Great work on this! The vibes were immaculate and it kicked off a bit of a "internet-based urban legend" research trip for me! The IM text could have been made a bit more readable / better controlled by the player, I was having a bit of a hard time keeping up but that's just a little nitpick :]
Play game
Do you like the red room?'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Atmosphere | #1 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Narrative | #1 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Creepiness | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Art Direction | #1 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.214 | 4.214 |
| Audio | #1 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Originality | #3 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Gameplay | #3 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- From start to finish, I was just enraptured by this game - its atmosphere, its premise, the fresh design decisions (like that narrator voice! wow! Huge grin on my face), the quality of the implementation itself. And your obvious familiarity with the source material and the era you were invoking. So much I could dig into here but I’m time-limited so: Adore the art direction and implementation. So many subtle details. The grid overlay to emulate a CRT etc. The absolutely convincing implementation of the forums, from the aesthetics to the topics and post presentations. It was smart to add the “fluff” of the news, gaming and music sites, giving a sense of a whole world and a more complex person than we’d otherwise have had a notion for. The music provided was truly impressive, I really enjoyed it and nearly fell over when after I read you had made it when you were sixteen (curious how old you are now!). The use of SFX was similarly superbly done, particularly at the end as you ratcheted up the tension and horror. The narrative was great - immediately compelling, as I mentioned, and held me from start to finish. Enjoyed the drip feeding and the natural sounding chat conversations, particularly in the group chat. You made a lot of narrative design choices that made the difference between “good” and “great” - like banning users for mentioning things we later were given access to (rot), as well as banning people saying our name later. Even things like the download bar not showing 100% visual completed but saying finished was a great touch - made me wonder and thus made me smile. Lots of added moments of tension. And again, THAT NARRATOR VOICE. Ultimately, really wonderful job, I was overjoyed at my time in your world. An aesthetic and narrative pleasure.
- Superbly evocative and genuinely creepy. The look, feel, writing, music - all great. Loved it!
- I really liked the chat dialogue - it felt very natural, very realistic. I could have used more "game" interactions! I *loved* the vampire forums. Understandable as a Jam, but i really wanted to explore the websites more. The music was great. You really nailed the atmosphere, here.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.