Hi! For learning purposes, I'm playing the games that won game jams and taking notes.
Here are my notes in case you're interested.
Very funny game, I really like the humor, the art style is simple and very cute. The introduction is really well made, you directly get what you need to do without hesitation, it’s natural. This game leaves me with a little more joy and happiness. Great Job!
- Very nice use of the screen shake when the frog is very big. It emphasize the weight of the giant thing, and combined with the slower movement speed, it feels really heavy.
- The idea of getting bigger, and then eating bigger things is very good. I was not expecting it at first and was very surprised (even more with these horrible cries and sounds). It makes a nice progression during this 2 minute game, we don’t have time to get bored.
- Big part of the screen is black and white, it was hard for me to know exactly where my mouse was on the screen. I suggest adding your own custom cursor so that it’s more visible (maybe use something green like the frog?)
- The progression bar at the bottom is not very clear. It’s hard to really understand when the bar will be complete. I would suggest using a more traditional progress bar, and work on it so that it really appears as a UI element, and not an element of the game world.
- It’s a nice idea to have this little texts popping off the frog to tell us “hungry…”. Maybe you can use it to indicate the progression, like “really hungry! ”, “hungry...”, “a bit hungry…”.
- The small particles are very welcome!
- Your introduction into the game is very good and smooth. The small tutorial in the menu, the frog saying it’s hungry, and the menu disappearing when the player finally gets he has to eat the frog. Perfect for a jam.