I got to play this for the finals as a judge. Here are my thoughts:

I feel this game has a lot of potential, but does need another round of polish on the mechanics. For starters, you tell me about the pacifist option to talk mid battle and mid turn, while I got turns already queued that I cannot cancel. So of course I kill it instead as I can't take back those moves and they finish it off. You really should consider telling the player about it earlier as you have a battle first as a tutorial where the option is not there so why would I expect it now in battle 2? 

Emma's TP skill is useless. I missed over 50% of the time with it. If you are going to make me burn a lot of TP on a skill please do not make it miss.

The Air Elemental battle I also got a non-choice on the pacifist route as it paralyzed the only one who can do that and I had no paralyze cure items. By the time it wore off it was not an option anymore so I had to kill it. 

The last two bosses felt way too powerful compared to the rest of the game. They are a huge jump up in difficulty and power compared to anything you face to that point.

Overall I think you have an interesting idea, but need to back up a little and introduce mechanics in a proper order. Maybe make battle 1 introduce the player to the pacifist option? Or tell the player at start of battle 2? Otherwise you've established to the player that there is no such option then suddenly spring it on them. 

I do hope though you do polish this up though someday. And congrats on getting to the finals of the IGMC!

I was one of the official judges this year, and now that the results have been made public, and I'm free to do so, here is my score and thoughts on this title:

Overall score: 7

The game had a nice look about it and great music choice. However, I feel the mechanics that were tied to the multiple endings weren't explained very well. If you have an option to talk it out with, instead of kill, an enemy, but you don't tell a player that until it's too late, that's not giving the player ownership of their choices. The writing could have really used another look as well, as it was very clunky and easy to trip over at some parts. I could get the gist of things, but it was rough around the edges. Also, the lack of healing items and the difficulty of the last boss were more frustrating than challenging.

Hey there Daybloom Project, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. The cute artstyle and music choices were smart, though the busts seemed a bit odd since they were an entirely different style.

The selection of puzzles was nice, but I wish you had chosen just a few to really focus on. The boulder pushing puzzle, for example, was more of a time-waster than a brainteaser. It can be a great feeling for your players to take knowledge from an easier puzzle to solve a challenging one, but since each puzzle was different there was never a chance for that. 

The battles were fine, though only the final battle really felt like a challenge. I decided to go for the Wholesome ending, and was pleasantly surprised to find that sparing the bees did reward me in the end. I'm not sure how different things play out with the violent ending since I ran out of time to replay it, but I'm hoping that the battle against toxiqs is  a lot more challenging because of the lack of pollinator power.

There were some visual and dialogue issues that need addressed. Going through the story and fixing the grammar would definitely help get the emotions you were intending across. You also need to adjust the options you included thanks to a plugin, since if you change the touch UI location it will move some of the windows and end up covering the submenus, making it hard to tell what you're doing. I didn't spend much time in the menus, luckily, so it wasn't a big issue but it's something to keep in mind.

Overall, there's a lot to like about this little game, it just needs some extra time and polish to truly shine.

Wholesome: The Last Word 

by Daybloom Project 

Hey there Daybloom Project, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I was asked to judge your game in round three of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.

The story suffers from grammar issues and the font is a little blurry.

It would be better in my opinion if you allowed the player to save anywhere as there is a lot of dialog and cutscene.

I can see that you've taken some elements from other games such as Undertale and Earthbound. 

I like that you've decided to use a lighting engine.

There are a lack of options for a game like this. I didn't like that I had to hold down the shift button for the majority of my time playing. Allowing an auto-run setting in the options could easily fix that.

I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games, but I can appreciate the amount of work that went into these puzzle rooms.

The battle mechanics are very well done. The player is given many skills with unique functionality and ways to win in combat.

I landed a critical hit with a special move accidently one-shotting a bee against my actual intentions. I guess my pacifist run is done. The critical damage multiplier is too high. I'd recommend upping the critical hit rate, but lowering the critical hit multiplier from 3x to 2x. More critical hits, but less damage when a critical hit lands.

There's like a half second of unnecessary padding every time you open a chest. It's not much, but it kind of feels like unnecessary padding after opening twenty something chests.

The music and sound effects were selected well and I really enjoyed the boss battle music. 

Nice job with selecting animations, but I think that if you would've picked a few more it would have added value. Almost all of the restorative magic and items use exactly the same animation.

The last boss fight is really out of whack and all of the enemies being able to paralyze you really make for a frustrating experience. I think the paralyze rates need to be toned down quite a bit. I spent more turns unable to act than actually acting, and when I do get my turn it's mostly damage control, using the items gained through-out the adventure just to revive and heal.

The main menu shows room for two actors, unless you scroll down to see the third actor. I feel like this could be reworked to show all three without having to scrolling down to see Reno.

The story makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever and I found myself saying "What?!" multiple times. The puzzle gameplay was pretty good and there were a variety of well designed puzzles through-out the game.

The battle system was fleshed out and mostly balanced with the exception of trying to win the last fight violently, which was quite a challenge and it took me three tries. I'd say I got really lucky the third time with a charm landing and sticking for multiple rounds.

I one-shot a creature early on while trying to 'weaken' it and at that point I decided to just fight creatures going forward. I started out doing a 'wholesome' run however I ended up beating the game with a "Noxious Ending".

I think that you've done a pretty decent job at making a game jam project and you should be proud. Well done on making it to round three of the IGMC 2022. I hope to see what you come up with in the future.

-Drifty

Things I liked:

• Cute sprite art
• Clever battle system concept where you can choose to kill enemies or end the battle in a “wholesome” way
• Good music

Things I didn’t like:

• Bust art isn’t as cute as the sprites
• Grammar issues made it hard to enjoy the story

Overall a cute game with a cool concept.

Very cute! I enjoyed my time through it. The game did feel a little toothless, combat wasn't very dangerous and the dialogue told me what to do most of the time, but I wanted to see what happened by the end and I wanted to make sure everyone got out by the end.

The word "wholesome" was rather losing all meaning in my mind by the end, admittedly, but that's mostly personal taste. If you liked writing it, then stick with it!

This is my favorite game so far that I've played in the IGMC. Everything from art to music to overall gameplay. It all just... fit. I really liked the clear amount of care that went into this and you should feel really proud of it! 5/5!!!

First thing I noticed are the adorable arts! Really digging them <3 I also like the persuasion mechanic. Made the game more adorable.

After finishing the game, all I could say is that it is indeed wholesome. Everything about it is so wholesome! Very nice game as well <3

Amazing game, I love it :)

Wooooow! This looks great!