itch.io

I appreciate you taking the time to follow-up with a thoughtful reply. I would like to apologize for flying off the handle like that. I had literally spent 6 hours of my day that day between the live recording, note taking, and then editing to produce those reports for every single entrant. Then having someone devalue my effort and work like I was some Ai bot just really struck a nerve with me.

Some background: I've been writing blogs for my business for decades, and over time, you fall into habits and rubrics that works for catching peoples attention and engaging readers in that way. There is a reason it reads like Ai, because Ai is following the marketing formula that works. On top of that one of my higher education focus's is in English and Writing. I also was a teacher for many years and that background helps me cater my reports to fit for a students perspective as well.

My Process: I play through the games, live. My first 5 minutes focus's on raw first reactions, which I narrate. After that, I go through each category that I am evaluating an entry on. I literally have a list in-front of me with questions to "ask my self." After the play through, I write a rough draft of the report for each report, in most cases, almost verbatim the audio notes I took during game play. I like to be whimsical, and tell a story through my communication, even in rough note form. Once the notes are taken, I then go back, re-read my notes, and edit them into the rubric I have created for these Jams.

Here. I am going to share with you the literal raw notes copy of your review. It will be very similar to my notes in the live video recording (which you can watch through as well.) It will also read like a rough draft version of the "pretty" report you got that has not been edited yet, but will have the exact same whimsical tone and marketing based communication.

Timeline P015***
V.
First Impressions: Oh, a text based adventure? Let's dive on in. As someone who likes to read, the theater of the mind is a wonderful thing to explore and play around with. being thrust into a story that has a slight choose your own adventure style to it was quite nice, especially, when there are dark secrets to uncover and work your way through. I appreciated the stories respect for the player in allowing a seamless movement backward and forward through the text allowing one to explore other options and avenues within the same story without having to be forced to the beginning or remembering all of their previous decisions.

Fun & Engagement: I did find myself quite engaged by the story. What was this families curse? What happened to their car? Was this a murder? I wanted to know more and was left with so many questions leading me to be curious about the rest of the story here and more backstory!

Theme Use: I feel the interpretation of the theme was quite loose here, but, you could argue that follows into the ripple effects of decisions we make and "Just One More Day" can ultimately lead to different outcomes.

Visual Presentation: Here's where it get's tricky. With these types of games, we want to allow the theater of the mind to create as much as possible, but, with this comes the challenge of utilizing lots of flavored words in our writing to help coax the brain to form pictures, hear sounds, and ultimately, paint a canvas for itself. We can, of course, utilize small visual cues to help with this. Quick flashes on the screen of a clock when we are checking the time, or barely visible car with no distinct features pulling through the background of the text as the family arrives home. It is a delicate balance, and if we choose the complete lack of visuals, we need more descriptive text.

Sound & Music: My personal favorite, when it comes to creating theater of the mind games. If you forego any visuals, sound can be extremely impactful, especially by itself. Utilizing an engine turning over sound when the car fires up, the gentle chiming of a clock when you look at it, or the subtle purr of a cat that's getting scratches. These can be powerful tools when trying to immerse your player in a text based adventure.

Technical Execution: Everything worked perfectly, no bugs, no soft locks, the abilitiy to move freely through the story and retrace paths was a very nice touch and respected the players time.

Originality: A good story is often times all you need to bring originality to a tired genre, and a good story becomes even more important when your game is completely focused on the story itself. Good work.

Polish: It's complete, and it all works in a nice little package. Well done.

Final Thoughts: A wonderful narrative taking us down a dark path with a family that has a curse. We end up with more questions than answers even after exploring the different avenues making us want to know more about this family. The lack of visuals and sounds made us rely much more on the descriptive text, but it felt a bit lacking in this department. Fortunately making up for it with some strong characterization! But here's where we can really dive deeper. A narrative game, unlike a book on paper, offers up unique opportunities to subtly play with the theater of the mind with brief and vague sound and visual ques without forcing the player to have a specific image. It is a strength that the game format has above pen and paper and can allow us to expand on our creativity.