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Bierdurst's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Challenge Fit | #1 | n/a | n/a |
| Creativity | #1 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Polish / Completeness | #2 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Fun / Engagement | #2 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Divorced dad simulator, but the dad owns a drone. Very funny game!
The vibe is so on point, every litlte detail made it convincing. I could almost sense the smell of tabaco in the walls😂
Unfortunately I didn't make it past this level despite using all my brainpower :( I guess I'll blame it on the beers. Could you share the sequence of movements to beat the level or a recording ? I'd like to be able to try the next ones.
Thanks for playing and your nice words. ^^
Sorry about this one, the level the difficulty curve did a little jump. xD One or two more levels before to get a little more used to the mechanics might have helped.
In its core this level is a stone riddle from Pokémon, adjusted to include the fan. (I have to admit that could be seen as being lazy, I call it an easteregg xD) Maybe take a look at the Pokémon riddle first: (https://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon/comments/2245np/heres_a_more_compreh...)
It shows the first part.
If that does not help, here is the full sequence:
Edit: Hide Spoilers is not working :/
<details>
<summary>Click here for spoiler</summary>
A, W, W, A, W, D, W, D, W, S, A, A, W, D, W, W, S, A
</details>
Have fun with the following level! ;D
Oh yeah I remember those Pokemon stone puzzle, i used to strugle as a kid ! Nice to see some things don't change over time xD
Thanks for the sequence !
By the way, I can see a lot of your comments in the other player’s submissions. I wanted to thank you for adding in your thoughts - this is exactly the kind of contributions I like to see toward this newly forming community. :-)
Yeah, while actually participating is the most important part, I think constructive criticism is important for learning and even just some positive words can go a long way to encourage people to keep going. Tbh I am a little underwhelmed by the amount of ratings and comments here. Of those 67 ratings around 20 might be by me and my teammate xD. Although I guess it is to be expected, when for many the following jam this week is the new priority. Cudos to you for managing to join again while playing every entry AND giving criticism. Alone the testing this week prevents me from joining again immedeately xD. Maybe you as host can try to encourage people to give at least a little more feedback and critique in the future. ^^
I’m trying to make my entry for this week, but I’m not sure if I’ll finish. 😅 This week has been difficult for me, as I’ve had a lot of business meetings setting up ForgeWalker as an official LLC.
From what I have seen, minimal comments is more or less par for the course, at least amongst jams that seem to be one offs - the bigger jams of course always get more. That’s part of why I decided to host my own jams as a series (along with forcing me to produce more small games) - I want to be the change I wish to see. 😀
I think I will add incentives in the coming weeks to encourage comments - perhaps a separate leaderboard.
Art imitating life. 🤣
Feedback and critique: This is a very well thought out game. The graphics could be improved of course, but they work for the aesthetic, so I don’t really have an issue here. The gameplay makes sense, and the music and sound are absolutely wonderful.
The only beef I have with it is that there are no UI/menu system, and only a rough onboarding (the hints are all there, so this isn’t terrible, but never assume that what things are obvious - pretend that you are sitting your grandma down in front of the game, and she has no idea what is going on). Player onboarding should assume that they never read your game homepage - make everything available in game. The UI/menu system can also give the player hints and allow for pause, control of music / sound, credits, etc. None of this is present, so polish is lacking a bit. Transitions between levels are also a bit abrupt - consider tweening. I also had some weird experiences where the game would freeze briefly while loading between levels - potentially resolvable by the tweening mentioned earlier as a way to hide the game until its ready for the player.
All that said, this is well done! Pat yourselves on the back, I think this is a very strong entry. :-)
There definitely could be more UI directly in the game. You can actually enter the sound menu via "M" — we only stated this on the itch page, partly because we did not want to clutter the in-game screen too much. The initial stutters and the freeze during the level switch are a problem we only encountered in the web build, and with a short black screen or something similar this could be fixed. We will keep this in mind for the next game we make. Regarding the onboarding, I think our design philosophies differ a little. Of course a commercial game cannot afford to lose inexperienced players during the first few minutes due to bad onboarding. Our audience on itch, however, are game dev enthusiasts, or at least other gamers. I think then it's fair to assume that they can work with the hints we placed. Nevertheless, guiding players into the game is something we have struggled with previously, so thanks for pointing it out again,
and thanks for taking the time to write this critique!
Re: Onboarding, With a goal of targeting gamers in mind, its definitely intuitive; it only took me a few seconds to pick up. :-)
I’d argue for a reconsideration of onboarding philosophy still a bit; think of most successful commercial games - there is some kind of explicit handholding involved, and some of these games have an implicit bias towards gamers. I recommend watching Jez’s series on his non-gamer wife playing some of his favorite games. It’s highly entertaining, and a bit illuminating on some of the assumptions we as developers take for granted about our audience.
Realizing that this is a hobby for many, I’d still recommend that even casual devs always create games with shipping in mind as the goal. Even considering the audience of people who are used to gaming norms, something that is accessible means that your end product reaches a wider audience. As a goal, this isn’t always achievable (especially in a tight timeframe like these jams) - There is definitely an art to striking the right balance here, and I myself prioritize getting my game down before thinking about the UI and general UX, so don’t take this as throwing stones, lol. I like that this is a conversation. Hopefully I changed your mind, but even if I didn’t, I’m glad that you gave me your point of view. :-) I still love this game and hope to see future entries from you.
Thanks for sharing this, I think I actually watched some of those a while ago and it was a little eye opening to see this as someone who is playing videogame their whole life ^^
I think the most ideal way would be to guide players smoothly into a game but without being too intrusive. In our way some more icons on the in game screen would probably have been enough. However, in general I dislike game pauses with explanations when I want to start playing nearly as much as having to read a wall of text beforehand on the itch page. Getting this right is difficult, especially with the narrow perspective you have as the developer. We will strive to improve this in the future, possibly by trying to find some playtesters before the end of the jam that can give us another perspective. Thanks for your reply, it is good to be contradicted on those things from time to time :)
This is genious
Thanks for your comment, happy that you enjoyed it. :D
The Game Is Very Good And Its Idea Is also Good
i enjoyed playing it
but It Does Not Match The Theme
Thanks for playing, but can you explain what you mean? The theme was "unstable key", the keys of the keyboard are unstable and explode after a while. The implementation of the other challenges we included is explained on the game page as well.