Game 1: Get Out and Vote- 121 Newcomer total (103 w/o newcomer)
Political Impact: 27
- Centering a game around the verbs of political action are a great way to remind people of their engagement opportunities. Great Job!
- So close to the election, the game is all about the specific political action of voting -- just one of the many tools in our toolbox. I think the most effective of the 3 minigames was the "speaking to different potential voters" minigame and processing people's thoughts and feelings about voting as a political action.
- Reinforces voting as the sole avenue of democratic political action. Fails to grapple with democracy as a political concept.
- the game does a good job of sticking to the theme. it is very clear what the message is and i think there are some good arguments within the game for why and how people can and should go vote.
- Great job sticking to the theme! The visual novel especially did a great job communicating issues and potential solutions, and the other games delivered the message as well.
- Thematically on point!
Innovation: 18
- By highlighting what community members look like at the ground level of your experience, you are hinting at the evolving landscape of the voter. Bravo.
- Overall, the game to me felt solidly in the middle: not especially innovative or fresh, but not boring either! I appreciated the "political Wordle" minigame, that was a cool idea.
- Stakes presented as self-evident. Fails to challenge critiques of democracy.
- while the game has strong messaging, i dont think it is particularly innovative with HOW it conveys that message. It is an assemblage of mini-games which feel quite disjointed from each other. it would have been nice to see more cohesion between gameplay and theme.
- I really enjoyed the visual novel portion of the game and the overall narrative of getting out the vote, I think that concept has a lot of potential for a fun and informative game.
- All three minigames were creative and unique
Quality: 16
- There were a couple of hiccups that prevented me from easily progressing through the wordle minigame mode. I needed the guide to enter the words, as the wordlist was a bit too constrained for me to work through it on my own. Wordles usually have a word list of a few million, so I get why it wasn't feasible.
- Though a cool initial idea, the game could certainly use more time for polish. I wasn't exactly sure how the poster-hanging minigame worked; I would press "E" and nothing would happen. It seemed like I was collecting posters automatically somehow.
- Default audio level should be reduced. Wordle lacked many common words in list, such as "world," "drive," and "crate," making game nearly unplayable. Poster game mechanics not fully explained. Art & audio quality are solid but gameplay & narrative feels like a rush job.
- the conversation and poster mini-games are easy to understand and play. I had a hard time with the wordle section as the word bank is very limited, i found it very frustrating.
- The music was great and I enjoyed the art of the various voters we got to talk to! I had some trouble figuring things out with the wordle and top-down poster game, but the mechanics were presented clearly.
- I struggled with the poster placement mini-game; I could have used a little more instruction/clarity.
Accessibility: 18
- While there are no features for accessibilities that I saw, I would say the work does emphasize the avenues of engagement and access, which is a form of efficacy and empowerment.
- The game could have used more accessible features (even just a pause menu to refresh the game or go back to the main menu would've been nice), but I understand that there probably wasn't much time to plan ahead and really implement these important features.
- Unable to exit from minigames or game menu to main menu. No accessiblity features.
- there are subtitles but that is about it as far as accessibility options go.
- The mechanics seemed fairly accessible to me and straightforward, although I think there were some missed opportunities (such as allowing the player to use their mouse to advance the visual novel dialogue, I may have missed it but I could only use the space bar)
- It seemed accessible enough to me, but the controls for poster placement were a little funky.
Diversity: 24
- great representational elements in the canvasing and poster work.
- I think the part of the game that most exemplified diversity was the minigame in which you "convince people to vote" -- you get to see a wide range of citizens and potential voters.
- People who were not white men were depicted.
- this game does a great job of representing many different people.
- I think this game did a great job with diversity and portrayed many different kinds of people.
- I liked the diverse pool of people in the first minigame a lot!
Best Newcomer: 18
- I'm not sure I understand the question, but I think the game is a great start as a product made by a team of new game developers!
- Feels like a game that was developed as a introductory project.
- i think this is an excellent first game! Something to think about in your future projects, is thinking of ways to harmonize the gameplay with the theme a bit more.
- I think this was awesome work for a newcomer team, well done!
- This was well done! Props to everyone involved.