Post by mpaul0416 in Blood & Sweat jam comments

Side Quest #2 with Creative Assembly » Entries » Blood & Sweat

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I really like this game. It seems like management games tend to be avoided for game jams, due to the difficulty in balance. It was nice to see you tackle the genre in a game jam! The art style was very cool as well.

There was a part of the tutorial where it says the icons are above, I wasn't sure if you meant above the tutorial panel or above the part panel.

If I were to add to this

Tweaking the challenge would be good, although that's really hard to do. Unifying the UI would also help guide the player. For example, blood cells on the heart look like cells, but when applied to injuries, it has a different UI. This change can lead to confusion.

Game Design

I'm going to be using Jonas Tyroller's framework for fun for these reviews, so you can watch his video for more context around it.

Impact

For impact, I think some response in the world for fixing an injury would be nice. Something like a bandage that appears for a small time after fixing an injury would help reward the player for mastering the game loop. Another one would be having the human react in some way. That would both reward the player and help sell the fantasy.

Challenge

This game definitely upped the challenge! It would take some practice to be able to last in this game for some time.

I feel like some more tweaking to lower the skill floor would help ease the player into the game a little better. There are also things that make this more difficult, like not automatically returning the blood cells when you finish healing a part.

I think this is an excellent entry in the management game jam game, and with tweaking could become even more compelling.

Fantasy

For Fantasy, I think that you have the beginning of a great one, but it will need expanding some more in order to draw the player in. The folders feel more like computer folders, I think more closely matching something doctor's orders would help sell the fantasy.

Another thing that might be fun is to see what the injury was and what caused it. Was it a car crash that injured my leg and foot?

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Ikenet4 years ago(+1)

Woah, thanks for the extensive feedback!

First off, I watched the video you linked and really enjoyed it, I'll definitely be coming back to it when working on new game design ideas.

Overall I agree that the UI needs some work, ideally the game would be able to explain itself better without the tutorial, which in the end may even be more confusing to the player.

I agree that a better visual feedback for the player when injuries are healed would be nice, I like that idea of the bandage. I feel like the overall style is not really cohesive, like each part being a computer folder for... I'm not even sure why, it's the first thing that came to mind and just rolled with it. Ideally it would have a more consistent theme, something hospital-ish to sell the fantasy.

The idea about having a cause for the injuries is great! Could be fun to add some silly situations that cause them. One of the ideas I had initially was to give each human you played a random name and look, and in the end if you lost there would be a tombstone with some kind of joke as the "last words".

This makes want to go back to the game and keep building upon it and add all these ideas and mechanics, even if the jam has finished. Again, thanks for the thorough analysis! It's really encouraging to me as a beginner.