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Contemplate's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Design | #87 | 4.075 | 4.075 |
Ranked from 40 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Felt a lot like the Stanley Parable, would have been fun to have some more ways to mess with the narrator. Like maybe you can't easily quit, or something. Or turning down the volume doesnt work.
We tried to keep the scope to a minimum, and we still felt overhwelmed! Turns out it's really hard to make a game like this, specially with a robust team where you have to make sure everyone's in the right state of mind for the game at all times!
We've learnt from that too (Our first experimental game) and trust me, this was one of the first things we thought of making for the game. We even have an interaction system implemented! (but not actually linked to anything in the game sooo- virtually useless hehe... whoops)
Thanks for the suggestions, we really enjoyed 'em. And thank you for playing!
Very good game with very smart idea I loved the visuals but I think the audio was a little bit of anyways great job overall well done.
You can go checkout my entry if you pleased it will be nice if you rated and left feedback.
Hey, thanks for playing! :3 The audio was definetly off, but thank you for the kind words!
I'll play yours in a bit - nothing fairer. Thanks again!
The link to the theme does seem a little tenuous, but I did enjoy it a lot - there haven't been enough games of this style submitted to the jam! Very reminiscent of The Beginner's Guide. Spoilers ahead:
I think wrenching control away from the player is really quite frightening (in a good way) in this kind of game, it almost makes you feel like you are narrator's prisoner. I'd really like to see that concept expanded upon - what other kinds of ways could the narrator mess with the player?
<3 Thank you for your comment! "The Begginer's Guide" absolutely was another one of our influences - one of our game designers even played it beggining-to-end in-jam! We wanted to expand much further into the idea, but we found out during development that making an experimental game or a walking simulator, even as a group, does not lend itself that well to the philosophy of rapid prototyping that is one of the cornerstones of success in a jam. We've learnt a lot - it's our first game like this, in fact! - and we're very happy that we're seeing players feel different things playing the game and coming to their own conclusions! :3
This was really interesting and funny - I don't want to say too much and spoil what it's all about :p Didn't really know what to expect at first but ended up having a really good time with it.
Thank you so much! I’m glad that you enjoyed it!
We're glad you did! <3 I watched your stream VOD - that was fun to watch! That reminds me - we've updated our page to warn people not to read further without playing first. Thank you for streaming it and thank you for playing it!
This is really neat! I loved the overall theme and the visuals. To a certain extent, it was giving me Stanley Parable vibes. My only complains would be that the voice audio sounded a bit odd (distorted?), and sometimes didn't match the subtitle timing (or wasn't present at all). Overall, well done! :D
Thank you so much!
Stanley Parable was definetly a major influence for this game. The distorted audio was sort of on purpose and sort of us playing with it :P
But yeah, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t have enough time for timing the subtitles right. We did try our best, but we had some bugs at the last minute that needed fixing.
Anyway, we are fixing up everything we couldn’t at the jam and probably gonna release it as soon as the GMTK Jam is over, so everyone can experience what we envisioned.
Thanks again ;)
I love this-- I like walking sims I think this was just great. I am left wondering whether this is parody or satire though-- i.e. are you purely taking the pretentious elements of walking sims to thier most extreme conlusion from a place of love for the genre or a place of pure criticism? It felt like the latter, but who am I to say. There seemed to be a little bit of your own sentiments and frustrations with creating games thrown in there, so maybe I'm wrong.
Excellent excellent work. My only suggestion would be not to state what you were trying to say with the game so blatently on the game page-- I mean I read it after playing the game because I was curious but I liked going in blind. I think it would lose some punch if I knew the (for lack of a better word) 'gimmick' before going in.
Anyway-- Your game left me wondering, so it worked (maybe ironically? I don't know. I dont even know what irony is anymore). Either way, I am inspired to something more meta with our next game.
This comment made my day. Thank You!
I’m so glad this little game of ours is receiving so many good feedback and constructive criticism.
Anyway, about the game, we just wanted to make fun of walking sims for the sake of irony. I personally love walking sims and experimental games like this.
But I liked that you got a totallly different idea. We really wanted people to make their own meanings and conspirancy theories about it, so I guess there is no wrong answer (and there is no right answer either lol).
Thanks again for the lovely comment!
Larissa's comment said it all but I want to add that it really humbles me to have inspired someone. We wanted players to take whatever they could out of the game, any conclusions whatsoever about Imposition, Creativity, "Art", or even Narration or Contemplation or anything else the player might reflect about. Thank you for being living evidence that our game was a game worth making! <3
And from a design standpoint: We didn't define it as a satire or a parody beforehand, but we ended up making a bit of both, skewered more towards parody, since, as Larissa said, we absolutely adore Walking Sims - No joke, four of the six members have Dear Esther, Gone Home, Stanley Parable and even Myst as personal favourites - so that's saying something!
And lastly, thank you SO MUCH for the suggestion - now that I've gotten some time to update the page, you'll find a cutesy lil' spoiler warning right on the top. I've been wanting to make the page easier on the eyes, so I'll probably update it further eventually. Thank you for helping with that, and thank you for your amazing comment! (I... I'm not gonna lie, I teared up reading it the first time ;~; <3)
It took me a while to understand what was the point of the game. I was complaining about how narrator's voice was really bad mixed with the game. Then I realised it was intentional. How could I contemplate with that annoying audio? However I needed to read game description to get how it would fit within the theme.
The art is gorgeous indeed.
Very nice entry. =)
Full disclosure: it was meant to sound pretentious and hard to understand, but not badly mixed - so that was entirely our fault and I just sent your feedback over to my Sound Editor. But yeah, that's one of the game's biggest flaws for us: We failed to convey it better, IE, we didn't focus enough time on making it clearer it's a satire, or a commentary. Our fault on that one, again, but we're REALLY glad you enjoyed it and ended up understanding it after all. <3
Wow.
I did not expect that.
This game made me feel anxious, bothered and made me feel somewhat personally attacked. And a little bit of goose bumps. Usually this would be a bad thing, but I think its amazing that a game made in 48h could do this.
Sure... the game could use a little bit of more gameplay time and longer exposition but I mean... its a jam
Sincerely, the game design is on point. You have proven that you can make the player feel what you want them to feel in a few minutes and that is a hard thing to do. Game designers design experiences and I think you did that.
Also, kudos for narration, subtitles accessibility and volume control. This shows a lot of attention to detail.
Good game. Be proud. Congrats!
O-oh gosh, thank you! <3 Jam constraints have skewered the game a bit, especially in technical places and "Thing is ready, all we gotta do is put it in" department. But thank you for your feedback, truly! You, in fact, gave me the most concrete way we could have improved the feel of the game: Longer exposition and more gameplay time, a longer "retention graph" so that our point is driven home in a more organic way! Urgh...
And thank you again! We actually watched Mark's Visual ACessibility video mid-jam to help us make proper subtitles - we.... failed in the implementation, yeah, but I'm glad we tried and that it was noticed! Thank you so much for your feedback <3
Thanks Ian!
We really wanted to provoke the players and make them feel uncomfortable, so I’m sorry for that.
A little more of gameplay would be wonderful, maybe expand the world a little bit. But it’s 48h jam with a 6 members team, so I’m really satisfied with the ending product. I’ve participated in a few jams, and this was definitely one of my favourites.
I have to admit the audio narration was a stretch goal, but i’m really glad we made it. I think it gives a hole new experience to the game. Our sound designer, my fellow artist companion, put a lot of effort in it and I’m super proud.
Thanks for the comment ;)
I think I got it? Didn't really get much out of it, but I see the idea. I think.
It's okay, take whatever you can from the experience. Do you have an opinion about the narrator? About contemplative games? What about curiosity and player retention? If you thought about any of that, even if briefly, I think our game did what it was set out to do. Thank you very much for playing!
That’s okay if you got confused. There is no right or wrong answer, we just wanted the players to experience something funny and provocative. If it tickled your curiosity, then we’ve reached our goal
SHAME on you for judging my art appreciation skills like that. I totally 100% contemplated it, even before you made me do it, you metalinguistical bastard.
Anyway, great entry with a bonkers premise.
H-hey, thanks f-for the feedback :( Oh gosh, I'm not nearly as confident as I am behind a mic and a script, am I? :p
Glad you enjoyed it! <3
THANKS for contemplating our art, even though we asked you to. I DID put a lot of effort on my particles systems and mood. I’M REALLY GLAD YOU LIKED IT
Anyway, thanks for the lovely comment <3
This is a pretty neat concept. I like how it plays with being one of those pretentious art games, although I probably wouldn't have figured that out entirely if I didn't read the description on the game page. Still, it was pretty neat experience!
Also, am I wrong in assuming you guys are brazilian? From your credits it seems like you guys are a team studying games in PUC. If so, that's awesome! I'm brazilian as well, and studied games in FMU. It's always good to see some design talent come out of this country.
Thank you so much for your feedback! <3 Yessiree, we're from Rio, and we have a huge student body of aspiring gamedevs here, eager to learn and to participate in jams like these! This was one of 5 projects made within the group (which was divided into 5 balanced subgroups, which I can DM you / link you if I have the chance :) ), and I'm glad to see other brazilian devs out here! <3
Yeah, one of the problems we had was that we didn't have the time to implement all we wanted to make the idea fully realized - making an "arthouse" game, even a linear one with the illusion of choice (or maybe precisely becuase of that), seems to be... harder than we thought. :p But I'm really, REALLY glad that some of the idea shined through!
Again, thank you so much for sharing this! And by the way - Guess who my favourite pony is. ;3
Sure, DM them over to me and I'll check them out when I can!
As for your favorite pony, I mean judging by your profile and your name it's obviously Sweetie Belle, duh
Damn, yeah, true ._.
Anywho, since I just found out Itch.io doesn't have DMs, I'll link 'em here :3
https://dannyvegas.itch.io/fireflies
https://leokaplan.itch.io/gmtk2018-tdcommunism
https://ianalbuquerque.itch.io/the-tragic-story-of-don-coelhoni
https://marinatelles.itch.io/ninas-garage-tradle
https://gandragar.itch.io/rhetoric-fighter
[IMPORTANT NOTE] Some people are reporting that the .rar downloadable, through the itch.io website, is shown as damaged, corrupted or unknown. We haven't diagnosed the issue yet, but downloading the game through the itch.io app seems to fix it. We apologize for the inconvenience. :(
That's funny.
Hehe, glad you found it to be funny! We tried to ham it up a tad, "The Stanley Parable" was really a big influence!
The Stanley Parable is one of my favorite games ever! That's a great source of inspiration.
looks cool. but understand the goal.
Thanks for the feedback!
We honestly thought it fit the theme pretty well, even if not a perfect fit. Jam themes are more abstract than it appears anyway, it's more a prompt to create with a bit of a restriction. But I definetly can understand if it feels like we haven't achieved our goal... We didn't finish the way we wished we did :( Hope you took something out of the experience!