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A jam submission

ThumelaView game page

Returning from the Brink
Submitted by CrissOle (@olsencriss) — 1 day, 8 hours before the deadline
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Thumela's itch.io page

Categories Your Team is Eligible for
Narrative, hobbyist, 48 hour.

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Comments

Submitted

It's not necessary for interactive fiction to have images. Don't feel pressured to do that. I like to experiment for my own reasons and because what I'm doing in some cases are early experiments in pushing boundaries for later but if it's not something you're comfortable with then don't feel like you have to. There are specific kinds of people who play interactive fiction games and they want to interact with a good story.

This has a good story. It was a bit difficult for me to read in places because I'm a vegetarian and theoretical animal pacifist but I understand that this is fiction so I just pushed through those bits. I enjoyed the rest and it was cool to have something infused with South African culture.

I did not like the animated text. I found it distracting. There are ways that it can be implemented better and it enhances the text and I know that's what you were going for but it didn't work for me. "Follow" was particularly frustrating and I can imagine that there are some people who would find it impossible to click because they don't have much dexterity. (Also, I wonder how blind gamers would experience that text moving around.)

On the whole though this was good and I really liked the ending.

Some technical points - make a link at the end that goes back to the first passage so it's easy to play again for those who want to. I ended up stuck with a session cookie that wouldn't let me restart the game when I refreshed the tab and I had to close the tab and open a new one to be able to restart the game. I'd also suggest making your visited links the same colour as your fresh clickable links as otherwise it hints at where you've been in the story already.

Also, I know what LifeOnGaming Studios was talking about with the Grootslang returning. I think it goes like this. Start game. Rise. Wait. Stab. Go right down the dark tunnel. Go further. Return. Grootslang is alive again. In fact, any time you go right and come back it seems to come back to life.

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for the play and feedback!


I see the loop and wanted it to be an imagened death but didn't voice that clearly enough 😨


I also wanted to have an 'animation off' for accessibility but just didn't get there.


Thanks again 😀

Submitted

Really well written, a great short story with vivid detail. I love it.
The text effects were really imaginative and well executed, on occasion they would distrupt the flow of reading, for example when widening the kerning, the text would wrap around to the next line, then when resetting the paragraph would jump. I really like the effect though so maybe if there was a way to turn off auto formatting for that section?

Other than that, I can highly recommend it, will definitely share it to a couple of my friends to check out :) Good job

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for playing and I'm super stoked you enjoyed it!


I was in two minds about that animation but liked how it linked with having a strained mind, like not being able to think straight like Ilembe. 


I'll work on some more fixes in the next few weeks so it's not solid.


Thanks again 😀

Submitted

Reading is not a great skill of mine, but despite it you presented a good well written story.

The text effects were mostly beautiful, though sometimes they make it really hard to read.

and sometimes the buttons are slow to show up, perhaps make the buttons or the presentation speed up if the mouse is clicked.

Nice touch of African mythology, I feel myself inspired, Might delve into it myself in future dev ventures.

This game reminded me of the dreams section in the game "Lost Odyssey",


Developer

Thanks so much for giving it a play. I was quite torn when it came to timing. Initially I had it set up much quicker, like for the death of the Grootslang. I slowed it down to try and give the player the same feeling as the character, waiting in uncertainty.


Thanks also for the recommendation, I'll definitely check it out this weekend!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the animated text and effects. Interesting twist on a simple text based game.

Developer

Thanks so much for playing!

Host(+1)

Hi! Just a reminder of this rule: " To be eligible to win any of the prizes, your team has to play and give feedback to five other entries by Monday, 5th October 2020". 

So if you haven't done it yet, you still have the rest of this weekend and Monday to give your feedback!

Submitted (1 edit)

Cool story and interesting use of text animation to bring it to life!

I'm not a huge fan of reading so it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish.

My only suggestion would be to add simple images to go with the text to add to the story.

But all round good job! :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for playing!

I was quite torn about graphics/images. I suppose it is a reading thing, but I wanted the player to see it in their mind and not force them into what I see in my mind... if that makes sense...

But with the right art I suppose that wouldn't be an issue. Such a good one to think about. 

Thanks again!