| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| THEME | #59 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
| DESIGN | #171 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| OVERALL | #187 | 3.611 | 3.611 |
| INNOVATION | #202 | 3.389 | 3.389 |
| MUSIC | #222 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| SOUNDS | #270 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| VISUALS | #315 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
I know this is one of your first projects, which I am impressed. There were obvious things that needed fixed or polished, such as sound/music, and the player controller. The motion blur was also pretty rough. But what you did pull off was pretty awesome. I think if you keep honing your skills, you will become a great game dev!
I streamed it here:
Thanks a bunch for playing, seeing your playthrough was really illuminating in itself so I really appreciate you taking the time to send that across.
I agree the motion blur was problematic for you; I did test on a few machines and on my slower ones the blur really kicked up so that's what the lightweight version was for, but I should have made that clearer--or even better just put an option to turn the blur off.
I really appreciate your thoughts :)
Wow, this was a very cute game with a nice little message. I'm really impressed with the environment and the way you used the theme. The music was pretty nice and the game featured a good amount of sound effects. The walk backwards to the start was a nice conclusion to everything.
There was some clunkiness in the game. The first thing I noticed was that, if I moved for more than just a tap of the movement button, I would continue moving even after letting go of the movement button. Additionally, many animals would float above the ground as they walked. Additionally, some of the sound effects were a little too loud compared to others or too repetitive, like the dogs barking.
These were only minor issues though. My character drifting after letting go of the movement button stopped being noticeable after awhile and I overall loved the experience. One of the best games of the jam.
Wowee thanks for the boost to the old ego! haha. I'm really glad you enjoyed the experience overall :)
There's certainly quite a bit of clunkiness that does need tightening up. I think the way I constructed the player movement initially was really sub-optimal, so will definitely make sure to spend some more time perfecting that in the next one. And yeah, I had some trouble creating the navmesh on my texture which was perhaps a little too advanced for me; so had to leave the bugginess there to the wayside--but would certainly look to iron that out in a more finished title.
Thanks so much for playing and for your great feedback!!
Well i wont forget this game :D one of the best use of theme i have ever seen in this jam congrats. The enviroment and the animals are top notch. There were some problems with the movement when standing still my camera was sliding :o Other than that small issue i loved this one great work well done :D (Navigating to your home backwards was really funny xD )
Note : I would be happy if you could check out my game as well :d
This is a MESMERIZING game. The music and visuals work so well together to create atmosphere, and the animations are beautiful. It would have been nice to have the ability to speed up text and to skip the waiting period between lines, but the writing was so excellent that I can't complain much. Also, the player seems to slide when on any non-flat surface, which made talking to the cat a bit hard while I was sliding off the roof ahaha! Unbelievable job!
Such a beautiful game! Can't believe this hasn't been played more! One thing I would suggest is having a pause menu with the controls visible as for where I was walking such a distance I had forgotten some of the controls, that and when I stood still the player was sliding ever so slightly on the spot. Other than that, this was a brilliant submission, great job!
Thanks for your sweet comment!
I did have a similar idea for showing the controls in the pause menu (along with which animals you could speak to) but in the end I left that up to the scraps of paper at the beginning of the level to bake them into the world instead of adding more UI. But I do agree with you that maybe there was just one too many buttons--the game could have maybe done without the sprint just to streamline things more.
And yes, my player controller was a bit janky in how I implemented movement and gravity... definitely something I want to iron out :)
Thanks again for playing!
Nice game and a good submission for the jam! It was a really chill atmosphere and as has already been said although you didn't make the assets involved you combined them really well and nothing in the game felt out of place at all. It was a heartfelt little story and I liked the idea of giving up things that make your life easier and the trade off simply be a good feeling that you've helped others :)
The one minor thing I'd change is to reduce the frequency of the cow moos, it took me out of the moment a bit when it wouldn't shut up haha. But great game nonetheless and to hear it's your first project is brilliant, you've done a great job on this one. Nice work :)
Glad it struck that emotional chord with you, it's exactly what I was going for.
I can't agree with you more about the cow... On my final playtest it started to get to me as well. To be honest I found quite a lot of the animal audio a little abrasive, I think the system I had built to deal with them all sonding off just wasn't great. So unfortunately it just became one of those things that had to go through due to the final crunch.
Definitely want to spend some more time on audio overall in the next one.
Thanks a bunch for playing!! :)
I always find SFX a tricky thing to balance, there's such a fine line between adding immersion and risking being annoying isn't there! And worse when you test yourself you have no idea if you've become numb to it. I heard the song in my game so many damn times during testing it was in my brain when I tried to sleep haha.
Your game is definitely one of the more memorable ones I've played so good luck for the next jam you enter, I'm sure you'll do great! :)
NIce game. Loosing the forward was little bit too much, but he got so many new friends so who cares, right?
I really liked it. It looked nice and was cute. I'm sure you're aware of the issues like the floating starfish and rabbits. Also sometimes I never fully stopped moving. I stopped playing after I gave the dog my mouseclick. I didn't know how to get across the water, and I was not experimenting while walking backwards!
Glad you enjoyed the experience; you were right near the end :)
And yup have certainly got a tonne of improvements to make in the next one.
Actually, you weren't able to get across the water but I guess that signals that I should work on a better way of directing player attention.
Thanks for your comments!
The music is very relaxing, the game world is a bit empty but it was still enjoyable, also there are sometimes where i didn't know where to go and felt lost (mayor was a pain to find :/), gameplay wise there isn't much to it and it definitely it isn't a game for everybody (that's not a problem of your game: that's a problem of walking sim in general). I would personally reduce the motion blur and communicate better to the player that they "traded" a key, but other than that the game is very good and pretty fun!! Good Job!!
Glad you found some good stuff in it :) And yeah, it's definitely not one for everyone.
Finding the Mayor was also a slight problem for my game testers so I shifted around the dialogue a bit to try and fix that; but I guess it wasn't quite enough!
I certainly agree with you about trading the key... I had hoped to have come up with some way of displaying this compellingly but couldn't find one that wouldn't interrupt the aesthetic. Perhaps, as per a comment below, a simple "GIVE" prompt would have sufficed.
Thanks for playing and for your helpful feedback!
Really wholesome and relaxing, even if you didn't create the assets, you did a wonderful job putting everything together with your narrative. The music especially is super fitting, and the interpretation of the theme is really unique :)
I think the game could've used a little more polish on the dialogue interface, there are many animals out there and it would've been nice to know which ones I can / can't interact with, the "speak" text was a bit finicky (for instance reading the comments I guess you were able to interact with the chihuahua barking but I just couldn't ). Maybe adding an outline to the animal model if the raycast hits it? And also using a big box collider instead of the character's model to give more leeway to the raycast. Also it would've been great if you could click again to show all the dialogue at once (and make you give it up at some point? ;) ), the text speed felt a bit too slow for me, but I stuck through. Finally, having a prompt to give you the choice to give up control or not could really add to the experience, because just clicking to say yes doesn't really feel like giving my consent lol
That was a lot of possibly negative feedback, but that's only because I see what you were trying to go for, and the potential for this narrative is great! I'm just writing this in hope this will help you iron out the project, really cool experience nevertheless :)
Thanks so much for the wonderful feedback; I definitely agree with you across the board.
I definitely wanted to implement something to make which characters you could communicate with much clearer. I toyed with the idea of an exclamation point above their head, but didn't like the aesthetic and then ran out of time to implement something else; but I love your suggestion of highlighting them.
The player UI for the Speak was also a little finicky for some reason and I didn't have quite enough time to figure out why; I think overall my method for enabling and disabling it was not ideal, resulting in errors here and there.
Clicking to skip through the text as well is a great idea, and one which I couldn't quite implement due to how i created the text effect--but I'll definitely give that a rethink if I reuse the system as it is pretty essential to make this playable; especially if it were any longer. One of the people who tested it also suggested looping the final text on interact (like dark souls) to make it clear when the interaction was over, which I thought was a nice idea.
And yeah... click definitely doesn't equal consent... haha. I had played with the idea of adding a "Give" UI prompt before the click, as I didn't want to add any more button inputs, but amid the UI issues and the inefficient dialogue system that also got put to the wayside for this version.
I also thought I could have implemented a visual for actually handing over control, as currently it just happens in a flash--something like a UI animation or somehow passing the animal the key... but yeah, couln't quite get my head around it without it looking or feeling quite inconsistent.
Really, thanks so much for all your feedback has given me a lot of food for thought!! :)
The art style was beautiful, music relaxing and that sound design was excellent. The use of sound to highlight where important things were meant that even with no indicators it was quite easy to find the next part of the story. Also little touches like the barking dogs and water crashing on the shore made the world more alive and made it easier to travel backwards as you had the sound to guide you. Very clever design.
Needless to say, I really liked this.
Chiuahua had the best moves hahaha. Great visuals and atmosphere, but gameplay felt a bit too short. I saw dead rabbits floating in the end, was there something to it or is this a coincidence XD? Overall good first game!
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