Bwahaha, I think this title reached its target audience! I've got plenty of response for the contents of this title, but I'm gonna save those for the end. First, let's get to my ratings!
Overall: 4 - No you didn't read that wrong, I loved this. I did not agree with the message, but this is a piece of art on its own that goes to great lengths to show its own appreciation for art. It's sooooo spiteful, and what was birthed of that spite is honestly a very strong entry. I don't know if other participants will think so highly of this game, but I am really pleased to see what you managed to put out with your own hands. Those hilarious end credits are a testament, despite their sarcasm: you did all of this yourself (except the stock images). If this is what you're capable of in a month with a time limit and what I perceive to be apprehension towards making your own assets, imagine what you're capable of when those sorts of restraints are taken off!
Gameplay: 3 - You have something really close to being good here! I actually almost gave this a 3, then went back to 2, then back to 3, but landed on 2 in the end just because of some design choices I personally feel hurt the experience. On the positive side, I think the point and click adventure stuff works really well! Man, if I had a nickel for every entry in this jam that involves using a time machine to travel through eras of anthropology and go back and forth bringing the right key items to the right place...
Anyway, the reason it's a 2 is because the combat, while seemingly deliberately bad, is bad hahaha. It's usually actually not horrible, I didn't hate the random encounters and actually think they're a good idea to add more spice to the point and click formula, but the grid based "click the square that does the most damage" system is extremely arbitrary. I died to every boss the first time, found their Perfect square, and then handily defeated them on the subsequent fight (except the final boss who I beat first try, thank god). This really hurt my playtime a lot too, while my in-game time was around 45 minutes at the end, my actual stopwatch I use for the jam had me at 57 minutes, almost exactly an hour! Thank goodness I upped that playtime cap, I feel like it's important I played this to the end.
I will say that at the very least, while the rest of the combat is, again, *quite bad*, the final boss was such a great payoff for all of it that writing this now, I think I'm going to bump that Gameplay to a 3. I really genuinely liked that part a ton, and it's gonna be a top moment for this jam.
Music: 2 - There are, like, 3 songs in the whole game. It was deliberately light on music, but nothing was so bad that it ruined my experience. A final boss theme would have been nice, but I presume that would conflict with your thematic intentions.
Story: 3 - This is tough. I mentioned earlier, I do disagree with a lot of the message of this entry. However, as a work that is an expression of an author's feelings, and as a linear narrative, I think it's perfectly effective. The antagonists are built up in a natural manner, they have seemingly clear motivations (although I imagine if you took those hoods off they would be comprised entirely of straw), and even the ending, in its deliberate shock value, is meant to send a message. I will say that the dialogue is aggressively preachy, but it is at least constructed in the form of a natural meaningful debate between the protagonists and antagonists. It's not a message I agree with, but the story works and I'm not going to dock points based on my own biases.
Comedy: 4 - This could easily be a 5, we'll need to see how the rest of the jam goes. I was laughing constantly, there were the giant blue checkmarks every time you utilized a required element, that shock ending, some of the quips about the enemies (I think the mummy description was my fav), even the credits! This was actually a super funny game, and the comedy is where it thrives.
Graphics: 4 - This is the part where I get to be spiteful! While no individual drawing in this game is especially brilliant, it's extremely coherent. The art is charmingly amateur, but even in its "lower quality" it depicts its subjects strongly. What really brings this entry's art over the edge from a 3 to a 4 is the way it utilizes famous works of art as backdrops. As I explored this area, I was reminded of all these brilliant works from the past, and the storytelling through this graphical choice was clear, that "AI art is just like all of this art that came before". You really used this hand drawn artwork to tell the story without dialogue, and it's a really strong and interesting choice. This is excellent!
Now then, let's address the elephant in the room. You're clearly disgruntled about the AI rule. I won't sit here and pick apart every argument in favour of AI that this game used. I'd even bet any argument I could use is one you have already seen and disagree with, so it'd just be a waste of our time.
However, firstly to clear the air, you were not directly responsible for this AI ruling. It was originally our intention to disqualify AI during the 2024 jam as well. However, I'd failed to add that to the rules, and ultimately we decided it would be unfair to change the rules during the dev period, so the mods all agreed that last year would be the final year we allow AI art.
With that said, I really appreciate the way you voiced your thoughts about this here. There was no angry DMs, no blowups, instead you participated in the game jam, followed every rule even though you disagreed pretty strongly with one of them, and ultimately used that as a platform to voice your opinion on the matter. I think the last line was maybe a bit too angry compared to the overall composed approach to this game, but in the grand scheme of things I think this was a great way to send a message.
But, I also think this jam entry defeats itself in a way. Through this unsubtle platform to voice your thoughts on AI and its detractors, the amount of sheer effort you put into this really shines through. I don't know what it is that drives you, maybe it's just spite, or perhaps there's a lot of passion in there, but what I see here is art in its purest form, and it's proof, at least to me, that you don't need some "equalizer" to make something great. I think one could easily argue that something like this could be even better if it were able to have beautiful generated artwork alongside the writing and gameplay, but I'm unsure if that's true. If you had the ability to generate all the artwork, how would you have depicted all of these famous works of art? Would you have simply used their original images? Prompted a new interpretation of them? Regardless of how you would have done it, to me it feels so much more personal and deliberate that you drew each of these works yourself.
This isn't an apology, I stand by our choice to prohibit generative AI, for reasons you touched on in this entry and for reasons you haven't, but even if I don't agree with the things you said in this game, I think this was paradoxically an excellent entry, maybe for entirely the wrong reasons. Great work, and I really hope to see you again next year!