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A jam submission

Clean Up!View game page

A game about cleaning a house!
Submitted by Rafa Bolas — 3 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Clean Up!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound/Music#653.4003.400
Controls / UI#923.0003.000
Overall Fun#1162.8002.800
Art / Graphics#1202.8002.800

Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Genre

Puzzle

Mystery | Advenure

Other

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

  • Youtube Timestamped Link
  • Graphics : Fine
  • Music / Sfx : Fine
  • GUI : Needs video options for res and window type, otherwise fine.
  • Gameplay : It's basically an "I Spy" game.
  • Notes :
    • Some things are hidden quite well, but also are incredibly small. 
    • Some things aren't obvious if they're meant to be clicked.
    • 'Time Trial' should be an option, not the only one and the default.
      • This feels like a casual game and this goes against that.
    • Items should have some randomization to them.
      • Have some turn on or off, or change their placement entirely.

Overall I think it's ok but it does come off as a bit of a mobile game (or flash game), and the lack of randomized elements and the timer turns it more into a game of memorization.

Definitely had me panicking to try and get all the items prior to time running out!  Overall a good game, although maybe a touch more time each round?  Some of those items are fairly small and hard to realize they're actually meant to be cleaned up.


https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2563903889

Jam Host

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

A quick little "find the object" cleaning game. While I do like it, I feel like there are a few shortcomings.

First, it can be very difficult to click on some objects. The coin in the third area and the little triangle on the garbage can in the kitchen both come to mind, but I find many objects just don't register the first time you click on them. Considering the small window of time you get for everything and the fact that clicking on certain objects can cost you time, this can make the game very frustrating. While zooming in can make grabbing these smaller items a bit easier, this has its own time cost as you can't stay zoomed in and do an effective job navigating the room. 

Of course, the real issue is just the incredibly small window of time you get. With five rooms, you're getting less than 30 seconds per room while dealing with controls that just don't like to work the first time around on many objects. It's even worse, since time keeps ticking while you're between levels. If it were 2 minutes per room, I'd say the difficulty in clicking on objects while zoomed out would be okay. In that scenario, you'd have plenty of time to do zooming in and out to deal with that problem.

One thing I also noticed was that this game can be very slow and, at times, unresponsive. I had at least two instances of time freezing while in the first stage, during which I couldn't click on anything, but the game itself didn't freeze as I could move the camera around and zoom in and out. I also observed that when using ANY menu button, the game would take at least a full second before it did anything. I'm not sure what's going on under the hood for the game, but this poor response time could also be playing into the difficulty of collecting items.

Submitted

Hello =) I love tidying up in real life, so I thought I'd give your game a try.

Here is what I enjoyed about the game:
It was satisfying to click the objects and clean them up. I wasn't sure if it would keep my interest, but having the time limit made the game more interesting and I wanted to keep retrying to clear all the levels. I felt like the difficulty was nicely balanced and after several tries, I beat the final level with .005 seconds left!

Here are a few small bugs I found with the game:
- UI response time is slow when you start the game. If the scene needs to load when you click Start, then I would like the UI to have an instant change to some loading indicator. It feels uncomfortable to click a button and then nothing happens for a moment.

- Seems to be a bug when you pause, look at settings, and then resume the game. I wasn't able to click on anything again until I paused and clicked resume again.

- I couldn't seem to find any "incorrect" items on levels 3 and 4.


Here are some changes I think would improve the game:
- A clear visual indicator/attention grabber that clicking a wrong item reduces your time. This could either be a "-10 s" text that appears where you clicked, or a similar text that pops up over the timer. It took several losses before I realized that incorrect guesses were harmful, and at first I just thought I had a limited number of wrong guesses per level.

- I think the timer should be much bigger. I didn't see it for the first few runs, and I didn't understand why I lost. A visual update when time is almost out (maybe 10 seconds left) would also help draw the player's attention to the timer. (Maybe the text getting bigger, changing color, or animating as each second ticks down). You could also add a sound effect like a ticking clock when time is almost out.

- I'd like the controls to be displayed anywhere in the game itself. I got stuck on level 3 and then went to the itch page to see if it said anywhere that the game was unfinished, and that's when I saw the controls for the camera for the first time (which allowed me to clear the level).

- The logic on what items do and don't give you a time penalty seems a little inconsistent/hard to figure out. I would consider either making EVERY misclick a penalty (and making the penalty smaller, like 5 seconds, or alternatively having something like a limit of 5 misclicks per room before game over) or removing the penalty all together.

- I would limit the camera rotation so that players can only rotate as far as they need, not 360 degrees.

- Some work could be done to improve the visual style and appeal of the game. Maybe better use of shaders and a more harmonious color palette to start. The game's visuals are a bit harsh and amateur-looking.


I think there is definitely potential in this game! Here's how I would expand it a bit:

- Keep building scenes and create multiple stages like the one you have now where a stage is made up of 5 consecutive scenes that share a timer. Completing one stage would unlock the next stage. Stages could have different themes where all the rooms in that stage are part of that theme.

- Perhaps add a way to earn a small time bonus. For example, clicking 5 items in under 2 seconds could add 10 seconds to the timer.

- Lean more into the "hidden object" nature of the game. For example, in the first level, the little blue container up high against the blue wall -- that was always the last one I clicked because I always overlooked it. Having items that are a little trickier because they blend in by they sharing a color, shape, or tangent line with the background or other objects gives the player a fun "a-ha" moment (as long as they feel fair and they don't just become pixel hunting). These could be more prevalent on harder levels.

- Along those same lines, you could add a left/right pan control to the camera which would let players see a little bit behind things like table legs, which gives more tricky places to hide things.

- Increase the charm factor of the rooms. Right now, they are very plain and generic. If each room had more of a personality, players would look forward to seeing the next room and discovering all the objects. For example, instead of just a plain bedroom, you could have the bedroom of a teenage girl who is obsessed with a specific boy band. You could then invent the band, make fake posters, and put clutter around the room that would make sense in a teenager's room. Or maybe the study of a Sherlock Holmes-style detective with bits of evidence and investigative tools laying around. Each room is an opportunity to tell a little story. (I recognize this is a lot more work creating content though!)

Thanks for sharing, keep up the good work! =)

If you're interested and available, I'd love to hear your feedback on my submission as well. Thanks!