Hey! Thanks a lot for your nice review!
We may have bitten off more than we could chew in such a short time, sadly. But let's give the team a little more time and I'm confident we'll deliver a true gem.
I'm actually very interested in knowing what you DID get from the game's narration. This way I could see what worked and what didn't.
Did you take part in this jam? If so, I'd love to test your game!
Mathieu - author and localization lead at studio lapiraterie
Thank you and Michael for both responding! Yes, I was also a jam participant, I did all the art for Mechtronome, which I would describe as a top down, rhythm-based, 2D action shooter where your guns degrade. Feel free to check it out and let us know what you think!
Kudos to you and your team for all the work you guys put into the game as well! I share your same confidence that you all can create a truly unique game if given just a bit more time. From here on out, I'll talk about my experience playing the game in detail and what I got from it:
In terms of the story, again, I didn't really understand what was happening but my initial impression of the game was something akin to Papers, Please but with a more surrealist, eerie and dreamlike tone. What I did grasp was that you were some kind of operator for a machine designed to bureaucratically sift through requests from these strange entities known as encounters and either "Resolve" or "Dismiss" them based on some piece of information like what they said or what their waveforms looked like, and if you didn't get through enough in time, there would be consequences.
I didn't understand what the slider on the right did and how it related to everything else, but I knew the knobs in the middle had something to do with either dismissing or resolving the encounters and only the Dismiss button would flash green and let me click on it when I messed with another dial. I didn't get the difference between "Resolve" and "Dismiss", and I just assumed they did more or less the same thing (delegate the task of dealing with whatever encounter was on the screen to someone else further down the line) but that didn't make sense to me at the time either.
I think the manual is a clever idea in hindsight, but in the moment I found it a daunting read because of slightly awkward page cut-offs, the general length of the text and the ticking time limit. I also think the pages detailing what to do depending on each encounter could have been their own separate UI element (like a poster, or a spreadsheet or something) rather than being all split up near the end of the interface's manual.
Finally, I wasn't sure who the green person in the top left was meant to be either, since they just seemed to write vague messages independently of what I was doing, so that confused me. I thought they were either the voice of the protagonist or some kind of virtual assistant from the interface that would guide me through the first encounters, but it didn't seem to be either so it had me thrown for a loop.
Anyways, apologies if this was too long! I just found the experience really captivating and I thought I would offer all I can to help. I hope for nothing but the best for you and your team!
