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The games in the first Text Adventure Literacy Jam in 2021 were aimed at children

I guess this is the cause of the double vision I got from the rules. (Does the close focus on ‘obscene content’ and ‘adult content’ still make sense for an age-agnostic jam?)

The description of the jam is a bit confusing. The blurb talks about making games for new players, but the rules about content and the title art suggest it’s about making games for children.

These are very different goals! Making a game more child-friendly might mean making it less beginner-enticing, and vice versa! Which goal will the jam be judged on?

Can we have some reassurance that this situation is less dire than it looks? Previous posters have already laid out the apparent problems, but it would be nice to know it’s not as bad as it seems.

Super, super cool game. Thanks for making it. I kept notes when playing.

(Spoilers for everything!)

backside and finale

By which I meant: it's strange that the exit to the finale is just slightly more obscure than the exit to the backside stages. If it's imitating the early exit from Baba is You, the finale ought to be much more obvious and much easier to reach and beat. If it's meant to be hidden, it ought to be more hidden.

any number of jumps

I was wondering if the protagonist should blow past double jump to infinite jump. Having beaten(?) the demo since, I guess there were three or so stages that would break from this. But the user-convenience might be worth it?

bicolour door label

prose?

I forget what these were about. Heh.

operators- the song lyrics are 'that's amore', not 'that's adore'

Deliberately annoying text has unintentionally annoying eggcorn.

confusign- explaining the mechanic in the text kinda sucks. we made this far. give us some credit

The stages immediately before had figuring out the new mechanic be a major part of the challenge. 'Confusign' just yells that answer at you. I guess none or all of them should do that?

picking favorites- much too hard

Actually, I finished the demo without ever beating this one. Maybe there's a trick I didn't see. Maybe it's just too hard for such early placement.

macrocosm- too easy. yes, the text _says_ it might be too easy, but it still feels wrong that it _is_

The flipside of the previous, I guess.

library- too few clears?

The library world only needs six stage clears to advance. It felt like too few at the time, and it still does.

cascade- ahahahahaha YES

Cool stage.

lens of truth real anticlimax

I wrote this before the game even explained how the lens worked. As far as I recall, the game just dumps it on the floor in front of you, explains nothing, and then drops a load of operating instructions on you on the stage where it becomes relevant. Probably could be organised better.

imaginary doors could look cooler

Unique sprites or something?

prose?

The quality of the prose dropped off over the course of the game. Yes, it does tell you that's what's happening. But a stage with no text is better than a stage with ha-ha-yes-this-text-is-bad-(pleasedonthitme) text.

ending?

I am only mostly sure I beat the demo. Which is awkward. I reached an area with an impassable DEMODEMODEMO wall, a tutorial that doesn't seem to tutorialise or unlock anything, and a second finale which looked far too large and trollish to attempt. (If it unlocks a third half of the game, I guess I'd try it. If it only unlocks a you win screen, I'm happy to say I've already won.)

The megalomaniac scope of the demo being what it is, I have no idea if that's the end or the halfway point. Heh.

This was a kickass puzzle game and you should be proud if it. If my notes look too negative it's only because I didn't write 'wow' and 'cool' everywhere. I'll definitely buy the full version if it appears.

After testing on every smartphone I could get hands on:

* Scrolled on one iphone 8

* Doesn't scroll on an identical iphone 8

* Doesn't scroll on a older-model iphone

Is this a known issue with mobile?

Thanks for the feedback

You can scroll to the bottom of the page on your mobile phone? That's excellent news!

It definitely doesn't scroll on my iphone 8. Did you have to do anything unusual?

If you can scroll to the bottom of this page in a mobile browser, I will pay you one million dollars

'Enable scrollbars' does not enable scrollbars in mobile. This is bad. It would be better if scroll worked in mobile.

Thanks!

It's definitely the four hour-sized version of the game, but making a complete anything in four hours feels like a accomplishment.

When I saw 'Interactive novel' in the description I though ooh, that's a bit poncy.

But no. This is an honest-to-god novel, twine'd up and given away for free on halloween. My hat goes off to you, because holy shit that's amazing.

This has got more Halloweenic energy than any other three entrants put together.

I can't speak to its good taste, but it's got the swagger.

I am only six sevenths Moon Goon. The seventh ending eludes me.

Unless, as another man said, the existence of a seventh ending is merely another snare of the god of cruelty.

I cannot tell a lie: having this great new interface and using it to reimplement 'examine' and 'ask about' caused a burning pain to shoot through my head.

The story's charming, though.

For instance, the link to intfiction should point to the thread for the current Ectocomp, not the thread for the previous Ectocomp, as it does now.

Likewise, the 'list of all the participants' link goes to a list of other people who participated in a different competition. That's not good.

(If there's something clever or spooky to do while sneaking off to pee, I wasn't clever or spooky enough to find it.)

Rating anthologies is trickyyyy.

I rate the foolglass story five out of eight drowned corpses. The darkness story gets one out of one cheap laughs. The baby story is two out of seven Silent Hill sequels. And Don't Dive into Blood, Kids is wolf out of wolf wolfs.

I think that adds up to four out of five stars!

Came for the atmosphere, stayed for the terrifying fish.

The terrifying fish were well beyond the call of duty.

fyi

I don't know what to make of this. I don't know how my character works or how the only(?) other character works. I don't know what my goals are or how to approach them. I don't know if these deficiencies are in the game or in me.

On a purely technical level: text should appear faster and not jiggle.

(edit: Second try. Any attempt to take a proactive action in the gameworld gets me a not-really-grammatical blurt of third-person narration and kicks me back to the title screen. Except one time my interlocutor announced she "had sage" and gameovered me apropos of nothing.)

(edit: Actually, a lot of the game has a translated-from-another-language feel to it. And it's hard to imagine Emily Short writing such hyper-stilted dialogue. (The ghost is off-kilter intentionally, I guess. But the human's diction is nearly as odd. And the intermittent blurts of narration are worse!)

I absolutely do not know what to make of it.)

(edit: And a few hours later the author talks about the game on her blog. Which gives a bit of context for the experience, if not the oddness of playing it.)

Even wearing headphones, I can't make out what cookie monster is saying more than half the time. 

Cool idea, but too heavy on the voice filters to play. :(

My cheeks have been terrorised into a rictus of smiling. This is so great.

Cunningham deserved to win his factory, and this deserves to win Ectocomp.

Super-cool. I was smiling all the way through, and the end was perfect.

One point (rot13): Ng gur raq bs gur tnzr V svefg glcrq gur jbeq lbh va gur obk, naq jura gung qvqa'g jbex V jrag bss ba n jebat cngu sbe n juvyr. Fubhyq vg npprcg lbh nf na nafjre?

Aliens change colour as take damage. White means they have 15+ hp. (White aliens also line up in nice vertical rows for easy beaming :) )