I’m happy to see that you enjoyed participating in the Committy!

Honestly, when this year’s modifier was first announced, my brain kinda immediately jumped to the idea of ‘designed by committee’ (the logo was intended to convey that very vibe) - combined with a sprinkle of inspiration from Valefisk’s video about a board game designed by ChatGPT - which is what lead to this monstrosity getting concocted. I initially was considering making this game a tabletop game, but then realized that making this an Always Online Live Service™️ would be a better choice, seeing as it would allow everyone everywhere to experience the end result of everyone else’s suggestions getting combined (and Always Online Live Services™️ are appropriately inherently terrible for games).

I did bear in mind the whole ‘trusting people to not be stupid’ thing into this service though. There’s a decently zealous serverside profanity filter, the SQL uses prepared statements, and there’s a way to report inappropriate cards via the card viewer page (although I didn’t get around to implementing an interface for me to easily view the contents of the reports table. I can still delete problematic cards though).

(and sure, whilst it may be a completely different type of ‘Every Suggestion Combined’ than the majority interpretation of it, I have referenced each of them within the URLs generated for hands dealt out)

While I may be slightly confused as to how certain cards beat each other out

That’s the beauty of it all!

Every such existing interaction between cards was dictated by other players.

When creating a card, the user is presented with two other cards, and has to pick which one of those two cards their new one beats (and that new card shall get beaten by the other card) - that suggestion is permanently enshrined as Precedent and applied for all further interactions between those cards.

Likewise, when an unprecedented interaction between two cards happens - the outcome (ideally as decided by a third party after hearing arguments from both players arguing why their card is objectively superior) - the suggestion about what card is objectively superior - is also permanently enshrined as Precedent and referred to for all time whenever those two cards interact.

So, if you’re wondering why, say, the interaction between A Duck and Lake Superior ends the way it does - you can blame whoever made that suggestion/decision at the time and date mentioned at the end of the announcement proclaiming the existence of the Precedent applied to this current situation.

This minefield of seemingly incomprehensible precedents that make very little sense (outside of the context in which they were agreed upon), my right honourable friend, this is the true, magnificent, horrifyingly glorious beauty of the Committy!

The announcement was a bit of a latter-stage inclusion (after I nixed the originally planned online multiplayer gameplay). I wanted the announcement to convey the sort of authoritative rituals of pomp and circumstance and generally silliness mired in tradition and legalese surrounding the ways in which legislation and common law/precedent enter into the laws of the land.

Y’know, real ‘going through the motions of getting it signed by the powers that be and then getting the designated Shouty Person to proclaim it and publishing it in the London Gazette to make sure’ sorts of vibes.

Yes, it isn’t very conducive to multiple rounds, but I am working on the theory that most people wouldn’t bother sticking around for multiple rounds anyway.

Does this combined with the precedent system make Committy some sort of absurdist parody of the legislative and judicial systems which produce the legislation and common law by which Rule of Law is achieved in contemporary political systems and societies? My right honourable friend, I have no idea either, so it falls upon the membership of the Committy to decide amongst themselves whether or not this suggestion bears any weight and whether or not it actually sounds coherent in the first place.

The landing page was heavily inspired by XCVG’s marvellous landing page for Safety and Security at the Liberty Macvonden Building (ITC-1141-A) back in SBIG 2021. Like that page, I wanted to ensure that people could be directed to where the game actually is, but set their expectations appropriately for the sort of experience to expect (and add to the whole experience).

For the main Committy website, I opted to be tasteful with the music (saving it as toggleable dramatic music for the debating phase of The Ritual, and as the piece de resistance for the Punchline, whilst ensuring that the website itself would at least be a bearable experience) and likewise with the overall page layout (again, for functionality’s sake (or as close as is possible with my godawful CSS)), so I opted to treat the itch.io landing page as the ‘title screen’, with a short kazoo afterthought as some sort of title theme for the game.

And finally, I had very nearly managed to create a SBIG game without any trace of Percival (everyone’s least favourite ex-employee from the former Button Factory’s Making Sense Department), and I thought I had finally managed to properly get rid of him (after I tried to kill him off in Inconvenient Space Rocks 2 back in 2021, but ofc he somehow survived and appeared at Kevin’s in 2022). But, it appears that someone (probably Votebot) tipped off Percival to the fact that I was participating in SBIG again this year (without telling him), leading to him sneaking in and throwing that complaint into the landing page. Which was a bit rude of him. Alas.

Anywho, still pleased to see that you found Committy to have been a worthwhile entry to this year’s SBIG jam.

This opus certainly was worth the wait. I certainly wasn’t expecting the surprisingly tasteful jokes about unpleasant subject matters (which I shall refrain from spoiling here), the very deep and complex web of interpersonal relationships between characters, and a tasteful mix of dry and absurd comedy.

The janky presentation (tastefully implemented in a rather non-intrusive manner) just sweetened the deal. Sure, the unskippable dialogue does hinder replayability a bit, but I think I got the ‘true’ ending on my first playthrough, so 🤷‍♀️

Overall, this was a very SBIG experience!

I’m glad you appreciated the concept 😊. I figured that this sort of twist on the theme of ‘every suggestion combined’ would be suitably novel (and potentially amusing) without devolving into endless feature creep.

I’m also pleased to hear that you appreciated the audio. Percival told me to tell you that he isn’t Kevin (Kevin is just Kevin), and he reminded me that he is a bit annoyed at being relegated to his cameo appearance on that landing page (although with that attitude, I am questioning why I allowed him to make that cameo appearance).

Finally, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll admit that I haven’t been able to actually playtest this game either 😅 (although, I was originally planning on including some online multiplayer room code stuff into the game (a la Quiplash), but I had to cut that due to time constraints (with the URLs generated upon starting a clientside game (allowing multiple players to see the same hands on multiple devices) being the only remnants of that planned system), hence why there’s only the clientside-only MVP available).

Rather nice game tbh.

If you want some constructive criticism, I’d suggest treating the WASD keys and the arrow keys as different players (so two players can share a keyboard, without needing to buy a controller), and probably making the the player objects look slightly different (maybe different lance colours?)

Overall, I can see plenty of potential in this game concept. Nice work!

I’m glad that you liked it :)

tbf this was my first time trying to do anything with node.js (and first time since university coursework that I’ve done anything which involved a database) and glitch was the cheapest solution I could find for hosting the game and database and such :^)

I suppose it could have gone worse (even if I didn’t end up achieving the original vision I had for this).

Anywho, I saw that card you contributed; nice card btw.

Thanks!

(Although I will admit that I did kinda fumble the execution of the idea)

that was rather fun ~~and a mood~~

although it wasn’t very clear at first what I was supposed to do for the tower minigame, the train minigame effectively just being RNG, and the ‘do nothing’ minigame occasionally catching me completely off-guard (causing an instant loss for that minigame)

That was an alright game.

I found the janky means of attacking to be rather thematically appropriate, and I found the whole roguelite feel of the game to be rather interesting. The boss fight suddenly changing how movement works was also a rather pleasant bit of unexpected spice.

Not entirely sure what the dash is supposed to do, and it was pretty obvious that success was mostly determined by how frequently boons were offered instead of the red/orange guys. Perhaps you could set it up such that the first couple of rounds have green guys, then there’s red guys, then another wave of green guys, then an orange guy, then RNG from there (just so the first bit of the gameplay session is a bit more bearable). Also, it did tend to get a bit frustrating when the boss fight repeatedly went into the ‘unable to attack the boss’ phases without any opportunities to fight back being offered. Finally, it was a little bit frustrating when one of the gun enemies was hanging out barely off the edges of the viewport, because, if one’s mouse went outside the viewport in an attempt to point the stick towards that enemy, the game would cease tracking the location of your mouse (whilst they would still be free to retreat and keep shooting). Therefore, some means of preventing the enemies from hiding out of bounds like that would be appreciated.

This was a rather nice game, and didn’t overstay its welcome.

The attack did feel a bit unsatisfying to use (wasn’t sure when the attack hitbox was actually active, or how far out the hitbox was, which meant that I pretty much always took damage when attempting to briefcase the skulls), but the plentify supply of SPOOKY SODA did help with this (albeit at the cost of minimizing the challenge posed by the game).

The UI aesthetic was rather interesting to behold, and I also liked the ‘billboarded 2d sprites in a 3d world’ visual design of the game.

Overall, this was some quality SBIG content.

I managed to reach the flying sheep level, but, with the randomized controls and incredibly janky physics, I wasn’t able to get the character up to the end of that level. I can see that this game had a lot of potential as a series of short platforming challenges/gags, but the randomized controls did end up souring the experience (seeing as most of the gameplay was spent trying to work out what button did what), making it a bit harder for me to properly appreciate the many setpieces in this game.

that was an interesting experience. The level of jank was somewhat interesting, but did get a bit frustrating towards the end as performance tanked and I was struggling to remember how the controls were supposed to work, rendering it rather difficult for me to actually move my weapons and be able to use them (eventually just relying on the janky physics to brute force my Napalm Balls from the Book of Napalm into the hurtboxes of the enemies, whilst constantly regenerating health from the ULTRAKILL Reference whilst drowning in a sea of blood).

still, peak SBIG energy right here.

I’d say that this is more of a ‘good’ game than a ‘so bad it’s good’ game tbh. It does have some charm to it, and is a mostly pleasant experience.

Did have a couple of awkward deaths in the asteroid parts by accidentally erring too far out of bounds (not from bumping into any of the asteroids), but tbf that might just be more of a skill issue than a real problem with the game itself.

I noticed the instructions on the itch page (it would probably be worth adding something saying ‘press E to open cabinets’ and ‘press F with the crowbar to open boxes’), but, even then, the experience was mostly one of confusion (having no idea what the hell I was meant to be doing) rather than the presumably intended feeling of dread/fear/etc, and, ofc, the fingers generally lead to a rather swift death whenever they appeared (especially because I didn’t have anything I could use to defend/sustain myself with). So, overall, genuinely unsure about how I actually feel about this game.

that was a pretty interesting implementation of the theme

that was an interesting bit of ergodic literature

that monke sure be rolling

also nice music

That was a surprisingly fun game. Besides the last water bubble on the final level not working (and the narrow water bubble thing on that level not being worth using, it being easier to jump over that bubble entirely than attempt using it), this was a rather enjoyable experience. Bravo.

I can see a rather good game here, but unfortunately there’s a few issues which spoil the overall experience for me (but I have some suggestions for how to address those issues).

• Enemies feel way too bulletsponge-y, and that overall leaves the game feeling a bit unsatisfying to play. Couple of suggestions for how to address this:

  • Reduce health of enemies/increase damage of attacks (so the enemies die at a reasonable speed). Especially with the special attack - would feel more worth using if enemies could be killed in a single shot or something with that, rather than the current situation (where they just appear to shrug it off).
  • More visual/audio feedback for when enemies get hit. Maybe give them a visible healthbar (so it looks like your attacks are actually dealing damage), maybe add hitsounds/hitmarkers, etc. Probably a stretch goal though.

• AI stuff

  • Would be nice if enemies weren’t able to constantly track your location through walls (but then again, implementing this could be a bit awkward).
  • One of the outside fish managed to go around the left side of the balcony and was able to shoot me through that wall (ofc couldn’t shoot it back), was kinda frustrating.
  • Also the vending machine at the very start probably shouldn’t be there - game would benefit from some breathing room at the very start.

• QoL stuff

  • Larger crosshair would be nice.
  • The ability to make the game fullscreen would also be nice.
  • A pause button would also be nice to have.

your game appears to be marked as private or something, so I can’t actually view it or attempt playing/rating it.

you might want to consider fixing that.

well, the card contents are all user-contributed (via the card creation thing), along with the core ‘what cards beat what’.

the main gameplay is trying to work out which of the cards in your hand is most likely to be objectively superior than whatever card your opponent plays - with the aim being to play the one that will end up being objectively superior at the end - and the question of ‘which card is objectively superior’ is, once again, answered by the users. Of course, if an answer to that question hasn’t already been established, it’s supposed to be decided democratically, via ‘finding someone else to convince that your card is the best one’.

I will admit that the version of this game ultimately produced certainly wasn’t the original vision for it. I initially envisioned some sort of room code system, with the game being a 3+ player game where two players would be in a 1v1 with the other players deciding the outcome (a la Quiplash), but with the extra curveball-shaped minefield of precedent thrown in. But, due to a combination of time constraints and having no idea what I’m doing with web dev stuff, I had to nix that and reduce the scope to the mostly-clientside version of Committy you experienced.

holy shit someone finally attempted to use HECC-IT without being forced to use it 🙏

and I’m genuinely surprised that you managed to push HECC-IT as far as you did with this game.

;)

when one knows what to look for, it’s usually pretty obvious

If you wish to use Scratch when developing your games, that’s your own prerogative.

However, sometimes sacrifices have to be made to develop a properly cohesive gameplay experience. Mouse-based controls were originally considered for this game, however, the problem of ‘where should the door/camera/turn around buttons go on the screen’ posed major problems.

Furthermore, the door uses a ‘hold the button to keep the door closed’ system (much more intuitive than a ‘toggle whether the door is closed or not’ system), in an attempt to deliver players a much more satisfying ‘slamming the door in the face of an enemy/cowering in fear’ experience. This simply would not work on a mobile device (or, at very least, would be extremely uncomfortable). And, of course, the player is not allowed to check cameras or turn around whilst the door is closed (as allowing the player to perform these tasks risk-free would detract from the intended panicked experience), so then that opens up the can of worms known as ‘should the player have to then open the door manually, or risk player frustration by making the door open automatically if the player touches another button?’ - both of which would lead to a particularly unsatisfying gameplay experience.

And when the choice is between providing a somewhat-contrived-and-relatively-crap gameplay experience (by adding clunky mobile controls) or ‘telling people to play on PC instead (and making the game playable in-browser so the player can use any type of PC to play it)’, it makes sense to pick the latter over the former.

No. This game is not built for mobile, therefore, mobile controls will not be added.

Unity WebGL doesn’t support mobile devices. It might work on high-end devices, but current devices are often not powerful enough and don’t have enough memory to support Unity WebGL content.

see https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-browsercompatibility.html

(and also attempting to add pointer-based controls would require a stupid amount of refactoring/reworking of the game - too much refactoring for what was supposed to be a simple stupid game jam game)

If you’re using a mobile device, One Unspecified Period Of Time At Kevin’s does not support mobile devices (due to the controls being keyboard-based), and mobile support will not be added.

If you’re not using a mobile device, consider either downloading a browser which can zoom out (such as firefox), or, if you are on Windows, downloading the Windows build of the game.

Alternatively, if you’re still unable to zoom out for some reason, click on the translucent square button on the bottom-right of the game viewport. This will make the game fullscreen, allowing you to not need to zoom out.

Does your browser support zooming out the page?

Kevin would like to congratulate you on your excellent job here at his Tortoise Sanctuary, and he is very pleased that his tortoise was able to get some sleep thanks to your efforts. I’m also pleased to hear that you enjoyed your time here as well!

Personally I have absolutely zero FNAF experience (Apart from “Five Nights At Friday Night Funkin’”, of course!)

same lol

One things stood out for me: “Yes, you almost definitely will lose the game at first”. Now that sounds like a challenge!

imma be real with you: that is actually a bit of a hyperbole. In response to some feedback received during that playtest livestream, I wanted to reassure players that, yes, trial-and-error would be a relatively important step in the process of conquering the game, and that they should not feel bad if they do feel overwhelmed at first. However, I’ll admit that the game itself is actually pretty easy when you know what you’re doing, but a bit of hyperbole certainly helps to deliver some pride and accomplishment from time to time.

And it turns out my blissful ignorance of the outside world worked perfectly!

Yes, that actually is the optimal strategy (although I wasn’t expecting anyone to instantly work it out lol). In hindsight, I probably should adjust the Intruder’s logic to get it to slowly start moving whilst the door is closed (maybe on a separate timer to its normal timer, with a higher move chance) as a way of penalising this strategy of ‘keeping the door closed constantly’ (as that’ll make Percival a little bit more frequent and everyone else get a little bit faster more consistently, and might even be a bit sp00pier when opening the door).

It seems very well put-together! There is a clear trajectory of people’s movements. It feels hectic and fun, and the characters are well thought out.

That’s a bit of an overstatement 😅. The Intruder was pretty much an afterthought all things considered (all it did in the initial release was just get close and then just stand there menacingly lol), whilst the Testudo’s legit tactical movement strategy was also a bit of an afterthought (and hell, everything about camera 7 was an afterthought, now that I think about it).

And when it comes to the trajectory: well, the layout of the sanctuary (barring camera 7) was actually the first thing I designed. I knew I wanted the map to be Tortoise-shaped (with an unsightly turd (which was always going to be for Bri’ain) right next to it for absurdity points), but, of course, whilst it meant that Tortelvis and the Esiotrot’s paths were very easy to figure out routes for, I genuinely was stuck for what to do with the Testudo. But, thankfully, there was some dead space in the actual scene geometry which corresponds to where camera 7 now is (initially, I had considered putting camera 7 in the “tail” instead and starting the Esiotrot there), without which the game probably would have ended up feeling a bit more shit (and the Testudo would have probably felt a bit redundant).

And, of course, Percival returned even though I tried killing him off last year, which is also mildly concerning in a meta sense (and the only reason why he returned was because I was going to Tesco to do my preparatory food shopping on the Thursday and then I had the terrible realization that Percival would be the perfect character to use for the obligatory exposition dump, seeing as Kevin canonically does not talk but his actions are usually merely referred to in the passive voice, and Ke’in is, well, Ke’in).

Anywho, Percival’s role as the accidental antagonist in this game actually came about from a bit of laziness. I needed some way of forcing the player to leave themselves vulnerable to attack in certain situations; initially, I tried designing the map of the tortoise sanctuary to have multiple doorways into the tortoise room (forcing the player to split their attention between the two), but those maps all looked scuffed in an unironically shit way. However, forcing Percival to shut up was basically the easiest solution I found to that problem, by having a threat that would force the single door in the office to be opened every once in a while.

I should admit that the main gameplay loop of this game (with the camera recharging, the door, and the asleepn’tness meter) was actually shamelessly ripped off from One Night At Flumpty’s 2. Granted, that game does have somewhat more elegant ways of solving the problem of ‘making the player use the cameras and not just sit in a corner and hide’, forcing camera usage (via the owl and the redman). Even though Percival doesn’t quite work as well for forcing the player to expose themselves to danger, I suppose Percival is mildly original in implementation.

I was annoyed that I couldn’t actually hear Percival’s Audio tracks 😅

I am mildly concerned about your music taste

So I decided to go to the github page and just download the audio files! Amazing covers of Sweet Caroline and Good Morning Good Morning. +1 sound for kazoo.

Thanks 😤 (didn’t want to put my voice through the exact same level of torture it went through last year though, hence the relatively paltry quantity of High Quality Covers™ this year). Of course, even if you did want to listen to Percival shouting ‘good night’ at the tortoise over and over again in-game, the tortoise will actually wake up before you reach the end of that song in the first place 😅. Anywho, there is one other bit of kazoo music hidden away in there (which you are probably a bit too good at the game to have heard lol) if that’s of any interest to you.

Overall, I had a fun time trying this out. Well done for putting it all together!

Thanks :)

Kevin asked me to tell you that he is honestly glad that you enjoyed your Unspecified Period Of Time here at his Tortoise Sanctuary (but that he’s still disappointed about you allowing Ke’in to disturb his pet Tortoise).

Now that I’ve let you know what Kevin’s opinion on your opinion was, I probably should admit that I’ve actually never played any FNAF games/FNAF clones myself before either (not a fan of jumpscares tbh) so its somewhat reassuring to hear from someone else that the overall gameplay experience was bearable 😅 (and it’s especially reassuring to hear that the Intruder did have the ̶u̶n̶desired effect on at least one player)

(and tbh the game wouldn’t actually pose a real challenge without the presence of Percival (unless there was some other contrived thing that would force the player into having to leave the door open to do things (such as having a shamelessly unoriginal reskin of the fnaf 2 music box which has already been done to death)), so I’m also relieved to hear that positive feedback on the ‘shut up’ system)

Anywho, a couple of small tidbits of development cycle trivia you may find mildly interesting:

• Tortelvis’s appearance changing when reopening on the same camera isn’t entirely intended. The plan was that, whenever Tortelvis becomes visible, his appearance would get swapped with a random other one (for some more of those subtly unnerving ‘wait Tortelvis didn’t have a Getty Images watermark 5 seconds ago’ vibes). But basically due to some event-driven spaghetti, reopening the same camera again causes the thing that checks if he’s now visible to be done again. In theory, I probably could have rewritten the code that handles the ‘pressed a camera button’ code to fix that particular bug, but cba lol.
• The fully keyboard-based controls (except for shutting up Percival) also weren’t planned at first, but yeah interactable canvases on RenderTextures do be like that sometimes. But the monitor screen pretty much perfectly blocking the view of the hallway was one of those happy little accidents, without which I probably wouldn’t have found myself asking that particular question in the first place lol.
• The small sound effects for the door/cameras were actually afterthoughts more than anything else 😅
• Likewise, the Intruder was also an a̶f̸t̶e̷r̶t̴h̷o̶u̶g̷h̷t̷,̵ ̵n̵o̵t̵ ̵b̶e̸i̵n̵g̵ ̴c̷o̵n̷c̷e̷i̷v̸e̴d̴ ̷u̴n̴t̶i̷l̷ ̶a̷f̷t̵e̶r̷ ̷d̴e̴v̶e̵l̵o̵p̸m̴e̷n̷t̵ ̸h̸a̴d̶ ̶s̷t̵a̵r̷t̶e̴d̷ ̵(̵u̶n̶l̴i̴k̴e̷ ̴e̴v̶e̴r̴y̷o̸n̶e̷ ̴e̵l̸s̷e̴)̶,̵ ̷i̵n̴i̸t̵i̸a̷l̶l̴y̶ ̷s̷e̶r̴v̴i̴n̶g̴ ̵n̶o̵ ̵g̴a̶m̷e̸p̵l̵a̸y̴ ̷p̶u̶r̷p̵o̸s̷e̷ ̴b̵e̷s̶i̵d̷e̵s̸ ̴’̴s̶t̶a̵n̵d̵i̶n̴g̷ ̵t̶h̴e̸r̷e̷ ̷a̵n̴d̷ ̷u̷n̸n̶e̷r̵v̵i̶n̷g̵ ̴t̸h̸e̷ ̵p̸l̶a̷y̷e̶r̴’̵ intended presence who was always planned to be added to the game, and function how it does in the final version of the game

wait what I lost my train of thought there.

Oh well.

Glad you enjoyed it though!

hmm…

Percival asked me to tell you that he is glad that somebody appreciates his presence.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t think he’s going to shut up about that any time soon 😔.

np :)

I suppose that it could be worth adjusting the enemy AI throughout the night (perhaps gradually increasing the move chances a bit at certain times?) to help add a bit more difficulty during the night, rather than needing to add a second night for difficulty to appear. (That’s the system I initially used in the crappy fnaf knockoff I made, before replacing it with a different system that has a bit more player impact in how quickly the difficulty rises, but the ‘increasing AI at certain times’ system was still good enough to work reasonably well in FNAF 1).

Anywho, on an unrelated note, about the (now removed) webgl build of the game: Does any of your code use the System.Threading namespace? A few months ago, I kinda found out in a slightly awkward way that webgl builds refuse to work even if there’s a simple using System.Threading; anywhere in the code, so, if you did want to get the game working via webgl, you might want to try refactoring out any of that stuff (if present).

(I meant ‘downright evil’ in a positive sense when talking about the orange button, don’t worry)

This was a particularly scary game (and the location of the orange button is just downright evil). Still haven’t been able to find the yellow button though 😔.

This is one of those games that I really wanted to be able to enjoy.

The graphics, audio, and the overall presentation of the game oozes with SBIG charm, combined with the delightfully absurd premise.

However, the controls and the gameplay don’t really work well together to give much of a positive impression of Tortoise Island.

Sure, when traversing the plains and mountains of Tortoise Island, the controls do a good job of getting the player around in a way that feels natural. However, these same controls make the precision platforming (which the player is very promptly presented with shortly after epic quest of Salad Improvement) an utterly painful ordeal, souring the whole experience, leaving the sort of foul taste that one may experience after leaving one’s salad out in the summer heat for a few days.

If it wasn’t for the controls and the gameplay clashing in such a painful way, I think that this game would truly be ‘So bad it’s good’. Unfortunately, the precise platforming with imprecise controls just render it ‘So bad it’s unpleasant’.

…i see

I genuinely have no idea how I’m supposed to feel about this game.

It appears that one of the slimes did spawn on me (and I couldn’t really work out how to get it off), but I genuinely have no idea if that’s supposed to be a bug or a feature, considering everything else in this game.

Because currently those frozen enemies just have the same boolean value checked as enemies who are plunged or staggered.

just add another boolean xddddddddd /s

Anywho, about that point regarding Stalewater: the pretty fricking great combat in this game honestly made me completely forget about the somewhat meh combat of Stalewater, at least until you reminded me about it in that reply of yours. Whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing is up to interpretation.

(but I did appreciate all 4 of the One Button-shaped references to Stalewater at the end of the game regardless)

Overall, not sure how to feel about this game.

There has been genuine effort put into producing a somewhat cohesive art style, an intentionally scuffed system for moving the duck around, a story, and variety in the things that the player is presented with.

But overall, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the game.

It feels like it’s genuinely trying to tell a story about a duck, not entirely fitting in with the rest of the world, eventually trying and failing to pretend to be someone else in a desperate attempt to find any sort of connection in the world, before falling into a pit of despair and then potentially finding peace with himself after being stuck in a state of despair for a somewhat long time.

However, this does feel a bit lost in translation, when considering everything else about the game. It’s like the game doesn’t know if it wants to be taken seriously or not. I’d say that the main culprit here is the ‘drop the duck in the location’ stuff that punctuate this game. If it wasn’t for those bits (either being replaced with a less intentionally-awkward movement system, or omitted entirely and replaced by cutscenes, instead of the current system which just feels like it’s only been included to meet a quota of ‘SBIG’), I feel that the game would deliver a properly cohesive experience, and might help the artistic intent to shine through more.

But, as it stands, it feels like the game is having a bit of an identity crisis, hiding the somewhat serious narrative about a green duck’s mid/quarter-life crisis under a thin blue coat of ‘mandatory SBIG’ paint, if you get my drift.