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Tau-Lingo's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #426 | 3.847 | 4.182 |
| Artwork | #1810 | 3.763 | 4.091 |
| Enjoyment | #2658 | 3.345 | 3.636 |
| Creativity | #4165 | 3.345 | 3.636 |
| Audio | #4623 | 2.760 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The player deciphering the alien language is working against a strict countdown timer, constantly pressure-tested by an endlessly ringing phone on the bridge that demands immediate attention. Every second spent testing symbols brings humanity closer to a catastrophic war if the deadline is missed.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
see description for full credits
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Renhat
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Comments
Good job, the music you picked worked well with the urgent matter. And I really felt like I was working with that phone ringing every secooooonds lol.
I drew the message on paper before the interaction started so I did not know it would update directly on the screen (technologiaaa, I guess).
And the main character is really a pro, I could not decipher the message on my own.
Thanks for playing) It's nice when "technologiaaa" works for people.
This game is a pretty good deduction game. The only complain that i have is the control. Press E to pick up is a little awkward. Maybe using hold left click to drag and let go left click to let go the object.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you for playing! Oh, actually it's a good idea for this game, I'll take note.
pretty complex game! i will need walkthrough for this one ...
Thanks for playing)
What about the game did you find difficult?
I'll try to make it clearer in the future.
so i locked in and tried it again,
honestly it';s a pretty good game! (watching project hail mary definitely helped)
like once i got into the flow i managed to decode the msg, the commander was extremely annoying but i think it comes with the job description.
if you ever make a full game out of it i will definitely buy it! thank you for making it!
for things that i was confused with:
- i didn't realize i have to send the objects out like that (it's in your game description so definitely on me)
- i wasn't sure what 1,2,3 did, even though it was staring at me through the screen lol
- when you decode the msg, the whole screen goes dark, i wasn't sure what i am supposed to do, but just looking at the screen made the phone appear so i guess that's it
overall pretty fun experience!
Thanks for the response! I’m really glad you enjoyed our game. I'll take note of all the moments that were confusing in the game.
good luck! looking forward to full release!!
I thought the world and environment looked great and the mechanic made sense! I love 3D interfaces/ui like the phone and item-sending-machine and I thought they worked great. But like Fabiak said, I'm not sure how you could make mistakes in this game. To me, it felt a little like a to-do list. Once all the items had been translated, the game was over. Maybe having the player enter their own translations as the items are sent would create the possibility of a mistranslation, and that could have consequences down the line? That being said, the game worked great and it was still really satisfying to beat!
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about the main mechanic — man, I poured so much time into just implementing everything that’s currently in the game. I was thinking about ways to add more complexity, and the idea you mentioned was actually on my mind, but I knew time was limited (we only had 4 days, after all). I had to prioritize finishing the game first before adding more complex layers.
I realized that a jam game like this would mostly be a one-time playthrough, but despite that, I really wanted players to feel the emotions I tried to put into it.
The premise was very interesting and I really liked the artwork. The sense of urgency in the beginning was great since I had to figure out what to do while having the commander scream at you from the phone. However I think the 10 minute timer was too long and you can really take almost as long as you need translating the message.
Translating the message was fun but I would have liked to see additional outcomes based on how well you did. It would have been nice to have a failure state where you either misinterpret the message or run out of time and the commander gets trigger happy. I tried to see if there was a game over state by having the timer run out but the screen just turned black and I was still able to answer phone calls from the commander.
But don't get me wrong I still liked the game and it fit the theme of the jam!
Thank you so much for your feedback!
This is our first jam of this kind.
Yes, I agree, the 10-minute timer is too long. We initially wanted to set it to 5 minutes, but after a couple of tests, we were afraid most players wouldn't be able to keep up (we wanted to simplify it, since it's a jam).
And we do have a bad ending, and the timer was supposed to trigger it, and it even worked, but we didn't have time to test it. In the end, I only noticed it wasn't enabled after the submission xD. That's the reality of Game Jam.