Great idea, I really enjoyed the characters, but it is very buggy. Furthermore I do suggest making quests that lead into other quests, AKA, a puzzle is more interesting if the solution includes needing to do some other quest beforehand. Without that, or any sort of rewards, quests just become endless checklists that go nowhere.
Hey, if anyone played any extra games, please drop them here! I kind of have to stop going through them myself though, as work picked up and I'm barely making enough to meet my bills, meaning that I just don't have days off, ever. But hey, this is how life be! So if I never got to yours, I'm sorry and I hope that someone else did <3
I loved the art style and the writing. The pictures felt so unique and alive. Though I'm not too sure you can survive as Malkavian? The one time I got through the initial attack on one healthpoint, I would die at the start of the next scene without fail.
Hey, it is very short, but at least it works and I did have some fun with it! My biggest complaint would be that the button to interact and button to shoot seems to be one and the same. It is awkward to open fire in order to open a door lol.
Let me say that the voice acting is amazing! I felt very engaged in the story and overall it was a very fun experience, that being said, this is so so broken lol
1. First time I launched the game I fell into the last room, I think 2. Textures were trying to vacate the premises often 3. I found a wall that successfully always leads to leaving the map 4. Lastly, I error crashed to the desktop so I couldn't finish the game. Was fun though!
The bad: - some of the models are either missing or were not finished in time. the good: - existing art looks beautiful - the existing characters have very distinct personalities and I'm loving them.
Overall I feel like I wanted to know more about what happens after rather than before, however I had a lot of fun with this one and I feel like it drives the point of "there's no winning" fairly well.
I am. Though I had health issues so did practically no recording for this week and indulged in Bloodlines today instead. I'll see if I can continue tomorrow, so will update the thread on Monday if all goes well :)
High quality stuff! Highly enjoyed the experience, just wish I was less fog brained the day that I played it.
A few issues: - putting the key back on the table can be difficult as the click box is tiny. - the knife bit confused me too, as I got "can't go to sleep, need the knife", tried going to the kitchen and then the character was like "don't need anything off here". I think it's just because it fires before you explore your sire's room, so you can just skip exploring the room, the right knife will not be present yet and much confusion will ensue. Did not ruin my playthrough though. - the card bit made me question can a different ending be reached based on how you spread the cards? - I did get the "sitting animation glitch" too, but it wasn't a big deal, just bit funny.
Overall this is a great game and I would highly recommend it to others.
Great use of sounds and visuals, the text is clean, I found it very enjoyable little experience. It threw me into a philosophical rant, which is always a good sign (it means your game made me think). So yeah, good job dev!
I tried yours ^_^ There are a lot of spelling errors, so much so that the whole kitchen conversation left me confused. Art style is a bit hit and miss. Liam looks incredibly cute, while on the other hand with the Malkavian I'm confused which way they hands are facing. Personally not a fan of the numbers ending. Multiple playthroughs are fine, but I rather there was something more story based than just a whole bunch of numbers, as that just felt a bit like a cop out.
On the upside it is lengthy, the sounds are fitting and when the art style is not doing a number on me trying to figure out hands, it is cute :)
Somehow you overlaying the text over the background rather than having the text be at the bottom is making your game stand out. Nice story! The main character was a bit contradictory at points, hating vampires but also having wanted to join them, but this could just be a character flaw thing. The only thing I didn't like is how abruptly it ends. With either decision it feels like you should get a short "what happened" or at least a blip of character's thoughts or something.
Nice and sweet, the only complaint that I do have is that to me it is unclear what the consequences of using your powers are, as it seemed that I could just brute force my way through the game.
No downsides here! I needed a cheer up on the day of recording this and oh boy did this game deliver! I found it easy to play, interesting to follow the story, beautiful with a good soundtrack and the humour really worked! Thank you for making this!
No putting your writing down, alright? The main character is a very well written person and the game overall is good. I am glad that you caught the game breaking bug, as fixed games are always better than broken ones and thank you for making the game :)
This was so unusual, but I wholeheartedly loved it! So incredibly creative!
Got a few complaints though:
- would it be possible to stop the game from scrolling down when a choice is made? It often scrolls past where I should start reading the new block of text.
- would be great to have a name or initial of who is talking in front of the dialogue. You can sort of keep track when it is two people, but it becomes very hard when it is 3.
Overall this was just so... Different. I'm very glad that you made it though as I really liked it :D
That's why I stated with "if we went for an objectively professional lens". At that point we would have liked to have people competing on similar grounds in a similar genre, don't you think? We are obviously NOT going for an objective lens and that's fine. Like, that's not even a critique on my part, that's stating that it's a different kind of jam all together. :)
I find that plenty non English speakers wrote in English for the jam. I've helped quite a few with typos and one typo was found on my side. If judges require for the game to be in English, I find that that should be added as criteria and not something after the fact.
That being said, I don't consider this jam to be objective, bur rather subjective. For me it was a bit of fun and a place to play with my passion, see if I can make something, if we went for an objectively professional lens:
- teams should not have been allowed, or there should have been a clear people limitor, as someone working alone will struggle to compare to a professional team of 5-10 people.
- sub-topic should have been thrown in on day 1 to make sure that games couldn't have been pre-planned or pre-made before the deadline. We're going on scout's honour here mostly.
- judging criteria must have been made clear from the getgo. For example, if a person is using a dark-pack versus a person that made a game with no graphics, versus a person that did all their graphics themselves (but they're not up to par to dark-pack graphics), if you are judging visuals, how do you compare here? Do you give the text novel person negative marks for their chosen genre? Do you give the dark-pack user extra marks because it is beautiful graphics, or do you also rate them down in favour of the person that went through the effort to make their own? With a regular judging choice of "add N/A to the category and then divide the score by amount of categories that the game qualified for" could mean that someone that took the time to make their own visuals will get penalized for doing so, as they could potentially score lower on those, while the title with "N/A" in that category would not have that score dragging down their average. Such issues are normally solved with dividing products into genres and therefore not comparing text adventures with visual novels, though the question on dark-pack graphics versus homemade graphics would remain.
- verdict on demos? Some games have so much potential (for example, look at Shadow play or Oslo by Night Act 1), but unless they win by the rules they will never be finished. However if you put them side by side with a finished product, how do you judge a product on its potential to be a finished product, versus an actual finished product? In my eyes this would mean that unfinished games are already not competing on auto, but they could be amazing finished games, though the authors will never be able to finish them, leaving all of them in a sad state of "could have - should have".
Now there's nothing bad in subjective jams! The only grievance I have here is that I tried multiple games that I wish could all be showcased on steam and I know that only 1 will. For example, I think that Blood Frontier should live as its own product. But I also would like A night at Hotel Lasombra to have its place too, even though the approach to the making of these two games and the themes was so incredibly different. And I'm nowhere done playing all entries myself, so I can't even say if I'll run into something else that will be super impressive for me.
While the fights were very simplistic, because there's only one way that they can go, I loved it. The story is lovely, the graphics are adorable, shame you never got to finish it.
I will post my update comment as a new comment. Holy hell dude, you have updated this game significantly since early access! There's an end goal, the buildings have different functions, there's events!
Not too sure that this clicker is my thing, but 5/5 for execution now.
Shame that you never got to finish it, as I feel like we only got our tippy toes wet as far as the religious elements are concerned and they feel like the focus of the story. It is a good hook though, just wish that it was longer!
I dig the vibe. Feels newgrounds-esque. Wish it was longer honestly, more people to encounter. I also broke it once and got the text to overlay over itself lol
I loved the story. I like how you can collect endings and have little hints for the ones that you haven't reached. I found our sire to be very wholesome (I don't know why). Good job, I really enjoyed it!
I hope that you make something complete in this line one day, because I greatly enjoyed it. It reminds me of a never ending liminal space. I honestly want more. I would gladly move in here.
Well done! Though honestly I'm bit too dumb for it, so I never finished it, but I did get hyperfixated on the moon in one of the trials and brute forced the other, so I'm proud of that! Also I DID NOT manage to break your game in any way. Which is sad for me, as I really wanted to break my way through those scream wards.
Did you take all the pictures yourself and then apply a filter to them, or did you find them somewhere? Also I absolutely loved the whispers. The only crime to do with this entry is that if you don't win we don't get more.
Hey! I loved the game! It was very well polished, the art does it absolute wonders!
I do have a small complaint though - I wish that fast skip stopped after you made a choice and you needed to turn it back again as I missed some content because of it. There is no way to backtrack outside of the scene as well, so I couldn't just go back.
Lovely story, sound, visuals, well executed! My only complaint is that I would like to hold down the arrow key to move in a direction continuously, because constantly tapping it was giving me hand pain. I understand that you made it so, so that the turn based combat would work, but my hand pain is still not very happy about it, so 4/5 great game, would highly recommend :)
Right, this is going to be mean and I'm sorry about that. My issues with the game are based solely on the narrative:
MINOR SPOILERS OF THE FIRST SCENE PAST THIS LINE:
- my protagonist propelled themselves into the ward 3 times over, not 2 times over. Considering that the choice there is "touch the ward" or "break through the ward", it is really really dumb for us to do 2 X of "touch the ward" before breaking through it.
- my protagonist then did not think that it was wise to heal, so you have this experienced vampire fumbling through the facility 1 hit away from death, this is fixed after the first fight, but by no logic should that ever happen.
- G-Pain witnesses me getting hit by the ward, is told that there is a ward and then asks why I'm not helping them with the button, to which my character apologizes. It is like both of them entirely forgot the ward and none are smart enough to remember that the other one is acting dumb.
MAJOR SPOILERS DOWN BELOW FOR THOSE THAT DID NOT PLAY YET:
- biggest issue for me - without a fail every single person in the whole facility can be seduced. Now a tumble does not take them out of commission, so I have to assume that they are just standing there like this is entirely normal - "the prisoner is escaping, but they just did the naughty with me, so all is good". This is made even worse at the lab where G-Pain and you are discussing the fate of the contents of the lab and the person whose whole life is focused on that lab only tries to half-heartedly stop you by going "hey, maybe don't do this thing to my whole life's work" and can be shut down by the glare of the main protagonist, because, you guessed it, we did the naughty with them.
- keeping in mind that everyone can be seduced and we have corrosive vitae, leaving the facility is the easiest thing ever. Spray blood on the nearest door, do the naughty with the guards and you're good! They won't even care!
- Salubri have a bloodhunt on them, there would be no reason to pin anything on anyone in order to get rid of one.
Overall, you tried! It works! You wrote a thing! That's good! But the game is really not challenging when you realize that you can hanky panky your way through it.
