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Meta Game Jam

Hosted by Xavier Ekkel · #MetaGameJam

1,707

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A jam submission

Quality AssuranceView game page

do, crash, repeat

Submitted by Joan Sol ROO, Saltadrow — 21 minutes, 29 seconds before the deadline

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Quality Assurance's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Uniqueness of Metaness	#5	4.190	4.190
Metaness Quality	#5	4.333	4.333
Overall	#7	4.143	4.143
Aesthetics	#17	3.952	3.952
Fun	#21	3.714	3.714
Gameplay Innovation	#21	3.429	3.429
Audio	#23	3.381	3.381
Humour	#30	3.381	3.381

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Relevant Metaness Categories

Breaks the Fourth Wall

About Games Development

How is your game meta (within each relevant category)?
Spoiler: In this game, you play two games: (1) a QA testing game, where you find and report bugs, and (2) a game inside the game where somebody crashed his car in the forest.
To advance the history, you alternate between both characters (the QA tester and the dude in the forest), trying to go as far as possible. Each bug you find and report as a tester will allow you to know more about the story of the car crash victim.

QA is Meta because:
- You test a game to find bugs
- There are email exchanges with your colleagues, with some human errors
- Sofware and hardware failure happens
- there is a twist that should break the fourth wall (mid game, and the ending)

Please list any pre-made art/music/other assets that you used.
The visual effects are Unity3D postprocessing in combination with Keijiro Takahashi's glitch/ascii effects (https://github.com/keijiro/)
The audio uses stock files from freesound.org

How many members in your team?

Team of 2

List your team's social media!
https://twitter.com/JoanSolRoo
https://twitter.com/pacinquin

Anything you want to say to players before they play?
We are leaving the description almost empty because we don't want to spoil the game.
CONTROLS: All controls are explained in-game, when in doubt, look for the red element in the screen.
LENGTH: A full playthrough of the game takes 5 min in speedrun, and should not take more than 10-15 min doing it slowly.

Have fun :)

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Comments

MetaBitlySubmitted5 years ago(+1)

OK, I finally uploaded a video of my playthrough, it can be found here:

Submitted

Joan Sol ROODeveloper5 years ago (1 edit)

Hey! thanks for the playthrough, glad you liked it!
The end was very rushed, we should improve (or at least add) the ending. You were supposed to get hit by the car :P More info here: https://itch.io/dashboard/game/238177/devlog

Thanks again!
-Sol

Xavier EkkelHost6 years ago(+1)

You really nailed the metaness, and the email sections are absolutely perfect! Controls/camera take some getting used to, but aside from that this game is a great experience from beginning to end.

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago(+1)

Woah!
Glad you liked it!

we really need to improve the camera control...

MetaBitlySubmitted6 years ago(+2)

The controls were a bit wonky but that's just because I wasn't used to them. It was really cool to have a spoopy game punctuated with the devs. I really wanted more but I understand time constraints!

Great work overall!

Submitted

Positive ZeroSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

UI felt very smooth and polished. The controls were a bit strange, idk if they were intended to. But great idea, I had my fun ;)

Submitted

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Hey, glad you enjoyed it :D

The controls were supposed to be old school (Alone in the Dark style), but then we added camera movement, so i guess these two are not very compatible. We need to rethink that.

Thanks again!

Retro Indie JoshSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

An interesting experience, especially after reading through the postmortem. Definitely appreciate that you kept trucking on through the ups and downs. An excellent microcosm of game development, as any successful jam should be. :)

Submitted

randomphantomSubmitted6 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Very neat meta stuff here and a thoroughly surreal experience. The tank controls are a little weird, but I guess its kind of reminiscent of Res evil games so not so much issues with that.

Weirdly, the shader bokeh effects I feel are a little overused. If I do full screen mode I can't read the blurry text which is weird, so I have to play it on a small window which breaks some of that immersion. I think pickups were not very clearly communicated as well as I had spammed spacebar and picked up objects unintentionally, and couldn't understand that having a key icon appear means that you had picked up a key, until much later in the game. Guess that's why you need QA guy though? The UI in the email client was on the other hand neat, understandable and easy to follow without getting lost, so nice work on that. Good job!

Submitted

The World Ends Without You

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Thanks for the feedback!

It is true that the effects are a bit too much, we did not test it full enough i guess. We need to improve the clarity of the in-ingame.

Thanks again :)

Joqlepecheur6 years ago(+1)

interesting and well done ;)

MiniBobboSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

I love it when you are emailing the demon, you say Hi. Lol!

Why would anyone open the attachment?

Very nice! I was excited to see what happened next! I was a disappointed when it ended.

Submitted

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Glad you liked it!

We are planning to make a longer version with things we left out. The original idea was to make it puzzle-based, but puzzles are hard to tune with a hard deadline.

Thanks again!

-Sol

daniFMSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

Such a cool game! And it's meta all the way. The only downside was the movement mechanic, I think you could use a 4-way movement with the keys instead :)

Submitted

SaltadrowDeveloper6 years ago

Hey thanks for your kind words! We choose the "tank" movement to make a reference to Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil games :) But maybe we could have tweak it a little bit so it's easier to move!

playBitkeSubmitted6 years ago

I like the game, but couldn't click to the next part :/

SaltadrowDeveloper6 years ago

Hey thanks for the comment. Where exactly did you get stuck?

Wolfs GamelabSubmitted6 years ago(+2)

Laughed out loud at the main without an attachment. Meta-ness at it's best, really fun to play.

Submitted

Don't break your screen

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Awesome, thanks :D

Radical DogSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

This is hugely impressive. The story definitely worked, and the visual style was really strong. Only would have liked a quicker turn speed!

Submitted

Platformer Mixtape 2010

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Thanks! we are very happy with all the positive feedback, and we are thinking maybe going for a longer version including some ideas we left out of the game.

We will increase the turn speed, as it seems to be an issue.

Thanks for the feedback!

YirggzmbSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

This is a really cool idea. I had way more fun that expected, reading emails and such. Found the controls a little awkward in the car sections, but nothing major. Really enjoyed it.

Submitted

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Glad you liked it!

What about the controls in particular would you change?

Thanks for the feedback :)

-Sol

securasSubmitted6 years ago(+1)

Pretty cool game. Good visuals and the progression of the story was very engaging.

Joan Sol ROODeveloper6 years ago

Thanks!