Tested on browser
I'm not a big fan of story-driven philosophical puzzle games like Thomas was alone (that somehow this game reminded me of), but I must say that the general mood, stylistic and musical decisions are on the top, and I'll be as objective as possible.
Sound effects are great, which is not so obvious since sometimes the "sound" part of a game jam is the most avoided by developers, and if a developer is not familiar with music and sound manipulator tools things are necessarily going to be messed up.
Also visual effects are really cool, which I think is what makes the general minimalist graphics stand out, and I appreciate the notes and opinions you left in your game page.. it is something that developers should do during jams (I should too!).
Dialogues seemed really intriguing and , even though the dialogue system itself is a little bit off and tricky: I accidentally skipped some parts of text since the Enter button is both used to progress the text and skip the dialogue, but the dialogue is skipped before it is completely shown, so it is a little bit frustrating. ( i had to restart the game a couple times and skip all the levels to read the dialogues)
Maybe using just two cases (if the text is progressing and hit Enter the whole text is displayed with a little arrow on the bottom, the next Enter will change dialogue) or making the text progression faster would make dialogues more appreciable.
Now, I sincerely admit I'm not one of the smartest guy around here, but I feel I've got to point two things since I really enojoyed your game and ideas:
1. The second level was a little bit hard to solve, and had to skip it. I think that the level design was not the best, since the gap between the first level and the second level is tricky. Too much actions differences and mechanics progression between the levels, maybe 1-2 more levels between them could smooth the level design. But again, maybe it is just me.
2. Playing it outside the jam I probably wouldn't understand that the main theme is "floating island". Only thanks to the last dialogues and reading the controls I figured out it was an island of "junk", but at first glance it is not immediate the visual representation of the floating island, mostily if you have to phisically destroy it or remove parts of it as a mechanic of the game iteslf.
Anyway, I really like your style and also tried some of your other games!
Viewing post in Nights With Junk jam comments
I maybe need to add proper input locks for ENTER (so that you can't accidentially press it too quickly, it is used throughout the whole game but not for dialogues) and have a proper "skip" button for dialogue.
1. No, it is not just you. I was too busy playing with concepts for puzzles and core mechanics. I thought about it for several days straight mostly on paper and in sandbox-y mode, so when the time came to actually load those levels into the game and weave into/around story i was wastly behind the schedule so i made a deliberate choice to include "cool stuff" sacrificing much needed in-between levels of difficulty curve.
It is quite absurd in retrospective - the game even contains a level i can't solve myself (as a bonus), but not the basic stuff :(((
2. Yep, i should have made junk more obvious through first dialogues.
At the same time, it is kinda in line with the fact that it could be really anything instead of junk because it is people who are creative and see things and make them "fun" and not things themselves.
I think that the main problem is that you've got tons and tons of original ideas and a lot of creativity, but sometimes we gotta accept that if we are not in a team and have a little time we can't realize everything that is in our mind, and maybe the coolest things we fulfill in won't be appreciated or understood like simple features that just work for a jam.
Anyway, I really like your work and this game expresses your own personal style, which is not so common in jams. I think that this is what really touched me the most
I have not yet found cool people to team up with in such a way that makes resulting collaboration cooler from my perspective than solo work.
People call me in to join projects from time to time, but mostly it ends up being quite dull and not motivating enough and i quit soon.
How one around finding the right people to work with?
Do you have some experience with it?
I guess my games and other work might attract some community eventually and i can collaborate with community people in a typical opensource fashion, but that seems a bit distant. ^_^
I also can try and actively search for creators i personally consider cool and who do FOSS.
I think that nowadays finding people on the internet is the easiet thing on the planet. What's truly hard is finding the right people you can really trust and have fun together.
Sometimes a message on Reddit, on a Forum or simply on Discord could attract the right people, and this is something I personally experienced since I'm one of the Godot Engine Italy Community's curator, and a couple of nice teams came up together for jams and projects.
But it depends a lot on your character, attitude in teamwork and what you are looking for.
If you didn't find the idea of a team project yet, you simply don't need it!