Play game
The Drift Ways's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Funness | #8 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Puzzle Design | #8 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
| Visuals | #8 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Story | #10 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
| Overall | #11 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
| Characters | #12 | 2.333 | 2.333 |
| Audio | #15 | 1.667 | 1.667 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- While the puzzles were almost all give this thing to that person to get this thing to give to that person, the setting was nice. It would be greatly improved by sound.
- Great fetch quest puzzles, didn't expect the death. Very alien. Had a hard time getting him to go where I wanted to, though. Especially south and north.
- First let's talk about 2 biggest issues in the game. One is the controls - it felt impossible to go south sometimes, I had to really keep trying to do so. Second, the game would benefit from checkpoints, that would keep us from having to replay the game from the beginning each time we die. Besides that, I think this game was really solid! I liked the visuals - very original, the world design was cool. The audio was pretty good, nothing to complain about. The story was interesting and even my Twitch audience enjoyed the alien creatures and lore. Puzzles were pretty good, they were a little bit of a fetching game, but I liked that there was a chain of quests, and some puzzles were not *too* obvious, such as going to the sea to fish, lifting the rock, etc. I think if there was more time/the game would be more robust, the quests would be even more fun to do. I enjoyed roaming around the city and turning in the quests, it reminded me a little bit of World of Warcraft which is a huge plus. The characters were charming. I had a lot of fun playing this game! I'd say bring more jokes/puns, more characters, more items, and more ways to die. It all made the game fun!
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Like Durinde said, the description box gives off the feeling of old-school text adventures. Perhaps you made a draft in Twine or similar before coding this? I don't mind the fetch quests, but I wish there could be a bit less walking and more adventuring. Don't be afraid to put more than one item or character in each location! This game absolutely has potential.
I encountered some buggy behavour when exiting screens in the wrong position. I could enter the temple instead of going to the temple entrance, for instance. And when walking south from my "ex", I ended up trapped to the left of the intended walkable area, with no way out.
Thanks for the review and the compliment about its potential. I know twine well but I did not use twine at all during any part of making this program. I wanted to have text but I didn't want to block the screen at all, older games had that sort of separate text window and I kinda liked that look. I'm curious as to what you mean by more adventuring, what does that entail? Putting more then one object definitely is a good idea.
I will look into those movement bugs and fix them when the jam is over.
Oh, there is actually enough adventuring, by which I mean dialogue, items, characters and story progression. What I mean is that by having one or none interactable item/character in each location, the ratio tips in favour of walking around. Explorers and maze lovers may disagree, but I think the main drawback about your game is that I spent more time walking from place to place than solving puzzles or talking to characters. (Which are the fun parts, IMO.)
I asked about Twine (or any other text adventure engine) because it had that graphic text adventure feel that I grew up with, like Magnetic Scrolls, or even Infocom's plain text adventures. (And in those, movement could be very fast, and one item per place was no problem.) I myself like to use Twine as a planning tool, so I was just curious.
Sci-fi is one of my fav genre, so kudos to you making this game. I wasn't prepared for trap death, so it was nice to know that I should be more cautious. The player movement could be faster.
Who made the start menu music?
Thank you for reviewing the game. I love sci-fi stuff too and exploring different worlds whether in fantasy or sci-fi is why I like video games in the first place, the chance to escape everyday reality. I don't know off hand who made the start music I'll have to try to find out, it was from a cd of royalty free music and sound effects.
I couldn't figure out how to get past the stream of black water. I'm sure there's another path, but I couldn't find it - the text at the bottom of the screen was also cut off, so it's possible I was missing a clue? I think you need a little work on the character controller and UI, but I love Sci-Fi, so was definitely excited to try your submission.
Thank you for playing and reviewing my game. You use the repellent that you get from an alien in one of the earlier screens, but you might not see that listed in the inventory if the UI is messed up on your computer. The game is meant to run on 1920 X 1080. What resolution is your system at? I'll have to try to fix that when the jam is over.
My screen resolution is 3840x1600, but I scaled it down to 1920x1080 and was able to read the text in the UI. Thanks.
There's a certain charm to the presentation. The combination of the text descriptions at the bottom of the screen notifying you of exits, the completely alien world, as well as deaths gives the game an appealing old school feeling. Character control was frustrating at times, especially when trying to get them to move north or south (I could never quite figure out where to position the mouse). I felt they could have walked a little faster as well.
Thanks for the review! I'll have to look into fixing movement once the jam is over.