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Shadow Pilgrimage's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
How clear & compelling is the game's central idea? | #4 | 4.400 | 4.400 |
How elegant, useful, and intuitive are the game's mechanics? | #14 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
How cohesively designed do you think the game is overall? | #15 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- The game feels unmoored. Simulatenously at home in it's evicative setting, while also being confused and offering equivocations. The action resolution mechanics do not seem committed too, offering lots of hemming and hawing. There are also were much more confusing grammar than I would like in a game. Or perhaps not enough. It felt trapped bewteen a poem and a more straightforward experience, never quite reaching the heights either can. I want to go to the Place Where The Sun Died, but I don't feel like the game does enough to support a journey of discovery.
- How clear & compelling is the game's central idea? it took a bit for me to wrap my head around the concept of unbound shadows, but the examples given helped me along the way beautifully. How elegant, useful, and intuitive are the game's mechanics? the resolution is simple enough to keep in my head, and the cards serving multiple purposes is very nice. limiting to a single tool needed for resolution and guiding GM creation is also very clever. How cohesively designed do you think the game is overall? The table of contents goes very far in making the document easy to navigate, even with the short length. it also gives a good outline, so I wasn't lost reading the text ever.
- I thought this was a very evocative game!! I found the stats and their "fraying" to be especially thematic. Not only is the card drawing a clean and simple way to negotiate successes and failures, but it's also a great way to lean into the impossibility (or, extreme improbability) of ultimate success, and focus instead on the journey and personal growth.
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Comments
This seems quite avant-garde
I was unsure if face cards count towards success, if they are black? Or are they given to the GM before they are counted?
I think this game has a really interesting premise -- it's weird in a cool, storybook kind of way. I also think the way the deck of cards interacts with the GM's "economy" is interesting.