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A jam submission

Waves of NostalgiaView game page

A love letter to the time before the scroll.
Submitted by Alexandra Diljá Bjargardóttir (@alexandrabjarg) — 21 hours, 39 minutes before the deadline
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Waves of Nostalgia's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#13.9833.983
Audio, sound, music#14.1334.133
Creativity, use of theme#14.1334.133
Visual, art#24.3334.333
Gameplay, mechanics#73.3333.333

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This to me is an interactive art exhibition, and good one at that, perfect alternative approach to using the game medium to express your art. I'd say it's perfectly good without being gamified. a Well presented message on social media, doom scrolling and general effects of modern day tech conveniences... or inconveniences, depending on the perspective 😅 ..or at least that's what I read out of the exhibition 😁

 I very much enjoyed this one, very consistent visual presentation - especially liked how the backdrop of the itch.io page seamlessly matched the in-game backdrop.

Submitted(+1)

Way too easy. Barely a puzzle game. Finished it, like, so fast. Jk, jk. I liked it. The text was engaging and poignant.

Submitted(+1)

Makes you remember.

Submitted(+1)

I like the songs you selected, very fitting. The text was pretty funny, especially the Duolingo joke.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I really liked this, it's an important reminder about how much of our time gets filled up with useless scrolling and how the phone is constantly competing for our attention. Great concept!

The references to Duolingo were especially funny and extremely fitting at the same time!

I also like that you pointed out how ironic it is to spend all your days looking for productivity hacks and what not while sitting on the sofa and looking at the phone instead of just actually being productive.

Submitted(+1)

I really loved this game, thank you. I think I wasn't exactly the target audience for the doomscrolling levels since the only social media website I use regularly is YouTube (which is plenty bad but at least there's only that), but I used to be heavily addicted to social media so it wasn't hard to put myself in the shoes of somebody riding the algorithm. However, I'm wondering if maybe the gameplay of these levels could be made to more closely reflect the message being conveyed. One thing that springs to mind is making these levels mazes instead of a linear tunnels and making the exit marker indistinguishable from the notifications. That might make them feel more oppressive, but these sections are still effective. I was however much more impressed by the nostalgia levels, those actually evoked a lot of feelings in me and made me sad. The music really fits the atmosphere.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback!

It's definitely a narrative reflecting my personal experience: not only do I hate how much time I tend to lose to scrolling, I also can't stand the pointlessness of most things you encounter while scrolling (hence the dialogs like "Which Kar-Jenner are you?"). But what is an even stronger feeling for me is that I have recently been experiencing  a lot of nostalgia for my childhood, teenage and young adult years - not because I actually want to be younger again, but because I miss that feeling of having to figure out what to do with my days and not have this default device to go to that can swallow entire days of my life. So for that reason, I am really happy to hear that those levels actually hit harder for you.

Regarding the game design: I actually agree that the levels would have been better as mazes. I had originally pictured them as such (I had previously made maze levels in bitsy), but I really wanted the level to happen within the phone screen, which meant I limited myself space-wise even more than the already small levels of the bitsy editor. I love the idea that the exit marker could look more like the other sprites in the phone levels. I think I might definitely experiment with evolving this game further. 

Submitted(+2)

Lovely sentiment and execution!

Submitted(+3)

Super impressive, looks and sounds amazing.

I uninstalled Instagram off my phone the same night.

Developer

I really appreciate that coming from you, Joon! And I'm so happy it made you uninstall Insta haha.