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A jam submission

The Week BeforeView game page

Work in Progress
Submitted by Nicolás Jaramillo Ortiz — 2 minutes, 44 seconds before the deadline
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The Week Before's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Characterization#323.6673.667
Mental Engagement#333.5563.556
Overall#443.4263.426
Overall#463.5563.556
Lasting Impression#553.2223.222
Atmosphere#553.7783.778
Emotional Engagement#692.7782.778

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

The game got stuck in dialogue mode without there being an option to select several times, which made it difficult to get through. Quite a cool idea to have to social engineer your way around.

Developer

Thanks for playing! Sorry about the dialogue system, I implemented the option view rather late and it ended up a lot buggier than I expected but I'll definitely be taking a look at it after the jam + expanding the options to make the social engineering aspect even more involved.

Submitted(+1)

"Don't worry, I've got this."


I imagine that these (or something similar) are the agent's last words. Because, unfortunately, curiosity killed the cat. The Destroyer seemed like such a nice guy that I thought to myself: 'I bet he's totally chill about getting riled up. Let's try it!' As it turned out, I'll never know if he was chilled about it. Probably not, seeing as he called me a traitor, but then the game basically stopped. There was no way to continue the conversation. The same thing happened with Goggles. Yes, I threw caution to the wind against my better judgement and tried the Don't-say-this option again. Had to restart on each occasion. Which made me wish for a save function.

The visuals and music make for a very nice atmosphere. Your storytelling and dialogue are really good. Immediately transported me into the world. More puzzles would have been nice, of course, but this works well enough as it is. It was fun to sneakily collect information from the NPCs.

Very entertaining game. Looking forward to more content :)

Developer

Thanks for playing, really glad you enjoyed the storytelling! I didn't have enough time to properly test all dialogue options (or, more specifically, revisiting some of them) so this feedback really helps me get another bug that had went under my radar. And yes, The Destroyer was gonna get a lot less chill after that. I do plan to update the game in the (relatively) near future with the mentioned bugfixes + a bit more story content and a puzzle here and there, so stay tuned! :D

Submitted(+1)

Really cool idea! I love the idea of a social deception sort of game, but like a puzzle of sorts.
Really cool low-poly look, and the characterization and writing hooked me in, you really get a great look at some characters from just a few sentences of dialogue.
Great work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing, glad you liked it! I wanted to include more... tangible puzzles besides the main puzzle of figuring out the password by paying attention to the dialogue, but I'm glad that it still works by itself!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the experience! :)

First, the overall theme of playing as an Agent, needing to be careful what to say so as not to uncover your identity. The characters development was nice too, especially I liked how manner of speaking resembled their characteristics  and backstories, that was definitely a plus.  I also enjoyed the way you've "smuggled" the tip regarding the order of correct digits, that was both smooth and kind of tricky! 

Graphic design combined with music give the player the ability to "dive" into that nice, gloomy atmosphere, and in the end I *really* rooted for the Rebellion, wishing to kick the Emperor's arse. Looking forward for the next part!

On the downside, as few others have mentioned, there's a bug regarding one of Doctor Death's dialogue option, leaving no ability to continue. Also a few graphic glitches, and, personally, I think it would have been a nice touch to add some kind of ending screen to dialogue options that lead to failure, even simple "you failed the Rebellion" or "you died", because currently, after selecting them, it also seems as if the game 'stops' and nothing happens, the player doesn't have that feeling of "it's the end"

Developer

Thanks for playing, really glad you enjoyed it :D! I have now patched the mentioned bug, but thanks for playing the full game despite it. I'm also very satisfied that you liked how the characters' backstories and personality bleed into how they talk - I'm still getting the hang of writing dialogue and kind of feel like everyone sounds like me? So it's reassuring to see that my intention does come through in the text.

Also, the plans were definitely to have a more robust ending and not have it just fade to black but time caught up with me 😅 But I'm kinda commited to the whole saga thing now so I will be continuing development on The Week Before after the voting period is over; keep an eye out for that! And kind of related, the 'next part' already exists! It's called Extracción (you can play it here) and I worked on it for another jam that finished a bit before this one. It has different mechanics and some characters reappear,  but for the moment being it's only in spanish. However, I plan to continue working on Extracción too, including localization for both games.

Submitted(+1)

Overall a good experience!

Movement and graphics are really smooth. I did run into some dialogue issues wher eI couldnt scroll in lists and stuff. but managed to get thru it!

Developer

Thanks for playing, really glad you enjoyed it! And thanks for the feedback on the scrolling too :D

Submitted(+1)

I ran into an issue while talking to Dr. Death, all the dialogue options disappeared and I wasn't able to exit out of his close up. Otherwise, I was really enjoying your dialogue and world building. The corrupt government full of internal  subterfuge and slimy cops who casually talk about doing drugs in the hallways really had me intrigued.

Developer

Thanks for playing, I'm really glad you enjoyed it! and sorry about the bug :(

Submitted(+1)

Nice story, with a cool theme and aesthetics, kinda lacking more engaging interactions for me. Personally, I prefer bigger walls of text instead of button-mashing dialogues but I guess it's just me :)

Overall enjoyable experience, and worth the time spent.

Developer

Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed the experience! I was definitely stretched a bit thin with time and didn't get to implement all the depth I would have liked for the character interactions, but I'm glad that the overall experience remains good despite that. In previous games I feel like I've gone too far in the wall-of-text direction with my dialogue so I tried to tone it down this time around but perhaps I went too far 😅 The feedback helps a lot, so thanks again!