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My Dad Santa - Wholesome, awkward conversation sim! 🎅 [Browser]

A topic by happycrazywild created Dec 17, 2020 Views: 364 Replies: 3

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An awkward conversation with your dad, Santa Claus.

Play as Blitzen, Santa's adopted reindeer son. Make choices that affect the conversation, and uncover a funny, emotional story in the process!

Just keep in mind -- nobody ever said saying the right thing would be easy. Technically, you don't even have to be present in the conversation. That's what smartphones were invented for!

Features simple yet expressive 2D characters in a 3D cartoon background that evokes the cozy feelings of old Christmas TV specials.
Game lasts 10-15 mins. per play session depending on reading speed. Though...you'll likely want to play multiple times to get the best ending.
Family-friendly, appropriate for all ages.

I'd greatly appreciate all helpful feedback about the game -- positive or negative. Specifically:

Your overall experience, emotionally...how did you feel when you played it? Were any parts frustrating? Moving? Funny? I'd love to know!
The writing. Were the characters well-written and believable to you? Did you particularly like or dislike either character?
Any technical issues or nonsensical events/dialogue you may have seen
Which endings you saw, if any -- there are multiple endings and many ways to get there

Please be honest even if you have criticisms.Thanks for playing, and I hope you enjoy it!

https://happycrazywild.itch.io/my-dad-santa

Happy Holidays! 🎅

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IndigoFenix3 years ago

Interesting concept! Text-based conversation games are typically very straightforward mechanically, but the "flappy reindeer" dialogue selection system mixes up the standard formula in an interesting way. It's neat to see systems that add some game-like quality to dialogue, which isn't very common.

However, the execution could use some improvements. A lot of the dialogue options basically amounted to the same thing, there were a number of "loops" that led to the conversation repeating (missing all dialogue options often causes you to jump back to an earlier point in the conversation), and the path to the best ending (at least, I think it's the best...It's the one that said "congratulations", while the other ones said "you didn't get the best ending") is also the easiest - you basically have to TRY to mess things up in order to get a bad ending.

I think the best way of making a game like this would be to set up the dialogue tree first, with a large number of different paths, but at least three basic endings - bad, neutral, and good - and make it so that "automatic" responses (snapping out in anger) typically lead to the bad endings - and then construct the gameplay segments so that these automatic responses are hard to dodge. Missing all responses (being silent) should still progress the story, but be interpreted as "being silent" and prompting the other person to talk.

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happycrazywild3 years ago

Hi IndigoFenix!

Thanks for playing my game and giving such helpful feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the mix of story with (somewhat) challenging game mechanics!

I was wondering if the difficulty was off. I posted the game on Newgrounds as well, but the ratings were a bit low yet there were no comments. I thought people could be struggling to get through and quitting in frustration. I did attempt to do as you described -- I made a dialogue tree and intended the "automatic" or "easy" responses to lead to negative outcomes -- but I worried about the game being too harsh, so I made it easy to recover from mistakes. Probably too easy, depending on the path you take in the story. One particular flaw is that saying nothing and wasting time has little consequence. In real life awkward car conversations which inspired this game, the anxiety of "It's hard to speak up, and I'm running out of time" is a defining emotion that is absent here.

I originally planned to update the game, but this was originally a jam game so the code a mess, and it's not Christmas anymore. Therefore, I'll probably move on from this project, but I'll make sure to apply your feedback to my next. Thanks again!

Cheers!

P.S. By the way, if you feel like answering, what did you think of the story's writing itself? (i.e. Were the characters likable, did it feel genuinely interesting/emotional or kinda sappy/boring?) I know it's taken me a while to respond, so it's fine if you don't reply.

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IndigoFenix3 years ago(+1)

I found the characters and story to be likable enough for what it is. If I had a specific criticism it would be that the game felt incomplete, like there wasn't quite enough material to really get invested in the story, but since it's a game jam that's not really unexpected.

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