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pocketpainter19 days ago

This game was a very creative entry, and it has a lot of potential to be something more. I was really intrigued by the concept of the game, but unfortunately I think there were a few misses in the execution. If you were able to adjust this in the future, this could be a really unique game on the market.

The biggest concern I have is going to be the gameplay. The game lends itself to an interesting atmosphere and a strong storyline, but the cookie-clicker style minigame kind of kills any chance of that taking root in the player's mind. Especially with a lack of visuals, it gets the "boring job" part of the description across well, but also lacks from making the story interesting due to the fact that the story is only portrayed through unreviewable text and flashes of light. The light flash is a great way to indicate mood, environment, and events, but without anything else, can only really be distracting. This along with the fact that the computer monitor ingame is on the opposite side of the desk from the actual text we're supposed to be reading to follow along makes it so that the player has to choose between figuring out what the story is or doing their desk job. When the desk job is the only form of player interaction with the game, this is a bad choice because it discourages the player from playing the game at all.

Despite this, I think you did a very good job creating a setting and the room itself is rendered gorgeously, which is a big part of why I wanted to play this game to begin with. I think with some polish, upgrades to ui and some more game design fixes, this would be a cool game to complete. Good job! :)

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Motion Blurred19 days ago

Thanks so much for playing and reviewing! Even though it makes sense, I‘m kinda surprised that players are invested enough in the ‚gameplay‘ that the dialogue seems distracting. The idle game was a last-ditch attempt because I thought it was the lowest-effort minigame I could make (to no one‘s surprise it still took a lot of time) and feared that players wouldn‘t play it and be bored by the dialogue pauses. Ideally, the screen game would‘ve been more adventure-like similar to Hacknet or Stories Untold so I could have synced the story beats so you don’t feel like being pulled from the gameplay when looking away. Maybe even just pausing/slowing the idle game during the dialogue would‘ve been enough but doesn‘t feel right.

I actually find the idea of not letting the player play the ‚main‘ game interesting but it would‘ve needed a better integration and narrative to work. Gameplay is my biggest enemy still… I might need longer jams to participate in so I‘m not running around like a headless chicken

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pocketpainter19 days ago

That's valid, I think game jams are notoriously difficult to get completed games in (of course haha). tbh i can see why you'd assume no one would want to play the cookie clicker type game but honestly there's a really big fanbase for cookie clicker in and of itself and honestly I enjoy actively playing games like that so maybe I'm not the best guinea pig on the block :") Either way tho, I think a good way around this would be to make it more like a text box (like a phone notification?) that you can open up, interact with on like the computer screen, kind of like your coworkers are all messaging in a group chatroom or slack or something. That way, you kill multiple birds with one stone - You have a rereadable chat history, you can make the text more central to the game, and you can also have some sort of alert sound that tells the player when a message comes in. It would be interesting too to play with the idea of being stuck in a room - like you have a bunch of mundane tasks around the office space the player is in (among us style?) like reorganizing some files, dusting some bookshelves, etc. something small and boring so the player has every reason to sprint back to the monitor to read the new messages from their coworkers

Of course, all of this would take much longer than a week so the foundation you laid by having this game this complete in the first place is pretty good already. I can see your vision tbh and its pretty fire

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Motion Blurred14 days ago(+1)

Now that you mention all the other advantages of putting it in a chat box I fully agree, it would’ve been the better solution for the jam (since you still would’ve seen the lights outside anyway). Though generally I find the 3D text more interesting, because it’s not just another screen you’re looking at - CosmoD games and Smile for Me did that pretty well. It’s just really hard and definitely not solvable in a jam time frame lol. Again, thanks for all your feedback, I love reading it. And funnily enough, I just talked with a friend who ALSO found the idle game more interesting than I expected and also suggested a 2D dialogue lmao

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