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The Gyres's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #27 | 3.133 | 3.133 |
| Overall | #35 | 3.117 | 3.117 |
| Impressiveness | #35 | 2.867 | 2.867 |
| Presentation | #42 | 3.133 | 3.133 |
| Creativity | #46 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Ranked from 15 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.
- Good 2d art and use of atmosphere. There's a disconnect between the controls and the environment sometimes that could lead the player into frustration. For example, the gargoyle question doesn't activate immediately when you stand in front of it. Sometimes the mapping takes the player to the side on the wall. Had to watch the YouTube playthrough to see how that was done. So not solid technically, but charming and has potential. Nice concept and serviceable narrative execution.
- I enjoyed this game, particularly locking Arwyn in the wee room on his own and opening up the rest of the level to explore without him. I appreciate that due to it being a jam game, most of the effort probably went into the writing (and it shows!), but most of the frustrating parts of the game are due to it using basic RPGMaker functionality - I had to look up the walkthrough video to work out that I needed to place the tag, crash kit, and notes on the table individually, even though I had collected them all. The core conceit of "a person trapped in a labyrinth of their own devising" is a strong one, and I can imagine how it could be expanded into a full game - more time spent before "the turn", more time building to the ending to soften the tonal shift, etc. As it stands, The Gyres is a solid proof of concept, and with a bit of polish particularly around the generic RPGMaker controls, could be an excellent portfolio piece.
Number of team members
2
Please credit all external assets you have used.
Music - Ancient Ruins, Midnight Creeping from Gamedev Market
Sound Effects - MV Stock SFX
UI - Made in MADO MV
Font - Pixel Operator by https://www.dafont.com/jayvee-d-enaguas.d2725
Please credit any external plugins/packages you used.
MADO MV
GALV's bust plugin
What engine or toolset does your game use?
RPG Maker MV
Please provide a full playthrough YouTube video for your game.
https://youtu.be/9M_XjsdQNhM
Please provide a link to a 30 seconds gameplay YouTube video of your game.
https://youtu.be/9M_XjsdQNhM?si=IFgf-OpLVxa4jb4e&t=100
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Comments
I managed to soft-lock myself pretty quick in a maze room, but up until then I was having a good time!Nice audio choices and the overall visual aesthetic paired well with the mood of the dialogue.
Finally got round to playing this game a few times through, very good narrative and world building. *'Nuff said* Well done to the both of you :)
Great narrative! I can tell a lot of work went into crafting the story of this game and, as a narrative lover, I really appreciate it. It really made me nostalgic for some old Nintendo and GameBoy games.
Music was lovely and very fitting for the scenes and the color palette. I will say, some of the rooms felt a bit repetitive/flat, purely in terms of aesthetics. For example the room full of spikes. I would considering adding some other elements/assets to help flesh out the world but also help break things up to the eye.
I hope you plan on continuing to refine this after the game because a couple of the endings felt so sudden and I really craved more - which is a great sign!
Well done, especially for a team of only 2!
Really cool game! I go the C and A endings. Like other comments pointed out if this game was a bit longer the A ending would have felt more impactful. I love the portrait arts for the characters. I agree with Volcanlord on the overworld sprites, they kinda look out of place :/ Also there seems to be some colliders missing in the library room
Overall I would say that was a nice game! Great work :D
This was good! I really enjoyed the fact it has a fully thought out story with multiple endings, and that's clearly the strong point here. I enjoyed doing multiple playthroughs to see the different endings and figuring out how to get the true ending. It's also quite a nice use of the theme.
To be a little harsh maybe, I didn't really like the "overworld" character sprites. Especially since the dialogue sprites are really nice and filled with details the character sprites felt very flat and kind of washed out. I'd recommend for this sort of game using a much more limited amount of pixels with stronger contrasting colours as that generally fits these kind of rpg-maker games better. I know this isn't really the focus of the game but it felt like a bit of a waste in comparison to the other art, especially some of the ending arts being really nice!
Glad you enjoyed!
Whyms was responsible for the bust sprites and cutscene images, while I was the one who did the pixel sprites. (Oh no.)
Ultimately I wouldn't call myself a great pixel artist and I was also the one doing the in-engine stuff, and so most of it was more in the vein of 'Well that will have to do for now' more than 'this is the best art it can be'. It might come down to the particular palette I was using, it might be that the sprites could ideally use more work, probably a bit of both.
Nice entry! It was interesting to go through and the story was good. I encountered an unfortunate bug where you can use the stretcher to keep getting Crash Kits more than once, and doing so breaks the logic for getting the ending, and so I had to restart the entire game to try doing it again. Despite that it was an enjoyable experience, good job!
For some reason it was always the Crash Kit events that ran into problems, I swear. Adding it to the bug fix list for after the jam, thanks for catching that!
I love the story work for such a short game jam, I am a bit sad that the gargoyle library puzzle was set up so the correct answer was first in the list because I missed it the first time clicking through the text boxes. I also love that ya'll put trust in the players to explore every nook and cranny and connect the clues that were laid out! Great game <3
I realized reading this comment that I had thought to myself 'I really need to change the answer order in the library' and then promptly forgot to do it. That's something for the post-jam to-do list. Glad you enjoyed! :)
The multiple endings were cool to see from a small team! I like how you could interact with the environment like the random bookcases as I feel like it encourages exploration.
Thank you so much! Carcosa was the one who put together the bookcase stuff, and I thought it was a really cool addition.
Sadly can’t rate the game as I had to bail out of the jam a few days in. Life got busy all of the sudden. Still wanted to play this one. Good to see an old teammate taking part xD
I really liked the story in this. I’ve got endings A & C in my little play-through. Certainly felt like the A ending would hit home on a longer game, where you’ve been on a few hours of gameplay before the ending act. But still hit the right note in a few minutes of playing. Also loved the level design on the lever room for ending A and the gap in the spike room. Honestly would love to see how a longer form of this story or a similar one would play out. I was really hooked xD
Ending C felt a bit quick, I hit the chest first just before I noticed the door. I had to go back for the door xD
I did spot a few visual bugs and the sprint key did nothing for me, otherwise a very solid entry.
Wishing you luck with the results!
Hey! Long time no see! Nice to see you're still about at the jams, even if things didn't fall into place this time around. :)
Glad you enjoyed it! Ideally I would have liked to make the game longer. There's at least 3 rooms still in the files that wound up as cut content for the sake of meeting the deadline. I might go ahead and add them in a polish update once the jam is over to give the main dungeon a bit more substance.
Pretty nice i think? the game ended pretty early when i just opened the chest, the story was intriguing up until then but it just ended and i got my wish? ok strange.
on my second playthrough, the game softlocked in the 3 lever room. i couldnt talk to the guy to tell them to come with.
Don't worry, you're not missing anything in terms of Ending C, the chest ending is kind of intended to be a little bit confusing! It becomes a little clearer on subsequent loops.
Sorry to hear to got a bug in the lever room! It seems to work okay when I try it, but the whole thing has quite a lot of moving parts so, that is probably the number 1 place I'd expect things to break in unexpected ways. Once the jam is over I'll probably tinker with that room some more.
Excellent story and compelling plot! I'm so impressed with the narrative and the atmosphere, congrats to the team, this is an great entry!
Thank you so much! Both of us on the team are very into writing and were pretty sure that would be our stronger suit here, so we tried to make the plot and characters interesting.
Thank you kindly! I really enjoyed working on the story, so I'm glad that you enjoyed our work!