Play Physical Game
AMBROSIA's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| UTILITY — Does complexity inspire game prep? Or Is it very "Pick-up-n-Play"? | #3 | 4.091 | 4.091 |
| WRITING — How does this read? does it emanate with horror, humor, drama...? | #7 | 3.864 | 3.864 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.753 | 3.753 |
| LAYOUT — How well does the module get across information? | #13 | 3.955 | 3.955 |
| THEME — How well is the jam theme used? | #16 | 3.682 | 3.682 |
| GAME DESIGN — How good is the game balance or concepts there in? | #17 | 3.591 | 3.591 |
| FAVORABILITY — how much do you personally like the submission? | #21 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
| ART — How good is the art/graphic design? | #23 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Simple to read but highly evocative, the text does well to sell the idea of crawling into something ancient, magical, and undead. I'm immediately sold on the premise, with the only complaint being that navigation between areas has been neglected with poor indication of how to get between different areas, or even on how to enter or leave the core of the module without literally climbing up or down a live wire able to kill a character with a single failed save!
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Comments
"Hey, doesn't this look exactly like the INSIDE of a skull?" "Uh, Jimmy... how would any of us know what that looks like?" "Oh, uh... never mind..." YIIIKES. Even that conversation alone would be creepy. The still-definitely-alive embryo thing as the players walk deeper into the cavity of what used to be a massive creature? Creepy doesn't even cut it. Wow!
Great / horrific concept, with lots of detail. The background is fun, but please increase the opacity of the boxes behind the text to make it a bit more legible.
As post-jam polish, consider adding a printer friendly version without the background, or with a zoomed in and B&W version of the background.
Love the art style of the map! Not such a fan of everything just being a linear exploration. Not much room for any decisions from the players (or social interactions). My guess as to how this would play is mostly the warden describing environments for the players that they pass through. Also I am a little confused as to what text should be yellow and what should be orange, you seem to switch that up a couple of times.
Art: Gorgeous textures, great use of negative space on the cover. Did a great job getting the maximum out of the Barrow palette — others should take note of how you used those colors. Map could probably use a bit of polish.
Writing: I thought it was very good on the exterior panels, but I found some parts of the interior confusing, especially where you're using longer sentences. E.g. "They appear to lean or press free from the confines of the chambers walls, with any freed bone surrounded with a perfect silphium imitation of the subject's body in life." — I think you mean that they're bare skeletons where they're inside the alcove, but e.g. if the hands are sticking out into the room, then the hands have silphium "skin" over the bones. But I had to read that sentence several times to figure out what you were trying to say.
Game Design: It's very linear, with no branching of the environment and moTERM.GEO telling the players what they're expected to do the whole way. There aren't really solutions to dealing with the Nymphs except to fight them because you have to stay put to drill, but fortunately, the players are equipped with something that happens to be super-effective against them. Not much to do at each location except search the things you're supposed to search or, I guess, not search them. All of this limits the audience to players who don't mind just being told a story, with pauses to roll some dice and fight things along the way. Anyone hoping for interesting choices and creative problem solving is likely to be frustrated.
Theme: The naming of things borrows from myth, and there's a religious cult that would have had its own myths, but those don't figure in the plot. The theme is there throughout the story, but it's not really driving the plot in a meaningful way, since the plot is just drilling holes while fending off bad guys.
Layout: The cover layout is really nice. Most of the rest is simple but effective. The map arrows are a little chaotic. Although the texture is beautiful, it is maybe just a little distracting in places... could try darkening the text's underlay just a little more, or make it a little bigger, or something.
Utility: It's a pretty simple scenario, straightforwardly presented. Groups that like these linear scenarios would have no problem running this.
Favorability: I really like the aesthetic, but not so much the scenario. The premise is fine, and the nymphs are different enough from other scenarios' colonists-turned-into-monsters to be at least a little bit interesting. But I don't like playing or running adventures where you just go through a fixed series of rooms doing the tasks the adventure tells you to and searching scenery to pick up items.
Very strong outing! Love the atmosphere, the creatures, and the sprinkling of Warden advice throughout! The layout is clean and effective and the objective is clear for PCs. I'd have a very easy time running this!
I would say my only real qualm here is that the map is pretty linear - I don't know where the players would get a chance to make any meaningful diversions from the set path, and that can be tough to work around! I feel like a split path from the temple that either goes to the base camp or the worksite, and then converge later, would inject even just a little bit of a variance in path choice. One or two hidden passages or secret cubbies would get it to a place where the exploration feels more balanced to me.
Super solveable though and I like everything that's here on the whole! Really excellent execution across the board. Good stuff!
Hey, you used Morrow, my pitched planet! How fun.
I really like the topographical background, but I think it clashes too much with the text, even with the translucent boxes. maybe it should be mostly black like the first panel? Or the boxes can have a higher opacity? The items being silhouettes against the background also makes them hard to see, but a white stroke/line around the items would fix that.
The second panel mentions "remains beneath the ground" but I don't know what remains that's referring to. Is the special mineral compound the remains? (I realized later it's the giant mommy.)
You define Silphium in the section What Is Silphium, but didn't use the term before that. Maybe the timeline should mention the offspring, previous inhabitants becoming nymphs and introduce the term silphium
When you mention the moTERM.GEO before defining it, that could be briefly confusing. You could just add (see below) after that line.
Using the cord as the path on the map is genius.
I find the map a little confusing. It says the temple is in a gorge, but it looks like it's right next to Old Town. Oh, nevermind. I now see that the two gray triangles are mountains and the actual temple is between them. I would still say that's a little confusing though. It also says the temple was "built into" the skull. Are the mountains horns of a skull? They seem to be disconnected from the skull I see outlined on the map.
Really good layout, design, and concepts here. Locations, like the womb, are well done and have evocative writing. The adventure seems like it'd be a lot of fun.
I dislike the premise, but objectively this is very good.
The writing does a good job of describing each of the locations on the map, and there are some pretty strong images to be found in the adventure, my favorite being the giant skull! I appreciate that atmosphere and tension are built entirely through the environment at first, rather than introducing combat or enemies too early. My main issue though is that the adventure feels too linear, and it may make players feel like their choices are unimportant if the only real choice to progress most of the time is to just move further forward.
My one big comment would be that although there's branches and a variety of things to do within each location, the overall linear map structure can make it less interesting when players ask "So where do we go next"? At that point the choice becomes "Do we turn back now?" - that's some interesting design space to explore.