A fascinating game with a classic narrative and interesting mechanics. The character creation mechanic of using cards to populate traits is one thing that really grabbed me; I love a good character creation setup, and the idea of using chance to make your characters is a fun one. You've got really solid archetypes to work with, with interesting traits under each one that all feel like they belong within your archetypes. The use of cards as your primary mechanic makes the whole game feel like one of those old tales of playing against death, or gambling with the devil. (I can see the Old Gods influence in this!) I did find that the document wasn't the best for readability; the column/text size combo was an issue for me, and I have also had a hard time picking out the text on the title page (maybe it needs to be higher contrast/bold so it stands out more against the background?) Otherwise, this feels like a solid game with a classic setting and narrative that leans into folklore and horror. Great job!
Viewing post in The Devil Jonah's Leviathan jam comments
Wow thank you so much! I super appreciate the feedback and definitely agree the art for the cover in general doesn’t work really well. It was “good enough” but I’m definitely looking to commission someone to do a proper cover for this.
As far as the text and readability, was there some specific parts that you felt suffered more than others? I will be honest I struggled trying to get the text of the rules pared down and in an order that felt like it flowed as well as not making the thing enormously dense. I’d tried to break up the text into sections to split it up and I felt like it helped, but this is also only my like second attempt at doing my own layout. Knowing any of the specific text that you felt your eyes glazing over and areas that seemed to work would be amazing.
The biggest issue with the body text that I encountered was that it felt like I was reading one long sidebar, if that makes sense. The text size for the body text is just big enough that it reads as "side content to the body text" to me, and the combo of the body text size with the column size left me feeling like I was stitching together sentence fragments into one whole sentence vs. just reading a sentence. There are some images in the columned text that feel like they would be better in a larger size and breaking the column format, such as some of the more intricate images on page 5. I find that columns are usually a helpful formatting for when you have lots of little bits of information to put into one section that would otherwise take up a lot of page length, or for lots of body text that is in very small text like an academic paper. It was much easier for me to read and retain the sections of rules and setting that were formatted without columns and gave the images room to shine.
You actually have some really good formatting on your character sheets; you use column, tables, and blank fields effectively against the ornate borders and images you've chosen. If I'm looking at the document just through formatting alone, that looks like where you hit your stride. The spots that are not in columns feel like you've given them room to breathe and shown off your creativity. Your lovely text needs room to breathe so it can dance with your images! There were plenty of pages that wowed me, so I think you'll just get better with practice.