I like how you veered away from making a game and sought to try and make an experience. Unity has a lot of tools and methods that can achieve a variety of things and I'm glad that you put a spin on those tools that were originally purposed for making games.
This element is also one of the things I wanted to comment on for improving this experience. I always say that Google is your best friend if there's something you want to do but not sure how to go about it. It's to the point where learning how to search on Google becomes a game design skill on its on, especially if you're working solo. I would have liked for this experience to be pushed further with research into more coding-based techniques since that would have elevated the visual work you have done.
This is an interesting commentary on how our data, hosted on different databases can construct different but similar visages of us depending on what we do in those sites. I would imagine that these reflections serve as an insight into the fact that we're giving away so much information to these different companies, and the content we give them also differs as well.
I'm not sure what to recommend here for improvement since I'm not too familiar with using API's to get tokens for OpenAI and stuff. I would say that if there is such a method where you can contain a way for the game to fetch the needed databases to have the generated dialogue to work on its own, then I think it would help to fix the problem of this game only working on certain devices.
Interesting game though, and I like the environments you chose to represent each company.
I remember playtesting this game during one of your first playtests and was able to get through your game without much hassle. I'm glad that your group made the conditions to beat the game more airtight to keep the player within the narrative at hand because from my past experience with your game I was able to skim some of the story.
One of the things I would recommend to improve for a future build is to maybe see if you can update some of the UI textboxes. Maybe for stuff like dialogue and picking up important items there can be sound effects that can go with them so the player knows that these elements are ones that they should pay attention to.
Really like where it is! I like that you have a full narrative/game loop in your game.
The controls of this game are interesting because of the way the characters are joined together. I like how the players need to cooperate with each other to proceed but their controls are flipped so trying to move normally itself is a challenge.
I think one major improvement that can be made is the addition of checkpoints. I know this was said from others but I'm also going to chime in on this as well since your game is pretty lengthy from what I remember. Having those checkpoints can really keep your players motivated since they won't have to restart the entire game upon losing.
I like how this game gave control of the antagonist to the players to create a pvp scenario. It's definitely a unique take on implementing pvp, especially with the scale and premise your team went for.
I think that the thing that could be improved, or I guess potentially could be revised are the level layouts. With how the characters function and shoot there could be unfair situations that could emerge from tactics like stalling and cornering, especially since the boss can freely move around the screen. This would require a lot of playtesting though so it would take a bit to properly test and implement changes this big.
The thing that makes this great to me is how your team was able to stitch together three unlikely characters into one game. There were elements that made sure that no character felt underutilized and I liked the bonus games that were added as parodies of the google chrome browser game.
The only feedback I have for this are mostly pertaining to consistency issues. Character movement/physics are one of the big things that stuck out to me and having all of the characters share similar physics would be a good first step to polishing everything together. Other thing that was a thing is how spread out some levels are. I was thinking that they could have been split into more scenes if there was more time to develop this further.
Love the overarching pixel look to the whole entire game! Also the topic is super relatable since mid-terms are always a stressful time.
I think that having different level layouts would have really helped in establishing harder difficulties even if the game is pvp. Even though there was the element of your health constantly decreasing, instead of changing the rate in which your health drops having more difficult levels would have provided a more fruitful difficulty curve. You already have the assets and the art style so it would just be a matter of designing the layout and building it out. The design choices that were made though are understandable since both players are competing against each other.
I like the amount of things your team tried to do, ranging from adding dialogue to experimenting with materials. It shows your team's willingness to try things to achieve the look you're going for.
The feedback I would suggest for improving this game is within the first level. The level went a bit too ham with the trees and it became a detriment as I couldn't see where to go. The trees blocked many critical elements from the player's view, resulting in this feeling of being lost but for the wrong reasons. Also the camera in that level has a bit too much motion blur which didn't help in the level as a whole.
In the end, the amount of things tried in this game shows and I appreciate the variety of experimentation done to create something new.
I like how the game builds up from starting in a city to someplace fantastical. It provides a contrast that keeps the player's attention throughout playing your game.
I think the last level is where your game shines but it's also the place where there are some glaring issues. The lighting and the design of the place is very well done. The lights don't overpower what is happening on the screen and they're well placed to guide the player. The big flaw though that stems from the design of the level is that with everything going on the level lags to the point where I personally have to resort to a strategy I use in other games. What I do is I constantly look at the floor to minimize lag so as to reduce the number of objects and lights the camera needs to render, but this detracts from all of the work your team put into designing this level. I think it's either the amount of objects and lights combined that's overworking the camera or it could be the models themselves (they look low-poly to me but I can't say that for a fact unless I see the models themselves).
Nonetheless, the game builds up to something great and I'm glad I got to see this game in motion.
I remember playing this as a part of your presentation and I thoroughly enjoyed playing through this game. Being able to run around as an extremely speedy rat was an experience and even though this game is a commentary on the state of NYC (which I'm definitely all too familiar with due to living there my whole life), being able to slightly suspend belief to fly across the level creates a shock factor that exaggerates the issue but in a good way.
My main feedback would go to the last level and the movement of the rat. Only thing about the last level that would have been nice is to have it more of a maze so the gas feels more threatening, but that's something that can easily be done with time. The movement of the rat is more subjective as if you wanted to turn up the realism I think more time could've been spent on fine tuning the rat's physics. This also could lead to potential level issues/redesigns but the physics of the rat is more subjective and is dependent on how you want the game to feel to the player on a more detailed level. Otherwise this was fun to play and I'm glad I had the chance to playtest it.
