A jam submission

Too Sharp to HandleView game page

Excalibur chooses the next ruler

Submitted by lexydotzip, Cheshire Cat, Stefan Zamfir, Yumexor, greenworks — 7 minutes, 13 seconds before the deadline

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Too Sharp to Handle's itch.io page

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

While I know that a visual novel’s main selling point is its narrative, due to time constraints, I was unfortunately unable to play the game to completion or even reach the end of the first round. That said, the story features interesting and distinctive characters, each with their own personalities, strengths, and flaws—though after my first exchange with Oliver, I was more than ready to send them back to wherever they came from! The visuals are impressive overall, with well-designed character art and a clean, effective UI. The background music is fitting, though it may become repetitive over the long playtime a visual novel typically requires. A variation of tracks for different characters during dialogue scenes could help the atmosphere. One area for improvement would be adjusting the way text displays. Currently, right-click skips the text entirely, but it would be helpful if it instead revealed the full text instantly without skipping ahead. As a fast reader, I often found myself stuck waiting for the text to “roll out,” and if I accidentally pressed right-click, I risked missing crucial dialogue. Unfortunately, I felt the theme implementation was quite weak. While the protagonist is the legendary sword Excalibur, as far as I played, there was no moment where the sword was actually used as a weapon in any capacity. Overall, this was a solid submission with a strong foundation. I’m looking forward to seeing how you develop it further, and I’ll be sure to recommend it to some of my visual novel-loving friends!

Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tr7cSmTdiHb6WXuv8XrcbQon_a8TiCKAjaPigBUIW0g/edit?usp=sharing

Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes

Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes

Summarise your game!
Too Sharp to Handle is a 2D interactive novel with adventure elements where the player takes on the role of Excalibur—the legendary Sword in the Stone—participating in a medieval reality show to determine who will pull it free and become the next ruler of Camelot.

You have 3 days to choose one of the 4 candidates. One is eliminated each round.

Controls: mouse

Please explain how your game fits the theme:
You are Excalibur.

Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Play it. Love it. We do.

Comments

Atemly GamesSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Congrats on finishing the jam! Nice play on You Are the Weapon - it was fun and different.

I liked the portrait art of the characters and the dialogue was good too! It made me laugh a few times :)

I think that it would've been nicer if their personalities were a little more toned down during the first day for Oliver and Robin. They quickly put themselves as options that I didn't want to pick. So day one and day two were easy choices. On day two I couldn't find Robin at all - maybe I was unlucky but it would've been nice to see each contestant's day from start to finish instead of randomly clicking locations.

The twist at the end with Curt and Kate was interesting and the foreshadowing with the potions and the crow was good as well.

I think that choosing Kate is kinda the default because everyone else has some sort of quirk that makes them instantly written off. Maybe if you wanted there to be a little bit more deliberation about choices the characters could have a negative trait in regards to ruling BUT it's there for a reason. For example with Kate it could be that she is more violent than the other candidates (to a slightly excessive amount where you may not want to select her) BUT if you ask why she says it's because no one else will protect (or something like that). As caricatures they worked well :)

Otherwise it was good little story! Great job!

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bytebits01Submitted1 year ago(+1)

I loved the art and writing. I had so much fun and the contestants personallities are so unique.

I especially loved Curt and would have chosen him as ruler... but I changed my mind with the last round of questions. That's why I chose Kate xD

I also liked the music, but I think an option to turn the volume down would have been nice

Otherwise really well done and I had many laughs

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