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(+1)

Okay, I got a fair amount to say now. First about me getting stuck... actually I'd say most of what you described was pretty clear, there were just a few missing pieces that left me incapable of filling in the gaps. First was that the container didn't matter, which was probably the most helpful thing in the How To Play to point out. The second thing was specifically the little icon with the partially full triangle beaker. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, I kept looking around the room for a beaker to fill up or something. (I now understand that this basically means "1/2", but I only got there through trial and error.) If I'm being honest you can probably just remove that prompt as an option and it'd be the simplest fix, maybe it can, but I never saw it come up other than in the obvious case where 1/2 a purple = a pink.

Anyways, enough of that, I can actually comment on the game now. I really like the idea, it's very creative and inspired! I think you could turn it into a really fun little game with some tweaks:

  • First and definitely most important is the pacing, it took probably 2 minutes of gameplay before the requests got spicy, and a lot of that time was just waiting for new customers to walk to the window. Also the physics of moving things is really slow, like when dragging an object from one side of the counter to the other then I have to wait for it to catch up to my cursor.
  • Second is that the scale itself is kinda jank. I had some difficulty trying to weigh out a bread-load of milk, I started by placing the pots on both sides of the scale, and tried to put the bread on one side, but it didn't register. I figured out a better method later, but my first method feels like it should have worked. So I was a bit surprised later when putting the pot on the cheese DOES work. But actually... I'm impressed you managed to get it working as well as you did in the time constraint, as I understand it, game physics engines can be kinda unreliable at precision stuff.
  • Lastly is that depth perception is a real problem, I kept bumping things into each other because it wasn't obvious how close or far I was holding something, and my pours were very inaccurate. Some gamey drop shadows would probably help, but if I were to make a really spicy suggestion, I would say it should be a VR game... (okay for the game Jam, that would have admittedly been insane to even attempt, but I still think it'd be perfect as a VR game.)

I hope the feedback is helpful, but keep in mind I still had a good time playing! The physical comedy of the whole game is quite amusing, and you got quite the chuckle out of me the first time a customer asked me for a measurement of milk expressed as a math formula of random objects, really underlines how ridiculous the whole thing is.

I can’t thank you enough for the quality of this feedback! It’s incredibly useful, and I’m glad that after a few pointers you enjoyed the game a bit more.

I agree with all your points. I noticed the day after the deadline that a few things were broken, especially when placing objects on top of the pot. The system had been working well, but a last-minute change to one of the pot’s colliders accidentally broke the stacking, and I didn’t catch it before submission.

I also had a hard time adjusting the pacing. Because I already knew how everything worked, I was worried about expecting players to understand the mechanics too quickly. I therefore gave them plenty of time to experiment with the buttons, radio, window, pouring, and so on, before the first NPCs would show up. In retrospect, simplifying the game would probably have been the better choice: removing the window and the first interactions where they ask for milk - then using that time to explore the different quantities more deeply.

Your point about depth perception is also completely fair. I noticed that it wasn’t ideal, but assumed players would manage—which was probably a warning sign in itself! A simple improvement would have been to automatically align the milk carton when aiming at a container, so that the milk would always pour into it. That would have been easy to implement and would have made the interaction feel much better—but, of course, the idea only occurred to me after the jam :D

There are a lot of useful lessons for me here, which is one of the best parts of participating in a jam!

Thank you again for playing and for taking the time to give such thoughtful feedback!