Hello again, thank you for reconsidering.
would like to apologize for flying off the handle like that. I had literally spent 6 hours
No problem, I am sorta used to it partially because I am temperamental myself, so I run in to conflicts I could avoid regardless of which side is wrong (if any). I also have experience preparing blog posts/youtube reviews etc, so I understand, it takes a ton of time.
There is a reason it reads like Ai
Yea, after talking to you I understood it never crossed my mind what text Ai is trained on. With art it is pretty easy to figure it out, especially it was at first with notable artists having their style stolen, but with writing it just felt like “Ai style”.
I also was a teacher
That makes sense in regards to your writing style and the way you give feedback. I’ve been in multiple jams by now, your style stands out also because jams are competitive and your feedback feels “standalone”, more like a beta test/reader feedback or something.
I guess what struck me as “ai” was specific comments that didn’t make sense to me. It makes sense to discuss it in educational setting, but jams are more of a competitive nature so the feedback I am used to is very different.
You probably have a very habitual way of reviewing games by now, it does read like youtube review. I haven’t figured how to have this stream of consciousness on while doing a Live stream, but it makes sense you’d think in this manner in Live because of you’ve already done it too many times. My notes are super different when I prepare stuff like that, I am more paying attention to what doesn’t work (it’s not that i like to criticize, I just have the usability design too ingrained in my head, so my main objective ends up looking for bugs etc).
What stood out to me:
I appreciated the stories respect for the player in allowing a seamless movement backward and forward
given the genre, it is a basic mechanic. Since you had a gaming channel, it stood out to me as odd, because I got feedback about such stuff before primarily from newbie devs that do not know Interactive fiction is games genre.
theatre of the mind
it repeats multiple times. I’m not a native speaker, so it stood out to me as somewhat confusing. I read a lot in English for decades, but I don’t recall seeing it in text, though I don’t read plays or listen to radio fiction, so perhaps that’s why it is unfamiliar.
Now the reply to your review(if you wanna read haha, i also don’t see the original anymore so i reply to the draft):
Theme: i did this game originally for a different jam, but the theme here was similar to the game. Depending on the ending though, just one more day is a literal thing, the bad outcome is simply postponed, not avoided.
I appreciate your feedback, I found few moments especially useful even back when I thought it was Ai:
if we choose the complete lack of visuals, we need more descriptive text
Yea, makes sense haha. I don’t treat jams as serious work (partially because I can’t yet, I am recovering perfectionist), so I don’t do much editing & all the games right now are prototypes. I kind of avoid getting deep in the prototype stage because I end up solidifying some unnecessary things as canon to the plot and cannot let go of it when needed.
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.
That was very “visual”, good ideas, thank you.
We end up with more questions than answers
This is a very small bit of a massive project, so there’s a bunch of stuff being hinted at. It’s related to my Magnum Opus, so perhaps in a not so distant future you’ll recognize this story in some game trailer on Steam (one can dream..). Since it is not a standalone, using visuals was also somewhat risky, like I intentionally avoided names, because it has some major spoilers and I have been posting aobut his project in my art etc, I don’t want certain characters to be connected to one another. I was supposed to work on something else for the jam I did this game for, but I got the idea for mom’s POV, so I ended up with this. I had no concrete plan and cutting it short both in text and visuals was my way to not overthink it and worry if I gave up too much.
In any case, I’m glad we could smooth it out (I guess?). It was a good lesson for me to not assume and get defensive, even if I do get Ai response in the future. And also thank you for taking your time to both have this back and forth with me and the initial review. I’m sorry it hurt you when you did so much hard work, I understand how it feels, not something I’d want to impose on others.