Here's my playthrough of your game. It's at the 21:37 mark of this video.
Play Experience
THE EXAM's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #71 | 3.452 | 3.452 |
| Creativity | #118 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Horror | #139 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Enjoyment (Best Game) | #282 | 3.024 | 3.024 |
| Sound Design | #307 | 2.952 | 2.952 |
| Aesthetics | #387 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 42 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What game engine did you make this project in?
Unity
Comments
So the player character's mother--who called herself the "best mother in the world"--fed her student pills every time they got low scores on homework and exams?! Wow, that is a horrible mother! I think she deserved a worse fate than execution.
Poor teen, though. Their life was cut short because of the pills. ='(
Submitted
Bones And AllA tragic story of a nobody and yet everyone.
You wouldn't expect a small 1 week game jam indie game to illicit an emotional response but here we are, rather than a game, more of an experience with great creativity.
I've read some comments saying the ending was too subtle, but I lowkey wished you stuck with it, inadvertently, the message feels shallower if it has be explained at the end, almost ironic in a way considering the subject matter.
Submitted
Teddy: Needle & ThreadQuite an interesting game and had a unique format, but I think some of the ending stuff that explained what the game was would be better left to the players imagination. I particularly like the part where you tried to answer the questions and the answers would change on you, and the whole sort of like 'unreliable reality/narrator' thing as the story develops and warps something seemingly innocuous into a depiction of mental illness/abuse was well done. That's why I say that i think some of the ending stuff could have been left out. It was done well enough that it didn't need to be explained imo.
Submitted
THEY ARE WATCHING (Jam)Masterfully done and infinitely relatable, unfortunately. Not the poisoning and dying part, that is, but the stress of academic pressure, the oppressive nature of educational institutions, and domestic violence. I liked how expressive you managed to be with using such a limited amount of tools, conveying emotions and psychological states through text coloring and animation. Great work!
My only criticism is the ending, it felt unnecessarily expository. I felt like the game was already evocative enough with its mechanics and visuals, no direct explanation was required.
With that said, this is still an interesting game to play and a very effective social horror experience.
Submitted
Alien HermeneuticsVery creative and very unique but I do have some gripes. I would have preferred to be able to actually get questions wrong over the character I'm playing as just tell me that I was wrong and to chose another answer and I would have also liked if the game didn't tell you what it all meant ("this was the childs dying conscious"), I would have liked if that was left up more to interpretation since the game already feels like its all in your face with the exposition dumping at the end anyway. Still a great game though and feels really polished for a jam game, good work!
Submitted
Fathers Farm (ScreamJam2025)Very deep and important topic. There a lot of children going through terrible abuse that need help. Good game!
Submitted
The Last JobI love the way how they used the mechanics to tell their story. Amazing aesthetics and sound design too.
Submitted
Nightmare: PrologueA great game that highlight the stress from taking exam. Now I wonder whether there's a particular event that inspired this story.
Submitted
Trinity GhostInteresting game with a very important topic. Definitely one of the more creative games.
Submitted
Exorcist - The SimulatorI liked the story and the presentation of the game, a couple of issues i had were that the static sound was way too loud and kind of hurt my ears, and the other one is that the text explanations at the end of the game did kind of make the story less impactful, sometimes the best story is the one that the player gathers themselves.
Submitted
Clandestine CompanyYeah you are right, but in a game jam context, where most people quickly play the game and rate it are prone to not understanding the ending. My previous ending was completely different. It was too subtle that I had to create an explanation page about the ending. This didn’t feel right, so I decided to do this. Do you have any idea how to make this ending subtler but impactful? I’d love to hear it from you.
yeah, i think it's a tricky thing to handle with these types of games — while, like adam, i really love the concept of "show, don't tell" for stories in general, when faced with such time constraints it might be best to do a little hand-holding. perhaps relying more on the test-taking mechanic itself as opposed to pure dialogue could help? i.e. more questions to make the shift from school to psychological more gradual, or eventually introducing time, such that winning is impossible? just spitballing here.
otherwise, great game that makes aware a big problem that continues to persist today — thanks for making this!
This is a unique way to make a horror game. I’ve always believed that making a game is one of the best ways to deliver a message, and you nailed it in this aspect. The visuals are really good, and what the child is going through is genuinely disturbing, especially the way they’re treated by their mother and how the newspaper reveals the situation at the end. Experiencing it from their perspective makes it even more impactful, especially knowing things like this happen in real life as well. Great job, it’s very intriguing to play!
Submitted
!ERRORiIt’s such a simple yet deeply sorrowful game. The test feels like it’s telling the story of a child’s life. It’s heartbreaking to see what they had to go through.
By the way, did you do the voice acting yourself? I really liked it!
Submitted
Help me please Mr.GhostThank you for your lovely comment! For the voic acting part, I used this website(not ai, obviously) https://www.tetyys.com/SAPI4/
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