I really loved this game, thank you. I think I wasn't exactly the target audience for the doomscrolling levels since the only social media website I use regularly is YouTube (which is plenty bad but at least there's only that), but I used to be heavily addicted to social media so it wasn't hard to put myself in the shoes of somebody riding the algorithm. However, I'm wondering if maybe the gameplay of these levels could be made to more closely reflect the message being conveyed. One thing that springs to mind is making these levels mazes instead of a linear tunnels and making the exit marker indistinguishable from the notifications. That might make them feel more oppressive, but these sections are still effective. I was however much more impressed by the nostalgia levels, those actually evoked a lot of feelings in me and made me sad. The music really fits the atmosphere.
Viewing post in Waves of Nostalgia jam comments
Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback!
It's definitely a narrative reflecting my personal experience: not only do I hate how much time I tend to lose to scrolling, I also can't stand the pointlessness of most things you encounter while scrolling (hence the dialogs like "Which Kar-Jenner are you?"). But what is an even stronger feeling for me is that I have recently been experiencing a lot of nostalgia for my childhood, teenage and young adult years - not because I actually want to be younger again, but because I miss that feeling of having to figure out what to do with my days and not have this default device to go to that can swallow entire days of my life. So for that reason, I am really happy to hear that those levels actually hit harder for you.
Regarding the game design: I actually agree that the levels would have been better as mazes. I had originally pictured them as such (I had previously made maze levels in bitsy), but I really wanted the level to happen within the phone screen, which meant I limited myself space-wise even more than the already small levels of the bitsy editor. I love the idea that the exit marker could look more like the other sprites in the phone levels. I think I might definitely experiment with evolving this game further.