itch.io

Purely in terms of being a jam submission, it's very solid! Given that it only had a month to be created, the amount of art assets that had to be created for this just reeks of a ton of effort being put in! Like, Grizwald's and Jaxo's portraits are a little stiff, but overall, its very nice stuff and nothing looks or feels outright bad at any point. And I can see the framework for something much grander at play too, and I am enthused to see where this goes. 

As for constructive criticism, I think the best place to point out would be the overall characterization. I know, it's a jam product, what you have is excellent for the time and budget you have, but, if and when you further develop this game, or this setting, I would think the best place to look is your characters. Like, were told or shown little of what sort of people Grizwald and Jaxo are, Griz is a gentle but caring giant and Jaxo... is the reasonable one that for some reason goes along with things?  And finally Jess, who despite being the most expressive character by a wide margin and actually having some interesting things to say... has like zero real personality to speak of, despite being the protagonist. 

While I personally do not believe that the MC has to bee necessarily "relatable" to be interesting or compelling, I DO at least think it's important that the player can at least intuit who they are and learn things about them. And Jess... just doesn't actually get any opportunity to establish an even halfway consistent MO. The most I can get is that they are transgender via their design motifs which I suppose is a neat idea considering they are a bee but its something that I feel like neither jess or anyone else actually thinks necessary to bring up, nor do I (a straight guy with zero romantic experience or any real understanding of the subject) feel like anything is done with it at all, (and to be clear, sometimes the lack of mentioning something can be just as insightful as if they did bring it up; they are your characters, do whatever you please with them; so I am not calling it bad, its just a bit... odd...); and the only other thing I can get from them is that they are someone who tends to shy away from danger? Someone who is a bit sheltered, mildly oblivious, somewhat left out of the loop on things? Unclear.

Other than that, Jess is internally inconsistent, beyond the multiple choice nature of the medium. Like, you start the game with them either sleeping in or getting up immediately, then later have them be someone who is willing to get out of the house early when someone tries to reach them, only to then try to hope the people knocking at their door go away the next morning. And, yeah, a lot of what little we get on them goes like that, where its very difficult to gauge what their overall ethos is, which I think ended up unintentionally down-playing the impact lines like "Spin city has lost it's luster" were supposed to have. I do think it would be very important for the player to have a bit more time to get into their headspace, and so on.

Similar story with the setting, which frankly I can also peg right back to Jess and the other two major characters. It's shown there's this half-changing epidemic of sorts going about, and while of course that's going to get developed in further detail later, the status quo of Spin City that establishes why the half changing is a disruption is not. "Established as a safe haven following the 'changes'" is roughly what were told, in addition to hospitalization problems presumably also related... and animal hybrids being the norm can be rooted in attempts at immortality, but... OK? A flaw with the setting is that this does not sufficiently explain why most people are or are not animals, if it was a willing thing to begin with for the general population, and in particular, what sort of clear-and-present danger half-changed individuals might present to fully hybridized folks. Violent behavior, yes... but... the implications of the story beats imply that something more than that might be at play here to cuase a quarantine level situation, yet this does not feel like the narrative intent at all. "Can those already fully changed get partially changed again?" Is the question my mind keeps coming back too, and I don't know if that is what the audience was meant to be thinking.

And, this all has further implications and potential for insight into our major characters, namely-but-by-no-means-exclusively Jess. Like, they are a bee *now*, but I think an interesting question that could, depending on the answer, influence their personality is whether they have always been like this? Were they human at some point, and if yes, was becoming a bee in anyway willing or desireable to them? Or, were they born the way they are? Even more interesting a possibility, going off of a small detail you included, were they a normal, feral bee originally? -- That last one I think actually has the most potential! And so it goes for the rest of the cast; regardless of whether or not the player learns such backstory about them directly, any sort of answer to this question even just in the writers room alone would invariably shape these character's own personal world views.

I can probably contribute some more chatter if you want it, but for now, I think that is plenty. (yes, I know, I am incapable of shutting up). I like what you have here, and am eager to see more from you all! Keep up the good work!