It was short and sweet, but I loved it. Who it was, was a little predictable by art sake(idk if that was intentional) and expressions, but for a jam that's fine. I love the art per usual I am always insanely impressed you can make so much incredible art so quickly, and the beginning was so funny it had me cracking up.
One thing I will note is that introducing a heck ton of characters at once can be insanely jarring and overwhelming---maybe it's just me. You can't really grow any attatchment or care about characters when there are so much thrown at you at once. The characters have personality- and are lively, that isn't it...it almost feels like...we are supposed to know about the characters ahead of time or before the game has started. It feels like there's a lot of maybe not inside jokes..but stuff we should be knowing about the characters or time the spent together. They are new to us, even if they are very familiar to you. I think they have a lot of personality and their designs are cool. I think it's just a lot of characters at once it isn't super neccessary to have so many thrown into the bunch immediately, it starts to get confusing even remembering the characters names or anything about them, esp since bc it's a jam we don't spend very much time with them. It might be a preference so this has nothing to do with my score, I 5 star this.
I love the dialogue and clicking on the items and investigating was fun, and the arrow scroll was a nice touch! Awesome game and one of my favorites so far.
Viewing post in The HawkZombie Bookstore MURDER jam comments
Hey Phoenix! Thanks for the response! Honestly, hiddenone and I kind of wish we gave the game more time so we could flesh out these characters. The issue also was that the main 5-some of Oswald, Aimilios, Lumiere, Madison and Heather were all already in a previous Game Jam Game, Psychemis: the Forbidden Archipelago. hiddenone even linked that game on our page for it [which is pretty funny].
((Also, there was a cameo of a familiar face at the cafe.)) And it isn't just you actually. It's been a common critique of my games. Finding a good balance though is tricky.
Also which ending did you get, seeing we have three endings total? [They're RNG unlike Psychemis which was choice-based.]
ITS SO FREAKING GOOD aww it is not you guys' falt dw about it IT IS STILL 5 star it's got my vote 100%
It's sooo hard when there is a lot of characters going on at once, I get a weird overwhelmed feeling where I'm like whos who what's going on and I see name plates but i can't remember who anyone is xD It's probably just my brain honestly. I thought the characters were all wonderful and super cute and have great personality. Some little narrration bits not a long into but we've been friends for x years or some slight backstory or little comments or characters thoughts like a short summary of how they know eachother, I think would help the player connect with them a lot more! I hope this helps.
My first ending was accusing the guy with the glasses, it said i was correct, but idk what the name of that ending was...but Now I'm gonna go back and get the others xDDD
Thanks for playing!
I know the characters were a lot to deal with right away, but since it was sorta a sequel to Honeynut's first psychemis game I didn't want to spend too long introducing everyone. I also wrote a lot of it banking on the fact that Hawk would remember the characters at least a little (this whole game was made to make Hawk laugh and groan) so I skipped over a lot of the character development.
I'm glad you enjoyed the dialogue and investigating the bookstore, it was my first time making a point-and-click so I wasn't sure if it would really work or not.
OHH that makes more sense/ I understand tha, yeah introducing people would've been way too overwhelming, I mean a literal sentence of narration 'we;ve done x and have been close friends for years, and now we are doing y and z' a simple sentence, no introductions, like a thought bubble, or thought message!
xD the game was sooo much fun, i had so many favorites and this was one of them. Everyone went all out for this jam! I loved it, some of my fav type of game styles