Time for review. This year I am making videos of me playtesting the game, here is yours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToN_xt1SurE (Just realised my videorecorder havent recorded sounds, have to check that)
Usually when I see a game submission with a picture that hints something about a word game, I dont have much expectations from the game at that point anymore, but remembering sarriest previous years excellent game, that I personally think should have won the whole competition perhaps, my thought was instead "cant wait to see how she treats that concept".
I am most likely going to write another review about this game at some other point, since right now my review (and the video) is based upon me playing that game alone, and as that game is meant for three players, well, one player sure doesnt give it credit.
It is actually bit of a shame since your game might underperform in voting due to 3 player aspect, since I guess many wont be able to try it out properly. However, at same time. What an interesting idea to go for an actual 3 player co-op game. Fantastic idea! and a real shame you might get punished from that.
Playing alone, this game was quite terrible experience, however, with two people, one on keyboard, another on mouse, I think this is already playble. Of course the idea is then that shine just keeps still and games will be short, but I think it will anyway be playable, that you can aim for highscore in one one minute play.
This also brings me one problem with your game you didnt take into consideration, and one which is very difficult to even think, unless you have one of these special keyboards. For basically I am waiting for my daugter to come home from childrens camp to give this game a try on two player mode, but I could ask some friend of hers to play as a third one, except, not with my keyboard. I have this Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard, and it doesnt have numpad nor the arrow keys place the normal way. My 4 arrow keys are in two different places. On right hand size, under "," I have up and down key, on the left side, under letters "v" and "c", i have left and right keys, when then having numbers only on that top column, you can see how unpractical mobing shine is with this keyboard, and even more, if one player is typing at same time, then it becomes already practically impossible. Solution to this would be to give a possibility to reconfigure keys to some different place. Basically I could reconfigure my keyboard, but I am not familiar with this keyboard enough yet, so I am bit too worried how to reset it back to my current setting if I do that, hence I wont try it.
Anyway, this is something that doesnt come to mind, until you actually start using one of these special keyboards, and in practice the three player aspect is impossible with my keyboard and it is a slight minus to me, although very understandable thing to miss.
Trying to play this alone was possible, but very very difficult. But it did at least give some impression of the game.
Game looked very nice and good. I am however bit suspicious that game might be too difficult. For basically what I was looking is, that this game would be great on some childrens/youth camps/evenings. That people would be divided into teams, and then all these teams would compete against each other on who gets best high score. I think this would be great for something like that. But I am afraid this might be too difficult for elementary school kinds, espeacially the typing part.
However, at same time I am quite doubtful people would enjoy playing this game much at home. I dont think it has enough to interest them for more than couple of minutes. That basically they try one time, and next time they probably wont start the game anymore. But for something like camp/evening thing, I could easily see how this team competition would be set up many times and each time people would like it as much as the first time. This would be great material for something like that.
This would also solve another problem at same time. For basically I really like how you went on to interpret the verse. The idea is real gold. However, implementation does fail in that you get half the message done only. You do get the part that you need to work in team and body of christ etc. but to actually forgive etc. that doesnt come out in any way by just playing the game. However, I could once again see if this would be in some childrens evening, that then they could speak afterwards in way "So did it help being angry at other? no. Then did it feel good to be forgiven? yes. Also, when you patiently gave your team member time to learn, despite him not being very good at beginning, didnt it finally pay off?". This way this games message would really hit gold. Right now it gets there only half way and for that reason unfortunately fails. But the idea and approach was fantastic, although execution fell short.
Music and graphics were both very nice and working. They both worked. Clear graphics and fitting music. Also those little details, like things moving in instructions made the polish level shine so much brighter.
All in all, so far it seems like highly interesting idea that I have to get to try with at least two players to truly see how it works. I believe the slow mouse works well with more than one player, but with one player it was real terrible, because there was already enough trouble playing alone, yet alone making it even more difficult, but basically direct mouse in multiplayer might be boring for the one with the mouse, since that one then be just targeting and do nothing else, with mouse acceleration thing, it will be more challenging and fun.
I really liked this entry, although it is hard to determine if this is actually good yet or not. When I get to play with my daughter, I will comment about this again.