Amazing submission! I really enjoyed my time.
Art, Tone, Dread
The vibe of this game is front and center, and I love it. The assets and sprites are extremely charming, the art direction is distinct, and the singular dreadful piano soundtrack created a very immersive experience. I certainly felt like this cutesy, charming pixel persona was the building up to an inevitable and terrible conclusion for poor grandma. Such a shame to see that they only have three weeks to finish this really awesome game, I could see the building blocks of an interesting narrative in the works and I was already invested with this short demo.
Messaging
A very relevant and activist focused message. Having their inspiration in the front page and resources to guide players to seek out more information speaks to the intention of this game jam: raising awareness to the current climate crisis.
Critiques?
Not many. I felt everything was intuitive for me, as someone who likes playing a lot of tower defense. Everything I didn't know, I learned after resetting once. That said, here's what I think can be improved on:
- Making it more clear that the "plants" you place in the gardening phase directly influences what defenses you make during the "tower defense" phase.
- Making NAI's dialogue during the tutorial phase more apparent against the gray box and animating it (like how it was during the into movie) would bring more attention towards that side of the screen. It didn't take long to realize that was tutorial text, but having some extra clarity would be nice
- This is more of a personal thing, but I saw all the different stats (like temp, water consumption, etc) and just immediately tuned it out. Mostly because, I am a simple and dumb human that like to deal with only one currency in Tower Defense. I eventually kind of connected the dots as to why I should care about the stats (especially water consumption), but maybe explaining each stat and tutorializing each step would help with the new player experience. It was a lot to take in.
TLDR
It's a visually charming game that sets the mood/vibe excellently right off the bat. It's shrouded in a sense of incoming dread as you play into the hands of NAI, and has very strong and clear messaging. It's satire humor is very on the nose (which I loved), and only had a few things that were rough around the edges. Excellent game!!!!!!!!!