Great concept! Here's my notes I took while playing.
Presentation
Good voice acting? Within 96 hours??? I'm impressed!
The art style's cute :)
I mean this in the best way possible. I didn't notice the music and SFX because it felt so natural when combined with the art. Fantastic job on that.
Strange Behavior
The physics and collision detection felt "off" at times (sometimes enemies killed me when it didn't look like I hit them and bouncing off of squares didn't always work how I would've expected)
The camera movement when I turned from facing left to right made me feel a bit motion sick (and I normally don't get motion sick from games). I think this could be made smoother and less instantaneously snappy to ease that effect.
The game black screened when I paused it once for some reason? I fixed it by spamming pause and unpause and eventually I got the actual game back :D
Dialogue
There was way too much dialogue for my liking. It felt like Tim was talking every time I did anything and the frequency of the dialogue got a bit annoying to me.
The frequency of the dialogue and the nature of it revealing the answer to every puzzle made it feel like the game either didn't trust me to figure out the puzzles myself or the game didn't trust itself to teach me the necessary controls and mechanics in order for me to figure it myself. It left me feeling like I didn't have as much agency and independence as I would've liked as a player.
Nitpick: When doing dialogue, I prefer when games don't make me scroll in the dialogue box. My preference is to cut off dialogue at a natural place in the sentence, then let the player click or let the players naturally keep talking once the player has had sufficient time to read. (I'd look to Persona 5 or the Danganronpa series for examples.)
Really like this concept! Here's some notes I made throughout playing :)
Visuals & Music:
I like the transition between the main menu to the game when you click "start game".
The music is super relaxing. It's a simple but really nice loop.
Tutorial:
Starting the game with a "wall of text" style tutorial instead of a "teach as you go" tutorial can be hard on me as someone that struggles to focus at times. Teaching through mechanics can be hard to figure out in such a short time for a game jam, but it's something I recommend striving for as much as possible (especially for any projects outside the limited time constraints of a game jam).
I didn't really understand the scaling mechanic making homes of different sizes (even with hints open) until I was trying random stuff for awhile and eventually started seeing the 10 or so animals I was supposed to be making homes for finally start accepting the homes I was making.
Miscellaneous Improvement Suggestions:
I ended up messing up pretty early and couldn't "undo" my way out of it. With no restart button, I had to refresh my browser to restart. That normally would've been a deal breaker that'd make me click away from a game if I wasn't playing it in the game jam context to share feedback with others.
The "quit" button crashed the game if you play it in a browser. I've found this happens with Unity games as well. I recommend making a small little script in the future that hides things like a "quit" button if you're playing in a web browser.
If you get time in future jams, small SFX for things like clicking on or hovering over buttons in menus can go a long way to making a game feel more "alive" (even in menus). Same with SFX in the gameplay parts of the game.
Thanks so much for the detailed feedback 🩵 Glad you enjoyed the gamefeel, that was a major focus for us this jam to really nail this idea :) I definitely agree that things tended to feel a bit stranger as the bubble(s) got bigger.
Glad you enjoyed it! Yes, the bubble collision can be a bit weird at times, particularly as your main bubble(s) get much bigger than the smaller ones. Was very strange, it only happened when Unity built the game but not in the editor 🤷♀️
Thanks for the feedback! Those are 100% known bugs. Really wish we were able to fix this before the jam ended, but we unfortunately couldn't (instead the last hour or two was spent minimizing how disruptive they were). Glad you still appreciate and enjoy the vibe :)
Thanks for the feedback. The intent was continuing to merge revealing more of the background and (eventually) you win after merging enough. Though I agree that could be much clearer, I've seen others get confused about that as well.
The vibe. The colors and art sold the visual vibe well for me.
On the same note, the music was nice as well. For some reason, I was expecting a more rebellious vibe in the music and SFX, but I think I actually prefer it being more laid back. It balances out the rebellious-looking character designs and dialogue.
"Too bad only nerds read." I love this. More silly dialogue things like this! :D
I wasn't expecting an isometric view in the interactive portions, but I'm glad I got it. Idk why, it just made the comfy feelings in my brain go off.
Suggestions for post-jam improvements (if y'all pursue it):
I got stuck/looked like I froze when initiating dialogue sometimes, particularly in the library couch area. I thought I'd have to restart but after button mashing for 30 seconds or so I got free.
The text box was kind of tiny. I didn't realize I was supposed to scroll in it sometimes until the very last scene. I think that could be a little bigger or the text could be broken up more so there's no scrolling.
The motive for getting other girls expelled made sense for Pel. But it didn't have me fully invested as a player. I was invested enough to finish the game, but don't think I would've been for a longer experience. I think making the player relate to or understand Pel more via the writing or her character design would add a little extra polish via player investment. (This is hard to do in a 48 hour game jam, what's here is good for that time span and game length.)
Visual novels can sometimes feel a bit slower paced than other games since it's mostly just reading and looking at art (in non-interactive portions). Starting the game with a black screen and no art to look at felt weird because of that, since it was only text to get me invested for 4-5+ clicks. In a longer, non-jam title, that could lose a few players before they even have the chance to get fully into the game. (Again, not huge deal for a 48 hour game jam, but something that could be improved in future builds.)
A few minor bugs here and there, but good job overall!
Really loved this Bloxorz-like puzzle game. Definitely a fun take on that style. Really appreciated the undo button that made it so I didn't have to restart the entire level if I got one move wrong like in Bloxorz. This is one of my favorite games I've played this year, well done.
I enjoyed this concept! I wish there was a tutorial at the start, as I had no idea what I was doing until I read the instructions on the game page. I recommend always budgeting time to implement a tutorial.
Overall, I really enjoyed the tower defense mechanics, but I did find it a bit difficult. Great job!
I'm a big fan of turn-based RPGs, so I really liked this.
Upon getting into the game, my first reaction was saying, out loud, very loudly, "OOOOOOOO THIS ART IS SO COOL!!!" My second reaction was "okay, but what do I do?" I attempted to figure it out without checking the "how to play" section, but was unable to do so. Whenever possible, I recommend including a tutorial that isn't just reading a big block of text will keep people engaged. It felt like I had to read for a good 10-15 seconds before "playing" the game.
It was also really hard to see who took damage and when, since there was no visual indication or feedback that the enemies attacked my characters except for their health decreasing and the forecast of who the enemies would attack next turn. Once the enemies did attack, it usually took me a few seconds to realize that they did.
I killed the werewolf twice, but nothing appeared to have changed when I did. This looked like it just spawned in another werewolf three times in a row, but the lack of confirmation was a little confusing at first.
As I played through the game, I really liked how the character sprites changed based on how damaged they are. I also really liked the music, but it was really loud. I think volume control settings would be a nice coat of polish to put on top of what's already here.
I played for ~10-20 minutes but never beat the game. Is this an endless turn-based fighting game? Or is there an ending I just didn't get to? Great job on this! If you'd like to play my team's game to exchange feedback, we'd really appreciate it!
This was a really relaxing game. I felt like I didn't have 100% control over which option I selected sometimes, but that's just a minor nitpick. This was a nice change of pace that was different from everything else I played this jam. I had fun, well done! Would love it if you gave my team's game some feedback too :)
Fun concept! There's less between the center of the screen and the top of the screen than there is to the left or right side and the center. For this type of game, I'd make it a square aspect ratio, otherwise stuff coming from the top or bottom feels too hard and unfair. I'd also slow the projectiles down just a little bit, as it felt very unforgiving at times. Aside from that, I thought this was fun! Would love if you left my team's game a review as well :)
I'm a sucker for turn-based RPGs. I loved this. My biggest complaint is that I never once paid attention to status effects, buffs, or debuffs. The UI really needs some work to communicate that information better with a good visual hierarchy. Aside from that, I loved the concept of sharing health with the enemy, it made for some interesting combat. If you continue development post jam, polish the UI, and you'll have something awesome. I really loved this, well done!
