The concept is very interesting in how it adheres to the theme and managed to intrigue me very quickly. However, I feel like the mechanic premise was a little confusing to me, and I hoped that there would've been more gameplay cohesion with the environmentalist themes more explicitly than just narratively, though perhaps I'm not understanding the gameplay instructions clearly.

I think this idea is very creative. I love how the game will be a board game. It makes the game stand out and I love the impact your trying to make with this game. However, I am not sure if the game will be a digital board game or a physical one.

I like the concept and the current progress shown. I am just a bit confused about whether the game is a board game or a digital game. Because looking at the picture shown, the game seems to be a (background) story-rich game, but the GDD seems to indicate a digital game. 

Either way, I love the game concept and mechanic of bouncing between "past, present, future"; the cruel punishment of losing a skill set forever and not being able to reclaim it also seems interesting and fitting the theme. 

Hope to see things work out, and can't wait to see the final game!

It's great to see this move from concept to an actual physical prototype, the hex board with color-coded domains and hand-drawn roach cards makes the abstract system finally feel tangible and playable. My advice is to use this prototype in a real playtest soon if you haven't already, since seeing whether players naturally understand the domain-to-attribute relationships at the table will tell you a lot more than continued design refinement on paper.

I really like the concept and think the storytelling is good and stands out well. storytelling. The gameplay loop is also very clear and has a good direction. One thing that could help is simplifying the tutorial.

• -Gameplay – Does the project have clear mechanics, win / lose conditions, and player progress / interaction?
  • The mechanics are very clear in what the players will do, and the emphasis on the fact that there are “only lose conditions” really hits harder the mechanic importance that is conveyed of working together with the other players as opposed to just working alone. The video gameplay demo is very helpful in understanding the flow of the game in each turn as resources are lost and the remaining resources have to be reallocated, along with the sort of negotiation and community aspect of resource allocation that can be gained by talking through what different things may need resources at different times.
• -Aesthetic – Is there cohesive visual, audio, and/or narrative direction?
  • Before my actual thoughts I just wanted to say that as a person with many intersectional identities, that memorandum got me PISSED and to that I have to say hats off to narrative they did their job and they absolutely COOKED. Also I am internally screeching at the inciting questions in the roachification draft narrative absolutely COOKED.
  • Though it seems like the card art is unfinished, I like the idea of an image of a roach being on the back of every dilemma card in different colors to represent which resources were just lost, as I feel it kind of drives home the idea of the broligarchy in this game (and in real life ngl) seeing the differences between different “cockroaches of the world” but also seeing them all as cockroaches at the end of the day. It also highlights the aspect of protecting the most vulnerable in a community, through allocating more resources to them in their time of need, as losing important things can be detrimental to them and can only hurt during times of crisis. That all is to say that the art is cool, I like the card art, and the board art looks really nice. Although I think it would be nice, just for gameplay purposes, to have dedicated spots on the board for the resources to be placed, just to keep things organized physically.
• -Synergy - Do the game mechanics and artistic decisions support and enhance the project's intended theme and call to action?
  • The game mechanics highlight the themes of the inevitability of our current climate crisis through the consistently draining resources, and the need to work together with those in our communities to ensure that the right amount of the right resources go to the right places. It also definitely might help to reduce individual guilt as different people have different backgrounds and experiences which might influence them to allocate different amounts of resources to different places, and that sometimes it’s not on one person to like save an entire sect of their society. Idk if I’m taking this too far, but I like this a lot.
• -Scope – Is the scope of the project reasonable for the timeline of the jam?
  • After seeing the gameplay in action, I can definitely see that the project is within scope, as in my head there isn’t much more to do with this project other than maybe refining mechanics, adding more art, playtesting and distribution, and iterating on dilemmas and also maybe characters. All of which is very scalable and reasonable for the rest of the jam.
• -Production Plan – Is there a clear path to completing the project?
  • Production plan seems very clear and actionable towards release, not much to say there. Just excited to see more of this project come out. :3
  • (I am still full glazing.)

I really like how creative and different this project is, it stands out from a lot of the other entries by focusing on collaboration and systems thinking instead of traditional gameplay. The hopepunk aesthetic and tabletop format also fit the message really well and give the project a unique identity.

One suggestion I’d have is to make sure the core gameplay stays as clear and approachable as possible, especially for players who aren’t familiar with tabletop RPGs or collaborative storytelling games. A little more structure or guidance during play could make it easier for new players to understand the mechanics while still keeping the creative freedom that makes the concept so interesting.

I checked out your video, I liked how you two put a focus on the fantasy and role play at this stage, I think that's more important that some board game designers realize and can do a lot to inform design that players actually care about. I see that the mechanical focus is going to be resource allocation and event cards, I think that's a solid battle-tested loop, actually my game is built on a similar loop although its a video game and not a board game. Best of luck on the art pass and tutorializing, I imagine those will be the major hurdles ahead.

Seems like a good start. There are a lot of ideas here. I wonder if the game play could be simplified. For example, are the six domains of the board really necessary to make a fun game?