need to do would have been helpful.

Submitted

This is definitely a lot different than most entries, quite a unique submission!

I didn't really get what I was doing until the end, but once I saw that I thought it was quite a nice idea, a short description of what the end goal is before the start could be of great help. I'll ay this was not quite my cup of tea, but the concept is quite unique, and I can see how the theme and gameplay could appeal to plenty others.

The art and music used was really lovely, and it's always great to see historical themes of any kind!

Submitted

Quite artistic expression. I can appreciate such love and beauty.

Submitted (1 edit)

I didn't really understood what I was supposed to be doing, but the whole presentation with the UI, music, classic artwork and ancient poetry was so relaxing and beautiful.

Submitted

Girls being pals. You know, good friends and roommates.

This is a very sweet and artistic game, and an interesting way to present fragmentary poetry. Even translated and scattered and half-lost like this, the beauty shines through, yes.

Submitted

The flavor of it is wonderfully crafted! I like the details of faded text switching, translator attribution, and parchment menus. The background images add a lot to the mood, perhaps they can be randomized for each session to add replayability? The music fits very well and the game doesn't feel in need of sound effects.

The page showing the final poem has a bit of weird formatting with the square brackets that doesn't feel entirely poetic. Some of the options that are offered are more fragmentary than others, which certainly fits the tone, but they should probably be given at points where the player picked a either a blank or a different fragment with no punctuation.

This game offers a nice atmospheric experience, and definitely evokes a bit of a sentimental sense of longing.

Submitted

This was really beautiful. I started out playing it more like a game, trying to pick the lines that would best follow the ones I picked before, then started picking whichever available option grabbed me the most without thinking about the whole, then did a run where I tried to pick as many blank options as possible. Every time I ended up with something that put the writing in a different perspective and it was really enjoyable to sit for a moment and contemplate it. Really, really, cool concept for fragmentary work and great execution. Coincidentally I just started getting into poetry last year so this was a fun surprise! Just loved it.

Submitted

I wasn't sure exactly what was going on at first, but once I figured it out, it blew me away. This is a really interesting concept for a game. Creating a poem out of 'randomly selected verses' and then seeing the whole once finished. I would only suggest that if possible more images could be used, and selected randomly so its not the same three images at each point. Other than that, its amazing. 

Submitted

This was certainly interesting, I found it fascinating to read about it and explore that side of things. As far as game mechanics go, it was fun to use a work like this and sort of create a unique blend of poetry from it. 

Submitted

Well this is very different from anything I expected!  Good reminder that erotic art has existed for millennia, it's not a modern thing.  I'd love to play an expanded version of this that integrates lines from other ancient poetry as well.