I'm not gonna do a full review of this since it's definitely unfinished, but I liked the aesthetics and concept, so I figured I'd leave a comment in support of it being pushed out at a later date if you so desire!
Karsuman
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A member registered Dec 27, 2019
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Harold's AI Odyssey II: A Journey Through Time jam comments · Posted in Harold's AI Odyssey II: A Journey Through Time jam comments
There's a whole lot that can be unpacked here, but I won't go on at length since ample discussion is being had already.
Graphics: 3 - I agree with Sawyer on this one. The art might not be technically brilliant but it is extremely effective for what it is and was clearly a ton of work. Some of the takes on famous artwork or set pieces made me smile and I liked the monsters.
Sound: 2 - What was there fit well enough. I will say that if you walk around with the healing stone it gets pretty annoying hearing it go off, though.
Gameplay: 2 - This is effectively an adventure game with light combat. Most of the time you will be navigating between screens so perhaps my biggest complaint is the bugginess and sluggishness of moving between them - clicking too fast would result in a disorienting screen 'flicker' that caused the screen the visuals to fade in twice. The combat is basically a guessing game with a bit of memorization. I liked that the enemies existed but I found the combat to be mostly a distraction and it probably would have been better if they were preset one-off encounters, perhaps changing the combat a bit to suit them better. The two item inventory management was also pretty annoying, though it was not much of an issue after the Egypt zone.
Comedy: 3 - This game had good energy during the intro, which I thought was pretty charming and funny, but it becomes a preachy diatribe pretty fast. I thought the credits were amusing, too, but the sobering ending made them a bit awkward. This was definitely a game made for this community specifically and so I definitely have less context for what is going on here since I'm new, though the game made it plenty clear.
The irony of a guy making a game with AI following it up with a game that doesn't use AI, and having it nearly universally being considered better by the general audience, is not lost on me though, so this gets +1 point for meta reasons.
Story: 3 - Well, there's certainly a lot that COULD be said about this one. I also have little doubt that this is the most controversial jam entry, so I'll just say what I liked. The pacing and structure of the narrative were sound and it effectively upped the ante over the course of the game. The dialogue is competent and reads nicely, and the smaller character interactions closer to the beginning of the game were fun.
I'll leave it to the rest to complain about AI art being for the lazy and creatively bankrupt, or about how AI is a black hole for electricity and water supplies, or whatever probably true reason people have come up with. I don't think anyone is getting convinced either way.
Overall - 3
Gameplay: 2 - A few small puzzles that aren't particularly memorable but not obtrusive, is what I want to say, but I did run into the not capitalizing issue on the first puzzle. Not that it made things take much longer, but I could imagine some getting stuck on it for awhile.
Sound: 3 - Appropriate moody, ambient soundtrack. The game notably has VA, and quite a lot of it, but the volume wasn't mixed to match the rest of the game's volume, so it was pretty hard to hear a lot of it. I wouldn't say the game needed the VA but as amateur VA goes, it wasn't offensive,.
Graphics: 2 - The visuals are unobtrusive and the maps look fine. Nothing really stands out but it's not like it's bad, either.
Story: 2 - There's a lot that could be said about the story here, some of which I'm sure has already been stated by others, but I will say this might be the only game where Harold was depicted as actively intelligent human being and not a dumbass or a jerk(or Jesus or a lynx, I guess), so good job going against the grain, hah.
While I understand the premise to be scholar Harold falling in love with a supernatural being and wanting to continue working in her memory, I can't help but feel the verbose dialogue and rampant use of adjectives and thesaurus words detrimental to the overall experience. Since everything was written this way, it made all the text sort of blur together in my head - one historical text to the next all felt like they were written by the same mysterious pretentious guy - but even the characters do this, so yeah.
The end result is that it's hard to parse the specifics of what happened or even what the deal was with Harold's sort-of-but-maybe-not-im-not-sure-if-he's-cheating wife, even if I personally feel I have a good idea on what was trying to be expressed. I feel like the story would be significantly improved with dialogue that was more to the point and peppering the flowery stuff in some of the ancient texts or an arrogant character or something.
Comedy: 2 - There's none, but it isn't trying to have any, so I'll leave this here.
Overall: 2 - I resonant somewhat with the idea of this story; I feel like it could be more relatable if the dialogue was toned down and differentiated. The first puzzle should probably not care about capitalization to avoid people getting stumped on it.
Where in the World is Harold Asinego jam comments · Posted in Where in the World is Harold Asinego jam comments
Graphics: 3 - The menu is clean and easy to use. Generally the game is presentable and the tiles themselves are very nice. I do have to dock some credit for how frustrating it is to actually navigate the maps; the greenery is very large and distracting - I found the way they were used disorienting.
Sound: 3 - Good music that fit each area's theme well. No complaints!
Story: 2 - An episode of Dr. Who and/or Chrono Trigger distilled into a fetch quest. The premise is that Harold got lost by being stupid and trading items up till you get the key one to find him. It's a barebones story with very limited meaningful dialogue. NPCs repeat the same lines; it'd have been more enjoyable to just have smaller maps with less NPCs, I think. The concept is fun I just wish there was a more narrative to go along with it!
Comedy: 2 - Okay, I snickered at the outhouse. Other than that though, there's not much in the way of humor.
Gameplay: 2 - Very basic fetch quest gameplay with lots of back-tracking. The animation for traveling between time periods is very long and some maps are frustrating to navigate. You can also get stuck if you accidentally skip a certain line of dialogue that contains a password, which isn't too unlikely because you might be prone to rapid clicking as a lot of characters say the same or similar stuff(This did happen to me, so I restarted). All in all, I found the various issues I had compounded and I ended up not having a lot of fun.
Overall: 2 - I liked the audiovisuals! I just found the moment to moment gameplay tough to appreciate, and the lack of the story didn't create a lot of drive for me either.
Story: 3 - A little detective story where you try to track down a missing lynx named Harold. It's a simple to the point story with no frills, but the dialogue was decent(there were some spelling and grammar errors, but I think English isn't the dev's first language) and it's got some light edutainment value. The characters mostly exist to facilitate the plot and no one really has a strong enough personality to stand out among the pack, but I think that's okay for this.
Comedy: 2 - Not really a comedy-oriented game. It mostly plays things straight, too.
Graphics: 3 - Entirely handmade graphics, and quite a lot of them to boot. The game has a consistent naturalistic appearance and while I wouldn't say it is 'high fidelity' or whatever it's a respectable choice to pump out this much art over the course of a month.
Sound: 1 - There isn't any at all!
Gameplay: 2 - You collect information like a Phoenix Wright game and form a hypothesis, invariably choosing where Harold has gone to find him. There's no murders or long debates. It's not a hard mystery solve but that's okay.
There's some bugs, some of them requiring you to reload, so I saved often.
Overall: 3 - It's a cute little idea that reinterprets Harold as something else altogether.
Graphics: 2 - TREES. SO MANY TREES.
The random dungeon drove me nuts cause it was like staring into an abyss of green. I'm not sure if I can think of anything else to say, haha.
Sound: 2 - Nothing particularly of note, but the generic RTP field music is a perfect idle grindy game like this.
Story: 2 - There's no real story following the intro, and no one talks, either. I'm not gonna batter you on this point, though, since this clearly wasn't the focus, so I'll leave the score like this.
Comedy: 2 - There's a campy Bad Dudes reference, but the line is awkward. I'm not sure if there is anything else that would really qualify as comedy.
Gameplay: 1 - There's a lot I didn't like, but thankfully a lot of it is also easy to fix were you to expand this. Some of them were already said I'm sure, but the following is what I thought while playing:
The appearance rate of tokens was too low. For a grindy game like this, the option to speed up the animations or skip them is heavily advised, as the combat is pretty sluggish. The miss rate on physical attacks is frustratingly high, sometimes Kasey had to almost all of the DPS herself. To a degree it's expected that that random dungeons have dead ends, but there's an enormous amount of them, and none of them have loot so it mostly just feels bad. Speaking of loot, where is it!? I want loot in my vibes-based grindy dungeon game.
Overall: 2 - It's definitely unfinished and the gameplay is rough but I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily. For games like this it's best to generously provide the player with large quantities of dopamine. Loot, cool monsters, secrets, even bonus scenes or whatever if you decide to have a more character-driven focus. Working those kinds of things would help make this game enjoyable.
Graphics: 4 - I am not overly familiar with it because I didn't own a Gameboy Color as a kid, but I know it well enough to understand this nails the aesthetic. The game itself feels a bit like a cross between Pokemon and Earthbound, visually. Great job.
Sound: 4 - Authentic-sounding beep boops that fit the game well. Sounds great too. Nice stuff!
Gameplay: 2 - Effectively, it's a narrative-driven walking sim. This is one of the shorter entries, so while the gameplay is little more than an apple grabbling contest it never manages to become frustrating or drawn out. There is a platforming segment that is simple and easy enough, though Koma's movement is very weighty and somewhat hard to control. I'm not sure what getting all the apples does but it wasn't hard to get them all so I did it anyways.
Story: 2 - Koma, our protagonist, jumps into the dreams of people while they are sleeping and interacts with the world inside in a manner similar to the game Alundra, but with a lot less dying. It's a fun enough conceit and I l ended up liking Koma, who you'd expect to be more serious but is actually kind of a derp. The dialogue is interesting and has a distinctive feel to it too.
That said, I found the narrative itself uninteresting. This is another game where Harold is dumb as a bag of rocks and gets lost cause of his stupidity. The dream worlds are not really weird or compelling enough to carry interest, either.
Comedy: 3 - This game has some pretty campy characters and I found myself smiling here and there. The archeologist made me laugh out loud.
Overall: 3 - I really like the aesthetics, enjoyed some of the characters and I had a laugh or two. An enjoyable time.
Graphics: 4 - It was neat to see someone use the front view script! I think the monster designs were fun, and the menu animation and stuff like the block and attack animations were really cool.
Sound: 2 - I have no particular complaints about the music. I do feel there was something off about the sound effect usage, didn't really give a good feeling of weight to the skills or attacks. Just felt a bit off with the frontview script.
Gameplay: 2 - If you ignore the front view script, it's a long and moderately grindy dungeon with no gimmicks, a fight against a slime with a split mechanic that never changes outside of its stats, a fight against THREE slimes, and a missable encounter against a mimic that is even more boring than the slimes. The party building was also basic and basically pigeon holes you into bringing a fighter, sorcerer and healer. It wasn't the worst - it just wasn't interesting.
Story: 2 - Story was not the focus so I'm not going to be harsh. There's not really much here, Harold runs off into a dungeon for an unknown reason and his party hires you to go find him. The dialogue is dry and doesn't really offer much insight into the character's personalities. A serviceable story but one without any color that isn't Marsh's death scene..
Humor: 2 - I legit laughed when Martha ran forward and died from a falling border, leaving nothing but a red stain. Otherwise, this one plays it straight.
Overall: 3 - I really liked the visual flourishes during combat and with the menus. With more time I think this can be developed into something interesting even if I find it very plain right now.
Graphics: 3 - Though I agree with some other comments here regarding visual contrast, the presentation itself is nice. It's got a fun 'RTP, but as a sidescroller' aesthetic and I found myself liking the look. I also liked the expressiveness of the characters.
Sound: 3 - I liked the music, and the sound meshed well with action use! The Marsha death cry is super goofy, though.
Story: 3 - As another person said, this feels and plays out a lot like a teen romcon with an extra helping of gay. I found the dialogue between Harold and Marsha fun, though as the cast gets large and it's hard to feel out or care much about the rest of them. In spite of Harold and his love interest being the focus, Marsha and her love interest were much more fun together. Also if I didn't see him while collecting artifacts in the last areas, I woulda thought Lucius died as he kinda just never appears again in a story scene after being pulled into the warp. The whole thing feels a bit immature, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.
As a general aside, the antagonist's past, motivation and dimension jumping abilities remind me a ton of a certain character from Limbus Company. This might not be intentional, you might have never played it, but it amused me personally.
Comedy: 3 - It was rather amusing, mostly closer to the beginning of the game when it's just Harold and Marsha. After the main plot starts it gets rather dry, although Marsha and her waifu were funny.
Gameplay: 3 - I'm not going to be as harsh on this as the others. I thought the game was pretty fun and I did clear it getting all the collectibles, though I didn't bother with the speed clears. I DO think the slash jump mechanic, which I have seen before in other games done well, was quite fickle. Adding some lift on the jump is definitely advisable, as well as improving the hitboxes; some of the issues are definitely caused by the lack of mobility in the air, too.
I don't recall if one was suggested, but a controller is basically required, so I feel sorry for anyone who didn't use one, especially for the few instances that require the slash jump into marsha float combo. This sort of technique, which is basically a Celeste-tier technique, is only required a couple times, so dying 30+ times (if not more) before succeeding is not just plausible but likely. Cleaning up the jump lag and slash jump would make it more fun to do too; instead it's pretty frustrating.
Overall: 3 - I liked it! But getting to the elephant in the room...
There's no way that a first time clear, especially if you bother to grab any collectibles, will be less than an hour. I'm sure it can be done; I'm going to assume that the speed clear times are more than possible. but a part of speed running is learning to play the game at all, and people playing your jam game will not realize that it's actually reasonably challenging before getting stuck and giving up when the hour mark is over. I admit that I did go beyond that point and commented on stuff that happens after I went over an hour in my review because I took a liking to it and wanted to see where it ended up. But yeah.
Either way, I respect the amount of effort! I had some fun.
Graphics: 5 - Really nice, coherent visuals! The character designs were simple, but clean and sharp. I also loved the little animations, weird enemies and the environments. Great job developing all these assets over such a short time period!
Sound: 4 - The tracks were catchy and memorable, suiting the game well. Other sound work was straightforward without much fanfare, but things weren't out of place or anything.
Story: 3 - An interesting choice of narrative that follows Harold as a Christ-like figure who gathers apostles and performs miracles while defying expectations. I quite liked the concept, it's an extremely clever take on the jam's conceit. The actual dialogue (outside of Lucius) is quite dry, functional but not offensive. The two endings weren't really a satisfying conclusion to the game but I did like the portrayal of the antagonist as little more than a bully first and foremost.
Comedy: 2 - The enemies made me smile! I'm not sure I understood the deal with Lucius - I didn't hate him though.
Gameplay: 2 - I think navigating the town is pretty neat, as well as the node map. The combat is quite pretty but mechanically very weak. ATB is a personal dislike of mine so I might be biased, but with the way you acquire resources the whole thing is broken open almost as soon as you start.
That said, the combat also doesn't waste your time and is over very quickly, so it was at the very least not painful.
Overall: 4 - A very good entry. The combat is a miss but the execution of everything else is decent to great. Good job!
Graphics: 3 - There's an impressive amount of custom graphics, there's even multiple emotes and poses for the characters. I believe the tiles are also custom? I respect the amount of effort put into all of this.
Story: 1 - I struggled to enjoy the story. The concept is similar to an episodic Saturday morning cartoon with an A and B plot. The setup is simple: Harold is separated from his party on an Indiana Jones-esque adventure while the others fight dragons, but I found it hard to get invested into the characters or their dialogue. There is a ton of characters for a game that clocks in at about 30 - 40 minutes and everyone's screentime is so brief no one has time to shine.
Some of this might simply be due to lacking context from a previous entry in this series, as this seems to be drawing from one, but I think some of the issues would be remedied with more development focus. Maybe one storyline, not two? Or fewer characters. It's just a lot to fit in.
Comedy: 2 - I can see someone finding parts of this funny, though I didn't really have any big laughs myself. I cannot emphasize enough how much it feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, which isn't a bad thing.
Sound: 3 - The music was very good, but the most surprising inclusion here is voice acting; I would never expect a one-month jam game to have full voice acting, but here we are. The performances are a mixed bag and I feel like one or two of the actors might have had an issue with their mic. It felt like more could be eked out of the voicework with some voice direction, but I realize that's a tall ask for six VAs in the span of a month, so I digress. The thing that stood out to me the most was Harold's voice, which sounded like some unholy fusion of Lenny from Of Mice and Men and Fezzik from Princess Bride. It kind of felt like he was just being made fun of to me, which I don't think was the intent.
Gameplay: 2 - The main gameplay is made up of battles which take up about half this entry's run time. The battles are conventional and most skills are 'damage' and 'more damage', though there are a few debuffs, buffs and massively overpowered heals. I feel the mook fights are overlong and a bit tedious, but there's more going on with the fight against the dragons and if you take the time to cast the magic reflection spell the result is satisfying.
There were a few minigames, an easy race, a matching puzzle in the archaeology site and a quasi race with the vines. The former and latter become very simplistic with a mouse, while the dig site puzzle might be bugged cause it cleared for me even after failing to match the symbols correctly.
Overall: 2 - This game takes on a whole lot, with custom graphics, sprites and voicework, and I can really respect that. But I feel like trimming some of the fat would greatly benefit this one.
Harold: Prepare to [Die] Edition jam comments · Posted in Harold: Prepare to [Die] Edition jam comments
Graphics: 4 - The game has great atmosphere and visuals especially for the short amount of time we had, though I feel like Harold is almost too colorful and pretty when set against the gloomy, grayscale backdrops, resulting in some visual clash!
Story: 2 - Not really heavy on story and it isn't a character-driven entry, but it has a few fun interactions and I like the use of Ralph. The text is competently written and I noticed no errors.
Comedy: 2 - This game features goofy references to a number of movies via the various worlds Harold visits. I likely did not see all of them since I cleared the game on my second run. The ending is something of a punchline itself, but Indiana Jones showing up was probably the funniest one I saw.
Sound: 2 - I wasn't annoyed by it, but I also barely remember the sound work and music even minutes later. Better attention to music and especially soundwork would really amp up the atmosphere!
Gameplay: 3 - Lost the first time but beat the final boss the second. I definitely didn't see every world. There are merits to the game systems but because it is a dice throwing game and because there's no control over where you go your success or failure is mostly up to the whims of RNG, and I can certainly see that being frustrating. I'd be curious to see the systems expanded, especially if more options and decisions were given to the player.
Overall: 3 - I liked it! I'd play an extended version if the gameplay systems were expanded upon.
Thank you for taking my review well! I'm glad you took something from it even though I feel it might have been a bit harsh and I didn't manage to complete a playthrough. I'm just some random guy playing your game so you don't need to take everything I said as gospel, but the ability to process reasonable criticism fairly is the first step to getting anywhere I feel, whether or not you agree with my opinions. I definitely respect you for that.
Good luck on your future endeavors!
Very cool little game that plays with meta elements. Has tons of art, very impressive that you got so much packed into it in such a short time. I like that it is unlike the average walking simulator experiential type of games in that it includes some actual puzzling to be done that requires a bit of thought and observation without being overly obtuse. Very much an experience that can only be made as a game. Got both of the currently available endings. I did encounter a bug that was already previously mentioned.
I can't say I quite understand the story it's telling, it is very light on details, but it's certainly engaging and I certainly have some theories. Also, Kana is quite cute.
Very good job! Please finish it after judging time is over.
Neat little exploration/adventure game with a timer. Has a cute, spunky protagonist and some fun(albeit minimalist) dialogue. The visual style is unique and interesting, but highly disorienting so it can be difficult to read the text and some of the objects. Thankfully there's a guide but it's kind of a shame I had to use it to find the last couple of interactions.
To the dev, I would try to increase the contrast between the interactables and the environment, and change the font! The font is already low readability thanks to the tall, low-width characters, but at points it really strains my poor eyes thanks to the visuals and the transparent text box.
Shin's Chronicles : A Hero's Tale jam comments · Posted in Shin's Chronicles : A Hero's Tale jam comments
Reposting from review.
It's a game about grinding, effectively. At least as far as I got. Interpreting 'beyond expectations' as requiring you to be a level above the signpost is a bit of a weird one. Such a game would require the grinding to be fun, but unfortunately it doesn't succeed at doing that.
It's a very slow game that tediously involves spamming the attack button for much of it, made even slower by the enemies taking 2-3 hits to kill on average since you're stuck with one party member. The enemies also generally don't give much experience so you will be doing this quite a bit. Gets easier when you get the AoE spell, but it's still slow and effectively involves fighting randoms over and over. I couldn't force myself to grind for the second boss and had to stop.
The dialogue is also odd. The NPCs are extremely chatty and go on long diatribes, sometimes going on for 10+ lines about stuff that is exceedingly generic 'well this IS a jrpg' stuff. Accidentally talking to one of these NPCs in town again is a bit torturous. The priestess is particularly guilty of this - I groaned when she went over the five pieces of information and then would keep extending the conversation even longer and then doesn't even join you even though there's no reason why she logically shouldn't. There's a reason why most standard jrpgs don't stick you alone for very long.
There's definitely some potential here. There seems to be some sort of greater mystery to the story and that might be compelling, but I just found it difficult to get invested in the world, and the combat being extremely boring in spite of the main conceit being grinding killed my interest.
Good luck with your future stuff.