Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• NB - it was deemed acceptable to use the save game modification provided by the game author in the itch comments, and to review the whole content of the game.
  

  Geometry Smoocher 2 is a graphical novel game that follows the tale of a trope laden high school success story... a while after it happened and subsequently gone pear shaped. Your character must try once again to find his place in the world, or be doomed to repeat his mistakes. This narrative experience can be strangely dark at times, and I suspect it doesn't cater heavily to those who are not subscribers to the genre - you can have an interesting enough experience moving through the narrative but I feel it has some flaws should you choose to push any deeper.

  Liked

  • I found Rectangle with his corner folded over genuinely funny.
  • Presents itself well (given it's a not using a framework).
  • An interesting play on genre tropes with multiple outcomes that rewards some replay.

  Needs Work

  • Some Stability Issues (pressing space often crashed?)
  • I didn't really feel in charge of the Narrative.
  • Could benefit from ending/branching path acknowledgement/guidance.
  • Feels a little ham fisted, but, could just be a play on the genre.
  • Theme usage is there but is, perhaps, a bit too meta.

  I'm not particularly big on this genre, so, I may be reasonably off base with my comments - if so, feel free to disregard them. My experience was that there's two fleshed out main paths: 'repeating your mistakes' and 'finding your own happiness', and pretty much everything else seemed an (often dark) game over tangent, not to say 'repeating your mistakes' wasn't dark. And by dark, I don't mean actually that disturbing: I'm not sure the story gets to that level, it just says kinda weird stuff and has off putting tone shifts - quitting your job and your mum working herself to death? I guess I'm not convinced those extra choices improve the game.

  When you have an A/B choice, often the monologue would initially 2nd guess and then begrudgingly take the action selected. I grew to hope for a confirmation of the choice if it was as a path changing moment. Other times (for example, via 'leave') you can suddenly change the course of the game in a way it's hard to appreciate before you click. I tried to take several routes through the game - it would be helpful to have ending letters/path identifiers/chapters to guide replay choices. Being able to re-enter the narrative at a few different points once they'd been unlocked would be handy. As it is, not knowing what I haven't seen, I imagine much of what's left is quick game overs and I think I've seen enough failure states. Maybe that's the classic structure, though?

  There didn't seem to be much to pull the experience up, honestly - it was OK but it didn't feel special. I did like the menu/save/load framework. The characters as shapes was fine, but there wasn't much play on it. More visuals would help as with text only, the game feels dry. The 3rd party music choices seemed appropriate. The tourism photo backgrounds were fine also but I get the feeling some were included just because you had them. That's a lot of stuff that's fine, but, the game really needed something to elevate it somewhere along the line and I couldn't find it, so ultimately I'm left feeling tepid about the experience. Definitely seek more feedback about the writing & story and see if there's ways to improve or expand it with the framework you already have.