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Beyond The Spin's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #97 | 4.024 | 4.024 |
| Seriousness | #116 | 4.190 | 4.190 |
| Overall | #125 | 4.062 | 4.062 |
| Visuals | #210 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
| Enjoyment | #277 | 3.881 | 3.881 |
| Creativity & Theme | #497 | 3.929 | 3.929 |
Ranked from 42 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine
Godot
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Comments
cute and great game. I loved the minigames and the puns and voiceovers. This was really well made.
For the theme, i personally felt that the theme was an afterthought. The games don't really match what our journalist is supposedly doing, which is uncovering the truth.
also for the MJ level, i was focused on the left handside to complete the mini game, and i couldnt see what MJ was doing - i just saw in my peripheral view that he was moving. You should close the gap or have him in front or behind the rhythm game
Thanks a lot for playing, We are really glad you enjoyed it!
That’s fair feedback. The theme actually wasn’t an afterthought, we spent quite a while brainstorming how to connect “spin” to journalism. In the end, we decided to make the spinning mechanic represent the topic itself rather than the act of investigating the headlines, which is why the minigames focus more on the situations surrounding each story.
And thanks for pointing out the MJ level! That’s a good observation. We noticed during testing that most players naturally focus on the rhythm prompts, so bringing MJ closer to the gameplay area would definitely help make the animation more noticeable.
I'm genuinely surprised (and impressed) that you were able to make the idea of "spinning" the news work! I also loved that each minigame had a spin aspect. I wish the keys in the MJ minigame were placed relative to where they are on the keyboard (a on the left, w and s in the middle, d on the right) - my memory of them mostly comes through muscle-memory, so I struggled a bit more than I expected.
Thank you so much , we knew from the beginning that this was a very ambitious project hahah
And that feedback on the MJ minigame makes a lot of sense. The current key placement does not match how people remember those keys physically, so it adds difficulty for the wrong reason. We’ll look at placing them in a layout that better reflects the keyboard positions.
Really appreciate you taking the time to point that out!
Really interesting way to take the theme, also super lovely art style! In the tea minigame, it felt like the WASD controls were a little unresponsive at times though.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback! And thanks for flagging the WASD controls in the tea minigame. We’ll take another look at the responsiveness there, because movement should feel reliable and not get in the way of the challenge!
I found the bottle spin minigame too hard.
Otherwise a fantastic game with a very cohesive and charming artstyle!
Thank you so much. We’re really glad you enjoyed the game and the art style.
And honestly, the bottle spin minigame is super hard for us too haha. We did not have as much time to polish and balance that one as we wanted, so that feedback is very fair!
Good on you for letting the player disable screen shake, a lot of devs just throw it in without realizing or caring how detrimental it is to a lot of players. I have some criticisms but they were already discussed here in the comments so I can skip the deeper discussion. The spin the bottle mini game felt too random with its zone sizes.
The art style is very charming, reminds me of the "of loathing" games. Having the game be an assortment of mini-games was also a pretty bold ambitious choice for a jam, but you got through it!
Thank you so much, we really appreciate that!
Accessibility is/was important to us, so we wanted players to have the option to disable screen shake from the start. We could have done way more stuff to improve readability with the fonts and improved other stuff to create a more accessible game, but time was running against us to be honest…
And yes, the bottle spin minigame feedback is very fair. The zone sizes ended up making it feel more random than we intended, especially without enough time to properly balance it.
Nice idea of the minigames, liked the "thanks mate" tea lines. Not a fan of the political aspect but I can see its a good fit for the theme
Totally fair on the political side. It will not be for everyone, but we felt it fit the theme and gave us something more interesting to build the game around!
Very nice game, has a lot of potential of being like a warioware style game if the minigames were a tad bit shorter. The music is nice too
Thank you! We love the WarioWare comparison. And we’re glad you liked the music too!
Very good art, audio, game feel, interesting mini games and a great idea, overall i liked it a lot, great job!
Thank you so much! We’re really happy you enjoyed the game!
U can see that this game came out of creative minds. I like the art style.
Okay.. while i write this commend i unforunately have to admit that the music doesn't loop!
I just wanted to write that i couldn't play the game completely, because i needed to keep the music from moscow news playing in the background xD
k..Think i can go on play ur game then^^
Oh.. and btw.. I really love your logo! :D
I knew there need to be a creative team, when i saw this cute viking dog^^
Haha, thank you so much! We’re very happy you liked the art, logo, and our little Viking dog. And you caught us: the Moscow music definitely needs a proper loop hahah
Lots of heart in this one (super serious points!), but man, it was so easy to fail these challenges! I had to take multiple tries at every game to try to get it just right.
If you continue to tinker with it, it may be work looking into the balance more to see if expanding the "success" zones just a bit (or the timer zones for the tea) would improve gameplay, or if you're wanting it to be pretty challenging in terms of completion time/success windows. But I loved that each "level" was a different type of story with a different spinning challenge. Really creative!
I did ending up completing this one though - happy to add it as another cog in my MetaGame progress!
Thank you so much! You’re right, the balance is definitely something we would tweak, especially the success zones and tea timer. Really glad you completed it and enjoyed the different stories!
Really great polish, visual style and audio. On the first mini-game because my eyes were so focused on hitting the keys at the right time I found I was missing the animation work around the rest of the screen.
Thank you so much! That’s really useful feedback, we will make it better so that people do not miss MJ's animations!
The themed minigames are a nice touch, and overall this is a great idea. Where it had some trouble for me was in the way the art style interacted with the movement-based minigames. The movement of drones, doll, spikes, and road details didn't seem to have any relation to each other, which made it hard to tell where the doll was in relation to the obstacles. The bottle spinning in a different plane than the stop indicator made that weirdly difficult as well. I also couldn't figure out what beats the buttons in the rhythym game were supposed to match up with. The art style is very cute otherwise.
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! We really appreciate it. Those are all fair points, and we'll definitely work on improving the visual clarity and feedback after the game jam. Thanks for taking the time to play and share your thoughts! 😊
Ooo I like how each location is themed around the country. Each of the mini games were very fun!
(Metagame cog 71/126)
Thank you so much! We're really glad you enjoyed the country themes and the mini-games!
Probably the most political game I'll play today, haha. Great set of minigames, as a Brit, I especially appreciated seeing cultural icons thank me for serving them tea. The spin the bottle game had some absurdly small sections at times and it felt like it needed a bigger send off for the last game, however it was short but sweet, great job with it!
Metagame cog 43/126
Haha, thank you so much! We're glad you enjoyed the British level! And thanks for the feedback—we agree the bottle game could use some tuning, and we'd love to give the ending a bit more impact after the game jam. Thanks for playing!
I love that journalism is stuff like playing guitar hero to make Michael Jackson hee-hee loll
Haha, thank you! We had a lot of fun coming up with those mini-games, so we're really glad that one made you laugh. Thanks for playing! 🎸
I love this, this is so polished! Tons of little juice all over the UI too, with nice audio and feel! It's nice to see that you've thought about gameplay and user experience before other things, good job!
Thank you so much! That really means a lot to us. We spent a lot of time polishing the little details and making the game feel good to play, so we're happy that came across. Thanks for playing and for the kind words! ❤️
Great game, very impressive how you could fit all these ideas into a few complete mini-games. Visuals are great, although sometimes it makes the feeling of exactly when to hit the button a bit counter-intuitive.
Thank you so much! We're glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely improve the hit timing after the game jam!
Hardbass in Moscow 10/10
Haha, thank you! We couldn't resist adding a little hardbass. Glad you enjoyed it!
very neat bundle of several various smaller games! art style is simple but charming, and the whole thing overall reminds me of wario ware or rhythm heaven :D
Thank you so much! WarioWare was definitely a big inspiration, so that's a huge compliment to hear! We're really glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for playing!
Amazing game, loved the art style and audio, the mini game structure of it and the theme of "spinning the headline" of it, very funny and very enjoyable :D
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed the "spinning the headlines" concept. Thanks for playing!