(Played this game yesterday and didn’t take notes but I did write some feedback but closed the browser before sending it… So I played it again so I can write some new feedback.)
Looking at the categories I have to score the game in:
Improvements: I guess the whole game’s made during the jam, so everything in it is an improvement.
Fun: I think this game is pretty fun, and even the browser version is pretty fun, at least compared to the other games I’ve played. And while it’s a bit weird, I guess that’s on purpose. The time limit also adds to the fun, without being too tight (I beat it on the second try).
90’s: I think the game does fit into the 32-bit era, although the chromatic aberration effect is something I first thought could be hard to pull off on a 32-bit console, but since it mostly affects tall objects, I guess it can be drawn just on those objects, and maybe just some parts of them. The vignetting also seems like it should be possible although on the PS1 it would have to look a bit less round or maybe a bit messy. Then again, I think the resolution is only 200x150 or so, quite a bit lower than an average PS1 game. But I don’t quite feel like 16-bit consoles would have been able to run something like this even with an on-cartridge chip like the SuperFX or the Sega Virtua Processor, so in terms of features it needs from the hardware, I think it would fit on a 32-bit console and that it wouldn’t on a 16-bit one.
And some other “categories”: Art: I think it fits the game and it’s easy to see what is what. It’s simple, which suits the low-poly aesthetic, some of it is even untextured. The vignetting and chromatic aberration make it look like I’m seeing the world with the eyes of someone whose eyes are about to stop working and everything is about to turn into a blurry mess and then into blackness as the time runs out (but I don’t think I have schizophrenia, so I don’t know if that would be a likely symptom to get from it).
I think the music too fits well.
Font: (I guess this is more of a joke category, but I saw some games with hard-to-read fonts and started to pay attention to font details when playtesting games.) The font is mostly made of straight lines with rounded joints between some of them, and each character is easy to read, even rendered at a higher resolution than the other parts of the game which I assume is to improve readability. (I also notice there are thin borders around the lines, which might be the result of applying anti-aliasing to horizontal and vertical lines rather than aligning them with the pixel boundaries… although at this font size it’s not really a problem, and the way it’s blurred in this game would technically have been possible on a 32-bit console, although the lower resolution would have made it affect readability more.)
The simple shapes are nice and make the text easy to read. But there’s random inconsistencies like the lowercase a being quite noticeably taller than the lowercase e, making the text look odd and messy, but I guess that’s on purpose because the mental illness makes everything messy. And the monospacedness and the letters with descenders (g, p, y and probably j and q) being higher up fits the messy look too.