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The Executrix's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #3 | 4.300 | 4.300 |
| Creativity | #4 | 4.300 | 4.300 |
| Presentation | #5 | 4.400 | 4.400 |
| Overall | #6 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Horror | #11 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
| Gameplay | #12 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
| Theme | #19 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Which Theme from the list did you choose to implement in your game?
Seeking Freedom
How did you choose to implement your chosen Theme in your game?
The game involves elements of physical restraint (trying not to spoil!).
Did you implement any of the optional Bonus Challenges, and if so, which ones?
"Chains That Bind You" is the general approach of my implementation of "Seeking Freedom," though whether it will be for "the majority of the game" will depend on the player.
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Comments
I really enjoyed this game! I thought the art and style were really great, and I thought about this game for several days after I played it the first time, where I had been thwarted in the dream level. I'm glad I came back to it and finished it today. It was really a nice little gem to find the in the jam. It was pleasantly difficult for a platformer. Whenever I found a new bird doing some new behaviour, it felt like you were gently guiding me to figure out a new skill, like crouching or moving back and forth while hovering. I think from a game design perspective, that was really well done.
The only minor constructive criticism I would give is that the text below the game never faded to actual transparency for me. I could always still see the last line of text in between scenes. Otherwise, the only other thing I wanted was more! I wanted to see more of the Victorian times in this cute pixel style and maybe explore a few more levels. Anyways, good job!
Thank you so much for taking the time to play and for this kind feedback -- I appreciate it! The text issue is so interesting -- after receiving your comment I played it on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and had someone else look for this on another computer/OS and couldn't reproduce it, which makes it the worst kind of bug :). Could you see the faint text during the platforming scenes (in the Park, during the dream), or just within the cutscenes with text (i.e., in between lines)? Thank you for pointing this out, this is really helpful. And thanks again for playing and commenting!
Weird that you can't reproduce it! My computer is weird with brightness, so it might be something to do with my settings. But it honestly wasn't that intrusive, and wasn't visible in the platforming scenes. What I seem to see is that in the dialogue/story scenes, you sometimes have pauses between lines of narration instead of a line immediately following the previous one. That last line was still visible after it seemingly faded to transparency in this scenario. Here's a snapshot I just took towards the end of the game.
Great, thank you for this! I actually can't see it in the attached image, so it may well be my monitor that's the problem. But your info about it appearing between lines in cutscenes is perfect -- I think I can fix it in an update. Thank you!
I'm glad to hear others had difficulty with the birds - I assumed I was just rubbish at platformers! I really enjoyed working out the maths puzzles in the middle though!
Beautiful art, and beautiful prose!
The truth behind the mystery was really clever, although there was definitely a bit of 'deus ex machina' in the protagonist's solution.
My only other thought was that it felt unintuitive to me that the 'crouch' key was on the row above the 'jump' key on the keyboard - since jump feels like 'up' and crouch feels like 'down' I would have expected crouch to be on the row below jump.
But overall this was a really fun ghost story experience!
Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback -- I appreciate it! Yes, you're right about the storyline -- I'm always conscious that many players can get fatigued on long story cutscenes, so I tried to make something that could wrap up in good time, but it is abrupt. On the keying, it sounds like you are a WASD player; for those players, I intended J to be used for jump and K for gliding. (For arrow players, C for jump and X for glide). I'm impressed if you beat this game on WASD/CX keying, I'm sorry if it felt crammed/weird! Thank you again for playing and providing comments!
Visual style is great, all the animations bring life to the cutscenes, great job there! The two puzzles might have been better of spread out throughout the game instead of having both at once, but they were easy enough to solve.
Regarding the overall difficulty of the game, I honestly found it much easier than Out Of The Stacks, your last submission to these game jams. I think it's fine as-is. The problems the others had with the birds might be caused by them not realizing that you can crouch? Because they are pretty simple to avoid like that. Maybe when you get to the first tree with the crows, you could have a floating text momentarily appear that says something like "hold down arrow to crouch". Just so that the players are aware of that ability.
The story is somewhat confusing, it almost seems like there's some middle part of the story missing and you go right from the beginning to the ending. At first, the mystery is set up, then you play a short "dream level" and then the mystery is not only resolved, but the main character apparently knew the answer all along and actually did something off-screen to take care of the problem without the player's knowledge. It's just so sudden and it seems like the game was originally supposed to be longer.
It was also very short, could use another level or two, but the fact that I wanted more speaks to the fact that what was there was very enjoyable.
Great job!
Thank you for taking the time to play, for this detailed feedback, and for putting on this jam! I appreciate it. I was torn between spacing the games out (which, all else equal, I'd prefer) and making them integrate more naturally with the narrative, so I hear you on that. It's great to hear another perspective on the difficulty, too -- this is why it's great to receive comments/feedback. Thanks again for this!
Loved the art
Thank you!
I really liked the small math puzzles in the middle! For some reason it reminded me of older games that has a lot of weird little mini-games. I also appreciate the subtle pixel-art animations, like when the protagonist leaves the room or when the uncle is stumbling backward, it really adds to a scene that would otherwise just be static.
Thank you! This is great feedback and I'm glad the time to make those animations was worth it!
The story is very good in this one! It’s well thought out and well written! The “puzzles” make sense in the story as well. And the art is good too.
The platforming could use some work. It’s pretty difficult. And the music could be backed off a bit on volume and change from the organ-grinding track to something else for some relief. And lastly, the dialog could be slowed down or better have the player hit a button to advance to allow for those slower at reading to get a chance to enjoy it.
All in all, this is a well put together game, despite some of the minor flaws.
We would love to hear what you have to say about our game! So please, play and rate our creation and let us know what you think! Thanks!
Thank you for these kind comments and feedback, and thank you for playing! I will definitely keep these in mind going forward.
God damn birds I gave them a good try but...
It was beautiful and I have a feeling there would be more to offer, perhaps you should give a free pass after x amount of bird attacks.
Thank you, and thank you for playing! I recorded a playthrough of the Park scene to show one approach to the birds:
Suggestion next update: add guns so I can shoot the birds.
Beautiful game, btw.
Thank you, I appreciate it! I sensed frustration with the birds from the comments; not sure if that was a sticking point for you, but I added a playthrough video of that part above. Thanks again!
While I did die a couple of times, it didn't really frustrate me. I mostly commented as a joke. My overall experience was positive!