Yo.
Finally finished. No, nothing bad. But since I'm not really good at English (not to say terrible), I had to restart the game five times to understand the tutorial. In the end, I had to test everything in the ship because I still hadn't understood anything. But I'll overlook this point on my poor English and won't take it into account in my review.
Before I begin, I'd like to point out that I'm against the intensive use of plugins in Jams. In my opinion, your project is a bit anti-gaming compared to all those that started from scratch, given the number of plugins in your games. Especially since, aside from the title screen, I haven't seen anything impossible without plugins. But I'll come back to that later.
I like:
-The game is really very well thought-out. As much as the concept, the storyline, and the gameplay. You really worked your ass off.
-The graphic style is very well-adapted.
-The music is good. The change of pace depending on the game's progress is also a good idea.
-The engaging gameplay requires optimization and very interesting quick thinking. It also requires a certain amount of dexterity.
In the middle
-The map is really not practical, but I imagine it serves the gameplay.
Like less:
-It would have been interesting to include the gameplay book in the game, even if there's no tutorial.
-The gameplay doesn't stop during the cutscene. This prevents you from having a moment of respite from the ambient stress.
-The fact that you can't set a priority for materials (or I haven't found how), and sometimes you have to wait a good 3 minutes (which is extremely long in this game) for a useful resource to appear.
-The final image covers almost 40% of the screen. Before that, it's okay because the playing area is quite large. Even though it was long, I had fun beforehand, but from that moment on, I became annoyed by the loss of visibility. Since the game is very demanding of the field of vision, you could almost say that the image is the additional difficulty of the final stretch of the game.
Critical Bug:
-If you try to save your crash.
-Using the options screen causes the game to crash with a message saying that a resource cannot be loaded.
For such a complex game, I've only encountered this bug. GG!!!
Technical:
-Implementing a system that disables the entire gameplay to simulate a pause would have been useful. For example, you can define a key with "Input.isRepeated(buttonName)" that activates a switch on each event that sends you to a blank page and opens an internal menu in the game. I'm talking about including your rulebook without the game continuing to progress, or stopping the game during cutscenes. Because we can't take the time to read when the game's sounds make us understand that the ship continues to deteriorate.
- There are plugins that are used and that could be avoided with knowledge of the basic software.
Final point:
This game is overly complex. It's very interesting to see how you adapted RPG Maker to make it a game of reflection and speed. However, I find the difficulty level for a first level quite high (and I played on easy, lol). I had to restart the game five times to reread the rules. 40 minutes to understand, another 30 minutes to build the entire ship, and it was only then that I understood what I really needed to do. I agree to put this down to my level of English, but still. Even with a good understanding, this game will not be suitable for everyone. But I did not say that I did not have fun. On the contrary, I explored the ship from top to bottom and only focused on the final objective (which I found after 30 minutes) after having completely repaired the ship. I took a perverse pleasure in optimizing the pattern and being a completionist. Even if the last pregnancy level really annoyed me. I understand that it is a jam around that, but it should not be at the expense of the gameplay. Finally, I am not going to reduce your work, but I see few things that really required the use of so many plug-ins. I find that using so many plug-ins has something anti-game, especially in a Jam where some people start from scratch. One or two, like Skip Title, which seemingly adds an extra layer of difficulty to making your own menu, I'm okay with, but as for things that can be done with a little knowledge... not my thing. This is just my opinion, and I know it's allowed, that you're within your rights, and that it doesn't take away from your legitimacy to participate. You still worked very hard. It shows, and you've created a magnificent game in many aspects. But for me, all these plugins...
As I said, it doesn't take away from the work accomplished and putting plugins together, which still requires work and rigor.Your game is currently the most complex game I've seen on the Jam games. I had a lot of fun. You've created a little bomb that I think, with a little addition and optimization, could be a huge hit. Thank you for sharing your work and I wish you continued success. Good job.