Play game
Time Capsule of a Council's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #2 | 4.538 | 4.538 |
| References / Humor | #2 | 4.462 | 4.462 |
| Overall | #6 | 4.046 | 4.046 |
| Innovation | #9 | 3.808 | 3.808 |
| Ambience | #13 | 3.962 | 3.962 |
| Gameplay | #16 | 3.462 | 3.462 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I'm not crying, it's just allergies!
I should've expected that this will be an emotional roller coaster. I loved every second of it.
Thank you for this experience.
Thank you for letting us share this experience with you! Glad you enjoyed the game!
And we can all use a good cry every once in a while (even if its a secret cry), reminds us we're human, after all.
Thanks for playing!
This game hurt me in a way few have this jam...The mumei doom section was really cool sequence. Also that gwak made me smile when I was really down at the end.
Starting to think we should have added a warning that the game will make you feel emotions, so players can mentally prepare…
Glad you enjoyed DOOMEI, it was my first actual 3D project using Godot (as in, not just a test) and though it’s simple, I really want to return and flesh it out, but that can be said for most of the content in the game.
And I have to agree on the gwak at the end, Revian snuck that in and it was a good decision to help lighten the mood after the somewhat somber conclusion - feels like he was thinking ahead to counter his writing with the funny little UI sounds!
Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
I just love little details in games so i wanted to add my own. I just wish i was able to sneak in more of them.
(I had sound bytes of all the girls saying 'Flower' but couldn't figure out where to use them lol)
except as the chatter noise lolWow, this was an emotional game. Those moments together with the talents who are no longer here and Kronii's thoughts about being an eternal entity really hit hard.
I felt like the dialogues were in character for each of the talents and the writing was well done.
I loved the music and the sound design. The little sounds each talent made when talking was a great touch.
Oh and seeing Kronii bump into asteroids and fly away was so funny! XD
Some improvement suggestions:
- The team seems to have spread too thin between the different minigames, with the Moom one feeling a little too barebones. Planning the project and organizing a team are also important skills to practice and learn during these jams!
- Art felt a bit inconsistent across the different parts of the game. A coherent art direction helps the game feel as an integral experience instead of fragmented parts.
Thanks for the feedback David, I'll make sure the team sees it.
This was definitely a learning experience for me, my jam skills are rusty, and I probably could have held a tighter grip on the reigns for this project - rule of cool doesn't pan out too well in a jam, but I'm a real pushover when it comes to trying to incorporate people and ideas as best I can. Case in point, the trouble of art direction. But this was a great experience and the team was a blast to work with, which are the real takeaways from these jams, in my opinion.
Outside of that though, I'm glad the parts of the game that shone through hit the mark, and everyone on the team appreciates you taking the time to check it out, alongside all the other submissions. Thanks for playing!
Sad but sweet story and enjoyable story. The assortment of mini-games got me pumped to try out and create more fun game mechanics, which this feeling is unique to this submission. I respect the effort.
Great submission!
Honestly I'm over here still thinking about other mechanics (and potential minigames for Irys and Bae) myself - this game has really got my brain spinning, despite the troubles we ran into. Would definitely be happy to put more time into it later down the line, with the rest of the team's help.
Thanks for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I think I would have enjoyed it more if you focused on refining one of these games more, but it still was a fun play through. The writing was pretty solid. Volume balancing was probably my biggest complaint, but that's not the worst problem to have.
I miss council.
Yeah, originally the plan was to have each programmer focus on their own minigame, so that we could actually work on and refine them a little more without stepping on each other’s toes, but it didn’t work out that way, so I had to kinda cobble together something simpler for each of them.
I really would like to come back and flesh them all out though, and there are talks from some of the other team members about returning to the project after judging, so it looks like it might be in the cards.
I’m already looking into some other audio settings that were pretty scuffed due to the time frame, so I’ll see about balancing everything out across the board - having two musicians doesn’t make that any simpler, unfortunately. But thanks for pointing it out!
Council deserves all the love, they’ve been through the most in EN, and I don’t think I see that acknowledged by many fans. Thanks for playing!
I absolutely loved this. I experienced so many feels when playing through it. I was worried I would feel motion sick with Mumei's level but I'm glad I didn't. Also I can play Fauna's level literally all day, it was so relaxing. And I'm sorry I abused Kronii the entire Sana level long. The BGM was also so fitting too.
Also I'm amazed you guys came up with so many mini games in a short amount of time. Well done!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Minigames were a byproduct of having a larger team, so we wanted to split up the work and not step on each others' toes. Unfortunately that didn't pan out exactly as planned... But we got there in the end!
Mumei's minigame definitely needs some refinement, I'd love to expand and turn it into a fully fledged Boomer Shooter, though that might not help with your motion sickness problem. And I'm interested in looking into tweaking Sana's minigame to be more complex and less of absolutely obliterating everything using her, but I've gotta hit the drawing board with the team on that one.
Thanks for playing!
THIS HURT ME SO BAD. Council angst just. AAAAAAAAA
But it was in the best way possible. The writing is top notch, and the music just hammered in the inevitably of everything. You get brief moments with each of the graduated members, and they're fun and all, but it all comes to an end, and all Kronii can do is watch.
Every minigame was really fun honestly. Sana's was so silly, throwing the tiny VRChat Kronii into asteroids made me stupid laugh, and lowkey I think I would just play an entire Fauna fishing game. It was such a vibe and probably my favorite of the three. The Doom Mumei section jumpscared me so bad but the contrast was so funny. This game is so so good, *easily* one of my favorites I've played in the jam so far.
Glad you enjoyed the minigames, and the theme!
I'm a big fan of Fauna's game myself as well, really wanted something to match her chill yapping vibes, and the team brought up a fishing game, which we had to full send. And we had a bunch of fish originally in planning, so who knows, we might be dropping some content...
Sana's minigame ended up evolving into leaning towards her silly goober personality, which wasn't the original idea, but I think worked out well.
And Kronii felt like the perfect match for the story we wanted to tell, both lore wise and just emotionally, I'm so glad that we were able to work it out. Despite how much it hurts to come to terms with while playing, but there are worse outcomes from a game jam.
Thanks for playing!
I- w-wow, honestly, I didn't expect myself to shed tears today but here we are (But I got to finish writing the comment so I'll pull through!).
Such a beautiful bittersweet work, I love the dialog of the game especially Kronii being the warden of time. The genre of mini-games also feels fitting for each of the members too, Sana with this bubbly Space shoot em up (well its more like orbit em up, in a way huh), Fauna with the chill calm fishing game and Mumei with high energy of DOOM shooter!
My only comment is probably at MOOM section, the camera seems turns to a sharp 180 at certain points (Maybe I was playing on the web version?)
But still, wonderful work and writings especially at the end! Will cry again! Council/Promise Forever!
Sorry about the feelings jumpscare, I hope you had some tissues at the ready!
We went through a couple ideas for the Sana game, and actually started planning the idea of a Space Invaders-esque game, but switched gears to this version based on an idea Mirin had. We didn’t really do it Justice (just like that), but maybe that’s for the best, so she can return to her idea without the pressure of the jam looming over it.
Web build definitely caused some issues, there were a lot of bugs that were only exclusive to that version, and that I couldn’t seem to replicate when I played on my browser. It was pretty cursed in all honesty, but I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of it - probably something tied to swapping how the mouse works between gameplay and pausing/dialogue, so the game tries to adjust, or something.
Regardless, thanks for playing, and CouncilRys will always be 6!
Finishing this game left me with a bittersweet melancholy. This is really nice. Thank you for making this. The dialogue is nice and the soundtrack is amazing.
I’m sure the rest of the team would agree that it’s heartwarming to see the emotions we’ve been able to arise in the players - I was originally concerned about the effectiveness of evoking feelings using these minigames.
But I can’t sing the praises of Grem and Nostalgum enough, their music completely elevated the experience Beyond anything I could have originally pictured.
Dialogue was something that we couldn’t start working on implement until the last couple of days, so I had to scramble together some of the dialogue during the minigames - I had some ideas written during initial planning, but we weren’t solid on how the dialogue was going to work until 4 or so days left, so I couldn’t work in all of the dialogue perfectly, case in point: Sana and Mumei’s minigame dialogue.
But Revian did some really wonderful work in the final cutscene, and did a superb job capturing the message we wanted to send with a nice bow on top. I’m glad it was impactful.
Thanks for playing, and sharing your experience with us!
Simply amazing. We should treasure the ones that are here and remember the ones that have left.
Well said, and I agree completely.
I'm so glad the team and I, and other participants in the jam, could put together games like these. To help honor the members who are still here, alongside those have turned a new page, but make it clear that we won't forget them.
Really heart felt and a nice collection of games. Making 3 games in the jam period is really intense, crazy that you managed to pull it off. Capping the experience off with DOOMei was the right call, as a fan of both old and new DOOM, the music remix was fantastic. Great work!
Thanks for checking it out!
I don't think I've mentioned it on other comments yet, but we went with multiple minigames to help bank on our team size - with 4 programmers, we were worried about stepping on each others' toes, so doing individual experiences seemed like the best way to avoid that.
Unfortunately things didn't work out that way, so I had to lock in and crank out DOOMEI and Fauna's Fishing in what was probably an unreasonable amount of time - but I really didn't want to leave any of the games on the cutting room floor if I could help it, see Sana's game, which was rather simplistic until I managed to iron out and upload v1.1 (still pretty simple, but there's more going on there than the original submission at least)
DOOMEI was definitely my pride and joy for the project (though its a little more rough around the edges than I would prefer), and a nice change of pace compared to the other two more relaxed games, I'm glad that the team helped push in that direction when brainstorming, and we never would have gotten the music, either.
I had brought up a Mick Gordon inspired remix of Mumei offhand one night and Grem absolutely delivered on that one (frankly I feel like I might have to pay him at this point), I've genuinely never heard anything like it.
Massive shout out from the team and I for the feedback!
Accidentally posted on the site for the game instead of here, so here's the copy-paste of what was said.
What a fun collection of mini-games!
The beginning really sets the scene, but the mini-games feel more lighthearted (probably reflecting that the memories Kronii has about her friends are all the good and fun times). The music in the game is really nice to listen to and fitting, especially the hub theme with the ticking on-beat (the asteroid game is especially fun btw!).
Points of improvement to be given here would mainly be to rework the DOOMei minigame (the enemies didn't seem to be moving & the camera was locked, so you could not aim up or down). Other than that, it's just small nitpicks, like the screen that pops up after you catch a fish closing in a bit too slowly.
You didn't just make one game for this game jam. You made 3-in-1. Be proud of it, great job!
<Copying the comment from the page itself to this section as well, for any other submitters reading lmao>
Thanks for the feedback!
We definitely wanted to lean into sharing good memories over sad ones, especially considering how things have been recently within the community, so balancing that while still trying to make it clear that Kronii is feeling actual emotion was important - that was kind of our hook when we first started brainstorming ideas, I'm glad it managed to hold over through development!
I'm glad you enjoyed the Sana game! To be transparent, that was the one that had the smallest amount of time to iron out, and was made by a team member who didn't have much Godot experience, so it was mostly refined within the grace period (thank goodness for that grace period), and I was concerned that it might show compared to the other games...
Otherwise, I agree - DOOMEI has a lot of work that can be done on it, I had started developing it first, since I figured it would be the most complex, and it took the majority of the first week to iron out, but I really had to stop at "just functional enough" to work on Fauna's Fishing. It was still a lot of fun, and makes me want to try to improve it, and grow it into something much more boomer shooter-esque.
I feel like I've said it a thousand times at this point, but it still holds true, and I still keep humming it, but the BGM the team put together was absolutely astounding, and that's to say nothing about the time frame they got it done in, so they deserve every hat off for their hard work.
And of course, on behalf of all of us, thanks for checking out the game~
From the few games ive tested yet, this probably is my favourite currently. (Definetly not biased as someone who holds council dearly xDD)
Really well written story! (Made me actually tear up near the end xD)
Some things I noticed while playing:
- The UI sound setting doesnt apply to the options menu itself. The UI SFX is really loud so I turned it down at the beginning and thats when i realized it.
- Even though Doomei is probably my favourite minigame, there is definetly a visual/better audio feedback needed for the melee attack or else it kinda feels weird. same with taking damage (maybe getting a slightly red screen for a milisecond?). Difficulty wise it also seems really easy by the amount of healing and armor you get there so might be worth reducing it?
Love the Music! It just does a TON for the story!
Despite the early struggles and Life getting in your way definetly a solid game you managed to make within the time period! Well done!
Thanks for the feedback!
I'll look into the UI SFX issue - I ran into a couple issues getting the audio channels set up (which is not something I had encountered in my previous games with sound settings), so I wonder if that might have thrown a wrench in the works.
I've had a couple comments about DOOMEI's melee attack - I really wanted to try to tie an animation to it or something, but I'm not the best at animating, so I had to cut it for the time frame . If the team want's to come back and work on it, feedback on a lot of these smaller mechanics is high up on the priority list, for sure!
Difficulty for the game was kinda tough too - as the one who designed the game, I knew that I could just execute all the enemies and make everything really easy due to all the ammo, armor, and HP lying around, but not all players would know that - plus we only implemented a melee tutorial during the grace period, so some players might not have even known about the mechanic (see one of the previous comments). That's another thing I would come back and tweak if we wanted to continue development.
The music is easily one of my favorite parts as well, Grem and Nostalgum did such an amazing job taking the member's songs and incorporating new elements while capturing the feel of the members themselves, and the vibes we wanted for the minigames. Couldn't have asked for a better group to work with!
It was a series of really happy mini-games. I really love doomei mini game.
Thanks for playing! We really wanted to make each minigame fun and show each member's personality, hopefully that came through.
I really enjoyed making DOOMEI - I'm a little concerned that it might show, compared to the other minigames, but I'm glad you enjoyed it as well! I really worked on it with the goal of "Would this be something that she would play on stream?" And while it's still not perfect, I'm pretty happy with it.
This was actually pretty heart-wrenching. I was expecting a lot of games to focus on the romance kind of love, but this one is a deeper more thoughtful expression of love and you all managed to capture that bond that Council/Promise had for each other. It still hurts that 3 of this generation are already gone, leaving the other 3 to keep going. But I genuinely believe that the memories they shared with each other is exactly the reason why the 3 remaining keep going. You all have done so well to feature that in this game, in both how emotional and silly these games and dialogue are, and I thank you all for making me too remember all the memories I have of those beloved graduates..
I really like the genre-specific remixes of their songs. Also, a DOOM (MOOM?) minigame was the last thing I imagined any of these minigames was going to be. Amazing job having such varied gameplay experiences that felt complete and fun! Also also, as an artist can i commend the funky sprites for Kronii and Fauna's fishing minigame XD
Final comments:
- I don't know if there was a fail state built into the Sana minigame, but a lot of the time I was just tanking meteor damage to get by an area that spawned an unreasonable array of obstacles >.<
- Fauna's minigame naturally goes through the daytime cycle, and I managed to catch everything I needed in a single pass which made the option to change the time of day useless, at least in my playthrough
- Mumei's minigame would have benefitted from having some indicator that I'm executing a melee attack. Maybe a third of the time I was hitting it I wasn't sure if I was actually doing anything, and I would unnecessarily take damage.
Congrats to the whole team! Great work :D
Thanks for checking it out, and for the feedback!
I had a similar thought when originally brainstorming game ideas - that many people would lean into romance, and I honestly didn't think I could come up with something that would do romantic themes enough credit, without feeling campy or ham fisted. So while we were bringing the team together, we decided to shift towards angst, and platonic love, instead, and Council really felt like it worked the best, due to their past.
For the minigame ideas, we wanted each game to fit with the member's personality, as well as trying to consider what they had actually played during their time. DOOM was pretty big for Mumei's channel, so it only felt fitting to try to make a smaller scale rip, at least to me. While on the topic of DOOMEI, I wanted to try to make an animation for the melee but I got too caught up with other tasks - I should have at least had a sound effect to help, for sure (though there's already a lot of sound effects, so I could be wrong on that call).
For Sana, if Kronii is out of range long enough, the game will reset - I tried to reference that in the dialogue at the start, with the "what happens if I get hurt" option, but I think for the most part the minigame was pretty forgiving otherwise - especially if you saved Kronii's ability for when she was floating away.
In Fauna's game, we had actually made a change during the grace period to implement a pity system - when testing I had a run where it took like 10 minutes to catch everything because it was just pure RNG on which fish were caught. So if you catch enough copies of fishes, you're now guaranteed to get one you don't have, the next time you get the opportunity, which reduces the time change usefulness. But in general I had built the minigames with some scalability in mind, since the team said they weren't opposed to continuing work on the project - so the time skip would have/will be more useful with more fish in the system. Plus, we wanted Kronii to have a use in every minigame, and slowing down the actual fishing game itself would have made it even easier than it already was - so it was a bit of a concession.
Lastly, the team absolutely blew me away with their work on the assets for the game - the art team made some of the most gorgeous backgrounds and perfect sprites to fit each game, the music team actually cranked out some bangers - I still keep singing them to myself, and I've saved the playlist with the music so I can put it in my rotation. Ironically I feel like the programming side was our weakest link, since most other than me were busy, but Revian still managed to create some amazing menus and systems that became integral to the core feeling of the game; I can safely say this game would have little to no impact without his hard work. They definitely deserve the praise, and thank you again!
Your explanation for each minigame makes sense now. I understand the limitations of working within the jam period so I know not everything can be implemented to its fullest, but again, I do appreciate where you've all taken the minigames and they were still fun the way they were so you all still did a great job on that.
Also, regarding the music, I feel like it was a gigabrain move to have the jukebox there XD I can see a situation where I just have it just running in the background while I listen to the music XD
Again, congrats to the whole team. Amazing work from you all!
(Grem uploaded his two songs to YouTube if you'd like to check them out there - the playlist is also linked on the game's page
I need to see if the other musician uploaded his work and I can compile the songs together in full public playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLBhGpvhKIQaHpbdXKAhej0Ms4eqAI5ys)
Thank you! 🙏🏼
Just finished playing the tweaked build that fixed most of the previously mentioned bugs! I enjoyed the variety in having three separate minigames, and the heartfelt moments with each of the graduated members -- especially the ending.
Thanks for checking it out!
The team and I have been cranking away like crazy trying to polish what we can - in fact I'm in the middle of pushing a new version that fixed an issue where you could spam Kronii's ability in the Sana minigame and become a weapon of mass destruction... whoops...
The minigames was an angle that I wasn't even thinking of when originally brainstorming ideas, and though I think it might have shot in the foot a little bit due to the sheer scope, I think having 3 separate options fits the members well, since they were all pretty different. And the team put together some crazy good assets for them.
Revian absolutely blew the team away with his writing for the end (and he wrote it at like 2 AM which is even more astounding), and I'm sure he'd be glad to hear it!
Thanks, On top on working on menus, i did write the ending. Watching Kroni, i wanted to it be reflective, somber but also hopeful. I felt that Kroniini evolved past being gloomy or putting up airs though her time in Holo so i wanted to reflect that. Did i mention i hecking love Kronii? (Sadly not as much as Kronii loves kronii, i know my place)
I have no sleep and i must cook.
I really like the premise of the game! The idea of an immortal Kronii reflecting on the past when everyone else has left is a very existential premise.
The music also is consistently very excellent with each track being very different from the others and being a cool take on the remixes. I would like to hear some of these remixes on Youtube or somewhere like that if possible!
I do think that the game does spread itself a little bit thin, as each of the minigames do not share mechanics with each other. I think that having Kronii as a thematic mechanic is a cool idea that ties the minigames together. However, I think that having a game consisting of minigames is a bit difficult in a game jam, as the split attention means that you have less time to tune, polish and test each game individually. One of the genres you chose is also an FPS, which can take a pretty big time investment. There are also quite a lot of things going on with the fishing game, so the minigames are not really very "mini" to begin with.
There are a few bugs/Design feedback bits I can report:
1. On my screen, when playing the gameplay segments with Sana and Fauna, the gameplay was constrained to a small window on the top right of the screen. I believe this is a scaling issues with canvases being inconsistent.
2. These was a bar with the words "test" on the screen when playing the Mumei video game.
3. For the Mumei game, due to ammo being in short supply, I found myself running around most enemies. That could be an intentional game decision as the enemies are fairly easy to run around, and Kronii's time stop could come in handy.
I think that there are some good conversations the game. Such as those involving the other members delaying things just a bit so Kronii could spend time with them a little longer. The main thing I would improve if I had more time would be presentation of these plot elements, as some of them just happen in the middle or in between gameplay with relatively little fanfare considering the importance of the conversation. Presentation (audio or visual) improvements can help these story beats hit a lot harder, as I think there is a good core message in there.
I feel like this is a very ambitious project, maybe a little bit high in scope. But I see the potential in the idea and premise. Combining or making some minigames share more mechanics could be a worth trade off in favor of adding more touches to the story. Or alternatively, focusing on just one member, would allow you to add in more presentation improvements to really make things shine.
Thanks for the feedback - we've got a ton of tweaks and fixes that should be coming in a build today (I'm a little nervous about getting bonked in case it might be too much for the grace period but I think it should be fine).
Unfortunately the UI issue still eludes me - the web build even on my higher resolution monitor doesn't have this issue, but one of our team members also reported it. I assume you didn't mess with any window settings or anything - the games were just like that when they loaded? It's quite the strange bug, but I'm also not the best with Godot's UI features, hopefully I can find a solution.
I agree on the scope comment, this game put me out of my comfort zone, for sure. We had a pretty big team, so I wanted to lean into that and expand the size a bit to take advantage, but life got in the way for our team and I ended up having to take on most of the implementation while trying to lead everything, so the final product ended up a little scuffed.
At the end of the day, I think this turned into a showcase of the rest of our team's skills, rather than using my own programming prowess to try to weave things in better, but they absolutely knocked it out of the park, so I'm fine with that. Thanks again for checking it out!