To my unfortunate surprise, the game isn't great and the primary issue with it lies within the most unclear instructions I've ever seen, ever.
I understand the pressure of making a game jam project with limitations, time constriction, it is a monumental work to do it. Yet, the game jams are specifically made (in my humble opinion) to stretch the developers' skills, learn to work with given less and in the end, the most important thing is to create a working game.
Now, the game does work, yes, it runs well. It had good visual presentation and the sound design was up to the standards. The only, major complaint, which ruined the game's purpose were the lack of instructions. I spent nearly 10 minutes looking for what to do in the game. Note the fact that most players just download the game and they don't bother reading the long description or watching the gameplay (which isn't great to put up, because that directly speaks to the developer not being able to present the mechanics to the players), people just download the game and expect it to work, have guidance and enjoy it. This had no mention of in-game instructions, no mention of nothing. For me, major bad decision and in the future I would suggest to prioritize gameplay guidance over anything else in the projects. I've been making games for almost a decade and the most important part is to direct the player and give them the correct instruction, otherwise they will not get immersed in the game and quit half way.
It was really unfortunate to experience this and I do hope, if the game gets updated after the jam, it will include basic instructions for others. Good luck with the jam and future projects.
I'm sorry, but a game, which fails to establish the basic environmental instructions can't be simply dismissed as "oh that's okay". When I download and try a game, I invest time. It is my choice to play the game, that's true, but it is also an obligation from a developer's side to properly market/publish the game. You can't just feel like I was wrong, just because you think I was "harsh". I've played thousands of game jam projects and I've been involved with game jams too. Failure to establish the guidance for a player is a major flaw. And we are talking about masses of people, who don't even care about if the game is made in 7 or 5 days, those people just want to play the game and judging from their perspective, again, just simple add 1 line of text, all this can be avoided.
And you know what, if the developer/developers cared about the project they would actually respond first and be more open to the issue. The lack of any response proves my objective point even further, that they didn't really focus about the main "gameplay" aspect of the game. Sadly, they don't even care.
FYI the pointers from the start of the game didn't help at all. I don't know what version have you played, but main had nothing of sorts and I had to figure things out for almost 15 minutes.
Hello, I'm really sorry that you didn't enjoy the game.
However, I didn't ignore your feedback and I thank you for it : all comments are really important to improve my game. If I didn't reply to you, it's not because I don't care about this project. Actually, I've been working on it for the last two months to update it :) if you want to try it again, I've published a patch note of the 1.1 where I tried to address the biggest problems (especially the lack of clarity of the tutorial, as well as a game guide). Publishing this update took me a lot of time because unfortunately I only develop on my free time, and I don't have as many years of experience as you in video game development. But I'm still satisfied with this update, I tried to address the main criticisms, especially yours, so thank you very much.
Once again, I'm sorry that you felt like you wasted your time on the first version of the game, I'm still happy that you tried to play it. Despite that, it's a free game that I developed in 12 days. I'm not an experienced Game Designer, so for me the tutorial at the beginning of the game and the description + videos were enough. But it's true that the onboarding of the first version is catastrophic. I tried to improve it as much as possible in the update ^^
Finally, I agree with you on the scopes of Jam. A Game Jam is obviously the opportunity to focus on the essentials of a game. To reduce its concepts as much as possible to be able to put all its Skills to profit on a very short development cycle. But for my part, I especially enjoy developing. To me personnaly, game design is secondary, it's a field where I'm not very good (even if I try to improve myself). So for me a Jam is above all the opportunity to develop large systems quickly to improve myself as a developer. And my main goal is above all to have fun developing, I then try in a second time to make a fun game. I'm always grateful to people who play my games and appreciate them, it makes me extremely happy and it motivates me to continue. I'm also grateful to people who make constructive comments, it helps me to improve. But when I create a game it's above all for me :) and the pleasure of learning and creating something, then I share it for free if curious people want to try it. I'm also very happy when people enjoy what i've been working on obviously, but I do it for myself. However, I do not ignore the criticisms, and I try as much as possible to address them to always improve the games I make
Anyway thank you very much for your comments, I hope I was able to address most of your feedback, and if you want to try the game again, I invite you to test the 1.1 update to see if I was able to improve the black points that blocked you the first time.
Good luck with your future projects. (:
No thank you very much.
It literally took you 2 months to respond to me with a very unnecessary long and repetitive comment, yet you instantly replied to everyone, who posted a comment on your game, instantly. Time stamps don't lie, look above my comment.
In short, good luck to you as well and I rather invest my time somewhere else. Take care.
Edit: I will remove my rating as well, because I don't think it's right to rate this.