Really charming game , played 20 min straight until I beat it awesome job team!! The sewing mechanic feels amazing. Toggling the space bar and the shift key while turning with arrow keys felt very much like trying to navigate the different pedals of an irl machine but in a gamified fun way. The sound effect for that sewing machine is super crunchy, big fan. The gameloop of do thing, make money, upgrade thing, do thing, make money, payoff rent is tried and true and works for a reason. The art is really lovely and I liked the personality in each sprite portrait. The dialogue is quirky and enjoyable and the character development at the end is really sweet, BUT the endless text wayyy overstays its welcome in the intro scene. You even acknowledge this with the old lady saying something like "well I've rambled on more than enough" but then go for another like 8 text boxes lol. Also it may be a personal preference but I found the voice sfx grating. The combination of the two would have made me stop playing outside of a jam environment, which is a shame because the game is very fun and full of charm. I only say that as a piece of constructive criticism because I enjoyed the rest so much! The music is all chill and head-noddy and fits the sewing vibe very nicely. All in all, really great game and a homerun on the theme, super fun entry!!
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This is fantastic feedback! I'm glad you liked it and were able to get around the hurdles of the not so shiny parts lol.
Just to further the discussion a bit more.
The voice sfx seems to be hit or miss for people. Seems like people who like animal crossing games/older n64 titles tended to like the voices while others not so much lol It would have been nice to implement a menu for audio and whatnot but that was not in the cards this time around. Makes me wonder if it was all the voices that were the issues or specific ones. Maybe some audio mastering could have helped make it less annoying for some people?
The intro text was a double edge sword since I wanted to avoid the wall of text syndrome of jam games by blending it in with the world through conversation, but it was a lot to digest. Definitely needed more time in the oven to get the intro pacing right. Didn't help I wrote all the dialog in the last hour before publishing the game xD
I can totally see the voice sfx being a polarizing thing, having a setting to toggle it on/off seems like a perfect compromise. For me personally, I don't think the audio mastering was an issue, I just find that cartoony sped up gibberish style ear-tickling in a negative way lol. But like you said many people love it, and I didn't grow up playing Animal Crossing so that probably explains it.
I hear ya, I've done the same thing before. It's hard enough to strike a good balance with the tutorial in a regular game, let alone in a jam when you have like half a day to shoehorn something in lmao. Dialogue is great for being written in an hour btw :)
I think I will do a post jam update to add in a settings and proper quit game menu. And thanks! It was about 3am when I started writing so the fact that anything made sense was a miracle xD I was happily surprised that most of the games this year needed very little tutorial-ization just because most concepts were straight forward, in a good way!