Heyo, thank you for pointing out that the feedback is wrong. I must have hit ctrl:v instead of ctrl:c at one point. I actually have a lot I want to provide, but am unable to do so until very late tonight or tomorrow, and apologize for the delay.
Kirogata
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A member registered Jan 17, 2024
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Gameplay: Functions and works consistently within itself. No bugs. Good job!
Creativity & Innovation: I'm unable to comment on this. The gameplay itself is fairly standard walking sim sidescroller, but the large swaths of the same background without anything to interact with ends up obfuscating everything else.
Theme Adherence: Unable to say.
Playability & User Experience: Direct controls that were easy to understand, and also communicated to the player, great job on that. The bigger problem is that there is too much dead time, and the pixel art text is very difficult to read.
Art and Design: Solid pixel art. The ghosts are very endearing.
Overall Fun Factor: I'm not sure for this one. I expect there's something there, but it buries the lead too much.
As an overall comment: While twists and shocks are good and engaging, you can't neglect to keep the player engaged enough for them to experience those critical moments. With this, it could be higher enemy density, or even just more variance in background assets and their placement.
Gameplay: Feels good, makes sense, clearly communicative. Great job.
Creativity & Innovation: This has some creative flair to it. Connection games aren't uncommon, but enemies becoming part of the web creation is something I haven't seen before as a general design choice. If you expand and make the cast yarn have more meaning than just existing, you can have something very interesting there.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence. Connect all the things. Except trees.
Playability & User Experience: Simple controls and clear player action. Controls also posted. Good job.
Art and Design: This is really good art for a jam.
Overall Fun Factor: This has a lot of fun elements, and if you find a way to add meaning/value to the cast yarn in the gameplay, then you'll really have something to show off.
As an overall comment: This is really impressive. A little more expansion on mechanics that interact with the yarn ball and you'll have the basis of really solid indy action game.
Gameplay: Simple function platformer that behaves consistently. Great job on that. The stages clearly serve less as the meat as much as a pause from the narrative elements. This is a solid design choice, and in the future I'd encourage you to figure out other mechanics or systems you could implement that would align better with the core theming or intent.
Creativity & Innovation: Nothing groundbreaking, but I did appreciate the focus on narrative for the jam theme.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence.
Playability & User Experience: Functions well, no bugs. Platforming was doable but not -too- easy for the control limitations. Really good job on that.
Art and Design: Honestly, I'm a huge fan of the artstyle. It's communicative, unique, and consistent with other assets. This is a very eye catching style and if you are able to replicate it consistently, there's a lot of space for this in games and elsewhere.
Overall Fun Factor: I don't think the fun factor is there yet, but you did a great job of identifying what you wanted the game to communicate, which is a significant first step. This is really hard as fun is subjective, but also normalized to some degree. Figuring out how to incorporate fun into the game play can help player retention/completion and ensure the right emotional response ie evoked in players, while also being able to serve to help them bounce back for a more engaging cycle of emotions.
As an overall comment: Great job completing this, and again you really have something interesting with the art style.
Gameplay: Functions without bugs, feels pretty good, if a little on the slow side. Cozy simple cycle.
Creativity & Innovation: Cute concept reminiscent of a bare bones Va11-ha or Coffee Talk. Nothing super innovative, but taking good notes of whats been done before.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence. Building bonds with clients and community.
Playability & User Experience: Very good. I'm honestly shocked this was done so within the jam. Also great at communicating how to play to players (mostly)
Art and Design: Cute hand drawn evoking style. Works well with the non-standard and expressive pixel art.
Overall Fun Factor: This has a good core loop that seems to be supported by a larger narrative to keep the players engagement. Solid choice for the type of systems implemented.
As an overall comment: This is really impressive. Fantastic job.
Gameplay: Solid puzzle gameplay.
Creativity & Innovation: Not a lot of innovation, but it is solid and is a system that leaves a lot of room for additional levels.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence.
Playability & User Experience: Works mostly as expected. Had an issue where the reset line button reset all lines, but all good aside from that.
Art and Design: Simple and as communicative as it needs to be.
Overall Fun Factor: This is one of the funner puzzle submissions I've seen. While it misses a couple of general marks (details below), the complexity of the puzzles offset this enough to make it not just feel like direct pattern recognition early in the play cycle.
As an overall comment: This is one of the more direct puzzle as a game submissions that I've seen, so I wanted to provide some insight about this because the puzzle elements used are uncommon so you get some more design focused feedback. A puzzle =/= a game, but most (almost all) games contain puzzles. A lot of what holds back puzzle games is the lack of additional motivational factors, or interactive/variable elements that add complexity. When there is only one solution to each stage, and a lack of other motivational forces, puzzle games run the risk of being more puzzle than game, which in a general sense weakens the gameplay loop. This is because the interactive elements (which provide player agency) become less of the focus as opposed to pattern recognition. SO instead of "playing" it's easy to enter a "solving" state, which will impact the players experience. There are people who this is their ideal sense of fun, but they are a lower population of potential players, so being away of this is important in making future design decisions. (And you can be successful, and this observation/design/development choice will simply influence other factors like allowable budget based on expected returns and what not.)
Puzzle design is also really hard, so kudo's and keep up the good work!
Gameplay: Seems like it was gonna be a mini-game game if taken further. Great job having a how to play page. It is a little buggy though. I couldn't interact with anyone aside from programmer, and after I did the shooting reticle never left.
Creativity & Innovation: Fun approach to the building connections theme by using the game jam as the setting.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence.
Playability & User Experience: Functions ok, and player actions/expectations are clearly communicated.
Art and Design: Solid pixel art approach.
Overall Fun Factor: It was a little too short for me to say much for my experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed the joke about the game jam.
As an overall comment: This is a great foundational submission. The game loads, has a home screen instead of just throwing players into the game, a tutorial screen, and doesn't outright crash. Good work!
Gameplay: So the input polish here is really nice, but I couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to do.
Creativity & Innovation: Unable to comment.
Theme Adherence: Unable to comment.
Playability & User Experience: Controls were really good, great use of sfx for interaction feedback. I enjoyed exploring for a little bit, but eventually was just lost without any guidance.
Art and Design: Cute alt universe minecraft art. Really great job on the player movement animation.
Overall Fun Factor: Didn't get enough exposure to the game systems to comment on this.
As an overall comment: This has a really polished interface and player input feedback, and decent in game UI, and it never crashed. These are all huge victories. You do need to consider how you are designing your game and communicating what players should/need to do though, otherwise they'll wind up confused and/or frustrated.
Gameplay: Gameplay is fantastic. Cold use a little refinement, because I had no idea where I was supposed to go. But this base concept is fun and a blast.
Creativity & Innovation: Not super innovative, but real close. Turn the carried trash also into wrecking balls and BAM.
Theme Adherence: Not sure how on jam theme this is. But you do connect to things. Not sure how have the building aspect though.
Playability & User Experience: Plays mostly ok, but a little unforgiving with the controls, and could use some more guidance on where players need to go and where the cops are.
Art and Design: Solid communicative low poly art.
Overall Fun Factor: I had a blast. high octane silly. Lean into the silly.
As an overall comment: A few tweaks and you have something really solid here that then just needs iteration and polish. Fantastic job.
Gameplay: The polish on this is great. Smooth, feels good.
Creativity & Innovation: Nothing new, but doesn't always need to be.
Theme Adherence: Great theme adherence.
Playability & User Experience: Gameplay is solid. Fluid controls. Doesn't crash. A little unforgiving on the move limits.
Art and Design: The art style is cute and consistent. Love it.
Overall Fun Factor: I enjoyed my time with this. The sfx and movement animations go a really long way, and the dialogue supports that super well.
As an overall comment: This is fantastic.
Gameplay: Interesting gameplay concept, and I wish the controls were some form of tighter or more asteroids like.
Creativity & Innovation: If the movement didn't seem to be in the direction of the mouse, and was more like traditional asteroids of the direction you are facing, I'd have said this has a lot of innovation.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence. Connect the dot's, cept they are stars.
Playability & User Experience: Wonderful music choice, but the awkward and unintuitive movement paired with the finicky gravity/latch detection caused me to have less fun than I was primed for.
Art and Design: I love the cute doofy artstyle. Very 90's kids show and I'm here for it.
Overall Fun Factor: So while I can't say I had a lot of fun with this in it's current state due to the control issues, this HAS a solid fun factor. If it was asteroids based movement, and the stars and asteroids had gravitational influence over you, and you remove the health/damage. Bam, you really got something.
As an overall comment: Way to go getting a unique and apparent fun factor! That's really hard to do, so big props, and keep up the good work.
Gameplay: I can move and things are interact-able, and it doesn't crash. Great
Creativity & Innovation: On the minimal side, which is totally fine. It's a simple linear platformer with interact-able stages.
Theme Adherence: I feel like the game was intended to be strong here, but I ended up knocking my boyfriend into the abyss, leaving my family to die, and bulldozing my coworkers. So it didn't land with me,
Playability & User Experience: Game functions, but the moving the knife with the mouse was really confusing.
Art and Design: This is a really neat abstract minimalist art style. I really like it.
Overall Fun Factor: Watching the awkward physics played out was a delight honestly.
As an overall comment: This is rough around the edges, but it makes me think of artists who are earlier in their careers. By not knowing everything, but knowing some things, there's more of this clearly raw energy and intent, which is what I get from
Gameplay: Game functions, some of the card interaction feedback is on the rougher side. (insufficient things to use a card) Did super crash at one point, but no real idea why. A bit too complex with some of the card/resource interactions though.
Creativity & Innovation: Neat little matchmaker concept.
Theme Adherence: Alright theme adherence. Facilitating the building of a connection between others.However the negative options also mean the prevention of building connections, so mixed bag.
Playability & User Experience: Gameplay is pretty ok. Cards describe what they do, which is great, but the goal and "loss" conditions aren't super clear. Also, there seems to be "balancing" issues because out of 10 couples, all but one of them were "would be worst"
Art and Design: Cute cardboard style art. It's really endearing, fantastic choice for the gameplay.
Overall Fun Factor: So this is the real pain point for me. While everything being a resource is all fine and good, the ability to fail is a really bad experience for this game since you don't replenish your hand readily. At multiple points I found myself without any cards, and just had to blind guess. This paired with cards failing, or feeling not worthwhile are important things to consider when designing and balancing your systems. It's always better to err on the side of "it's easy to win/succeed" as opposed to "it's easy to loose/fail".
As an overall comment: This is a cute concept that needs a lot of balancing, but the bones are solid. Good job.
Gameplay: Solid concept, but I experienced a consistent issue where the first stage would have the cube load off grid every session. Aside from that everything behaved as expected and seemingly intended. Good job.
Creativity & Innovation: Cute concept of controllable sliding ice puzzles. Nothing particularly innovative, but an important thing to note is that this would be easily adaptable into a board game.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence. You literally build the connection points through tile movement and placement.
Playability & User Experience: Aside from initial fail bug, gameplay was pretty solid. I would recommend not using the scroll wheel of a mouse as the sole/primary selector for assets though as it is a bit awkward and not all mice have one, which makes the game unplayable for some users due to hardware. Alternatives like "TAB" are a pretty safe bet, and you can always have the scroll wheel as a secondary/alternate.
Art and Design: Minimal, but it works. This is a grid based puzzle game, and the tile approach fits.
Overall Fun Factor: It is as fun as a puzzle game can be without an additional gimmick/motivational factor. Good job.
As an overall comment: This is one of the more direct puzzle as a game submissions that I've seen, so I wanted to provide some insight about this because the puzzle elements used are uncommon so you get some more design focused feedback. A puzzle =/= a game, but most (almost all) games contain puzzles. A lot of what holds back puzzle games is the lack of additional motivational factors, or interactive/variable elements that add complexity. When there is only one solution to each stage, and a lack of other motivational forces, puzzle games run the risk of being more puzzle than game, which in a general sense weakens the gameplay loop. This is because the interactive elements (which provide player agency) become less of the focus as opposed to pattern recognition. SO instead of "playing" it's easy to enter a "solving" state, which will impact the players experience. There are people who this is their ideal sense of fun, but they are a lower population of potential players, so being away of this is important in making future design decisions. (And you can be successful, and this observation/design/development choice will simply influence other factors like allowable budget based on expected returns and what not.)
Puzzle design is also really hard, so kudo's and keep up the good work!
Ro-Bert and the Cable Conundrum jam comments · Posted in Ro-Bert and the Cable Conundrum jam comments
Gameplay: Some of the controls are a little wonky, but adaptable. Otherwise real smooth. Really respectable submission.
Creativity & Innovation: Solid little asset puzzle platformer. The use of the cable for connection and the core mechanics is a neat touch.
Theme Adherence: Solid theme adherence.
Playability & User Experience: Great job telling players how to play. This is critical in all game design and development. Overall was smooth.
Art and Design: The art is one of the stronger points of this submission, fantastic job.
Overall Fun Factor: I had a fair bit of fun with this, but admittedly it was almost entirely due to the character design and animations.
As an overall comment: This is a solid little title. If you could figure out how to make the -gameplay- feel as endearing as your titular character, then you'd have a really solid puzzle platformer formula. You all did great!
Gameplay: It takes a really long time to load, but once loaded it seems mostly fine. Some minor bugs like the always watering pail and buying from shop just stacking directly on top of each other, which is annoying but far from game breaking. Good job overall!
Creativity & Innovation: Cute little micro farm sim. Nothing particularly innovative.
Theme Adherence: Mild connection in the games current state. I can see how with additional features this becomes connecting to a community or something, but it isn't really at the "building connections" point quite yet.
Playability & User Experience: Thank you for having a screen that let players know the controls. This significantly improved my experience. Players need to know HOW to play your game. In future jams, give little mini guides as to what does what as well. (Like I wasn't sure how I was supposed to get more seeds at the start)
Art and Design: Cute pixel art, and everything clearly looked like what it intended to be. Great job.
Overall Fun Factor: This is solid. The loop is a little wonky for now, but this is great for a beginner game jam!
As an overall comment: This is a really promising early game jam submission. Keep up the good word!
Gameplay: Game play is good. Great creativity on asset interaction. I honestly think if you added a ricochet pointer for at least some of the early stages, or rearranged the levels a bit you'd be in a great place. And by great I mean you could put this on steam for a buck or two. (assuming you have enough levels)
Creativity & Innovation: This isn't super innovative by any means, but I liked and was surprised by the ability to have the satellites shoot at each other and not loose the "keys". That really got me really excited. Goo djob.
Theme Adherence: Adhered to theme.
Playability & User Experience: Most games in this jam suffer from this issue where the controls are not intuitive or communicated well enough, but you did a good job of not having overly complex mechanics, and around level 5 were introducing level designs that taught players the mechanics very transparently. fantastic job on that. (The first couple stages were a little rough though)
Art and Design: Cute and fun.
Overall Fun Factor: I think it's fine as a puzzle game, but those inherently have a bit of a limit on how "fun" they can be for a wider audience. Some adjustment to the VFX is probably the right answer, but I also don't think it's necessary to really adjust them too much.
As an overall comment: This is honestly delightful. If you adjusted the bgm and sfx to something a little more asmr-y, I think you have a solid little indy chill puzzle game. Great job.