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A Birthday Surprise's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme Interpretation | #1 | 4.353 | 4.353 |
| Polish | #1 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.151 | 4.151 |
| Audio | #3 | 3.706 | 3.706 |
| Aesthetics | #3 | 4.647 | 4.647 |
| Engagement/Fun | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Originality/Creativity | #4 | 4.294 | 4.294 |
| Magical Girl Concept | #5 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the Magical Girl Genre?
Contains 3 Magical Girls. The protagonist, Tama, battle nightmares with a magic paintbrush.
Which theme(s) do you pick?
Surprise
How does your game fit those theme(s)?
Tama is surprise to find out today is her girlfriend's birthday. In turn, she wants to surprise Paisley with a great present. Depending on how the day goes, the player may also be in for a surprise at the "end" of it all...
Were the assets for your game made during the jam? Elaborate as you see fit.
All art was created for this jam. Most art assets were created during the jam period, but a handful were started after the theme reveal.
All music is by Eric Matyas (www.soundimage.org), from their royalty free collection. SFX were mostly reused from previous jams.
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Comments
Very great game. A lot of options for a "simple" VN.
The option to fight enemies does not only not reward you for doing so, but it also punishes you for not going straight to the correct spots. This would need some rebalancing.
Overall great job.
Thanks for playing! It was supposed to be a simple visual novel, but I lost track of that play in the first week of development or so.
Agreed on the combat. I had more planned there, but it got cut due to running out of time. As it stands, it's basically an obstacle, and you're only meant to fight while trying to uncover the correct sequence of gifts. But you're completely right, it needs another look. I appreciate the feedback, thanks!
A very well executed concept and game! I think the writing was endearing and easy for a first time player to understand the context of the characters (seems like there's a whole series that I haven't played yet). I really enjoyed the combat scenes and trying to paint the strokes in a way to hit everything in one swipe, even if it didn't actually change too much in the long term. It did make the whole beginning scene before you could start the gift searching part a bit tedious, although having some sections you have to skip a couple of times isn't too unfamiliar for visual novels. The good ending was very cute, and felt like it was worth the effort.
Thanks so much for playing! Glad you were able to jump into the story... this is something that I'm always worried about considering this is an ever-building series.
I've gotten a lot of feedback about the combat. This is an area I'd like to revisit and improve in a future game. I had more planned for it, but unfortunately I was on a pretty tight schedule during this jam, so something had to get paired back.
I happy you were able to reach and enjoy the true ending! Thanks again for playing. :)
Tama, you could have talked to her in a day or two, you didn't have to LITERALLY REVERSE TIME! On a serious note, your characters are always so endearing, it's great. A little embarrassing but I didn't realize how to skip until my third playthrough, I kept clicking too fast for the tutorial icon to show up. I really like the overall game concept, I was expecting a straightforward visual novel and was pleasantly surprised to see the time management element appear. I like the element of added tension provided by the combat, but it's a bit of a shame that fighting even one of them seems to lock you out of the best ending. I was pretty proud that I managed to already find the solution by my third playthrough then lock in the correct sequence on the fifth. Got a bit addicted to trying to see as much dialog as I could afterwards, and I conclude: Paisley, you're hard as heck to shop for! (Yes, I know that's the point.) Great work!
Thanks so much for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed my weird little VN experiment. It was originally going to be a normal VN, but I decided to change it up part way through development. I agree that I probably should have found a way to allow at least 1 combat encounter and still get the good end, since the nightmare attacks are randomized and could make things quite difficult if you have bad luck. I unfortunately was really tight on time making this game, so it didn't get as much balancing and polish as I might have liked.
I hadn't considered that a player might totally miss the skip function by clicking through the text rapidly! It is mentioned on the instructions, but for such a simple control set I can understand players skipping the instructions. I'll have to think of adding a better call-out for that function, maybe at the start of each loop?
I appreciate your feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed playing! Thanks so much for sticking with this series! More to come soon, schedule willing...
As usual, I saved the ShibeyFaceGames title for last. I don't want to say I'm saving the best for last, but I like to end on a high note and for the most part the Basin Lake games have all been excellent.
There's definitely a bit of roughness around the edges compared to some of the previous titles in the series. There's two very different art styles in use. Skipping through the third of the dialogue that's the same on subsequent runs is annoying. The music doesn't loop properly. The combat is basically just spamming clicks (it feels like you should click and drag to paint, but that's not how it works). The first time I played, fighting nightmares didn't actually run the clock down.
Of course, "rough by ShibeyFaceGames" standards still means a very well made, highly polished game. Though it suffers a bit from style mismatch, the art is still fantastic. The music is still great. There weren't any game breaking bugs, and the mechanics all worked well. I'm nitpicking about a good game that isn't quite perfect, not breaking down the major flaws of a seriously flawed one.
Despite or maybe because of the limited scope, I think this game has some of the best and most creative design in the Basin Lake series. Overall, it reminds me of some old flash games, but with some new elements I haven't seen before. Having to manage time and balance visting locations with fighting monsters is a great core mechanic. The visual indicators of good/bad interactions are a great help. The narrative integration of repeating to find the golden path into a groundhog day loop, with different title screens, was a great addition.
I liked the premise of the story, but I think it was a little on the sticky sweet side for me. I do like the Tama/Paisley romance in general, though. I also wasn't a fan of dancing around the issue with Paisley's mother rather than just throwing up a content warning and stating it outright (I'm still not 100% sure I interpreted this scene correctly).
It's definitely a downscope from previous titles, but oddly enough, I don't think it's a downgrade. It's not perfect, it's clear some issues stem from limited development time, but I think the more constrained design worked really well overall.
Thanks for playing, as always, and for the thorough feedback! Glad you enjoyed this smaller entry into the series.
A couple specific replies:
Thanks again! I really appreciate the time you put into all this feedback, it's very helpful!
Honestly I'd love to see more smaller, more experimental entries in the Basin Lake series going forward. I don't know if all of them will work out, but I think there's room to explore with less risk there.
I do not enjoy yuri stuffs very much, but I'm not going to judge based on that. In fact despite not enjoying the genre very much, I enjoy the rest of the game.
How the story is integrated very well into the mechanics is just awesome. It's so immersive without the presence of a main menu; tho now that I think about it your recent games have been like that -- yeah this kind of thing is amazing imo lol and of course I loved the combat mechanics and time management mechanics too. Altho I think for the 'good ending' a little bit of luck is required for each playthrough as there is absolutely zero room for error and zero time to fight the random encounters to prevent any of the important spots from getting taken over (yeah this happened to me once).
The art, graphics, and music etc. are as always very well done; and this time the style is very creative.
With regards to the plot itself, outside the yuri stuffs, I really enjoyed the 'good ending' (SPOILER INCOMING for those who haven't got it yet) story about the... uh sorry I forgot her name it's kinda hard to remember... the tennis girl's bond with the dad and the background behind it. The way it is executed was nice too; this plot point has been somewhat hinted throughout the story and so when it was revealed it was like a big "Ooooh" moment -- I actually once got late and she actually disappeared and so it really hit lol
Overall it's good stuffs as always. My only complain is the lack of skip button for second and beyond playthroughs...
I'm glad you enjoyed the story despite the yuri elements. I'm also really glad you enjoyed the mechanics! I originally had planned a very conventional visual novel, on the border of being a kinetic novel. Against my better judgement (due to how busy I've been) I decided to gamble and try to do something a little different. I wasn't sure if players would enjoy it or not, but I'm glad to see most are enjoying it.
I agree that I should work on adding some kind of skip functionality in the future, but my time was super limited on this one, and a true skip function had the potential to add bugs that I wouldn't have time to fix... hopefully the faster-forward option eased the pain a little.
Thanks so much for playing, and your feedback! I appreciate it!
Pleasing presentation and a simple story - this, however, doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the novel as it compliments the necessity to replay for a better ending quite well. Furthermore, the battle and time-management systems were intriguing and unique - giving the novel a greater depth and personality. I don’t have much to comment on music and sounds, but they match with the tone of the story.
Great job!
Thanks so much for playing! Glad you enjoyed the battle and time management systems. I'm hoping to use this as prototype for something a bit longer, if I can find the time anyway.
The paintbrush battle system was pretty damn fun. Your game was pretty cool. I loved the graphic style of the characters too.
Thanks so much for playing! It's cool to hear you enjoyed the battle sections... I had planned to do more with those, but they were a victim of time constraints. Maybe I'll flesh that out in a future game... this one was more or less a prototype for a slightly longer game I have in mind.
Sometimes on the little guy it would go right through, but for the most part it was lots of fun. It would be cool to paint patterns that do more damage or something along that line.
The art in this game is great. Even if the game may be short, with my visual novel skill I could be here for a long time XD. I am getting closer but not quite there yet.
I think I have played this at least 6 times and still haven't got the good ending. If this was real I would have been dumped a long time ago...
Thanks so much for playing! Glad you like the art, as that's definitely where I sunk the bulk of my dev time for this one.
Hopefully you can hit the true-ending! If it starts to feel like "Air" (you know what I mean) feel free to ping me for hints, haha... But I feel like you'll be able to find it if you keep trying!
the game in one turn is short. but i would feel it's more for try and error in several turn to get the good ending. at least this is what i did. quite interesting. is it that fighting is not a must as long as I go places before it get destroyed? i know you run out of time but i still fell the game is made with effort, Good job.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and found the central gimmick to reach the true-end interesting.
You are correct about the fighting, it's not required, and in fact I believe you have to skip fighting on the map to reach the good ending. Fighting is more for the trial-and-error period where you are learning what shops and locations have which items. Admittedly, I had originally planned to do more with the fighting, and maybe even have Camilla show up on the map as an "enemy" but I ran out of time and had to simplify it quite a bit to hit the deadline.
The music doesn't seem to work in the itch client; only the sounds do. Everything works fine in the browser playable version though (using firefox).
The game feels a bit short, but enjoyable nonetheless. Not bad, for what was supposed to be a "simple visual novel".
Thanks for playing! Seems Construct 3 still has an issue with the Itch client... I've had that problem dating back to my Construct 2 games. Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix it... so browser is recommended! Thanks for letting me know though, maybe I'll make a note on the game page.
It's probably my shortest game to date (ignoring my weekly game jam submissions), but I'm glad you were able to enjoy it. Hopefully next jam I join, I won't be so bogged down with life responsibilities, hehe. This one did not line up well with my schedule.
I'm looking forward to trying your game and the others soon!