Remnants of Calandria
by TerminusEst13
Hey there TerminusEst13, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I'm Drifty and I was asked to judge your game in round four of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.
I respect the decision to go with black and white only.
The music selection and the way that you've displayed the intro legit gave me Crystalis vibes. Well done!
I'm a fan of only showing two lines of text on the screen at one time and I appreciate the big read-able font.
The opening area feels too big. Too many events, too many things. I got my weapon and I want to head out to use it. I would focus on stream-lining the player straight to the action.
I'm not a big fan of puzzle games and I think that it may have been a misstep to require a puzzle to proceed right out the gate. You're leading the player on with thoughts of Crystalis and GameBoy Zelda but then hamstring them with an annoying toggle the lights puzzle.
I like the art style and the music selection is probably the best in the whole competition, full of 8-bit bangers.
There's a lack of rewarding exploration, you just get called a jackass for trying to take chests in other NPC's houses, etc.
I went back to the elder and reported what Saki and I found and the game just was like "and you never saw her again, the end." WTF? Lol. Obviously I loaded and told him that I have nothing to report and then went to look for Saki. This is where the game should start. Summarize all the stuff that happens up until this point in a quick auto-run event.
I would suggest that next time you start the player right in the first dungeon map to look for Saki, after a quick auto-run intro event. It felt less exciting walking around in the beginning while trying to get into the actual gameplay. It doesn't make for a good first impressions the way it is now in my opinion. I think hooking your players right at the beginning with some action gameplay (when you market your game as an action-exploration game) is a much better option here.
While I do feel it was a little tropey with the whole twist dialog at the boss fight. I liked that you were given the option to agree or disagree with her. The writing is good even if a little tropey at times.
I think that this has all the makings of something really cool, but it felt a little fluffed at the beginning. Overall this is a very neat entry that had some ups and downs. You've put together something unique and I appreciate your efforts with this project, good job. Thanks for submitting a project to the IGMC 2022 and I look forward to the next thing you put out there.
-Drifty