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Not Too Much!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Community's Voice | #17 | 3.943 | 3.943 |
Ranked from 35 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Creative Vision / Rationale / How Did You Incorporate the Theme
'Not Too Much!' is a short 2.5D RPG game with visual novel elements and puzzles centered around an action budget. It is set in the small village of Floraville, following Albert, the town's philanthropist, as he endeavours to help his fellow neighbours with their problems out of the kindness of his heart... - We decided to turn the classic generosity theme on its head and think about "generosity burnout" instead, focussing on how important it is to put yourself first sometimes and think of more constructive ways of helping others.
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Comments
incredible amount of polish in the art as well as UI, it's so pleasing to the eye; the day to night transition is brilliant, I did wonder if there was a way other than giving a circular mask for the player to be visible when trees got in the way, but cannot deny it did the job; I love the premise too, the idea of showing the price and weight of generosity is an important perspective! I did get stuck after a point; but there is enough here for me to come back and give it another shot!
Thank you for playing our game and for the feedback! I agree, many of us give without remembering to give back to ourselves after. It's incredibly important to maintain that cycle of replenishing the energy and kindness you expend on others. The circular mask was a feature that we enjoyed a lot when our programmer showed it to us, but now that you mention it it would be fun to explore some other ways to see through the trees!
We have some mention a softlock that doesn't seem to be the ones we've intentionally added, which we will be looking into when continuing, and hopefully this isn't the one you're referring to. But I hope you're able to beat it on your next attempt. Once again thank you for kind words and suggestions :)
I loved the Creativity you have put into the art style, good game!
Really liked the graphics and cute characters! I did find it very confusing though what main goal was. I also found a bug if you fix and pickup the lawnmower before talking to the lady, which broke the game and I couldn't interact with anything, so I had to close the game and restart. But otherwise really cute game!
Thanks for trying out our game! I've been seeing a potential hardlock mentioned but wasn't sure of the specifics, thank you for pointing it out, we'll be looking to fix that ASAP. I'm super glad you enjoyed it nonetheless and your feedback is much appreciated :D
You're welcome!
This game looks amazing!
wow this game was so cute !! i love the 2.5 perspective , the game looks so impressive and the characters were fun to talk to :3 i liked how different actions make time pass , that was very cool ... and all the animations omg !!! so detailed i am wow
Really cool art style, great job!
Thank you! Love the rat pic!!
This game is too much beautiful! Great work with the art 😍
So interesting, great job
Omg the artstyle is so stinkin' cute!~ Stella my beloved <3 Love the little character icons when they talk, and their little animations, it's all absolutely adorable~ The gameplay is also pretty engaging and I liked the music too. Overall fantastic work, kudos to your team!
Thank you so much!! I have to admit I was quite proud of Stella's design and she's a bit of a favourite between us and some friends for being The Silly. We really appreciate you checking out our game and I'm glad you enjoyed it, thank you once again for your feedback! (also love your Jinx pfp :D)
You should be, she's very adorable! Also "The Silly" ahhhhh, love that for her. Feel free to check out my team's game as well if you're interested, no pressure of course (also eyyyyyy, Jinx is my girl so I had to represent >:) )
(also YOUR SUNDAY ART (and really all your art) IS SO GOOD WHAT, I'm following your artstation right now)
HOLD UP YOU'RE A STAR RAIL PLAYER TOO?? thank you so much I feel so ;;w;; it's definitely my proudest piece to date! And don't worry, I have every intention of playing I promise! Catch me in your comments tomorrow :3c
HELL YEAH, been slacking on the recent update bc of the game jam that I got spoiled on some stuff but what can ya do 🫠 Just sitting patiently now ‘till the Phainon banner drops haha. But Sunday’s one of my favorites for probably very obvious reasons pfffft. And sounds good, no rush!
Ooh noooo same ;w; I managed to play it on one of the weekends because I forced myself to take a break after crunching a bit lol.. I'm going for phainon too!! Wait do you have a place I could maybe dm you to talk about the game? :o if you have a discord you're welcome to add me! It's watersthancred
I do! Lemme add you real quick!
Great work on this game. The art, animations, and aesthetics are pretty good for a game jam. Gives a really good harvest moon vibe. The music is great too. That's impressive how much you were able to deliver for a game jam. Thanks for sharing!
Lovely and short story, I loved the artstyle and the unique character designs! One thing is I kept getting softlocked on fences in the web build, I tried windows too and the same thing happened. There also seems to be some weird issue with the grass and fences (from side on) visually. Apart from that, great game!!
A heartfelt short story and creative interpretation on generosity. This game is visually stunning and I love the art style and how polished the game looks. I only wish that the music and sound design could have been pushed more to be more interactive and that you dug deeper into exploring "generosity burnout" further with gameplay mechanics.
The artstyle is so cute!! I am in love with Hektor too. Such a a strong style and fun RPG!
I'm so glad you enjoy our game, thank you Aurora! Lucius loved creating Hektor and we're all obsessed with him too. I think I agree with him when he says he's "very skilled at designing blobs!"
This game is absolutely incredible! I loved the visuals and animations, it's actually so polished! The gameplay was also very interesting, although I do have to mention that I got softlocked once and couldn't progress the day. I wish there were a little more instructions to clear it up but overall it was a great experience!
Hey axl, thank you for coming to check out our game! I'm so glad our efforts to deliver a more polished game paid off :D If I'm understanding correctly I've seen one other person mention this softlock too so we'll definitely be looking into that for our final version, as well as discussing finding a suitable way to offer a little more player guidance while still encouraging them to explore. Once again thank you so much for your feedback!
//SPOILERS AHEAD//
I LOVED this little experience. It took me so many tries to figure out if it was even possible to complete all the tasks in one day, let alone figure out why every time I completed Stella's quest, I was told I expended too much energy. But I had a great time trying and retrying this game. I think instruction-wise, things could be a little clearer, but even with no direction, I had a really wonderful time. The game could be a little frustrating and the quests definitely got monotonous the more I had to retry them, but I have to admit, I really did feel like Albert! The ending shot was exactly what I had been hoping for to finish off the game. The ending art, and all of the visuals throughout the game were absolutely gorgeous! The artist(s) are incredibly talented and I loved the character design. It almost reminded me of a Paper Mario/Born of Bread meets Cult of the Lamb meets Stardew Valley. The puzzles were thought out incredibly well. I especially loved the house code puzzle. Stella not being able to remember her house code but being able to remember a super convoluted way to figure out her house code made me chuckle and reminded me of the goofiness of games like Undertale or Super Paper Mario. The game was a huge joy I had a great time.
A couple quick suggestions as I saw you're trying to release a more polished version and would LOVE to play a super polished version of this game:
- a couple of times after completing one quest I would become softlocked unable to interact with anything or being able to progress the day.
- There seem to be some super minor visual bugs where the grass shifts around a little bit
- I think some character interactions could be clearer, maybe an interaction with Manuel/some reason given for the morse code food or why he responded to only one specific code.
- maybe an energy bar instead of a daylight bar. Some things didn't make a whole lot of sense to spend time on. (i.e picking up Hektor) Also in the same vein, maybe having different tasks take different amount of time/energy
- if you're planning on doing a lot more work, being able to see the inside of houses could do a lot to build character personality (although the flavor text/fonts still helped with that tremendously)
Overall I really loved this game and would highly recommend. great work!!
Hey, thanks a lot for taking the time to write such extensive feedback, really appreciated!
//Spoilers indeed
We indeed didn't manage to implement everything yet - we ran across some issues along the way that made us decide to release a functional game first and foremost with all the base work in place. Some dialog didn't make it into this version, which would give a lot more context to different quests and Albert's exhaustion.
The action point system was a bit tricky to figure out- Fun fact: we did have a social battery/energy idea for the bar - but we ended up going with the daytime bar since we also wanted to emphasise on Albert not getting any time to himself. We're definitely looking at how we can redistribute the actions spent while also having every NPC solvable within a day AND making the player feel the restriction. I think taking on permanent changes from the previous day (such as unlocking new paths) is still on the table as well but I do enjoy the aspect that the game is solvable day 1, and it's the player learning and retaining information that drives the game's progression.
The soft locks were intentional - I was actually going to be more mean with Manuel shutting down more often, inspired by our programmer Pingu, who designed the first couple ones with Stella - I wasn't a fan at first but I can see the vision now. It's definitely something where the more updated dialog would've given a better idea of "why" but we definitely have to circle back to these, similar to the action points, to see how to manage player frustration while guiding them to make different decisions. I'm definitely a fan of second chances - especially in case the soft-locking dialog was chosen by accident.
The number puzzles were all Pingu, I'm glad you enjoyed them as much as we did!
Oh, and the grass thing only happened on the final upload, we haven't looked into the cause yet but we do intend to reduce the amount regardless to make loading faster.
Overall you're making great points and a lot of these are already being considered so I'm glad we're already going in the right direction :)
//Spoilers still//
Yes! incredible job once again! This was the first game I played from this jam, and I have played a lot since then, but as of right now this one is easily my most favorite!
I agree having the game be solvable from day 1 is a really cool idea. It makes the game meta in a sense because nothing in the game progresses it's all up to the player outside of the game. I'm really looking forward to what you end up implementing in the final version!!
I also just wanted to clarify in case there was confusion (which may be on my end.) The softlock stopped me from interacting with people altogether and didn't seem intentional. I was able to move around adn interact with the notes but unable to progress the day and had to restart the game (which due to the nature of the game wasn't a big deal but still hindered my progress a tad.) This may have been what you were talking about but just in case it wasn't I wanted to reclarify! I loved the Stella softlock though. That was a super nice touch.
As the character writer: I'm so happy you felt like my boy Albert. He became very important to me. I'll definitely carry him on next time I work on a game.
Thank you for all the feedback, we're taking a LOT of it with us!! It means a lot.
And finally thank you for loving our game and thank you for the feedback once again. I don't have a PC right now but I will pester one of my friends to stream your game to me so I can rate it!
You'll see me soon on your comment section!
The writing was incredible! I think (obviously to a much lesser extent) Albert becomes very important to the player as well after going through all the same things together! And that's super kind! I appreciate your comment in advance and look forward to seeing you there!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such passionate feedback! Even seeing your reply to Lucius, it really means a lot that our little game had such an impact on you. For most of us including myself, this was our first ever game jam. I'm very happy to see it's leaving the mark we intended it to! While I was less in charge of the mechanics and logical side of things, I know we will take your (and everyone else's) feedback into consideration to make the final version the best we can, so I really appreciate your suggestions. We were originally wanting to have extra maps for the houses so that's something I'd love to work on for sure!
Of course! I'm not familiar with game jams as a whole (as this is my first too!) but I think that this is an incredible first project especially for the amount of time given. I'm looking forward to the final product!!!!
I love your the art style of this game, and would've loved to see some more NPC interactions! I think the idea of neighbors always having the same issues day after day is a little true to life haha
Thank you so much rabbytt! I agree, we originally had 5 NPCs and were planning on having multiple tasks for each of them, but unfortunately with the time constraints and our responsibilities outside of the project it wasn't the most realistic goal for us. That said, I'd really like to work on the other NPCs and add them in our final version if we decide to go ahead with it! It just might mean giving poor Albert a bit more stress :')
love the art style – reminds of cult of the lamb. the game even has a day-night cycle, very impressive stuff. I hope there would be a little more guidance at the start of the game, but maybe you want to encourage players to go around and explore, which is also fair.
Thank you for your feedback! I'm really glad you picked up on that, COTL was our main inspiration for the visuals! While it was indeed our intention to encourage exploration (and a bit of trial and error to add to the notion of Albert's exhaustingly repetitive routine), we could potentially find a way to establish this more clearly. We are discussing releasing a more polished version of the game later on so it's definitely something to note.
Incredible job with this all around!
Thank you so much! It means a lot :)
Thank you so much!!
Cute graphics and fun game
Thank you!! We're so glad you enjoyed it :)
TYSM!!!
Very pretty - finding the lost dog was more effort than I expected!
Thank you so much! He's very slippery indeed haha
Hektor is a free spirit!