Factory Reset is solid game with nice presentation and interesting take on the PvP gameplay. Its narrative resonates well with the theme of the jam, and I really like how the conflict between Admins and Robots is presented and tied to it.
General experience is a very polished affair, pixelated retro art style accords with the setting and invites for exploration. The presentation makes me want to play the game, and when I do, there's always feedback to what I do: an effect, a sound, or both - it's great! Once player gets into the game and understands the possibilities, it gets properly challenging and rewarding. Getting into it has been a bit of a problem to me, although I have to commend the how the presentation filled in the blanks and let me understand the gameplay well.
The asymmetric adversarial gameplay was a bold choice, it supplies the game with good deal of originality but also leads to UX challenges. These, however, should be fairly easy to mitigate, and the game provides nice and polished experience even in its current form.
When I tried the game for the first time and without much assistance, I was not really aware it's made for two players. Before I got the explanation from the authors, many rules and opportunities were unknown, and I did not realize a lot of cool stuff by myself. Tutorial screen is perfect idea, however, I was instantly focused on controlling the robot and did not pay much attention to the hints. There may be some ways to make sure players get the important info:
- Instantly show there are 2 players in different roles, identify their interaction fields - pop-up hints, "stealing" focus, showing controls - be blunt!
- Hints need to steer players' attention - to do it better, they can use bigger fonts. It is natural for us (humans) to read the biggest letters first, and only after we check on the headlines, move to the text bodies.
- Visual distinction of Admin and Robot; can be just an "Admin Panel" title over the hacking interface, some visual separation setting the level and Admin space apart (color, gap).
Playing the game in both roles is a pleasant challenge; I am under impression that Admin's life is generally easier due to the abundance of merciless traps Robot has to face, but it may be just my slower reactions. I appreciate the balancing option.
The Admin minigame is really nice way to put an obstacle between Admin and their superpowers. As discussed, combos of 6+ numbers were practically impossible to deal with for me, but that's what balancing is there for. Here, it would be great to inform players about the exact traits of the setting (e.g. "Admin combos are shorter and Admin has more time to solve them"). As part of future polishing, it might be nice to make the "Hijack the motor" and "Invert visual sensor" icons more tell-tale, and show the hack names in bigger font.
If you would decide to expand the game further, I would recommend focusing on the onboarding, UI/UX polishing and also on presentation of the back story, which is original and puts the experience into a very different light.
Thank you for your amazing contribution to the jam, and congratulations to the well deserved bronze!