Play short film
I Want to Get Away, I Want to Fly Away's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio & Sound Design | #12 | 2.955 | 2.955 |
| Visuals & Art Direction | #14 | 2.818 | 2.818 |
| Overall | #15 | 2.807 | 2.807 |
| Storytelling & Theme | #16 | 2.773 | 2.773 |
| Cinematography | #17 | 2.682 | 2.682 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
our protagonist has already made his mind up in a life-defining way, just before his parents try to intervene
Proof of Real-Time Rendering
arrow keys can move the camera around at any point
How many seconds is your Cutscene?40
Game Engine
GameMaker
Game Engine / Tools (Other)
GIMP and Audacity
Roughly how much time did you spend developing? (in hours)
15 ish
Have you joined a game jam before?
Yes
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Comments
I really admire people who push themselves to think outside the box, and you are undoubtedly one of them. It’s very noticeable in your projects that you try to convey as much authenticity and personal identity as possible. This comes through clearly in your digital art combined with elements from the real world, creating an uncomfortably pleasant atmosphere that taps into the well-known “uncanny valley.”
I noticed that you intentionally aimed for this “uncanny valley” vibe by avoiding colors that would naturally blend or harmonize with the real environment. Instead, you used highly contrasting, attention-grabbing colors, and your drawing style feels like a “basic” representation of reality, but seen through a 2D perspective.
To push this even further, I strongly recommend taking a look at the fundamentals of drawing—especially shapes. Everything else, such as perspective, shading, anatomy, and so on, can be incorporated over time. Try focusing on shapes first, and you’ll undoubtedly see a significant leap in your art.
The improvised sounds were also quite fun. You did a great job producing them and making them fit naturally into the scene, haha. Maybe I’ll do the same someday in some of my own games.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the “uncanny valley” feeling is definitely present in the game. At first, I thought it was heading toward horror, but by the end it didn’t seem to be the case. Even though I didn’t fully understand the ending, I got the impression that the character escaped to somewhere else, though I have no idea where.
In any case, keep up the great work and continue pursuing your own artistic identity. Eventually, you’ll find something truly appealing that fits your style perfectly! Congratulations on the cutscene, and best of luck in the jam.
P.S.:
Just one extra question—did you use sequences to create your scene? I’ve been having issues with left and right audio in mine, haha, and I still have no idea how to fix it.
GameMaker gang strikes again!
GangMaker Game! er, wait GameMaker Gang!! Maybe my next GameMaker game should be a gang maker game called GangMaker? (sorry had to). Thanks again for the incredibly thoughtful comment! You have a real knack for blending valuable critiques with genuine kind words that makes it easy to accept the criticism. I really appreciate the effort you put into this comment.
Uncanny valley was the vibe I was aiming for so glad that came through to you. It was the only possible aesthetic that could make my terrible artwork somewhat presentable lol. Focus on drawing fundamentals is a great call and this jam has made it clear that I need to level up bit. Starting with shapes is a great piece of advice and I plan to follow it. Hopefully the next GoedWare Jam there will be some visible improvement :)
I had a blast making stupid sounds at like 3am on the day of submission, so its nice to hear you enjoyed them too. The ending seems to be confusing to everybody, I didn't do a great job of communicating my ideas. Its all a bit too messy and abstract. I'll put a paragraph at the bottom that I've been copy pasting that hopefully shows what I was thinking a bit more clearly.
Thank you again for the kind words and sound advice! I plan to work on my art fundamentals (starting with shapes) next. Every jam I get a little bit closer to an artistic identity, like you said, and I'm really enjoying the process. The GoedWare Jams/Community are the best. Hopefully see ya again in the next one :)
P.S.
So I actually made my scene in the dumbest way possible lmao. There are 17 different scene objects. Each object just plays its sprite and then on Animation End it spawns the next object and deletes itself. Each sprite I made one frame at a time in GIMP and then exported as individual pngs. So there's no sequences, or movement code or anything else like that. Just playing the sprite that I hand animated in GIMP lol. It helped for managing the audio because I could just go through each object one at a time without getting jumbled up. For your audio issues it may be that your sounds are set to Mono instead of Stereo? GameMaker default sets them as Mono for some reason, and I have to manually switch every single sound I import to be Stereo (there's got to be a better way but idk it).
Re: the ending. The irl sketch is supposed to be a marionette/puppet kind of thing that has been ripped apart from the strings. The idea is that the main character has finally reached a point where he can't pretend to be someone else any more and the opening of the curtain was showing him kind of escaping. The parents coming to talk to him are 5 seconds too late, as he has already made his mind up. I don't think I did a great job of showing this in the cutscene lol.
(sorry for the essay)very uncanny valley... nice, only advice is to improve the art
aha thank you!! uncanny valley was the vibe I was going for. I definitely need to improve my art ability, I think that will be my goal after this jam: lots of art practice!
I think you can do it, I already knew how to draw but I didn't know anything about game design but in the long run I learned
very cool original drawing! the voice is funny as well. a bit more polish would be better. i think using another door or add some text or drawing on the door would make it much better and understandable, also not quite time consuming to implement. still it's a good work!
thank you for watching and the helpful comment!! It could definitely use more polish I agree. I tried to not use any text(besides what is written on the note) but there were certainly things I could have done to make the story more coherent. Thanks again!
the art was funny, but the story was a bit confusing. the mumbling was nice though! i used to do the same back in the day when i made games on scratch. good job mate!
Thanks for watching, appreciate the kind words! I definitely could have done a better job of explaining the story.
Mumbling is a nice touch :D At first, I did not catch what happened at the end. After reading the description and playing it again, I get it. More time (could repeat a variant of the previous scene) could help build up the gravity of the situation, or maybe let the situation sink in the viewer by adding a silent look at the paper in the end?
Thanks for watching and the thoughtful comment, I appreciate it! I think you're spot on that it needed more room to breathe. I actually had a second note writing scene where the main character writes "Dear Mom and Dad," before crumpling the paper up and tossing it, but ran out of time and had to cut it. Letting the final shot linger for longer is a good call too.
Also I've been copy pasting the following from other comments to help explain the ending:
Re: the ending. The irl sketch is supposed to be a marionette/puppet kind of thing that has been ripped apart from the strings. The idea is that the main character has finally reached a point where he can't pretend to be someone else any more and the opening of the curtain was showing him kind of escaping. The parents coming to talk to him are 5 seconds too late, as he has already made his mind up. I don't think I did a great job of showing this in the cutscene lol.
Enjoyed the visuals and sound of the scene but was a bit confused by the end. Overall pretty good cutscene.
Thanks for the kind words, glad to hear you liked the visuals and sound!
(copied from another comment
Re: the ending. The irl sketch is supposed to be a marionette/puppet kind of thing that has been ripped apart from the strings. The idea is that the main character has finally reached a point where he can't pretend to be someone else any more and the opening of the curtain was showing him kind of escaping. The parents coming to talk to him are 5 seconds too late, as he has already made his mind up. I don't think I did a great job of showing this in the cutscene lol.
i did not understand but the art and sound are 10\10
lol it was a bit too confusing and abstract I think. Glad you liked the art and sound, thanks for watching!
I liked the art and the sound, but I did not really get when happened at the end. What is the thing he drew?
If you could, please check out my entry too!
Thanks for watching!!
(copy and pasted from another comment)
Re: the ending. The irl sketch is supposed to be a marionette/puppet kind of thing that has been ripped apart from the strings. The idea is that the main character has finally reached a point where he can't pretend to be someone else any more and the opening of the curtain was showing him kind of escaping. The parents coming to talk to him are 5 seconds too late, as he has already made his mind up. I don't think I did a great job of showing this in the cutscene lol.
Not that you say the puppet thing, I get it. Good job!
Very distinct graphics and sound design! I liked the photos mixed with simple character graphics. With a bit more polish you could pull it from "original and distinct" to something even more. Adding walls, for example would be cool :)
Same goes for sound- making all the sound effect with "mouth sounds" was a great idea. You definitely get points for originality here.
As for the cinematography- at first I thought it was the weakest point, but then I sorta liked, that all the scenes were shown from the view of a character. Again- very original.
I had to double-chack, but I was right, you made the "life in the box" on the last goed jam! I really liked how you approached that jam, and this one as well. You obviously think out of the box, and it's a pleasure to see what you come up with.
Keep working on your skills, and I'm anxious to see what you come up with next time! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words, I very much appreciate it. Glad you liked the mixed media attempt. I had a lot of fun experimenting with it and I think there's a lot of room for improvement with some extra polish like you said.
I made all the sounds in the very early morning hours of submission day and felt like an absolute madman doing so lol. Cool to hear you appreciated the effort. The cinematography is definitely odd. I think I leaned to far into the indie film artsy fartsy realm and lost out on a more cohesive plot development. This did result in a pretty unique look, but I don't think the lack of story clarity was worth the trade off. I wonder if adding things like walls (like you said in the first paragraph) would help bring more reality to the overall presentation and bridge that gap a little better. Something to consider going forward.
I'm really glad to hear you've enjoyed my last couple entries. Without trying to sound too pretentious, I've been trying to make stuff that is more self-expressive and its cool to hear positive feedback on that. I will definitely keep grinding, I'm having a blast making stuff and GoedWare Jams/Community is as good as any I've come across on itch. I think learning some art fundamentals might make a good new endeavor.
Thanks again for the comment, and can't wait to see what Dick Storm is up to this time!!!
Good work! The theme fits very well as the father/Guy/whoeverknocks is too late :D I did not get the ending though... I laughed when hearing the "music" nice idea on using this mumbling for a soundtrack :D Still: Would have been nice if there is more music or SFX eventually. The art style is simple and enough for presenting story, also some more variations of certain things or consistency in the style would have been nice. It's a nice idea trying to combine the pixel art with real images, but does not work all the time...do you know what I mean?
Still: Good job!
Thank you for the detailed feedback and great comment, I appreciate it. More variety of sfx would be nice, I agree, its just kind of the bare minimum as is. Art is a big weakness of mine, so I tried the irl picture with badly hand-drawn 2d animation combo to try and mitigate my lack of skill lol. I agree it doesn't work all the time, its definitely an odd look. The only part I'm super happy how it turned out was the opening the door scene.
Re: the ending. The irl sketch is supposed to be a marionette/puppet kind of thing that has been ripped apart from the strings. The idea is that the main character has finally reached a point where he can't pretend to be someone else any more and the opening of the curtain was showing him kind of escaping. The parents coming to talk to him are 5 seconds too late, as he has already made his mind up. I don't think I did a great job of showing this in the cutscene lol.
I don't understood the goal of the game but that was funny haha
It's a cutscene, not a game. It would not be a very fun game xD. And this is the Cutscene Jam btw. Glad you got a laugh out of it, thanks for watching :)
That ending was hilarious 😂. However, I noticed at the borders of the camera that there is some weird visual glitch.
Lol glad it made you laugh. The visual glitch on the camera should only occur if you try to pan with the arrow keys and is only there to prove real-time rendering. Hopefully it didn't interfere with your overall experience too much. Thanks for watching!