I spent so much time playing this! Such a creative approach, such a solid game! The idea of having many windows, resizing them, the automation thingies that helped manage the chaos, and ofcourse the idea to use emojies for everything! Genius

Was the game fun to play?

Not entirely for me, though I do respect the appeal for fans of the genre of games like cookie clickers and harvest moon, which are popular for good reason. The thing I enjoyed most was watching the emoji’s multiply and seeing them move to the things I gave them and watching them express happiness was genuinely charming.

Did the game include the core elements from the original?

Definitely. Looking after the pet emoji’s needs (water, food, play and hygiene) was well implemented and getting the resources from the mini games was a really clever design choice, especially how they linked together. Drag and dropping the poo and dead emoji’s into the shredder to prevent sickness was another core element that was well met. While resource tracking is solid, I think the farm sim could be further improved by using the water from your collected resources. The game does lose some connection factor, as it’s harder to form a bond with a mass of emojis than with a single individual. However, much like people who nurture ant colonies, there is a unique appeal to managing a large group and it does start small to begin with.

Was there a clear path of progression?

Absolutely. The game eases you in with an easy to follow tutorial which explains everything very nicely and at the right pace. Getting as many emoji pets on the screen is great for a main goal. The upgrade shop helps with progression through various means. The achievements are plentiful and have multi tiers to each so there’s a lot to keep you busy.

How good was the audio and sound FX?

The audio is a mixed bag. The sound effects are excellent, distinct and satisfying and communicated their action perfectly. But the background music actually hurt my ears, forcing me to play on mute for the majority of the time. While the in game mute button is appreciated, adding separate volume sliders for music and SFX would improve the experience. Something I think would be super cool to add to the game would be a music player so you can pick what you want to listen to within the game itself for even more immersion.

How well implemented was the UI?

Exceptional. I absolutely love your ambition of creating a whole operating system for the UI. The windows 98 look is great, fits the Tamagotchi time period perfectly and adds a lot of polish to the game. Having the correct time displayed in the corner is a nice little detail and I think I caught a glimpse of a screensaver too at one point, which is a nice touch. I can think of a few minor tweaks to improve the UI with the main one being making the text and desktop icons bigger to improve readability. Opening, closing and minimizing the windows worked great, especially if the game is played in full screen mode to hide your own tabs and taskbar, which is the way to play the game for the best experience. For the water plant game, I like the +1 though the droplet icon doesn’t seem needed and I like that it’s blue for water. The slider would be nicer in my opinion if it was bigger and that the water bucket moved in sync with the slider rather than lerped for smoothness which makes it appear laggy. The rainstorm where it multiplies the water supply by 10 is a great idea and I think a dark cloud would be more fitting than a star but I like its inclusion very much. Its collision box could be more generous though. Hovering the cursor over a poo or emoji was great how it changed to a hand and that it lifted them off the ground with a shadow and made them bigger to signal that you are lifting them up. I think if the hand had a grab animation frame when dragging, it would look really cool but I understand that this didn’t exist in windows 98 and the same could be said about having red close buttons. The speech bubbles on the emoji’s are great and I like that things fade away if not consumed to keep things tidy and to stop a spam strategy. While not a big deal, it would look more polished if the emoji’s were updated with their sprite layering so that the emoji’s in the foreground overlap those in the background. Overall, this is up there at the top for UI with Evengy’s game. Really impressive. If I could give more than 5 stars I would.

super unique take, love the ui with a passion. great job

Great concept.  Definitely one of the most fun entries I've played so far.

I liked the concept of growing emojis!

Nice aesthetic, very nostalgic style!

My main feedback is the minigames were a bit grindy, like waiting for a raindrop to fall or clicking plant, then square, then water, then square, etc.  Or maybe instead of grindy I'd say patience demanding, similar to unskippable cutscenes, like where if you aren't already invested there isn't a lot of incentive to do it more than once or twice.  My recommendation for this would be to set something that can run without constant focus, like doing water supply in the style of that old Win 3.1 game "Pipe Dream," but adding new outputs as upgrades for the player to optimize as the demand from the emojis grows.

The structure for something really cool is in place here, I think with some more focus on the the progression or gameplay impact of the emojis it would be alot of fun!

Good work!

Crushed it a lot of game and other great content super fun challenging easy to understand and functional. Very impressive :)

First things first ☺️ I really wish I was attending more of your streams this round, your feedback helped me in round 1 and 2 a lot during the dev stage. And I really appreciate the feedback you gave me on your latest stream as well 🙏

About the game - I think you nailed it! I love the concept of spamming emojis a lot and I think it's a win concept for the round! This reminds me one of my favorite episodes of black mirror with Peter Capaldi and Will Poulter - plaything. Love the windows 95/98 artstyle as well. I don't see any misses on the criterias tbh, great game!!!

Good luck in the finals 🫡