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A jam submission

The RatView game page

A choice-driven narrative game about surviving undercover in the mob.
Submitted by Binding Pact (@BindingPact), cloudlandmap — 17 hours, 20 minutes before the deadline
Rated by 21 people so far
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The Rat's itch.io page

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How does the game fit the theme?
You play as an undercover agent in the mob. You cant trust some people, but most of all they cant trust you.

What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
Audio (Music), portraits are composed of cutouts of other images, one icon and some patterns are from asset pack

How many people worked on the game?
2

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Comments

(+2)

TL/DR: I want more. 

It's actually got me interested in seeing it all the way through. I think there is a lot of opportunity to expand on the immersion: add more flavor to the journey. 

So I had some ideas: Instead of a finite amount of time to complete gathering all of the evidence, how about you have to gather as much as evidence as you can in the time frame. You meet with the handler every 7 to 14 days, and hand in the evidence you collected. In this interval you can incorporate something like a "upgrade" shop, which can help you when you are making a decisions and dealing with cards. Maybe incorporate multiple decision trees. Everytime you meet the handler, it could trigger a card draw where you take a permanent hit to one of the 3 stats - making it harder to recover or increase through decisions. When any of the stat get's to 0, effectively all the evidence you've gathered is added together and gives you a chance to get Tony arrested, + a final score. The replayability would come with trying to get through the scenerios faster, or efficiently. Just musing around with some of the ideas here. 

Over all I really like the direction and the premise, just want more immersion. Also, absolutely keep the animal cutouts on top of human bodies, it adds to the visual immersion of the game. Maybe that's how the protagonist actually views all the people around them.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! We've actually decided to flesh the premise out into a slightly larger experience with more depth/immersion. Some of the ideas you've mentioned match concepts we've been brainstorming so it seems like we're going in the right direction. I'm excited to see what it turns into with some more time

Submitted(+1)

Really good! presentation is great and the ui is very responsive and smooth which I appreciate
I thought the narrative was pretty compelLng and even funny in some places.
I especially liked that you can get multiple endings based on how you balance your stats alongside the narrative ones. I thought they were pretty funny. Also points for the option to give up, I immediately had to see if it did anything r gave you a secret ending

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Our background isn't in writing so I'm happy to hear that people have been enjoying the narrative. The option to give up right away was something I knew would set the tone well and show people there was more to see than depressing/stressful under cover situations

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Cool game! I think the visuals of the cards could be improved but it's a really minor point that's very subjective. Everything else was neat :)

Developer(+1)

I definitely agree. Much of the visuals were saved for after the core game was playable. What you see in the jam entry is what we managed to squeeze in before the deadline. Happy you enjoyed the game!

Submitted(+1)

This was such a great game! The art was perfect and music/UI work really well for the style of game - excited to see that it will continue growing after the jam (: 

Developer

I'm glad you liked it! We were pretty happy with what we accomplished in the jam, I'm excited to see what it will turn into with a little more time invested and depth added.

Submitted(+1)

Really cool game! Art is great, and the game feels very polished! Choice of audio is also nice, and the story feels very in-depth. Game fits the theme well, and I had a lot of fun playing this one! For a first jam this is veeery good, keep it up :D

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! It's been a great push for us as developers so this will be the first jam of many more to come

Submitted(+1)

Very enjoyable game, great visuals (I was 100% sold upon seeing the cover art). Works really well as a bite-sized version of Reigns or similar games (though it has enough of an identity to stand on its own). The writing is also nice, I had fun seeing what happens if you let each of your stats drop to 0. 

Developer

Really glad you enjoyed! Happy to hear the writing was good enough to entice you into checking the lose conditions :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

It took me couple of tries but I got all the evidence. The UI and game feel is really snappy so good job on that! The writing is funny and made want to just see all the choices that there were.

The text was bit blurry tho on my screen not matter how I zoomed. You could try to enable the “Full screen” option in the “edit game” -options on Itch.io. That could help if it has something to do with the web player scaling.

But overall the experience was great and I enjoyed the art and music :ratJAM:

Developer

Thanks a bunch for playing and the advice! This was our first game jam and didnt even know about the itch io option for full screen. Ill definitely turn it on because there is so much reading in our game and if you cant see the text there is no game hahaha

Submitted(+1)

It was a very pleasant experience. The UI is very responsive and cute. The art is very charming. Nice entry!

Developer(+1)

Im glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing our game. 

Submitted(+1)

haha i found so funny the little rats in costume, well done !

Developer

Hahaha thank you, it was a funny thing we thought of last minute. You are a rat, the mob are mice and the police are cats.

Submitted(+1)

i loved this game and its music is so nice : )

Developer

Thanks for playing our game! Im glad you liked the music!

Submitted(+1)

I loved Reigns, and this game reminded me of it a lot. Great job! 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! Reigns was definitely a big inspiration for this one. I've been meaning to go back and give it another play because it's been so long.

Submitted(+1)

really nice visuals and music, nicely done 👏🏻👏🏻

Submitted(+1)

This was a blast, I actually felt really conflicted with the choices, however some of the choices feel a little too certain, in the sense, oh I know I can lose sanity because I have N units of sanity greater than any potential sanity loss. Do some actions result in more than one unit of loss in a category? That would make some choices more risky and force more thinking.

Developer

So happy that you enjoyed! There are choices that result in more than one unit of loss in a category near the end but they wouldn't shake you if you came in with the right stat balance. It was hard to find a difficulty that would keep a general audience engaged while also not frustrated. The goal was to set up situations where you'd sometimes have to compromise idealism and choose whatever choice would keep you afloat. However, like you mentioned, there are times where your choice becomes uninteresting because your safety net is too big. The game Reigns keeps things interesting by having capped bars also result in a lose condition. I can see why that was an important part of the design now.

(+1)

This is a really fun game with the music and artwork! I know game jams keep things limited, but this is a really nice base for a bigger game.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! There's definitely a lot more depth that could be added outside of the time restrictions of the game jam. I particularly wanted sub quests aside from collecting evidence on Big Tony. That way, you'd have to balance your choices between even more allegiances.

Submitted(+1)

Solid overall, wait times between choices feels a bit too slow, especially when replaying, but pretty enjoyable anyway

Developer (2 edits)

Thanks for the feedback! I replayed it again and i definitely agree that there could be a faster mode, or perhaps even just "click to skip" to the end of each animation. 

edit: Actually, our click to skip that is already in game is broken/bugged TT

Submitted(+1)

Good submission!

It fits the theme really well, but I feel like it could use a bit more... fun?

Since it's a narrative game, I think you could try adding more than two options when the player has to make a choice. You could also add some jokes to make the game a bit funnier, or maybe add some ambient sounds to make it feel more serious and immersive.

These are just suggestions, though! You did some great work. Nice game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks a ton for the feedback! This was my team's first Game Jam ever, and we were so worried about time we ended up making the game play a bit too shallow hahaha

But we think there is so much more we could do with the idea that we are open to all suggestions. We were thinking possibly adding cards that get added based on which cards you selected, multiple chapters with increasing intensity scenarios, perhaps more characters for replay attempts, unique evidence etc.

Submitted(+1)

Yess those are nice ideas indeed! Great game for your first time!!