I really enjoyed this game! The art style and music is especially top notch! The atmosphere is what really sold it for me. It feels like watching a ghibli movie, almost. There's a serenity to it that I really enjoyed. I agree with others that it's lacking a "hook" but I don't think that's a bad thing. It sort adds to the relaxed vibe to the game. Do you have any plans to add more to it?
Play game
Masaki's Way of Saving The World's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #39 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Overall | #114 | 2.875 | 2.875 |
| Engagement | #124 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Gameplay | #140 | 2.250 | 2.250 |
| Theme | #158 | 2.250 | 2.250 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
We are so happy you enjoyed our game!! We put a lot into the art, with us being mostly illustrators and all.
Being compared to a ghibli movie is the biggest compliment we have ever gotten, thank you so much!!
We did get lots of good feedback about how the progression of the story went and we are hoping to improve on that in the next few months. It mostly means making the days a tad bit longer and adding a few things like new maps and improvements on the existing ones.
I need to hire a sleepy boy now!
That's a pretty impressive entry for your first ever game, since the artstyle was pretty good looking that fits very well with the story vibes - except the character sprites that were more pixelated.
This game does very well something that some newbie developers (and sometimes expert ones) forget to do: pacing and personality during dialogues. Each scene didn't feel to overstay its welcome (there were some that went a dialoguebox or two too long in my opinion, but it's not such big of a deal), with some little events that helped keep the player attention just enough (eg: Masaki falling asleep in a scene). And also you could see the characters personality pretty well in the writing of the dialogues - that helped a lot to keep my attention up and not get bored.
The story is... very simple. It felt right for the cozyness of the artstyle and dialogues, but I have to say that the story was lacking any "hook", something that would make the player look forward to the next events. It's probably the only main problem I could see in the game (I did not feel particularly engrossed to the game and not really curious of what would happen next) - but seeing it as a cozy game, I'm not even sure if that's a problem at all for this game specifically, but it's surely a thing to keep in mind while making games.
After all, again, pretty good work for a first game. Masaki the sleepy boy is so cute.
Here's the VOD:
Submitted
Dodge at NOWHi Waldorf, thank you for your comment! It was really great seeing you play our game on stream! We really appreciate your feedback!
Writing the characters, having them fleshed out, and making the art has been some of my favorite parts of making this game with Shira, and I'm really glad that those have left a good impression. We definitely realized too late that the character pixel sprites stand out in an odd way due to a zoom issue, so that is definitely something we will plan around better in the future.
We did attempt to make a hook, but I think we need to do a little rearranging/tightening up of how the game flows to make that hook a bit more clear. You did hit an earlier ending that cut the game's story short, so that's something we also realize we need to be aware of with our writing and pacing. (Back to the writing documents for us, haha)
Thank you for your comments and feedback! I'm so glad you liked Masaki as well, it was so much fun seeing this sleepy guy come to life haha ;w;
Really good and relaxing art style! Gameplay was super simple though and the story wasn't my kind of story. Anyway, good job.
Submitted
Cokaine Polar BearI didn't really get the story, but the art kept me hooked. Was it based on a folk tale?
Overall, a relaxing game to play with beautiful visual aesthetics.
Submitted
Mental Physics
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.