It's a complete product that, while having a slightly deeper learning curve than I think it should, really hones in on its gameplay and forces you to plan out your moves.
A bit more about that learning curve, though, is that I didn't realize a couple things until deep into my playthrough of it: 1. Use the arrow keys while sailing. 2. The red lines tell you who's selling what. However, this feedback which I'm giving is dangerous because it can easily fly in the face of something I value: implicit learning, the ability for a game to let you figure out how to play.
Viewing post in Bingle Trading Company jam comments
Thanks for the feedback! The guide section does actually mention how to do the movement, but I think that's the issue with having a text dump guide since it's easy to miss key info, ideally, we would have had a more flushed-out tutorial. I do think it was worth mentioning what the red line means, but we were struggling to decide what should be taught and what shouldn't, maybe something we can improve for our next jam :)
We definitely took our first game development a little bit too ambitious, so we fell flat on the tutorial and the map UI with some elements being rushed at the end (the cats besides the notes marking quests, and the underline). The underline wasn't something we ultimately wanted, instead we wanted to redesign the notes to more clearly show which goods are bought and sold. As for the boat controls, it would've been nice to teach the player as they played the game instead of reading a tutorial at the start, like showing them the controls on their first sail.
Thank you for your feedback :)