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Mech Mender's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #54 | 2.611 | 5.000 |
| Fun Factor | #61 | 2.089 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #61 | 2.263 | 4.333 |
| Visuals | #71 | 1.219 | 2.333 |
| Audio | #72 | 0.522 | 1.000 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Is your entry a video game or a physical game?
tabletop journaling solo game
Was your game made solo or in a team?
solo
Did you use any third party assets, if yes what assets did you use?
the cover art is from Adobe Express
Did you choose from one (or more) of the optional secondary themes?
yes! The themes were useful in the section on what you have to go questing for to get your mech fixed
Does your game contain any 18+ content?
no
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Comments
I had a peak, while this is not for me, woaw 36 Page Pdf of Gamecontent, i am impressed!
I read this over dinner today, wow it's very well written, all the story options are very interesting. I particularly like the different kinds of merchants, I was already picturing them in my head. I didn't write my own story this time, but I really enjoyed reading the options and then seeing how they came together in the end in your example.
Honestly I do the same thing with the few solo-rpgs I've seen (and I guess most TTRPGs that I get in like humble bundles) - I just imagine a bit what the world and gameplay would be, and that's usually enough for me, so for my work to provide the same thing, not playing the game but conjuring up some ideas and visuals, is all I really need haha
I got to jump into it, and found it a very pleasant experience! I will say its a good idea to read the appendix before you jump, I think if you are comfy writing stories then you can skip to the sample and then i dint do it cause i had written the story before i really got to them but I think the Bonuses would have been nice to have them higher up in the totem pole of info to use them if you dint have juice flowing in the brain lol.
I also wanted to point out it might have been a good idea to mention to roll all the dice before you start the story and then guide your story in the direction of those prompts, because I just started and then would almost have to retcon things cause i dint have all the themes in mind at the beginning, I noticed in your sample you played it that way. Not sure if you did mention it in the rules explanation but I think it was the way to go. Even though my story came out just fine.
Overall never had tried a journaling ttrpg but thought this one was very fun leans me towards trying more in the future! Nice Job! and so thorough too. 🤣
Hey thank you for trying it! Yeah all the appendix stuff was a mess; like I didn't have it at first and the game felt incomplete, so then I added all that, but then it felt way to unwieldy, so my solution was to take all the extra stuff and pack it in the back of the book so that it wouldn't open with too much intimidating stuff.
I've started studying more solo-rpgs now, and a lot of them have a very clear game loop; a lot of the ones I've seen aren't saga-based, they're repeat cycle based. So it's new customers coming into a shop, or one you had an ailment that progresses, and you're trying to keep it under control.
It was a good "first pancake" to alert me to all the things I'd need to learn to do more of these, but it's so many times easier than making a full 3D game, that I really want to figure this format out.
Okay, I've never even heard of anything like this before, but I definitely like the concept. I used to play TTRPG games, and as I see it, this would be an awesome scenario to play out.
And the Appendix... I didn't read the whole thing because I'm lazy (English isn't my native language), but from what I did read, it looked like “how to write a book from scratch,” and I appreciate that.
Writing almost 40 pages must have taken a lot of time. Overall, cool stuff.
Thank you it really is "how to write a book from scratch" and when I went to playtest it, I was like oh no this is probably not right for a journaling game 😅
When I playtested it without the appendix, it felt like if you didn't know anything about improv or writing your own stories, the prompts would leave you very little to work with. So then I added a bunch of story structure stuff I knew, but I realized once I playtested that version that now it was too complicated 😅
So I'll have to keep a look out and test other people's solo TTRPG games more going forward if I want to make stuff in this genre.