Hey, man! This is a super cool idea! The mood and writing is spot on. The text snippets are just fantastic, to the point where if any of them were synopsis for a lovecraftian tale, I'd love to read it! The biggest difficulty I had was understanding how exactly I was affecting the game state, so that I could balance the options and make a bet on one of them. I was usually like "hmm ok, option 1 sounds intriguing! Option 2 sounds intriguing too. I'll just pick the one I find the most intriguing and would like to know more about". There are many cool ways this could be developed - the Reigns approach would be making the stats more easily readable (ex. a visual bar) and text consequences more directionally clear, even if the intensity was unknown (so that there is some gambling factor made possible from understanding the stakes and possibilities). Connecting previous choices to follow ups also sound rewarding! Anyways, I know you couldn't finish in the initial timeline due to stuff out of your control, but I really appreciate the effort and the fact that you submitted for others to try it. Cheers, mate!
Viewing post in This Is NOT Your Story jam comments
Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it. Looking back I feel like I underestimated the complexities of the underlying systems that would need to be in place in order for it to sing. It's not even the systems that I find problematic to build. I discovered that I am not enjoying content creation (story) and felt that I lean more toward systematic games.
Thus, I will probably not be finishing the game. The amount of time I would need to put in the project does not feel justified against:
- the timeline we have for the bootcamp
- the fun-factor that it would result in
- a healthy rule of twice
I still think it was a good learning experience in terms of to be more careful around game concepts where you don't have experience building the fun factor.
In hindsight, I might have to go with a different path next time around. Might need to first establish my fun-building skill as well as completing short projects before I try to "innovate", since the unknown always takes up more time than we anticipate.
It's hard to pinpoint where I went wrong, which is a bit frustrating in regards to "how to get better?"