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Touch Sand (with AskAlotl)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #3 | 4.267 | 4.267 |
| Theme | #4 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Overall | #8 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Polish | #14 | 4.267 | 4.267 |
| Art | #31 | 4.400 | 4.400 |
| Gameplay | #50 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Limitation | #54 | 3.467 | 3.467 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
this is so creative! very well made game for a game jam quite a bit to do, i really like that you need to motion the tools like you were actually using them.
there are a lot of npcs so at the start its kinda hard to tell which ones are important and a small tutorial segment would be helpful. regardless this is one of my fave submissions. if this would become a full game is would have a lot of replayability potential.
Could have used some in game tutorial, but after reading the description on your page I got the hang of it!
This game is so well polished, I love the little footprints, the sounds are all satisfying and the art is nice and cohesive. Also A+ title, really cute game!
Game looks good. The art are simple but have characteristics to them. I like it. Music are also chill and sounds are pretty nicely done.
All the animations and interactable elements also feel really nice to play around with, so good job with those!
Now on the gameplay side, I think the game severely wants a more in-depth in-game tutorial. I think it’s really unintuitive or confusing on what to do with the tools and items. I think a lot of players would get impatient and quit before they figure it out. It’s not bad after you understand it though, but yeah, I think that should be the number one thing to improve.
Thanks so much for playing! Yep big agree on the tutorial, we always leave it for last and run out of time before the jam ends! =_="
We've spent some time post-jam adding instructions for each tool as well as clearer visuals/audio for the detection pings, but I think we do also need some formalised onboarding rather than the cold open it currently has. Really appreciate the feedback! ^-^
I request for the removal of AskAlotl cuz he's REALLY annoying ᐢ⩌⌯⩌ᐢ💢
Hahaha, yep we feel ya ;P They didn't get as fleshed out as we'd have liked - they were supposed to be annoying, but not THAT annoying! We will be rolling out a post-jam update and we are working to get Alotl more closely resembling what we envisioned, including -
If you have any other issues or changes you'd especially like to see please let us know! ^-^
Had a great time playing this! Art & gameplay is super polished. Audio was great too. Do wish the movement and tool use didn't both require clicking & dragging, because switching was a bit tedious, and it took me several days to find a single treasure and I was wondering what I did wrong lol.
Thanks so much for playing :D We are definitely going to be increasing the amount of collectables that generate as a lot of commenters are saying they found it hard to find stuff!
We were trying to make it easy to play on phones + tablets, which why both moving and the tools use clicking + dragging. The idea was that the player picks a place to go, and then they are using the tools while they move there. However, I agree that it becomes tedious, especially with the magnifying glass + binoculars AND ironically enough, doubly so on phones + tablets, lol.
In your opinion - how would you feel if we changed it to tapping a direction to move in, rather than tapping an exact position? E.g. You tap a direction around your character, and you'll continuously move in that direction forever (or until you hit something, etc). That way we could keep the move-and-use-tools loop but stop the constant tapping to change position.
The game art is really nice, and the idea is cool. I would love to finish it and complete all the quests, but it was a bit hard to get started and find valuable items to kick off. I got tired of digging everywhere and didn’t find enough things to progress much.
The UI is really nice, I like the pocket idea. Also, the phone guy keeps beeping and getting in the way, haha. I really like the coziness of the game, and I hope there will be updates. I’ll definitely come back to it!
Thanks so much for playing :) We're definitely gonna release at least one more update to cap it off! You're not the only one who had issues finding enough to get started, so we're going to be increasing the amount of collectables and re-evaluating the costs of everything to help out. Thanks for the feedback ^-^
Game is super clean. Footsteps sounds, music based on proximity, manipulation of the tools, progression system, etc. Overall very polished loop. For feedback, I simply think that the game is too hard. I feel like people should start with basic tools and get upgrades or different items to rent from there. Also there are a lot of empty space when only looking with the glass. Overall this is a prime entry for the jam!
Thanks for playing, we really appreciate it! ^-^ We've had a few people now comment that finding things is a little hard, so we're definitely going to be increasing collectables. We tried to avoid starting the player with tools as we wanted it to be more of a choice than an upgrade path, but now we out of jam haze it's clear that the ascending costs for each tool screw around with that rationale a bit. We might revisit starting the player with tools, or we might lower + standardise the costs across the board. Thanks for the feedback!
This game is awesome, the art is great the sounds are nice and the tools are so creative and fun to use! 'The only nit pick I have which is only there because of the limitation is the damn phone, there is so much potential for a really cozy rpg that actually has good gameplay but the phone buzzing and moving onto my screen every few minutes had me rage quit. But you didn't choose the limitation so it is well implemented I must say, 10/10!
I have put forward the idea of creating another version sans AskAlotl - so that might be something we do post jam haha. Thank-you for the kind words!
This is so well made and polished, it's really fun to explore. The art is super nice too.
Thanks mate, glad you liked it ^-^
The art is especially lovely, I love the dithering you did the bridge and other areas. The ambient little crabs, the trees, and the artstyle is all very cozy.
The tap to get somewhere was pretty refreshing. I still would have loved a wasd movement so I can multi-task with the tools...
The first day I just wandered around because I didn't know how to use the magnifying glass properly (I just clicked it, it got slow and I found nothing... Later I found by accident that I had to drag it to my feet!)
Second day was a lot better, I found a lot of cool stuff! I still overspent though...
The tools were actually so fun to use, I liked it! The sense of progression was great too..
The em-dashes with AskAlotl was a good detail, smh... Beat him up...
Well done!
Thanks, really appreciate it! Yep absolutely agree, now that we're out of the jam haze it's clear we didn't onboard the tools clearly enough. I'm rewriting the description to take on the feedback, and then post-jam we can hopefully implement some tutorialisation before signing it off. Thanks for playing! :D
I got through two days in game and couldn't find anything. I spoke to all the NPCs I saw and explored what map was available to me. The game is visually great, I love the vibe you have going! I little tutorial and spot where the player can dig an item to understand how the game works may go a long way here. I couldn't find any simmering dots.
Ahh yep good shout, a tutorial area showing what the shimmer looks like is a great idea! Were you using the magnifying glass at all? I'm just realising we didn't explicitly state you need one of the other tools to see the dots! I'll add that to description now. But yeah in any case, having a small area where its taught what to look for sounds like a great post-jam addition. Thanks for checking it out and the feedback! :D
I did walk around a ton with the magnifying glass but couldn't find anything. Tried going to some of the spots the npcs wanted me to go.
Incredible work!!
One of the best, fully fleshed out games of the jam. Great use of the palette too.
Our game had a phone too! If you update the game please let me run over my phone with a car. If I have to hear my phone vibrate one more time i’m dunking it in the ocean.
So much fun, played for almost an hour.
Wow thanks so much ^-^ Glad you liked it! Also big same - dunking Alotl into the ocean was gonna be our final screen if we managed to get there, and that feeling only increased the longer we worked on it haha