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Marginal Adventurer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme: How well does the game capture the theme? | #7 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Anticipation: How excited are you to play this game? | #40 | 2.333 | 2.333 |
| Format and Grammar: Does it look like a finished product? | #59 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Which die/dice is at the core of the game?
It's a d100/2d10 game
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Comments
I wanted to like this game so bad, it hurts that it does not feel finished at all.
Visually, it's as default as it can get. It even uses Calibri. I like how printer friendly the layout is, but it is just not pleasant to look at. There are no icons, no visual identity in any meaning of the word. And I have honestly no idea why I was supposed to draw the waterline over the last page of the rules? Drawing over the text didn't seem to serve any gameplay purpose.
Continuing a bit on critiquing the layout, even the first paragraph still has "page xxx" as placeholder in it. All the text is in the same monotone font (no headings, subheadings, emphasis with bold or italic, etc.), this reads like the first draft of something.
In terms of structure, this was literally unplayable for me. I read through all six pages and could not figure out what the game loop was supposed to be.
And as an aside, the game uses d100/2d10 interchangeably on page five, when the waterline navigation physically cannot be played with 1d100. It's not a big issue, it just signifies a lack of eye for details.So yea, I did not play Marginal Adventurer, could not play Marginal Adventurer, and that's a shame.
I love the writing style with the intermittent self-awareness and dry humor. I love the physicality of it. It uses only 1 (or arguably 2) types of dice. I read through the first page and was hooked like with not a lot of other entries to this jam. But as a I continued reading, I sadly got increasingly lost where anything in the game was going, and that did not clear up in any capacity.
I appreciate you taking the time to read my game, but I really recommend you check out the game page. As detailed there, this game is also an entry to "Minimalist TTRPG Jam" which encouraged specifically the use of the most basic of layouts possible (I entered it into "Lesser Loved Dice TTRPG Jam" as well because the jam periods overlapped nicely and this jam specifically encouraged entering games that were not created for this jam alone). The page xxx thing is on me, a thing I missed and
will correct.I've already corrected it.2d10 and 1d100 is used interchangably because a lot of people use 2d10 as a d100. It doesn't matter if it's two dice or one because the system still works. The lines you draw simply divide your paper in four parts which make the mechanic possible. Both top parts indicate up, both left parts indicate left, both bottom parts indicate down and both right parts indicate right. Compare:
Oh damn I completely forgot about the fact that not the physical dice but the tens and ones positions determine direction, that's on me ^^'
But regarding the design criticisms, these are two different game jams. From the standpoint of expecting a regular ttrpg that uses lesser loved dice, it doesn't feel finished. If this were the minimalist game jam, I would've pointed out other things, but it's not