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Hoo Roo!

I'm one of the judges of this game jam and was assigned your game! As such, I've been tasked with scoring your entry based on the five criteria of Theme, Gameplay, Presentation, Engagement and Polish. While I can talk about these aspects, I cannot showcase the scores given, so please don't expect to see any numerical number tied to your entry in this post.  

 I chose to record my gameplay of each game I judged and post up both the video (after it goes live) and a small write-up I've done for your game. Hopefully both will help your continued growth as a developer in some way! Thank you for sharing your creativity, drive and experience with us, as every game has something wonderful to share with the world. 

 To start, the video! (You may note that some parts were a bit cut. Lag in the recording made it so I had to cut some bits, sorry!)

PAGE TURNER

This game was obviously someone's early try at using the engine in question and it shows in the overall presentation. Maps were large and empty, with wrongly used tiles here and there, and yet despite that it was an interesting little game with small flourishes that made it memorable. The writing was a particular high point of the game, with four characters who play off each other reasonably well. I will note that there were some weirdly written lines, but as a whole the writing was pretty solid when it came to story and characterization. 

The gameplay was decently balanced when it came to battles and items. What I found hidden around the library came in useful and the equipment found was pretty good in both how useful they were but also when and how they were given. Thought was obviously given in the various skills you unlocked. The crystals being stores was interesting, though unlocking new items through progression would have given the game a bit more depth, especially if certain crystals gave specific items for battle, giving multiple playthroughs a way to be more strategic in which crystals you go after first.

Overall, while it didn't touch on the theme too much, and the game had some faults in the presentation, it was a fun little game and the ending twist was pretty cool. Keep up the good work, dev-chan! You did great for what appears to be one of your first games. You got some fun ideas and I look forward to seeing more of you in the future~

As a judge I just want to note that there were so many great games this time around it was hard to see what the clear winners would be. Usually, when judging, you have a general idea but not so this time! Everyone really did a wonderful job and even those who might not have scored highly had interesting takes on ideas or fun bits to them that made them worth checking out. I always love judging events like these because the influx of games into the community, the sharing of ideas and inspiration thrown around is always intoxicating. 

Congrats to all the winners, but also to all of those who took part. I know I'm a grump at times during my recordings but just know that I'm proud of anyone who actually released a game for this - it takes SO MUCH to put yourself out there and into a situation where there are so many eyes on you and your creation, and you all deserve a pat on the back for taking part. Thank you so much for sharing your games with us. <3

You got the perfect attitude to grow as a dev - not taking things too to heart and using feedback to improve your game. Again, sorry if the first video caused any grief (if you saw it), it wasn't intended to come off quite so harshly. Roguish is generally a positive descriptor nowdays, but minxy hasn't really changed much and it's strongest synonyms are... well...

Not great. Roguish is gender-neutral, though, so you could just use that instead. Glad you're still intending to work on the game, though, and hope it all goes well for you! 

Hoo Roo! 

I'm one of the judges of this game jam and was assigned your game! As such, I've been tasked with scoring your entry based on the five criteria of Theme, Gameplay, Presentation, Engagement and Polish. While I can talk about these aspects, I cannot showcase the scores given, so please don't expect to see any numerical number tied to your entry in this post.  I chose to record my gameplay of each game I judged and post up both the video (after it goes live) and a small write-up I've done for your game. Hopefully both will help your continued growth as a developer in some way! Thank you for sharing your creativity, drive and experience with us, as every game has something wonderful to share with the world. 

 To start, the video!

Personal note: My original video was very harsh due to a number of different reasons. I have redubbed the video as I felt upset at myself for putting out a subpar vod. It is still a bit harsh in areas, but not as much as it was. Sorry if you saw it before this redub, dev-chan, it was not my intent to hurt feelings at all, I was just in a lot of pain and took it out on the game and I apologize that I let my pain make me grumpier than intended.

Theme 
A guild requiring you to make your way through the ranks whilst being looked down on by other guild mates at least shows some effort in creating a set-up to go beyond the expectations put on them, so it did hit the theme well enough.

Gameplay

Gameplay consists of two parts. The first is the dungeon and the second pertains to the guild. 

The dungeon is a maze-like area that has random encounters and specifically placed item collection points, with a few chests scattered about. You start there and have to find your way out, which can be very treacherous as you start with no items or equipment, making you easily killed. One of the biggest issues with the game is the balance in battles - early on you can die very easily, later on you can only be hurt by certain enemies who use poison damage. 

The town portion gives you a guild that you want to rank up in by doing requested tasks, a shop that sells very cheap but very defensive equipment and your home where you can rest and talk to your father. The guild quests never change and require that you take a quest and go back to the dungeon to fulfill it before you can take another. You have the choice of a few quests, but they all amount to the same thing - go through the dungeon to fight enemies and collect their parts or find a specific item in the dungeon. Once you collect enough, you sell them at the guild, get some money and guild points and build your skills.

Oddly enough, only after selling items to the guild do you gain skills from levelling up. Not sure why that is the case.

Unfortunately, while the gameplay loop is set up to be addictive, there's a lot of issues in the game that caused it not to be so. The ideas themselves are pretty good and could have been done very well, but the balance is very broken once you get every piece of equipment, which doesn't take much more than one quest. 

Healing items are well-balanced, but can only be found by killing monsters, so there is plenty of reason to hunt them down.

Engagement

Sadly, this is where the game really falls off. While the basic grind of running back and forth between dungeon and guild, doing quests and raising ranks sounds like a great gameplay loop, there's a lot of problems when put into practice. 

You are locked to the first floor of the dungeon (as far as I could get, at least) and thus you tread the same maze over and again looking for the requested items over and over. There is only one type of request item in the game - mushrooms - and they grow all over the dungeon and grow back after a while in the same event points every time. You can go to the first room, pick mushrooms, wait, then repick until you have the amount you need for the quest. The other quests require killing enemies and collecting their body parts, which also becomes onerous when coupled with the fact that once you collect all the equipment from the store you're pretty much untouchable and can just clean up with no challenge in battles.

The game ends up being very repetitive and thus, quite boring to play. Sorry, but it's true. 

Presentation 

Honestly, my favourite part of the game is this. I like the look of the dungeon and wish it had been worked on a bit more to add some more variety to the visuals. The music was pretty good for what it was and the writing, for the most part, was decent. I will note that calling a woman minxy is a bit derogatory as it can mean they're cunning, flirtatious and impudent, so having the first line of the female character call her that is a bit of a shock since, yeah, didn't expect to have my gender insulted from the get-go like that.

 I did like the scenes with your father, though, and appreciated that scenes changed depending on which character you chose to be. I even like the stark visual choice of just having blank backgrounds in town - I think that no matter why you made the choice, it worked for the game.

Polish

There was some weirdness with the request filling - sometimes you had to sell the items to the guild boss and talk to him afterwards to complete the quest, other times the event didn't read as you having x amount of items even if you did. It was a little wonky in that aspect, but otherwise the game worked well.

Summary

There are some good ideas here that need a lot of polish to make it work well, but it has potential to be a good game if given the care needed to shine. I liked the overall idea quite a bit but felt that it fell short of the mark due to ignoring balance and repetitive play. There's certainly ways to fix this, though, and I hope to see you do so in the future, Dev-chan! 

Hoo Roo!
I'm one of the judges of this game jam and was assigned your game! As such, I've been tasked with scoring your entry based on the five criteria of Theme, Gameplay, Presentation, Engagement and Polish. While I can talk about these aspects, I cannot showcase the scores given, so please don't expect to see any numerical number tied to your entry in this post. 

I chose to record my gameplay of each game I judged and post up both the video (after it goes live) and a small write-up I've done for your game. Hopefully both will help your continued growth as a developer in some way! Thank you for sharing your creativity, drive and experience with us, as every game has something wonderful to share with the world.

To start, the video (which I believe you already saw, but hey, makes it easy for others to see)!

Antis

Theme
I didn't find the theme touched on much, if at all, during the time I spent with Antis, but if there was an attempt to communicate it, it was not done in a way that is recognizable.

Gameplay 
The gameplay consists of building up your ant nest in order to take on various predators who attack, while keeping your queen and colony alive and thriving. To do this you assign various workers to tasks around the colony, then build on your progress while trying not to overwhelm the colony too much. It’s a careful balancing act.

To aid your colony you can create new and upgraded rooms that serve various functions and boost your ants in various ways – from increasing the amount of forage you can hold, to adding extra health to your army, to adding more ants born every day.

The loop is pretty quick to pick up and doesn’t deviate much – eggs are birthed, then hatch after a day to become your work force, which you can then assign various roles to. Alternatively you may sacrifice ants for various goods in order to help maintain the lives of the current colony, though it's best not to do that unless it's absolutely necessary. Hard to grow a thriving nest if you keep killing off the possible workforce, after all. ;p

Engagement
The game is pretty chill – you go through the gameplay loop and slowly build up your colony. Over time you learn how to balance your workers, harvesters and soldiers so that you’re not losing more resources than you’re bringing in.

That said, you can expect to die from either overstressing the colony or under-protecting it. The game requires a very careful balancing act which doesn’t allow for much exploration of systems early on - your need to keep enough food coming in vs other ants in the colony who aren't contributing to that side can make it hard to deal with, especially if you haven't built rooms to hold the many resources required. You will want to prioritize specific roles over others just to get to the next level of the game, which discourages exploration of the systems until you can easily hold off various threats and hold enough food to allow for expansion.

I did find the slow build up (and pacing) to be a bit on the boring side, but I also fully intend to play more of this game after I’ve finished judging the others, so the loop is pretty addictive despite that, especially when you finally figure out how to balance properly, which admittedly did take me a little while, but once I understood and it clicked, it became a lot more engaging to play.

Presentation 
The graphics are all custom and look great, working well together. The music is a little jarring in places but mostly fits the chill vibe that the game has, too. The UI is mostly good – the Soldier text is a bit hard to read with the green used blending into the darker background the text is on, and there were a few areas where extra explanation would be appreciated in the descriptions of what things do, especially highlighting the amount of food going out (the fact the queen isn't added into the nest total did trip me up once or twice, but I also got confused by the descriptions for the different ant types as I found them a little unclear as to whether harvesters brought in or cost an amount of food specified).

Overall, though, the game is well presented and looks very good!

Polish
No problems here! The game is very nicely polished.

Summary

A well-polished game with a pretty chill vibe that expects you to learn how to balance and follow directions.  While it doesn't really present the theme from what I played of it, it is still a very solid game with an addictive gameplay loop that is worth checking out by anyone that likes a good simulation. 

Hoo Roo!
I'm one of the judges of this game jam and was assigned your game! As such, I've been tasked with scoring your entry based on the five criteria of Theme, Gameplay, Presentation, Engagement and Polish. While I can talk about these aspects, I cannot showcase the scores given, so please don't expect to see any numerical number tied to your entry in this post. 
I chose to record my gameplay of each game I judged and post up both the video (after it goes live) and a small write-up I've done for your game. Hopefully both will help your continued growth as a developer in some way! Thank you for sharing your creativity, drive and experience with us, as every game has something wonderful to share with the world.

To start, the video!

Gameplay
I appreciated the idea that battles were small challenges that were part of the game, but not a major aspect, and that they had goals to complete within the battles, however there were very few to engage in over the course of the story. The challenge mode was interesting and allowed for more of a showcase of the battle system to be seen but got quite harder once you stopped learning skills – up to that point you just use the same strategy over and over and hope that the enemy doesn’t kill you first.

The choice options in the game seem like they may be interesting in a future build but ultimately have no pay-off beyond seeing a few alternate scenes and game ends, but adding them gives the game some replay value.

Unfortunately, we don’t see enough of the game to deepen any systems in it beyond surface level basics.

Engagement 
Honestly, the most engaging aspect of this game was the challenge mode, and only to a certain point. A big reason for this is due to the writing. Having to stumble your way through the story and dialogue does tend to create problems with wanting to play more of a game.

Another thing that tanked the engagement of this game a scene shown towards the end of the game, which made me not want to play more – namely the inappropriate sexual content between the succubus and the kitsune. Even outside of the failure state, knowing that a character you may control again is a sexual predator really tanks the desire to play. Unfortunately, as this was the second to last scene of the game I was left with a rather bad impression and a lack of desire to play more even if there had been more to play.

Presentation 
For the most part the game presented itself well. Music was interesting and fit well with the scenes it was used in, the sound design was not jarring (bar the clicking noise) and the character art was, for the most part, quite well done. I will note that there was some discrepancy in the art at times – sometimes it was highly polished, other times it was very sketchy. I recommend picking one style and sticking with it for the full release as having both felt rather disjointed at points.

Mapping was decent enough to be able to tell what was what most of the time, but there were two instances where I could not find sprites on the field based on where they were placed as they blended in to the tiles they stood on. That said, there were a few nicer maps mixed in with pretty lighting effects to enhance them, but otherwise level design was very standard.

There was a zoom and pan effect during scenes at times which was pretty cool and was appreciated so as to get a better look at the custom character sprites, which had some nice poses.

Polish 
I did not encounter any bugs or issues during the playthrough of the game, however there were a LOT of problems when it came to the writing. It was very clear that English is not the first language of the developer as the dialogue and story was littered with various grammatical issues – capitalization, word usage, punctuation – all throughout. The sheer amount of the issues made it very hard to read and understand what was being said at times. I highly recommend getting someone who is an English native to read through the script and help get this sorted as it caused a lot of issues in understanding what was going on in the story.

Overall, the game has some promise, but it’d be nice to see it without the questionable content and a bit more polish when it comes to the written aspect. Picking a specific style for the portraits and event imagery would also be a good idea. Good luck with your game, dev!

There was a point when games could be added. For now, maybe post any new updates in the comments with a link hosted elsewhere, don't update the game download itself. >.<)b

Hey guys Liberty here. 
Please remember to NOT OVERWRITE your games when updating any fixes or whatnot AFTER the end of the event. We've already had a few games that have overwritten their contest entries!
Instead, please ADD A NEW VERSION and note it as non-event so that we don't have situations where we go to download a game and find it updated/added past the finishing time.

Thanks and looking forward to seeing the creativity you all create!

I recommend maybe adding a walkthrough? All puzzle games should probably have one available. I... may have had to look up some videos on one particular part since I clicked a bit awry and didn't get a message that would have helped.

Otherwise, love the twist and thought it was very cute! Great art style and fun little game!

So good! really loved the visual design, but the sound design is also really well done! Great job!

It's very different to typical JRPGs and I don't think it has an English patch available - I just bumbled my way through somehow. It is a very charming game, though, and I got the gist well enough. It's a light-hearted, simple quest to save your true love, so yeah, I recommend giving it a shot if you've the time to kill. X3

Dang, this is giving me major Love Quest vibes. The palette, the cars, some of the building designs, etc. Very much in that style. I mean, it's not rips or anything, just giving that vibe, which is pretty damn cool.

ooh nice~<3

Lovely!

So I was one of the judges and I loved this little game to bits. It was a pity about the bugs, but the rest of it was just aces and I just wanted to let you know that! <3

The visuals for the game were really pretty and helped a lot in making the setting seem realistic. The character art in particular really helped convey the different personalities of the main crew and I liked the hints that there was more to the girls than first met the eye. The choice of how to show 'the secret', so to speak, was very well done and I could easily see a full game that followed the girls and made you second-guess a lot of things about what is actually going on. I do find it funny that a lot of people didn't seem to pick up on the hints of what was really going on with the girls, but that just goes to show that it has potential to be a really good future twist. ;p

The minigames as they were were pretty nice. I appreciated the pipe one a lot, honestly, and the other two weren't bad either. The sound was pretty great too. It's definitely one of the stronger adventure games in the IGMC.

But seriously tho - Bravo for hiding the twist in plain sight and using general gameplay mechanics to do so. That was seriously clever and I hope people recognise what you did and clap you on the back for it, especially the judges. >.<)b

The atmosphere in the game is very well done. The sound, lights and visuals were woven together to give a really cool feeling, making me tense and uptight about everything even though there weren't many critters to worry about. It did a great job showing a small chunk of what could be a much larger game. I would have liked a bit of a bigger inventory, personally, and I wasn't a fan of the controls, and how clunky the attacking was (having to ready before attacking felt a bit eh) but otherwise the game was really nice. 

The game has some promise but it also has a lot of issues. The most blatant problem is the spelling - there's a lot of bad spelling scattered through-out. This is kinda of weird considering that the writing is rather decent aside from that aspect - grammar and punctuation isn't noticeably problematic, which is weird as one usually leads to the other. This caused a bit of a weird disconnect for me. The characters were... well, they were okay. Nothing amazing but not bad. That really kind of sums up the whole game for me, to be honest.

It was very standard RPG horror game. The mapping was decent, the battles were a bit on the easier side but were pretty basic. I did question a fair few design choices when it came to the gameplay - having some items shown on the map while others were hidden, having menu choices that seemed to be added just to be 'cool' instead of being useful... that kind of thing.

I liked that items had uses, like the broom being used to sweep up glass and the boards being able to be picked up and reused. That felt nice, though the broom being suddenly full of glass was a bit weird (since you can just give a broom a shake to dislodge items stuck in it. Felt a bit ham-fisted as a way to limit it's uses). 

As to the sanity system. It's alright. I noticed people were comparing it to Darkest Dungeon and I don't really see it - it's not the first RPG horror game to use a sanity system in and out of battle, so I was kinda surprised that people were clamouring about it so much. It felt like just another stat, where-as the sanity in Darkest Dungeon is a lot more present and something you need to keep an eye on. In this game it just felt like another stat, like a TP or stress counter.

I also got to a point where I was 20 minutes in and just wanted to do something beyond talking to more people. It was a little annoying that it took so long to get into the game, I guess.

Overall the game was okay. Decent but with some issues. No offence meant, dev-chan, but I don't see why it was in the top ten as it seemed a fairly solid but standard game, but congrats for someone seeing enough in it to put it there. I went into it knowing it was a top ten title and thus my expectations were a bit higher for it than would normally be, so I did get rather frustrated with it at points.

This game was very cute and very polished. The sound, the graphics, the maps were all really nice. The writing was also very good and I really like the characters a lot. The puzzles were a bit too easy, I think, and there wasn't enough of them - I would have liked a few more to show off the 'systems' a bit. I very much liked the game, though, and I appreciated the mysteries left hanging. Great job!

A neat little escape game that dredged up memories of games like 999 and the like. The puzzles are well made and show a high degree of polish and style, as do the menus and other visual assets. The game shows off just what it could be in the future, and that future is pretty promising.

Good job, dev~

It's all well and good to show instead of tell and remove tutorials that aren't necessary, but when you actually change gameplay choices - like, say, making a previously safe mob start attacking or giving an item to use in order to progress - you need to tell the player about that. Else they get annoyed and upset that the game is suddenly changing without letting them know.

That is, you can't just change the 'rules' half-way through and expect a player to be okay with that if you don't actually give them a heads-up that things are now different for them. It's straight up bad design choice. So, sure, remove unnecessary tutorials. Don't explain things that are pretty much straight forward. But inform them when you are changing shit. Or show instead of telling, if that's your hang-up. Have a pig chase you from a room and then have the character ask wtf changed and why they're suddenly aggressive.

Keep it in the game 'dialogue' instead if you must, but at least 'show' if you're not going to 'tell' in a way that the player can understand without having to die first.

I really enjoyed this little game. It's a bit of a gem, even if I was very frustrated at the end (28 deaths is 20 too many >.<; ) I'd suggest a check point at some point during the eel section because holy shit man, my ball were busted and I don't even have balls! ;.;

That said, the rest of the game shines really well. It's definitely up there in my top five games so far. I loved the way Izel moves under water, had a ton of fun bouncing around as a prawn shell and took vicious pleasure in stabbing enemies and spiking things to death (and destruction). Just... that eel boss yo. Fuck that guy.

Here, have a rage-induced video of love.

It's a pity that there were missing graphics that stopped the game before it even began. What was there that I witnessed was well written, though. So it has that going for it at least.

The game is lovely and has a lot going for it. I can easily see it made into a longer, better game that would be a lot of fun to play. The main issues currently are the zombie dodging and the infodumps that give away the mystery right at the start. As cliche as it sounds, having the player find diary entries as they search through town and the lab would be a lot better as a story-despensing device. Also, having some kind of reaction to his parents talking about the lab stuff would be nice too (since I assume they were his parents and that he knows their names...)

Another issue was the introduction of the girl, who we had no idea about beyond the hamfisted reveal at the end. Hinting that he had a sister, that he was worried about her or that the mystery girl was linked to him in some way would have been nice instead of a sudden "Oh yeah, hi sis, oh no, bye sis" kind of thing at the end.

Overall, though, the game shows a lot of promise and with a bit of work could become something really special. I enjoyed what I played, even if I did get stuck a few times (I ended up playing to the end off-video and liked the aspect of the ending though I could easily see it being a multiple ending game based on actions you do and how 'affected' you get through your travels). 

This game has a lot of promise and is very interesting. It reminds me a lot of Cross Code (which uses the MMORPG idea) and Megaman Network. The aesthetic is really nice and the puzzles are pretty interesting. Though I didn't really understand how to fight for a while (took me a bit to understand how to use the cards properly in battle) and getting a game over crashed the game, it was still a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to play more of it in my own time.

Graphics were great, sound was really good (I was bopping along a fair bit to the music) and the ideas were fresh. I just think everyone should give this game a try for themselves, especially if they like RPGs with a twist.

The game has a lot of great points going for it. It really put me in mind of jRPGs from the early Playstation 1 and 2, and I really liked the overall feel of the game. The characterisation is a bit bland at points, however, and can seem a little rushed. Understandable that this is a prototype and not the full game, so it doesn't take the time it normally would to let the characters get to know each other and fill in the NPCs and world with more than just a quick splash of identity. Something to look forward to in the future, though.

I do wish the skill learning were a bit less 'my first skill tree' in visual - it lets down the rest of the game. I'm also not a big fan of the way you choose which character to upgrade during it. It's one of the biggest issues I have with the game for as much as I played it. I think it'd work as a menu styled thing than just 'floating in space with staaaars'. The aesthetic is a bit weird.

That said, the sound, gameplay and overall charm the game exudes makes it one of the few I've given 5 stars. I really enjoyed this game. Great job!

The tech demo has a lot of promise to be an interesting game when it's complete. The ideas presented in text form is, I thought, an interesting way to present your case to the judges on what to expect and how the game would play out. It wouldn't work in another IGMC but in this one where the idea is to showcase your idea for them to see if it's viable for publishing and winning, it might work out really well. Maybe? It might also make them think about the fact that the game is missing a lot of the interesting stuff that they didn't get to play.

The art is very nice, as is the sound. Presentation was well done and though I was a bit annoyed at the slow speed of some pieces, the promise of a full game made in this style has made me more interesting in following the game to see where it goes, so good job in that. 

This game had some really neat ideas, but it had a lot of big issues that made playing it a frustration and impossible. The graphics are, eh, alright for a demo of what the game could be. They're a bit hard to figure out what some things are, but they worked well enough as a showcase. The main issues are that everything is too fast and your equipment doesn't really seem to be doing anything for the hero.

There's just a lot going on all at the same time - you can't actually do a good job of arranging the pack, dishing out equipment, fixing the pack and destroying stuff while keeping an eye on your hero. If this were a bit slower paced, it would be a lot more interesting and fun. Collecting items, fitting them in the pack, dealing with space issues, choosing what to take and what not to take, equipping your hero so that they can go further and helping them defeat enemies by giving information so that you can plan ahead... that would make a really interesting game, however in it's current iteration it needs so much work. 

While the idea is interesting, there's a lot that isn't explained in-game, like the displacement/replacement mechanic or even how to play. I spent a fair while trying to figure out the keys to move. The idea of randomised stages is a neat one and I liked that aspect a lot. If there'd been even more of that it would have been cool, but for a prototype it worked out well to show what your idea was and how it worked, so good job on that.

The graphics and sound are neat-enough, though there's some pretty harsh pixel clashing going on at times. One thing that annoyed me was how big the screen was and how resizing it didn't help with the intro scene. A lot of it was cut off even after I readjusted the window size meaning I missed a fair chunk of the 'story'. 

Overall, it's a good promo.

This game had a few bugs and felt more than a bit weird to me. On the one hand, it's obvious that the creator went to a lot of effort to make some nice looking areas and lighting to go with it, but there were some pretty glaring bugs that made playing very annoying. Despite the dev being non-English originally the writing was decent, though I didn't understand what was going on or why (I missed some discussion from a continuous bug). Not being able to save really put the kibosh on playing more of it, sadly.