Enjoyed this a lot! Mechanically very sound and casual enough of a puzzle to not get frustrating (appreciate the included invisiclues-style hints as well!). Narratively speaking it’s nice to see this timeloop concept being applied to a normal day in the life of these characters rather than a (more obvious) scifi/mystery plot. Good stuff!
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It Was Fate's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #6 | 3.623 | 3.800 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
this is exactly as described, so i must ask myself why i'm so surprised. i think it's such a unique mixture of puzzle and narrative that it feels like to satisfy either the other must be compromised, but that's not the case here. i really appreciate the restraint and focus on two easily parseable people and their relatively normal days. i could imagine this conceit being deployed in any number of game tropes and as a player getting bogged down in those tropes' expectations. sheepishly, i never solved the puzzle, but you'll have to believe me when i say that i saw the path. i can't even manage one person's daily schedule, my own schedule. let alone two. very nice work!
Submitted
Editor-In-ChiefA game where I can spend the whole day playing video games - that's what I'm talking about!
I found it entertaining to figure out the exact way to collide two characters together: it's an interesting concept of having to control two characters, but you can't do both at the same time: so it's not only about "what" but "when", and is more about figuring out what are these characters doing by default.
Though that does sometimes create expectations "well, this character definitely should do this, they are free to do this, right?" but they don't.
And I would admit - I ended up spending most of my loops on red herring - that I felt must be one of the events that should happen, and then got to the ending accidentally as it didn't even came up to my mind (but that's me, I think the solution is pretty clear, if I wouldn't just hung up on a red herring).
Text-wise it felt a bit dry and mundane for my taste, and after a first loop I don't think there was too much to read - but didn't stop me from enjoying the puzzle!
Submitted
The Selfish GeneThe idea of a time loop puzzle box is usually that there’s a big mystery to unravel, or a big event needs to be prevented. Narratively, the characters are often stuck in their arcs until they can find a way to break through. “It Was Fate” breaks with that tradition by… having the characters go to sleep slightly disappointed. Suffice to say that I wasn’t very compelled by the central mystery. There’s nothing there for me to sink my teeth into.
What doesn’t help is that the writing reads like an outline instead of a finished story. For example, the line “Milton is fascinated by the curator’s references to the “Sublime”.” It’s a nice thought, but is there any way to show this? Does he talk to someone at the exhibition, or does a plaque catch his eye? As a result, the writing is so forgettable that I ended up mainly focusing on the choices, which, unfortunately, is another problem.
Whether due to technical limitations or simply creative choices, there’s no indication of which paths you’ve already seen. After the first two loops, I would have liked to see a big red banner saying “this loop is screwed” when you make a wrong choice.
All that said, I think the character portraits are a nice touch that helped to ground the story.
Submitted
A Royal Pain in the Ass
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