Very well designed and polished game! Impressive for a solo submission :3
The art and animation is pretty. I like the way the story is told, and the twist in the end!
My only very tiny remark is that the background behind the dialogs in the first part are clicking, and I think it would be better if they don't; it hurt my eyes a bit.
I saw in the comments of the jam that you oversimplified your ideas to submit on time. Do you plan to extend your game after the jam?
Anyway, good job! I enjoyed it.
Viewing post in The Color of the Ocean jam comments
Thank you so much! Thank you for that feedback - especially in my interactive fiction where words are almost everything, I should have given readability the most priority, you raise a good point. Feel free to be critical, I would appreciate that!
And yes, in the beginning - and you might actually relate to how psychological this is - I wanted to give the player the agency to traverse through the boy's mind, as we are a figment of the boy's imagination, we are part of the boy - so in that sense we can explore the mind. The beginning it's all lighthearted, we are surrounded by absurd-looking sea-creatures that are remnants of his father's storytelling, but as we go deeper and deeper, we reach a part that's blocked. Then you discover the boy was in denial all along. Ah, and all this will have to be handled very sensitively too, this is trauma I'm trying to represent experientially. But yeah, none of that happened.
Maybe I'll do it sometime in the future, I am so severely lacking in the coding department at the moment. But I am also so detached - I might forget about this altogether! Maybe someday?
What about you? Will you be working on your game more?
I think you did very well given the time you had, honestly! I also struggle a lot with coding, so I can imagine how challenging it can be (I'm one of the artists in my team, so I understand).
The psychological intent of your game is quite clear to me, though of course, I wish the game could develop it more and be longer. But considering it’s a solo submission and we only had two weeks, I do think you did an impressive job! It’s evident that you have some experience in game making already. I checked your profile and see that this isn’t your first attempt at a game (which make sense), and they all look very aesthetic! Keep the good work :3
To reply to your question: we’re a bit burned out from the jam right now, but we plan to submit a corrected version (with fewer typos and a clearer UI) before the end of the Josei jam (which is in one month).
We do one game jam with friends every year in May. Next year will be our fifth year of jamming, so we were thinking of making a v2 of one of our previous games to celebrate this anniversary. Maybe it will be 'Mindfarer'! (I hope so, it's the one I enjoyed the one making).
Oh yes, coding is a struggle - but it's also something that I genuinely enjoy..... well, at least most of the time!
Thank you so much for your very warm and reassuring words. I think, somewhere along the lines, I was being a bit harsh on myself. Yes, not my first time at all - I am a student doing masters in Game Design, so most of what I have uploaded are my college assignments! But most of them are simple interactive fiction - I would love to create narratives with more well-thought out mechanics in the future! And thank you!
One month...I do think you can manage because I saw only minor typos with the text ( and it's well-punctuated too!) . UI I am not quite sure what your end goal is...but it's definitely enough for a smooth enough ride. Just that, "ward-deployment" part was not clear to me....but yes, good luck!
Oooh, next year huh? I'm rooting for taking this game to the next level. It's already so good, would love to see how much more you can expand and refine it!