I liked how a box, circle, and and squares were tied to the theme of life. I think the creative theme being about life made the game more interesting and fun.
Music and colors were very nice and soothing. Sound effects from the falling objects added nice ambience.
The animation of opening and closing the box looks good. The audio works well when the black box interacts with other boxes. I can feel the fading part. The background keeps changing the color tells a vibe on it.
I like the game's theme, and the possibility that bad things would happen increases as time progresses (as life ages.)
It was very straightforward and the instructions were transparent and not confusing.
*Really* strong concept and theme. The idea of playing through life as a collection of good and bad events with shapes is imaginative, creative, and really does justice to the idea you can tell a story with minimalism. Yours was definitely the most interesting and ambitious idea of the group.
The metaphor, the music and the color changing are the most fancinating parts to me. The metaphor of life can make the player think of their lives: should we get more experience in our life at the risk of being hurt sometime? Or we may be cautious about every choice we make and enjoy the peace of our lives?
The game did very well on sound effects. The box open, items drop and background music are all blending very nicely together. I really like the echo bell sound when object hits the box. The mechanic of the game is simple and very easy to play. The sliding of the box with a small details of flying out when open and close create a good feel to the game, instead of just straight up boring sliding. The game idea is very unique and creative, just open or close the box to catch falling objects. The game physic demonstrates well with ball rolling on uneven surface and square falls flat when touching the ground.
The effects: gradient color changing. The rendering is also good.
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What could this game have done better?
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The game controls seem a bit slow. Sometimes when I pressed space bar I could not open or close the box and had to press again. The spawning of squares and circles seemed random and I have liked more circles because everyone likes winning.
The forced delay between open and close was a little frustrating. In some ways, feels more like an art installation than a game, simply because of mechanical simplicity and randomness of experience. Difficult to get better or do well at consistently.
The starting menu overflows the whole screen. I think it might be the issue that you chose the fixed pixel size of the font. If using scale of the screen in font, it would feel better. Plus, using a beautiful font type can make the whole scene be fancier.
I feel like the action of closing and opening the box can be designed better so that the lid doesn't have to be always on one side of the box.
Make the cover of the box move faster when pressing space. It makes it impossible for the player to get a positive score.
This game has a really strong idea, but pretty bad execution? A minimalist game, especially a narrative one, wants to tell its story and tutorialize through it's mechanics. After the first time I played this game I still had no idea what was going on or what I was supposed to be doing, at least until I heard you explain it. Like the point meter was just going up and down and I could not have told you why, let alone what the things were supposed to be representing. Ideally, there would have been a mini-tutorial at the start of the game, dropping a single one of each block to 'show' what they do to the player, as well as a thematically appropriate sound effect indicating 'auspicious' or 'inauspicious'.
Without explanation the common players may feel hard to understand its metaphor of life. Maybe they should add more elements to make it more obvious.
The game can be improved with more clear indication of what effect each items have on the gameplay such as what the white ball, red and black square do. Everything just fall down on the box together in a very fast pace then the score is quickly calculated which leave player confused about the purpose of the game and the scoring system. The constant falling speed can be improved with more organic and spontaneous velocity. Also the speed of the box lid should respond faster when spacebar is click such as box open then close half way of open instead of waiting for the lid to fully slide open.
The gameplay is very confusing. I kind get it after seeing their presentation. They're trying to deliver a 'message' but there's probably room of improvement of both the connection between the message and the gameplay, and the message it self.
Comments
What did this game do well?
****************************
I liked how a box, circle, and and squares were tied to the theme of life. I think the creative theme being about life made the game more interesting and fun.
Music and colors were very nice and soothing. Sound effects from the falling objects added nice ambience.
The animation of opening and closing the box looks good. The audio works well when the black box interacts with other boxes. I can feel the fading part. The background keeps changing the color tells a vibe on it.
I like the game's theme, and the possibility that bad things would happen increases as time progresses (as life ages.)
It was very straightforward and the instructions were transparent and not confusing.
*Really* strong concept and theme. The idea of playing through life as a collection of good and bad events with shapes is imaginative, creative, and really does justice to the idea you can tell a story with minimalism. Yours was definitely the most interesting and ambitious idea of the group.
The metaphor, the music and the color changing are the most fancinating parts to me. The metaphor of life can make the player think of their lives: should we get more experience in our life at the risk of being hurt sometime? Or we may be cautious about every choice we make and enjoy the peace of our lives?
The game did very well on sound effects. The box open, items drop and background music are all blending very nicely together. I really like the echo bell sound when object hits the box. The mechanic of the game is simple and very easy to play. The sliding of the box with a small details of flying out when open and close create a good feel to the game, instead of just straight up boring sliding. The game idea is very unique and creative, just open or close the box to catch falling objects. The game physic demonstrates well with ball rolling on uneven surface and square falls flat when touching the ground.
The effects: gradient color changing. The rendering is also good.
========================================
What could this game have done better?
****************************
The game controls seem a bit slow. Sometimes when I pressed space bar I could not open or close the box and had to press again. The spawning of squares and circles seemed random and I have liked more circles because everyone likes winning.
The forced delay between open and close was a little frustrating. In some ways, feels more like an art installation than a game, simply because of mechanical simplicity and randomness of experience. Difficult to get better or do well at consistently.
The starting menu overflows the whole screen. I think it might be the issue that you chose the fixed pixel size of the font. If using scale of the screen in font, it would feel better. Plus, using a beautiful font type can make the whole scene be fancier.
I feel like the action of closing and opening the box can be designed better so that the lid doesn't have to be always on one side of the box.
Make the cover of the box move faster when pressing space. It makes it impossible for the player to get a positive score.
This game has a really strong idea, but pretty bad execution? A minimalist game, especially a narrative one, wants to tell its story and tutorialize through it's mechanics. After the first time I played this game I still had no idea what was going on or what I was supposed to be doing, at least until I heard you explain it. Like the point meter was just going up and down and I could not have told you why, let alone what the things were supposed to be representing. Ideally, there would have been a mini-tutorial at the start of the game, dropping a single one of each block to 'show' what they do to the player, as well as a thematically appropriate sound effect indicating 'auspicious' or 'inauspicious'.
Without explanation the common players may feel hard to understand its metaphor of life. Maybe they should add more elements to make it more obvious.
The game can be improved with more clear indication of what effect each items have on the gameplay such as what the white ball, red and black square do. Everything just fall down on the box together in a very fast pace then the score is quickly calculated which leave player confused about the purpose of the game and the scoring system. The constant falling speed can be improved with more organic and spontaneous velocity. Also the speed of the box lid should respond faster when spacebar is click such as box open then close half way of open instead of waiting for the lid to fully slide open.
The gameplay is very confusing. I kind get it after seeing their presentation. They're trying to deliver a 'message' but there's probably room of improvement of both the connection between the message and the gameplay, and the message it self.