Play book
The Day Gavin's Blew Up's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Entertainment value | #7 | 3.130 | 3.500 |
| Artistic merit | #9 | 2.460 | 2.750 |
| Overall | #9 | 2.795 | 3.125 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Word count700
Blurb
A barber shop blows up. It's treated as a spectacle to the town of Manilla.
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Comments
I liked reading this!
I agree with the other comment, that the writing style and how it was portrayed felt a bit impersonal and didn't get me invested enough to question what actually happened to Gavin's and think more about it. However, the way it was written and the topics you grace make it seem more like a jab at society, which makes it not a bad thing. Overall, it was a nice read :D
I like the story. You manage to trick expectations & surprise (owners name, Gavin's just blows up). Your writing style is easy-to-follow & greatly realistic. To me it felt like reading a newspaper.
But this has also downsides: I did not get emotionally invested, because the documentary-style did not manage to introduce characters properly to me, in a sense, that I really get to know them, learn their behaviour, get hints on their feelings or can learn something abot them. Or from them. All of that could be improved.
IF your intention was to create tension or questions for the reader: I did not have questions, because I didn't get emotionally involved enough.
But what you described masterfully was society: the act itself & the reaction to it felt very realistic & are a fantastic mirror of real human behavior in my opinion.
Oh, no. I totally agree! It's like taking a b&w photo with terrible lighting; you can see the picture, but you can't make out the details well.
I mention it on the main story page that this was actually my second attempt at a story for the jam- after also spending the month wracking my creative brain for a ficlet challenge (I got 19/28 prompts filled, with two in various states of completion and 2.5 prompts with notes on what to write lol) so it short circuited a bit writing Gavin's. There was even a point where I went 'I should do more showing than telling' but I couldn't quite find a way to fit it in. In the end, I think it was meant to be a bit impersonal. Just hope it's in the good way, haha. 😅
I think with its impersonal style & the lack of emotions, this text can be evolved to a social-critique pretty quick. It seemed to me your shown society cared more about talking & less about caring.
You could lean more into the mood of "Actually nobody cares" & could somewhere place the question if it is okay for Cooper, the society & the reader to feel so flat about such a tragic incident.
I really liked the story was about a business ran by a simple guy with an nice twist and with an interesting ending that left questions. It was kind of realistic like it could happen next door.