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A jam submission

Against the Tide: Stories of Kiribati's Climate Resilience (Production)View game page

Narrative-driven hidden object game set in Kiribati, a Pacific island nation facing the impacts of a changing climate
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Against the Tide: Stories of Kiribati's Climate Resilience (Production)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Aesthetic / Art / Sound#15.0005.000
Call to Action#14.5004.500
Use of Themes#34.5004.500
Overall#34.2504.250
Playability#44.0004.000
Likely to Release#44.0004.000
Compelling Gameplay / Fun#63.5003.500

Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Hi! This is great so far! I enjoyed playing this! I did, however, get stuck a couple of times when trying to find items. I think it's because the game is not finished. I did like that you gave hints, but I felt like it still needed more information because there was one I was stuck on, and even with the hint, I couldn't find it. I think maybe you could implement a different hint system where the players can click for a hint, and the game outlines the area, helping the player narrow it down in that area. I think that would be helpful because a lot of people are visual learners! Overall, this is looking great, and I truly love the aesthetic you guys are going for! I can't wait to see more and wish the best! 

Submitted

Hello! So I'd like to provide feedback in the structure of 1) explaining my ratings, and 2) providing feedback based on specific questions from the developer.

Firstly, I'll explain the ratings. Easiest to explain are the 5 stars for Call to Action and Aesthetic/Art/Sound. There was a clear attention the specific issues and solutions that exist in relation to the climate crisis on Kiribati. The art really helped to deliver further on that, as it gave a sense of the island life in a visual sense as well as creating its own unique and colorful world. Some more SFX would've been appreciated, like some more sounds of crashing waves or seagulls, maybe some more distinct beeps or boops when clicking on something, but overall the music was very calming and fitting. I gave 4 stars for playability, with the one issue being that I didn't really understand the controls at first and there wasn't any really visual feedback for hovering near an area with an object in it, but realistically it was fine aside from these nitpicks. The 4 stars for Use of Themes was based along the idea that the island theming was very nicely done, but I still would like a little more SFX to support it as I mentioned before. I said 3 stars for Likely to Release as it seems like progress is only about halfway through, which, considering the time remaining, getting the full game out might be a little tricky, but maybe with just 1 more level of the remaining 3 to make I can see this being a pretty decently full experience. I only gave 2 stars for Compelling Gameplay/Fun for a couple reasons, the first of which being that I don't tend to play these types of games, and the experience didn't attract my attention as much. Despite this though, the main issue I found with the gameplay as that there wasn't much compelling feedback for the player upon finding an object. Getting a text wall, while good for explaining, isn't always fun, and it can end up turning the experience into a search for information that could be found on the web. The visuals definitely aid in making this interaction more enjoyable, as it seems to be a more art-centric game above anything else, but giving the player more feedback, like starting an animation , playing music or SFX; anything that can relate to what you're trying to tell the player about the issue/solution represented by that object. (Ex. When you click on the bucket in Saltwater Intrusion, have it spill over to show the brackish water.)

As for answering some of the other questions, I'd say the game was pretty easy to play in the end. I didn't have too much trouble finding the objects but I did still have to look for them. The hints were helpful but not in certain cases like  with the Mangrove Roots and the Te buibui, as I kinda just ended up clicking on the entire area with no rhyme or reason and eventually finding it. This created another issue where I found a lot of the objects were out of the way or in the edges of the image, which meant my eyes weren't really drawn to any of the objects as something that stood out among the rest. An example of that done right was the Water Tank, which had a red spot to separate it from the others. The UI/UX was not too intrusive on the view of the image and was easy to use and understand. As for the text bubbles, I did mention them before but I'll say something else about them. They were pretty informative, but didn't really have much personality to them. Having it be straight-up information is kinda tricky when that's the main reward for playing the game. I'd recommend that, without doubling the length of the text boxes, try to make the speech more colorful. Add some punctuation or explain how cool something is, whatever can get the player to feel more deeply about what you're telling them.

All in all though, this is a pretty interesting game. The art is really a big strong point here for me and I'm very happy to see it be implemented so well. With a few tweaks, this will definitely be a pretty fantastic game!

Developer

Two of the five planned levels are playable in our submission for the production sprint. Over the next few days, we will finish illustrating and implementing the remaining scenes, as well as adding in voiced dialogue. We will also be adding information about relevant organizations and ways that players can support climate relief efforts in low-lying island nations. You can see the planned progression through levels in the third screenshot included.

Also, please note that the second playable level (about resilience methods) will be more zoomed in during the final submission, with the player being able to move the camera around the scene. This just has not been implemented yet, but hopefully it isn't too difficult to view the objects in this level in our current build.

Developer

Also I just realized that I set the wrong leaf to be clickable in the second level; it should be the leaf circled in blue but for now you'll be able to progress by clicking the leaf circled in red!