WOW, you have absolutely been killing it with the output!!! One week in and four games down is so impressive. I am in love with the theming, and how unabashedly this is a niche game about something you really deeply love. Your love of rocks seeps through the pages and totally draws me in. I'll have to try this and see how cool of a rock I can get!!! It's so cool to see your passion through your eyes in a format like this c:
FlowerMouse
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A member registered Jun 11, 2020 · View creator page →
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WOW, I absolutely love the graphic design on this!!! It is absolutely beautiful to look at, really nice pallette of colors and the illustrations are pretty & cute without being distracting. Very pleasing to the eye and eminently readable. It absolutely draws you in!!!! I'm a big fan of fairies, so that's already a huge draw for me, and the font choice, colors, iconography, and illustrations really make me feel cozy and ready for fairy adventures!
I haven't gotten a chance to play yet, but flipping the page on its side and putting a grid on the back is a great idea. It might not technically be one PDF page, but I think this is still rocking the one-page spirit!! Awesome to see you find a way to include a dynamic ruleset *and* a grid in such limited space.
The integration between a little micro-boardgame and a journaling game is really neat!! I must admit I've not played many journalling games, so I can't speak much to those aspects, but with regards to the game design itself, it looks to be simple but effective!!
In Depth Critique Portion (wow this got long lol)
You said you wanted some feedback in the Discord, so here's my best attempt (Bearing in mind I'm a new designer, myself, with very little solo journalling experience, and I haven't yet had a chance to play your game properly):
Firstly, I love how the theme all ties together with the journaling aspect, and it's cool how that encourages some lovely varied stories. One thing I notice, though, is how little input the player has into the physical game. It's mostly random results of random events. This is great for generating unique story threads the player has to respond to on the journaling side!! It's a great engine for fairy garden plot points, but it does mean the board game part doesn't feel overly interactive.
The danger portion is a good release valve for choice!! The fact it's only a 1 in 6, however, does risk it not showing up in a game. Part of me wonders if it might be even better suited as a resolution mechanic than a random event! This is all almost certainly the result of the small space you had to work with, though, and the inclusion of some nice choicey tension in the danger portion is a great call. This has a nice bit of mechanical juice behind it for such a small package!!
There's hints of a pathing and space-management aspect to the board game (a la: which tile to go to, how to keep movement available), though there's not much to dissuade you from just going at them line by line. If you ever decided to expand on this one, maybe a collection of different bespoke gardens with unique hex boards could be a direction to go! Or you could go further into the RPG aspect, and direct the player on how to fill out the hex board with obstacles and points of interest before they begin to explore. I see a lot of potential in that!
And here's the conclusion!!
All in all, this is a beautiful game, and a really impressive first go at the mechanical game design. There's a couple ways I see to spice it up, but this is really really solid and an excellent first showing!! You absolutely should keep developing. Alongside the lovely Wikipedia disaster game you made, I am loving your creative voice and your design sense. What an awesome start to the jam! I can't wait to see what you make next c:
Shit Or Get Off the Pot: A Solo Game Jam community · Created a new topic We've opened an official Discord server!!
WOW, everyone, I am totally blown away by the response to this jam!!! We already have 85 participants and 13 submissions, and the quality is just staggeringly good. Maybe that doesn't seem like a lot to some of you, but this is my first ever jam, and I am absolutely giddy! I never imagined we'd get so many talented designers creating with us.
In light of this all, Courtney went ahead and set up a server for the jam!! Come join us! We're having a great time chatting with y'all, and people have some *really* cool stuff in the works.