Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• Gameplay: Gameplay is fine. Some controls and interactions are a little wonky, and being stuck with the zombie as a threat doesn't feel great. Creativity & Innovation: I'm not sure I see much for creativity or interesting application of the jam theme. Theme Adherence: With the theme of building connections, I'm not sure I see a strong adherence, unless the building is the number from the assets to undo the lock? Playability & User Experience: The game largely runs smoothly and well, aside from the hiccups when text is on screen. Art and Design: Simplistic and communicative pixel art style. The music is a solid choice and fit the setting elements. Overall Fun Factor: Fun is a pretty subjective term, but I don't feel like your game was designed with that in mind, and instead is focused on other forms of player validation/relief. It's not a bad or wrong approach per say, but it is different than being "fun". As an overall comment: In escape rooms, how information is presented to players is super important, and that's I think the biggest issue tele vision runs into. Figuring out the code for the safe was far from intuitive, which detracts from the player experience since you add in an element of imminent death. Escape rooms are timeboxed for sure, but in a way that no individual portion has a timer, so players can make up time in other areas. And you have elements of that approach, but the (fairly fast) zombie throws that off, as it becomes difficult to get enough distance between the player and the zombie to allow enough time for the player to process/think about the combination before getting a game over. The sweet spot for timing would be to have enough time for a player to read/process the combination lock, and input 1 attempt. This is compounded by the fact that the lighting is limited and the lock takes up a large portion of the visible screen, so the threat factor can't be reactively responded to through player control, but has to be explicitly predicatively reacted to.​ With all of that said, this is a very solid submission, which is why I'm able to dive a bit more into specifics of where the weak points are, and there are a lot of ways to resolve these types of issues. It could be slowing the zombie down, not relying on dialogue from the TV, the zombie only being in the way or being able to move the player, or being able to trap the zombie as some basic examples. It's also worth considering that adding in "lose" conditions mid game is akin to misleading players, which I'd generally recommend staying away from. (Basically, in this you present the lose condition as run out of time, and then mid game you have to run from a zombie who just kills you) ​Great job, and keep up the good work.