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A jam submission

ALCATASHIRIView project page

Module for Mothership TTRPG made during Triptech³
Submitted by akumata — 1 day, 1 hour before the deadline

Play module

ALCATASHIRI's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
UTILITY — Does complexity inspire game prep? Or Is it very "Pick-up-n-Play"?#293.3033.381
ART — How good is the art/graphic design?#333.3503.429
LAYOUT — How well does the module get across information?#393.1173.190
FAVORABILITY — how much do you personally like the submission?#422.7452.810
Overall#432.9443.014
GAME DESIGN — How good is the game balance or concepts there in?#432.9313.000
THEME — How well is the jam theme used?#472.5122.571
WRITING — How does this read? does it emanate with horror, humor, drama...?#482.6522.714

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

  • The core concept of having to solve the mystery of who you're saving from a prison that history forgot about is instantly gripping and incredibly unique! Unfortunately, the choice of font, colors, and bright colors induce eye strain and draw attention to writing full of errors that never make it impossible to tell what's going on or being communicated, but will constantly distract from the mood and intent of the module. With a little bit of refinement of the art and some proofreading, this will be an easy 5/5 in the future that you could practically run straight out of the pamphlet!

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Comments

Submitted

I was thinking about that movie Escape Plan when reading this. I think the colors are a little much, perhaps a slightly muted color palette would make it more pleasing to the eye. The pixel art is great as always.

Regarding the contents I am having a hard time figuring out how to run it and keep the gameplay engaging. I like the premise of a prison break but the module seems to at have very specific information about the keycards and at the same the door puzzle doesn't seem to lead to anything.

Submitted

- The room descriptions layout could use some work to separate them for easier reading.

- Intro text could afford to be the same size as the rest of the module.

- Multiple spelling and grammatical errors to fix. 

- I like the style of the map, but the doors are too small. All the squares could be bigger, but keep the pixel vibes.

- Suggestion: colours on the NPC details could match the keycards of their rooms.

- It would be good to signal the 'mystery' part (figuring out the identity) in the intro text.

- Maybe drop a second light blue keycard somewhere, because if they don't find it in the corpses, everything else is locked off. Can these locks be hacked open? 

- I think the myth is panopticon? If so, it doesn't feature enough beyond set dressing.

Submitted (1 edit)

Art: It's fine. The 8-bit aesthetic suits the game design choices. The perspective on the cover art is wonky, though. The top part of the tower, platform, and front part of the catwalk all seem to be viewed at different angles to me.

Writing: I'm glad someone did a jailbreak! It seems like something we should see a lot of in Mothership, but don't. There are a lot of grammatical errors however, and the use of "you" seems directed at the players, whereas it's going to be the Warden who reads this. The story doesn't totally make sense... like, why did the jail surface and let everyone out of their cells but not disable the bombs? 

Game Design: Given that you seem to be trying to write a TTRPG that feels like a CRPG, you did a decently good job of that. There's lot of running around to find keycards while dodging three different types of enemy which are each threatening in different ways. There's a logic puzzle to make sure you rescue the right person, and "power ups" to help you if you do the side quests. There are things you could do to make this appealing to a wider audience, but as long as you're aiming specifically for CRPG players it's fine.

Theme: I guess the idea is that Alcatraz is a legendary prison and could be mythical in the distant future? I'm not really seeing it.

Layout: Pretty functional. The 8-bit style impedes readability a bit.

Utility: I'm confident that I could run the adventure as intended without much prep.

Favorability: Unfortunately, this is exactly not my jam. I think CRPGs do a bad job of capturing what makes TTRPGs interesting to me, so I won't play anything that kind of back-migrates the shortcomings of CRPGs into a TTRPG format. (But don't worry, that didn't affect my other ratings, only this one.)

Submitted

Not bad. Needs a bit more polish, but overall the retro game console aesthetic comes through and it looks great!

Submitted

I love the art--the enemies and the splash are great, but the map--the MAP. It's so evocative to me of SNES/Gameboy maps in the best way. It really inspires me as a Warden to frame the whole thing around some eerie midi music. I think your layout is clear, the module is easy to read, and your color-coded and keyed information helps draw connections between the map and the descriptions, the clues and the convicts. 

My main criticism centers around the players' objective. I really like the gameplay you set up with these 3 dangerous inmates, and how the players will have to unearth the clues to pick out the right one. But why can't they just take all of the prisoners with them? In the end it's probably a fairly easy solve: the surgery room can only manage one surgery, or something similar, but I can see that having a knock-on effect of that room becoming the center of the interactions as the tension ramps up. 

Developer

thank you for your feedback. indeed i should probably have specified only 1 surgery can be done or some other time sensitive event should take place. I will take note and add some extra description to the surgery process.

Submitted

Very refreshing, light-hearted and even a bit whimsical! Great art and design. I love how videogame-y it is with the colored keycards and puzzles. A fun investigation with lots of opportunities for combat and action.

I did think the color key was a little hard to see on the map though, but that would probably be an easy problem to fix. 

Is it based on an existing real-world myth, or is the myth just that this prison has been around for hundreds of years?

Developer

thank you for giving me feedback. Yes indeed, i can see that the colors might be hard to notice in the map, i will experiment with other options to see if i can make the color pop a little more. i played with the inmates having each a mythical name, mostly on Greek mythology. I did consider the prison a sort of myth (altho not based on anything real) and from another person comment i could add some rumors about the place and maybe a time-frame to give it that mythical status.

Submitted(+1)

Love the central premise of a flying dutchman-type PRISON, immediate fun kerb appeal.  Appealing action focus as well, lots of stuff to obliterate hapless player crews :D
I would love to see more lore about the prison- maybe myths and tall tales about it, the rumours that very few have heard. I can imagine seeding those in a space station bar for my players to overhear...

Developer(+1)

thank you for your feedback. Indeed i lacks more information about the prison itself and maybe if i had managed the space a bit better i could have squeezed in some rumors. Il give it a look after the jam to see if i can't change some stuff around and give those rumors and myths a little more space :).