itch.io

hmm, I think the story is not bad per se. I just think the issue is more the implementation and when it is told, if that makes any sense. I like to write story parts in games myself and I often think the story is the important part of a game, so I tend to make this mistake as well to be fair.

But I think mostly, when I start a game, I want to play it. Before I read any dialogue, I want to know how the game controls, how the movement feels, how the combat works, and so on. If I get  textboxes before that, I will mash spacebar after the fourth textbox. Because I wanna get to the game and see if it is fun. I am not gonna get invested into a story before I know the game in itself is fun.

The problem is, now that I already mashed through the first textboxes, I have no idea what is going on. So I will skip the rest too. And this is exactly what happened here to me. 

So I think a better way to implement the story is to stick to the absolute basics (like, the turorial hints) at first or entirely skip it. then expand on it once the player has achieved something, like clearing a level. Now, you get the story as a reward and I think players are more likely to engage with it - rather than frontloading it and making the story a chore before getting to the gameplay.

But those are just my thoughts and I just wanted to make clear that the implementation is my issue here, not the story itself. But, having a story in a game is always a choice I respect, especially in such a short Jam game where you barely have the time to write good dialogue. But maybe for future projects, consider to pace the story a bit different and I bet it will be a really great game in terms of writing and gameplay!