So very glad to hear that you and your son enjoyed it!
As pertains to the subtleties, the details are really there to promote [some level of] immersion. From a game designer’s perspective, I’d love to hear what was working and what wasn’t, but if you weren’t being pulled too far out of the game by anything, I’d wager they were doing their job. 🙂
It occurred to me this morning that I had made one concession here, which I had intended to take further: making the NPCs carry things.
As it is, there are a small handful of outward signals:
I had plans to incorporate a variety of other accouterments into their workflows, less as a signal of intention but as another layer of realism that brought life to the "house". The pieces that did get added feel really successful; I just ran out of time to add more.
(I also had plans to allow NPCs to pick up and move the stools so they wouldn't get trapped, and more generally allowing tasks to be interrupted-and-resumed later (e.g. if the stove became blocked in the middle of soup making), but that would also necessitate putting back whatever they were currently carrying, and better pathfinding logic in general. Ultimately I had to draw a line between what I could get implemented well for the deadline and what I wanted to get done… As another example, it was originally planned that you would have to jump up onto a stool to reach the upper cupboard, fridge, and cookie jar — but doing so would leave stools in positions that blocked NPC jobs, and while it was cute, it made the already difficult gameplay more challenging, so it got cut … except for the jumping on stools code.)
I had wondered whether folks would make an effort to build a parent trap… ;)
Intention signaling is one of those things that I had to think seriously about.
On the one hand, the game is playable without it, and you can learn through observation and repetition what the routines are and approximately how long they last (at least with enough certainty for the fraction of a second you need to escape). It's a little disappointing when someone spontaneously turns around and spots you, in the Nethack "rocks fall and you're not wearing a helmet" kind of run-ending way, but when you've just managed to duck around a corner, or weave in and out of rooms just avoiding detection, that same risk drives excitement.
Signaling intention just in time (i.e. as it changes) doesn't actually help avoid any of the "spontaneous detection" scenarios, and at best gives you visibility into where the NPC is pathfinding to. How useful that is may be a reasonable subject for debate, since it's a reasonable blind spot for me.
On the other hand, if NPC intentions were signaled in advance, it's a lot easier to know whether you're going to be safe before you even move. It's not an inherently bad thing, but it does replace hard-earned knowledge with free information, and reduces the challenge of the game substantially closer to "can I move around well?". Given that the game is only just compelling with its current balance of movement and discovery, I fear that adding signaling would lead to higher scores and broader appeal but lower satisfaction overall.
Always happy to entertain the discussion, though! :D
I'm looking forward to see where this game goes from here. I've loved the concept from the beginning, and the execution hits on many levels, but I feel like there's a lot of trial-and-error in the current implementation around finding a build that scales properly to confront the next challenge, and the numbers aren't always intuitive. (I also made it through several runs before I discovered that I could upgrade my power plants…)
Really fantastic elements of polish, and a great concept!
Don't let Mimi's sweet appearance fool you — they are hungry.
I loved the simple evasive gameplay, and the hunter/hunted dichotomy was fun to play with, too. I wished at times that everything moved just a little bit faster, but the game is a brilliantly cohesive whole that works really well. The addition of partner mechanics also helps add depth and complexity (though I'd be curious to see more puzzles in the future where the solutions were cooperative rather than individual).
I did occasionally notice goblins enter buggy states (e.g. walking east, but watching north and south on alternating frames), occupying the same space (making it frustrating to try and eat only one of them), and detection was often less dangerous than might be expected, but I view all of those "issues" to be well within scope for a game jam, and they generally don't detract from the charm of this game.
A super cute game with a story rivaling the (good) nonsense of a Saturday morning cartoon. The individual arcade games were surprisingly skill-based (with one exception I can note), simple enough to pick up quickly, and just sticky enough to be annoying when you have to walk away to jump into a garbage can…
I felt as though evading the manager was a bit underemphasized overall (I hadn't picked up that I would need to until after he caught me a couple of times), and the consequences of being caught were too minor for me to notice, but I ultimately still enjoyed the game, and look forward to seeing if this concept gets developed further!
Such a simple premise, but well executed and very fun! The difficulty ramps up slowly enough that you have a feel for the game before it gets out of hand, and the art style adds to both the aesthetic and the challenge.
The only potential negative I might note is that the later levels may slightly overstay their welcome, but that's a difficult balance between being long enough that players can demonstrate their accomplishment and being short enough that they will stick it out to the end.
