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yousayrandy2 years ago(+3)

It is incredible that you were able to do this in the amount of time we had to submit something. I'm about to give praise in all the areas that I'm sure you're aware deserve praise.

The fact that there is even a driving system in this is amazing. It's "open world" that I can drive off the beaten path (although there is not currently a reason to do so). There's a great deal of potential in that, and it's mind-boggling that you were able to get that implemented as quickly as you did.

The fact that there are cutscenes is already impressive, but cutscenes that are actually pretty good, have cinematic cameras, animation, context-appropriate text, dialogue options, etc.? It doesn't seem possible, and it's unfair that people as skilled as you exist and are keeping with scrubs like me.

I thought the stylized graphics was very well done. I could play a whole game with this art style. I wouldn't need much added or changed. 

My only complaints about this incredibly ambitious, impressive thing that makes me feel insecure about myself, is that it's barely a game at the moment. Part of this is personal preference, but I explore the games in a game jam to get an, "Aha!" moment when I fire something up and they have a unique gameplay twist on the theme. There is the outer shell of an extremely competent game here -- so much so that this feels more like a demo to a commercial product than a jam game -- but it is fairly basic in terms of innovation and player input. This is for me personally, but I would have preferred to spend my time more on finding a gameplay hook and maybe dial back all of the other 10/10 aspects of the game. There is clearly room to spend less time on those amazing areas and bump up others.

But again, there's value in having a 10/10 presentation game, it's just not what I'm looking for personally in a game jam. You also did smart things to make it, like add dialogue choices (that don't really do anything) and have the driving between cutscenes, which makes the player feel like they have more agency than they do. So there is a compelling game here, but it's not the focus, and I think that hurts me when it comes to my preference for game jams.

But regardless of any of that, this is still an amazing piece of work, and I am envious of your talent and efficient. Incredible job.

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fouman2 years ago(+1)

Wow, thank you so much for trying out the game and taking the time to write this lengthy feedback!

I wanted to take the time to touch on some of the points you brought up, hopefully ease your mind a bit.

  • The game itself was always supposed to be a Visual Novel style game. We really struggled to find something to do with the theme and we ended up crafting something around the twist at the end (don't want to spoil it, hopefully you made it to the end to understand how our game links to the theme).
  • We really wanted to focus on having an engaging story and reveal the twist. It's really hard to write a mystery story that is humoristic and coherent. As you pointed out, the dialog choices might seem "meaningless" but considering it's a VN game, it goes without saying that these choices add interactivity to the dialogs. The dialog scenes are not cutscenes but the actual game. Given more time, we could have made choices be more meaningful and lead to different story branches but that makes it even more complex to write.
  • We understand that a Visual Novel game is pretty niche and might be boring for a lot of people. This is why we wanted to implement an open world sandbox where you could drive around and investigate different locations in any order. We also wanted to add more to the sandbox, a car chase for example. All of these plans had to be scrapped due to time. We decided to leave the driving in, even in its linear state, because it gave the players some break from all the reading/dialog.
  • It's funny and eye opening, reading all the comments, how a lot of people love the driving, some hate it and some find it's fun as a break in the story.
  • For the graphics, we heavily relied on asset packs we had licences for. If we didn't have these assets, we would never have been able to deliver a game of that scope. We also used tools to help us, like INK for the dialog system (freely available) . In the end, making a game is about assembling pieces together to create something. You don't have write everything from scratch, you mostly never do in any industry. Even AAA companies buy assets if it saves time.
  • Believe it or not, this was our very first game jam but most of us have a lots of experience making art/music/code. Being a team of 4, we could share the workload, one full time writer, one music composer, one graphics lead and one gameplay lead. We put tons of time working on this, a lot more than we should probably have but we were all having fun and wanted to create something great.

With all that said, hopefully you can see that you should not feel insecure. And for the record, I feel insecure too sometimes. I tried around 70 games and a lot of them are gems, much better than our game, IMO. The way you see game jams isn't wrong. I also think it's good to look for innovations. For this first jam, we tried something and once committed, we went all in trying to craft the best game we could. 

You have to see that just the fact you released a game is already a win (I'll try yours soon). You do the best you can with what you have and try to have fun doing it.

We honestly don't know where this will lead. The goal was not to make a demo or go commercial. The positive feedback we received does makes us consider making the next chapter and fixing/improving all the aspects you brought up. We'll see!

Cheers!

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yousayrandy2 years ago(+2)

These are great points. I never intended to say the game is boring, and I do enjoy a good story and writing, and can even get lost in a visual novel from time to time. Apologies if it came across that way.

The story here is quite good, and I did get to the end. I was very amused by it. The "tongs" joke in particular had me chuckling out loud.

I once said to a friend of mine that I used to take for granted when a JRPG would give me a choice between two dialog options, but they essentially meant the same thing, and changed nothing. Nowadays, that small "choice" gives me such a relation to the character that it otherwise wouldn't. It's artificial and (pun intended) "not real," but it's a level of interactivity other mediums can't do. I definitely see the value in "interactive narrative," so I didn't mean to intend that this was lesser in any way. It was just a personal preference thing, and when my mind is in "game jam" mode, with all of the tremendous amounts of games to try, I'm looking for a very quick hook. But that's just me. I also struggled with the theme a bit, too, and with the nature of jams, you win some, you lose some. You make sacrifices and compromises. It's very interesting to see the ways in which people choose different paths to get their game out.

Also, I assumed you used asset packs. I'm still a little shaky about using them for jams in particular because I don't want to accidentally forget to give credit where it's needed, but for larger projects I fully intend to use them liberally. But as someone who doesn't have any experience with rigging, animation, camera work, anything of that nature, I couldn't possibly hope to achieve the level of quality you guys got in the short amount of time that you did it in, no matter how many assets I had. It takes skill to do that, and I commend you.

Either way, I hope you didn't take offense to my original post. This is still an amazing achievement either way. At the end of the day, you guys are the creators, and what you want to make is what you should make. I just feel there might be something to be learned from anyone sharing their perspectives, so I shared mine in hopes people would do the same, even if I might not wholeheartedly agree.

If you do take the time to play my game, I would appreciate it, and don't hold back on your feedback!

Thanks for the insights in your response. Congratulations on a job well done!

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fouman2 years ago(+1)

Thanks again for your comments and no offense was taken whatsoever by what you said! And sorry if it came out as defensive on my part, not my intention either. Just trying to express our thought process during the jam. Maybe I should start writing devlogs :D

Thanks for mentioning the camera work and animations. I had a bit of "playing around" experience with rigging but finding ways to sync animations/camera work with dialogs and some player choices was a challenge in such short time. I'm really happy it worked out in the end and that people are acknowledging the work!

Thanks again with all the feedback, good or less good, that's how you learn as I like to say!

Cheers!

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