I had planned to take an hour to play all the games in the jam, but I ended up spending an hour on your game instead! Before anything else, congrats on finishing your first jam! It's awesome that you managed to ship a completed product. I really can't wait to see what else you're going to make in the future. Also, I love the art style you guys have going on here! The end screen in particular looked pretty cool
As it is with most first time games, this one is a little bit rough, but that's ok! I have a small mountain of feedback to give you for this one, but I just want to take one more second to again note that it's awesome you finished this! I hope you take these notes as things to keep in mind for next time rather than finding them discouraging. We all have a first jam game somewhere, and the most powerful thing we get out of it is what we learned. Alright, without further ado:
Gameplay:
So, the web version didn't have the text block on the left fully expanded. Not your fault, but because of that I spent the first several minutes just running around the overworld very confused. Having said that, there's one thing I noticed about your overworld that's a common mistake for first time devs in the top down space: Do you notice how you made it so the entire sprite has collision both for the ghost, and for the other people, meaning you collide with their head/hair etc? When you're dealing with a top down camera, make it so their collision is only the space around their feet. This allows you to create the illusion that you can walk behind the NPCs. Similarly, if you make it so the ghost only has collision at the bottom, it means you can get right up in an NPC's face instead of bonking the top of your head against their shoes.
Now, you may be thinking this will cause sprites to look weird as they clip in and out of each other. That's where the Z-Index comes in. You can layer which sprites appear in front/behind others using code in your game engine. In the case of a top down game, if you make it so their z-layer is equal to -y coordinate, you'll make it so the higher up on the screen a sprite is, the further back it is. This allows you to make it so the sprites can go behind sprites and in front of them and the sprites will clip properly
Alright, now I'll talk about the minigames. First, I'm gonna level with you, this music was giving me a bit of a headache by the end. It's kind of grating after listening for a bit, and because some of these minigames took me a while to solve due to issues I'm about to talk about, I ended up overdosing on it heavily. That said, I adored the scrolling skull background. It gave me megaman battle network vibes, which is awesome. Alright, here's my notes on each individual minigame:
--Puzzle minigame: I personally think this game would be significantly better if you removed the money thoughts mechanic, and made it so every piece can snap to every tile piece. Solving a grid puzzle when you don't know the original picture can be fun, but when you constantly have to divert your attention it stops being fun and starts feeling annoying. Now, it may be that you want your player to feel annoyed like how the ghost feels towards their brother, but it's best to remember that video games are meant to be entertaining at the end of the day. If the player runs into a wall of frustration, they're just gonna go do something else. In the end, for this one I ended up just dragging the pieces around until they caught on the only tile they could snap to and moved on.
-- Pipes minigame - I got super stuck on this one because there is a second, much shorter, valid solution that doesn't count as correct. Puzzles like these only work if you allow dynamic solving. It's pretty obvious you programmed a very specific game state to be the "correct" solution, rather than building in detection for a correct solution. I can get why, given it's a jam and you had time constraints, but puzzle games are at their best when they allow for multiple solutions, especially when the alternative solution is 100% correct by the rules of the game. Always build solution detection rather than hard code the "correct" solution
-- Twins game -- this one wasn't super remarkable in any regard. Kinda felt like an old school flash game, so props for that. Only thing is, just like with the puzzles I gave earlier, you should allow every letter to slot into every letter slot. Using the periods as a cheat to indicate the end of the word, and only allowing the letters to slot into the exact correct space kind of takes away from any puzzle solving there was to do there. Find a letter, drag it till it snaps, next
-- Ghost game -- this one I got so stuck on I nearly gave up and quit. Turns out, the only way to beat it is to click the button, then move the mouse way to the left and click the space bar to trigger the button again, because the ghost is offset way to the right relative to the ghost. Additionally, you don't have to start at the beginning of the maze. Move your mouse to the left of the exit and hit space to instantly clear the maze. I don't really have much to say on this one other than the bugs need to be fixed
-- Crushing Pills Minigame -- honestly, I don't have a lot to say on this one. Was just a straightforward "click the buttons before time runs out" affair. Lots of web game vibes here
One change I would have considered making if you had time would be to change the dialogue of the character after completing their minigame. That gives a better sense that the player is having an impact on the world around them. I'm guessing this was a time related issue though, which is completely fair. Food for thought
Alright, that's all the gameplay done, but remember how I mentioned that I spent the first several minutes wandering the overworld? Well, during that time I also took a moment to take a few notes on the writing as well. I'm gonna level with you, these people don't feel like people. They don't even feel like caricatures in a lot of cases. I don't say that to be unkind, but I recommend you continue practice writing dialogue after this. Maybe write some short stories etc and have people read them. Here's a few specific notes:
- The conversation between Mama/Papa (aka Gerald/Margaret) ends up feeling super stilted. I can tell you want them to be super detached/stilted which is fair and makes sense, but some of these things don't read like how anyone, even stuck up people, talk. Specifically, Mama refers to Gerald by name twice in two different sentences. It would be like me, every time I talk to you going, "Appel, congrats on finishing your first game" "Thanks Mist!" "You're welcome, Appel". See how weird that feels? The person opening the conversation might use the opposing person's name once, but the person responding will almost never use the opposing person's name unless it's the very beginning of a social interaction "Hi Appel!" "Hi Mist!" (we will not be using each other's names for the rest of the day except to maybe get the other's attention).
- Here's an exact note I took while playing the game "Erin and Ellen give me boomer facebook meme vibes". I don't feel any reason to hate these people like the author clearly wants, because I can't find them believable enough to hate. They're just "40 year old mad at the youths caricatures numbers 256 and 257". I don't think using this stereotype here was a good idea. If I'm exacting revenge on people, I should be able to feel at least some level of dislike for them when I'm reading their dialogue, but here I just roll my eyes and move on
- Cousin Ian on the other hand is a much better written young person relative to Erin and Ellen. I still don't feel a reason to hate him, but the writing here doesn't make me cringe. He feels like a character. However, I do have one note: You know that joke on the internet where people note how you can tell if the writer was an only child by how they fail at writing sibling interactions? "Hey bro" "what's up, sis?" etc? I get the same vibes here. People don't refer to their cousins as "Cousin Harold". He's just "Harold". If you want to indicate they were cousins, call him "Cousin Ian" in the name card and nothing else
Ok. I feel like I've been a bit more negative than I intended, but honestly all of this feedback is what I really thought about the game. That said, please don't feel discouraged by this. The only reason I took 2 hours to play/write this is because I want to see you keep making games, and for those games to get better and better. Congrats again on finishing your first jam. I can't wait to play what you make next!