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A jam submission

The Sanctuary for Fractured SoulsView game page

Submitted by Caitlin Eger, Chiara "Sats" Di Stefano, Nic_Hidalgo, Etheat, DonTre, Nicholas Daukayev, gameonjam (@GameOnJam), cece-kirch — 1 hour, 58 minutes before the deadline
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The Sanctuary for Fractured Souls's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Storytelling#1152.3002.300
Theme interpretation#1151.9001.900
Overall#1201.9671.967
Gameplay#1221.7001.700

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I had a lot of trouble with this one. In fact I couldn't finish it after trying around 4 different times.

First I want to say that the concept of doing detective work is a great idea from the start, and the characters were written quite well when it came down to personality! Something I definitely liked was the possibility of getting a sort of "random encounter" when leaving a room, either with Baba Yaga,  The Morrigan or Osiris. Even if the encounters seemed inconsequential.

However there were a couple things that prevented me from fully enjoying the game:

1- The BG music is good at first, but seems to glitch soon after the first couple screens and sort of "piles up" by playing the same track on top of itself multiple times until it becomes really hard to listen to. To the point you're better of muting the sound.

2- The amount of options is a little overwhelming, but the layout of them needs improvement. For example, all options for leaving or entering rooms should always remain in a position where the player gets accustomed to them (bottom, top, etc), same with dialogue options and search/exploring options. In the state that it is right now everything is jumbled together with the options all over the place, this difficults gamplay a lot more than you think.

3- During the dialogue with the Jade rabbit, the game softlocks itself after asking him to translate the torn magical page, not giving you any option to leave, which forced me to restart the game and lose all progress.

4- Some of the options do not shed any clues until you interact with something else in another room. While I appreciate some clues on where to go in the beginning, I generally dislike things I have to "check twice" after the main character learns of something in order to find something to proceed, and sometimes when asking the characters for things you find gives you very vague clues that don't seem to help enough.

5- The game requires you to gather proof before accusing someone, but you never really get a real sense of confidence in any of the evidence you gather. I soon found myself clicking the same options again and again hoping I see something different (see point 4). And when I felt like there was nothing else to it I accused one of the characters only to be wrong and have to restart (this wouldn't be much of a problem if not points 2 and 4). This made it feel less about deductive reasoning and more about triel and error, except you have to go through several steps in the right order  before you can try accusing someone again.

Developer

Thank you for playing our game and giving us feedback!

Submitted(+1)

OK, this was pretty cool. I liked how the game kept you guessing as to who was the real culprit behind the storm. However, something felt off with the audio, as it felt like two music tracks were playing at the same time. I would recommend checking to make sure that the right tracks play at the intended times. Aside from that, it was a great experience.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing our game and giving us feedback!

Submitted

You’re very welcome!

Submitted(+1)

Great idea, I always like stories that use myths and legends. It was also well written. It was a bit chaotic on the gameplay side though and a little overwhelming with all the options being available at once. Good job though!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing our game and giving us feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Nice! My main recommendation would be to limit the options where the player can investigate in the beginning (I felt a little overwhelmed at first) and then with time, more choices could become available.  Maybe for later also have some sort of glossary to keep track of any new piece of information gained.

Developer

Thank you for playing our game and giving us feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Good job! I love the mystery/detective aspect here. It's interesting how the characters are all from different folk tales and stories, trying to live and, well, scheme together. I also like the UI design. :) 

But it got a bit tedious going through the different characters and places while trying to find the next clue. It did not grasp me as well as I had hoped. Also, I got stuck when I asked Baba Yaga about the spell page - no more options appeared.

Still, a very creative game!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thank you for playing our game and giving us feedback! I appreciate you pointing out the broken connection. I just fixed that for future players so they can continue the story from there.