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A jam submission

Waiting for the Day TrainView game page

Catch the day train before it leaves at noon!
Submitted by Dee Cooke (@dee_cooke) — 3 hours, 57 minutes before the deadline
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Waiting for the Day Train's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation (Text, Graphics & Sound)#23.8753.875
Story (Plot, Setting & Objective)#73.4173.417
Writing (General Quality)#93.2503.250
Overall Rating#103.0833.083
Help, Hints and/or Instructions#103.0003.000
Implementation#123.0003.000
Puzzles#132.7922.792

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Overview of Game
Catch the day train before it's too late to escape the night world forever!

Requirements to Play
No extra software needed.

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Comments

(+1)

This is a game of contrasts. The introduction is beautifully written and illustrated with pixel art, while the main game is sparsely written and illustrated with photographs.  Two very different fonts are used for the intro and the main game.

I preferred the more lavish writing, the more legible font and the photographs. It's clear that the author was inspired by the landscape in the photos and it was interesting to play a game based around a real place. I'd like to visit it myself!

The game is short and the puzzles fairly easy, with the exception of one where I had the right idea but couldn't guess the right syntax. There were a few things I didn't have time to do in the endgame, so I will be playing it again. Overall it was a very pleasant experience.

Developer

Thanks for playing and for your feedback - I'm glad you enjoyed it!  Several people have stated that they preferred the descriptive intro style to the sparseness of the day world descriptions, so I may make the day world more descriptive in a future release.

(+1)

The minimal style works too, but you can certainly write, so I'd love to see a version with more detailed descriptions!

Submitted(+1)

Nice atmosphere, and I like the illustrations, but oh so simple and so short.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback :)

(+3)

A very short game, less than 20 minutes long.

The framing story is very beautiful, but mostly comes through cutscenes, with only a few touches in the action itself (such as the response to examining oneself, or to taking the pole).

Most of the game sticks to sparse, utilitarian descriptions. This strikes me as the wrong choice: that premise would lend itself better to lavish scenery and slow discovery of lore about the spirits: we never do find out very much about them, or how the various obstacles relate to their plots.

This might be due to interface constraints: an image and the status bar take up most of the screen, leaving little room for text, and the scrollback is frequently cleared. I often found this frustrating.

In contrast, the writing style of the intro and outro is lovely, and matches the beautiful art perfectly. However, the font is hard to read, and the line height should be higher (150% looks good on my screen).

Most of the puzzles are somewhat too simple and lock-and-key. Multi-step puzzles that require understanding the setting would be more fun and improve immersion. I loved the river, and the cat puzzle was also a good one.

The game is quite badly in need of synonyms: “cat” for “wildcat”, “birds” for “magpies”, “stone” for “outcrop”. This is especially frustrating since Adventuron’s default messages for unrecognised tokens make it unclear whether my action was uninteresting, or used the wrong noun.

The music is quite nice, but quickly grows repetitive.

Excellent response to “xyzzy”, but no response for trying to pet the cat.

Developer

Thanks for your comments!  Lots of things to consider for my next update.

(+2)

Gratifying and exciting game. I esp. liked the switch in art style between the intro and the main game.

Developer

Really glad you enjoyed it! :)

Submitted

I think there's a bug with Safari: For me, no more pictures are loaded after the intro. 

With Chrome, however, everything works as far as I can see : )

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the heads-up.  I suspect it may be a Safari/Adventuron issue so not fixable just now, but I'll note it on the game page.

Submitted(+1)

Yes, unfortunately many frameworks have compatibility problems with Safari and Chrome - it's like Internet Explorer all over again...