I played the game, twice. I tried to see if I could have a different ending, but it seems there is only one.
The good ting about the game:
- The story and atmosphere is nice.
- It's also nice to see this type of games made with Construct instead of the usual platformers and other very popular genres.
- Cut scenes are nice.
What to improve:
- The theme is really forced in, it could have been any theme in that portrait, so it looks like you have already the game ready and just placed the chicken in order to have an easy submission. I am not saying that this is the case, but because you didn't use the theme much it doesn't give you justice for the effort spent. Yes, we can argue that the main character is a chicken and scared, but actually no. He keep investigating no matter what, so it's actually quite brave.
- The art can be improved, but it's a game jam, so you actually did a lot of work here, so you can re-style the whole game with new art later on if you want it to look appealing. On the positive hand, it has a good old retro feeling, so if you polish it in a retro style and make it consistent, it would look good too.
- Audio, nice music, but as others have said need to fix some issue like the walking sound
loop.
- The story is nice, but there are no meaningful choices, you are railroaded very much around about what to do.
Conclusion:
The competition in the jam is very hard this year, you are unlikely going to win something, however I think you have something here that is much worth than the jam price, the story is interesting and honestly you did really a lot considering the time of this game jam. If you like the genre, as it seems, I would encourage to keep working on this story, there is an open ending and you can expand from there. Also there are a few unresolved questions in the story that leave lots of space to expansion and player's interpretation.
I would suggest you to join forces with some artist for a retro look, like the old point and click adventures and build a proper, but minimalist, UI so the players have lots of possible interactions (take an object, leave it somewhere, open, close, push, listen, look, etc.). Giving to all of these options and each or most game objects a feedback from those interactions. For example, you can listen to a door, observe it, open/close it, push it and so on. Each of those player's action will have a response like "You can hear a faint scratching on the other side of the door", "The door handle looks loose as if someone has damaged it for having using it for long time with strength", "the door is locked", "the door is unlocked, but the humidity expanded the wood and it's stuck", and so on.
Change the portrait from chicken to something else a bit weirder, but not too scary, something that a grandma would have kept anyway, like the painting of a family working the land in front of a country house/farm.
If you have a dedicated person for the art, you can really focus on the story and coding, and have all the above suggestions in the game. You can also join the force with someone that does the programming for you so you can focus 100% on the story and gameplay, having more time to add more stuff like multiple endings.
So again, probably you are not going to have the best game of the jam, but you have something on your hand that could be worth investing your time and money in.
Good luck with whatever you will decide to do with this game. Well done! :-)