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A jam submission

Quill ServiceView game page

Do your best to serve beverages to a rowdy crowd at HEAT
Submitted by Opa-Opa (@opaopa13) — 4 minutes, 43 seconds before the deadline
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Play twine

Quill Service's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Narrative#123.6514.000
Horny#133.5603.900
Kink#133.2863.600
Stealth#252.2822.500
Harmony#273.0123.300
Overall#282.6572.911
Play#302.4652.700
Novelty#322.5562.800
Aesthetic#391.9172.100
Sound#391.1871.300

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Early work
No early work! I started on the 26th, oops,

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Comments

Host

this is the only narrative game i have ever read on stream in its entirety and i think that says it all.  bravo, opa.  bravopa.  can't wait to dunk on quill even more when this is finished

if i had to give this a letter grade i would go with P

Submitted

Play: It's a twine game, so the gameplay comes down to reading and clicking. Not a genre for everyone, but I'm a fan. I'll use the Narrative section to talk more at length about the text. I liked the way the game was set up- instead of progressing through a set story, you had a 'hub' node you returned to to check your status. I'm looking forward to see how this evolves over time. Currently, you can see your character's composure and if you have a drink on hand, but the bar description at the top is promising. Different characters available during different bar happenings, perhaps? 

Aesthetic: It's a twine game, so it looks like one. Interestingly, this is the second twine game I've seen that looks like this- I wasn't previously aware that it could export projects that looked like this by default. Does it depend on the language you use? (Harlowe vs Sugarcube vs etc etc...) I have the same criticism towards this as I do with the other one: try and add a couple different color settings if possible, for accessibility, and change the font to something a little less default, for character.

Sound: I checked, and I'm pretty sure there's no sound. ...which is great, because I can't listen to any sound right now anyways lol.

Narrative: A visual novel lives and dies by words. I'll use this section to talk both about the content of the text- the story, the characters, etc- and the quality of the text- grammar, tone, command of the language, etc- because they're both equally important. In a game with lots of visuals, a couple weird phrasings don't make too much of an impact, but when it's just the text, any mistakes stick out like a sore thumb. Thankfully, the text here is very well-written. I didn't catch any basic mistakes, and the phrasing was overall solid. The 'game language' was also clear and helpful, and the information in the hub node was laid out well. The dialogue was laid out with thought and care, and there's obviously a lot of logic going on behind the scenes that can't be particularly simple. Regarding the story... I'll admit it, I don't know shit about bars. I'm only a legal adult as of relatively recently- in my country I still can't drink for a couple more birthdays (guess where lol) and I'm a complete and utter square so I have no intention of sneaking into one anytime soon lol. So I can't speak for accuracy, but I doubt that's what you were going with. The setting is exaggerated, obviously, but it takes itself seriously and never misses a beat, so you're never taken out of the world. Also, love the diverse cast. Are pictures available anywhere? I'd like to know, for example, more about what the protagonist looks like. I know they're equine, but that's about it. Horse? Giraffe? Zebra? Etc?

Horny: Very.

Kink: Another 'finally, something different' game. Not as out there as that other one, but I'm glad that we've got a wide range of people here. I don't find omorashi personally appealing, but you're clearly a skilled writer, and just from reading the scene I can see why people are into this. I'm legally obligated by my own persona to insert a halfhearted complaint about furries here, but tbh furries allow for cooler character design and this appears to be part of that big established universe thing mentioned in some of your other projects (which, btw, looks super cool?) so more power to you.

Stealth: Two stars, because you need more than the thumbnail to know what you're getting into. That is above average (not necessarily a bad thing, just a thing).

Harmony and Novelty: Harmony scores higher than novelty, because while it's got cool stuff going on, it is also just a twine game, and there are only so much boundaries you can push with twine within the time limit of a game jam without being Completely Fucking Bonkers. It's actually got a similar mechanic to a twine project I've been poking around with for a while- the whole 'events in story nodes affect persistent stats and also you loop back around to one status location a lot' deal- and it pulls it off very well. I'll definitely look to this as a model if/when I get back into that project again.

Final Thoughts: So sorry this took so long! :( I go 'okay, reviewing these games is a big task, but I really enjoy it, and it can easily be broken down into subtasks, so if I take it a little bit at a time, I can get it done!' and my brain goes 'hmm..... what if we watched a four hour video of some dude playing super mario odyssey and ate an irresponsible amount of pineapple instead' and I am not strong enough yet to tell it otherwise. That being said, if I can free up braincells, I'm totally checking out your other projects and that floraverse website, they all look so cool! (Especially that Rhythm Doctor level... ooh I am such a sucker for Rhythm Doctor.) Thank you so much for your nice comment on my game! It's late at night, so I hope this is at least somewhat comprehensible! 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the detailed reply! Let me see...

Play: The eventual goal for the game is to have at least nine possible patrons, and to have a random five chosen for any particular playthrough. I've already put in some work to make it easier to add new characters by creating generic passages which handle the behind-the-scenes mechanics before forwarding the player onto the appropriate text, so I'm not recreating the same logic over and over again.

Aesthetic: Yeah, this is the default style for Sugarcube! And yeah, that's the kind of thing I like to do for polished works, but this time around I had to focus on the writing/mechanics.

Sound: No sound! I could throw a song in there maybe for the full version.

Narrative: I'm not much of a bar-goer myself, aha. The goal for the final game is to include a little illustration for the main characters and the patrons! The main character is a combination of Floraverse species: he's an "okopy" (like "okapi") since he's a mix between a uniqorn and a turf tiger. So think a unicorn with stripes. Uniqorns have doppelgangers, which is where the "kopy" in "okopy" comes from. There's a good sample of art of him here: https://twitter.com/Opaopa13/status/1223259692287299584

Horny: Indeed.

Kink: Yeah, I know it's off-putting to some, so I made sure to include an option to filter it out. I'd like to expand this for the full game; e.g., when I have nine characters, I can let players who are uncomfortable with verbal degradation filter out Vexx as a possible patron. And yeah, this game is set in the world of Floraverse! You can read the webcomic or play games set in Floraverse... in addition to the games published under my account, I'm also the writer for Practice Run and one-half of the writing team for the Alice's Day Off demo.

Harmony and Novelty: Yeah, scope is important! The concept started out as a Bitsy game, aha. Twine and Bitsy are my favorite mediums for avoiding scope creep... except for the (unpublished) game I made that embeds mini-Bitsy games into a Twine project, aha. I hope your own project turns out well, good luck!!

Submitted(+1)

Quill's submissive personality comes through really well in the little mid-dialogue reactions. I didn't realize that some of the characters were previously established before I read the comments. That's pretty cool, I like universes that span multiple works.

Pretty crazy that everything was done in just two days! That couldn't have been easy.

Developer(+1)

Thank you! And yeah, it's been fun developing the universe! There's a collection that gathers them here: https://floraverse.itch.io/

Of particular interest may be Cherry Kisses (NSFW), which includes Florbet and Quill as customers. There's also Alice's Day Off (NSFW), which has no overlap in characters with Quill Service, but which I did half the writing for, and which does have character overlap with Cherry Kisses. And then there's Spank Quill (NSFW), which I wrote, and which you can probably guess the theme of. I'll mention Practice Run (SFW) too, since I did the writing for that.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted

Nice story! I think this has a potential to so somewhere! Maybe perhaps a love affair or hot person comes in the main character is attracted to??

Developer

Thank! I've been working on a "full release" version that will include more characters. Quill definitely has a pre-existing relationship with Florbet at the bar. I'm glad it still read well even for people who are unfamiliar with the characters already!

(You might want to check out Cherry Kisses, by eevee, who runs these jams. Florbet and Quill both show up as customers!)

Submitted(+1)

Its very well-written and captures the sort of frustration one might feel when dealing with rowdy clients, as well as the excitement one might feel if they enjoy~~ said rowdy clients.  

Developer

Thank you! I'm planning to add more patrons, for a greater variety of experiences!