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Paracity: The Count Down Prototype's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #664 | 3.650 | 3.650 |
| Creativity | #1957 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Artwork | #3360 | 3.350 | 3.350 |
| Enjoyment | #5903 | 2.650 | 2.650 |
| Audio | #8825 | 1.750 | 1.750 |
Ranked from 20 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?
This is a heist game with a complex countdown clock.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Me and my wife making art.
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Hey, it's CookieJar from the GMTK discord. Just copy-pasting what I sent over via dms:
My comments are gonna be mostly preferential, so if it doesn't match your vision for the game or you can think of some other way to address 'em, feel free! My ideas are certainly only my own.
Main critiques:
* As someone who prefers simplicity in tabletop design, I do think that the character stats can be simplified into a more straightfoward system. For example, you could *possibly*(?) make do without the Agreeable and Stable stats? B/c from my playthru I think they both just affected how often characters comply to orders, and that could be condensed into the pre-existing Warm/Cold - Sub/Dom spectrum (btw very funny to use sub/dom as genuine character traits) or some other single stat imo.
* Flags! Make clearer when flags are set or not, for sure for sure. Especially in the beginning, I ended up doing and re-doing a few things multiple times because I didn't know whether the action registered or not. I scaled that first gate like 5 times while not knowing a thing xD.
* I'm still a little unclear as to when and why I can't move characters. From what I gathered, I think all actions are locked if there are 3 or more actions currently ongoing atsm, but I'm not too sure! Make the conditions of action lock clearer, i think
* This is a good map, but visually I got a little red herring-ed by the House Accountants Office circle being right next to the Hidden Stair — i thought the former led to the latter. If that's intentional, that's fine, but I was led astray there.
Things i liked/loved:
* Loooved the setting, narrative, and theming. It wasn't too evident in-game, probably due to jam time constraints, but I genuinely did feel like I was on a heist, which is like *the* thing you want your player to feel for this game.
* Though I didn't find this to have had too much of an effect on my playthrough, the idea that my characters can make their own actions sometimes is awesome. Definitely expand on this system more later down the road.
Of course, huge congrats on even completing a game like this, I think you and your team can be proud of Paracity. it's a good game with a hell lot of potential. Congrats on participating, and I wish you all the best!Ah!!! You are the first player to finish a Heist!!!
First these are amazing. I need to find a new word, but that is all I have right now. I'm not the writer, that would be my partner.
• The stat system is not on much display in the Jam, but your point does stand to telegraph more clearly WHEN a stat is nudging the effects/behavior. For most of the heist Warm/Cold and Sub/Dom are the primary 2 stats. The other CAVES scores (based on Big 5 OCEAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) only affect skill checks, which are already baked in. Example: Persuasion is CHA + Agreeable. Shadowing is AGL + Careful. Warm and Dom are actually calculated from the CAVES scores, a vector sum and then renormalized. Upshot, we will need to keep the CAVES, but making it clearer when they are used will be important AND (my key takeaway here) they distract from the greater important Dom vs Warm plane, so we should highlight that more in the heist setting and downplay/hide the complexity of the full personality scores mid-heist.
• Oh no! Sorry about the gate. Yes, absolutely. We have a flag for "redoable" but that does not mean it is useful to do so. We should look into being a bit more stingy with the "redoable" flag, no need to keep running up that hill.
• Ah, I think this is the leader issue we are currently trying to find a good design for. When your leader (Isabelle) is acting, she can't command. The orders appear locked. We are not sure if we should keep this limitation, on the leader or not. Or go the other way and keep the leader from doing ANYTHING but command. TBD how to handle this. But beyond the leader, Movement seemed to be a point of friction for other folks too, I'll need to spend deeper thought on how to communicate it in a diegetic way that makes sense.
• We have a drawing of the map on paper we didn't manage to use. Hopefully the next version gets that and the paper texture so candle light flickers on the map. Rooms will then be NON-overlapping, which should help. The paths will be less clear tho
THANK YOU SO MUCH for sticking with it. It means so much to us, plus this is all very actionable feedback that will make the game better!
You are MVP.
I really like the concept behind this game! It feels kinda like D&D in terms of how each character chooses a move with a set amount of AP. The art and UI looks great but I do agree with some of the other comments that it was a little hard to tell what was going on at times. I think that with some extra sound cues or visual feedback and even just a simple tutorial screen showing what everything does this will be really good! Great job this is one of the most unique entries I've seen!
Yep! Very rooted in D&D, Gold Box games, Balder's Gate, Shadowrun, and other games in the CRPG space. I think we need to give bigger respect to the notion that making things more abstract does not in fact make them more clear. We will be working on making the screen more responsive. If you (or anyone else writing reading this (hullo)) can share examples of something you tried that didn't seem to work, that helps! But still, either way, thank you for the play and the encouragement! It is our first Jam and we happy to hear any kind of feedback, especially this late into the rating process. Happy Jam!
This is by far the most complex puzzle game in this jam that I've played (and perhaps in the entire jam)! It's a super creative idea with really unique mechanics I haven't seen in puzzle games that I've played before. However, a tutorial would be nice, as such complex mechanics make it hard to understand what's happening at first :)
Still, would love to see where this game progresses after the jam, after implementing some of the suggestions everyone has made here!
Thanks!!! We will add more tutorial, especially around the clock. I kind of forgot that it needs one.
We do have an (empty) Discord: https://discord.gg/27hQggNJa
We are planning on continuing development after the Jam... if we are lucky... a demo in ... November...ish?.
This is one of the more ambitious systems builds I've seen in this jam... a node-graph mansion with per-room skill checks, a crew of four distinct personality archetypes each with their own AI tendencies, a scheduling/timeline bar, and an order-queue log that's actually trying to tell a story about your crew acting semi-independently. Thats a lot of interlocking systems to get running in jam time, and the bones of a genuinely interesting heist-management sim are visibly here.
That said, in my playthrough it was impossible to tell what was working:
Aw yes, this is what we are here for. Thank you deeply for the deep feedback. This is the kind of thing that is hard to get from friends/family.
• We need to do a deeper run of the affordances. Especially for "Pull off current task". You and another person had a similar comment on this button. The intent (un-telegraphed) was this was a toggle between "Stack on their plan" and "Pull off current task", changing the effect of giving a new order. Does the new order stack? or does it replace what you have already told them to do. I think we will need to give this button some special attention on how to flag what is happening and why.
• Timeline... is my brain trapped in its own realm. In my head it is clearly the AP for each character's queued actions with a red edge flagging the end of that action. What else could it be? Well... lots of things. A legend is simple and somehow I never thought of it. Most people I showed it to I would explain the clock verbally... and I missed that in game it is just a big confusing ticker.
• The DC chances... I really thought was working. I'll do a deep dive. I have % comply and % succeed appearing in teal font on the block between the Order buttons and the (very confusing) Stack on/Pull off toggle button(s). Move... does not have a succeed chance... but it may later when/if we add Stealth to moving between rooms.
This is not meant to be a defense of these issues. I see a lot of comments where the dev nearly argues with the feedback. This is intended to communicate that your feedback is very helpful, and will improve both the game and my developing developer instincts. Thank you.
The UI looks pretty nice, but the lack of sound is a big deal, and the game could really use some kind of tutorial. I tried following the directions to move around the player, but a number of the buttons didn't seem to work and nothing was happening. The game looks pretty complex and I'm sure you spent a lot of time developing interesting systems for it, but unfortunately it doesn't matter all that much if a player is confused and stuck sitting there wondering why "Pull off current task" does nothing. :(
First: thank you for the play and the feedback! We didn't' realize until playing other games that sound was non-optional, we have been thinking of it as nice-to-have for a Jam... NOT THE CASE :, ). We feel silly having left out any.
The other item, very helpful!! Another post mentioned "Pull off current task" does nothing, and we likely would have dismissed it as they didn't have anything queued up to pull them off from. But between the two comments, we will do a deeper dive looking for bugs.
Thank you again for the encouragement and feedback. Thank you for your patience.
Quite nice with this being a heist based game where you have to use your time wisely! My brain slightly couldn't figure out why the people weren't moving to new areas until I spammed the move button a few times, but definitely a nice game, even more impressive that it's only you and your wife making this! Overall good job I would say!
That is very helpful!! Thank you! Move taking time is a good catch, I'm so used to it, I forget. We will try moving the character pawn to mid-door or showing a blue arrow to the room they are headed maybe... to try to show that the Order was received and is being acted upon. We need to actively avoid the notion that the UI is dead while the crew are working on things, and Movement is a topic I haven't thought enough about. Thank you very much!
Very interesting concept, but hard to understand what was going on at first. I think my game has the same issue... Nice work!
First, Thank You for playing! This is our first Jam and are just figuring out how all this works.
I'm not sure how to get the instructions easy to see on all the pages, so I'll paste some of them here:
Quick start instructions:
1) Click "Begin the Heist" at the bottom of the into screen
2) Click a Crew member portrait in the bottom left (I'd recommend Claire to start b/c she is a good listener).
3) Give that Crew member an Order (wide button on the right, e.g. Scale the Gate).
4) ???
5) Profit!
Known issues:
• The "Use" buttons don't really work anymore.
• There is no sound. At all. Sorry about that.
• The colors on the rows of tiles representing the AP points for the 4 characters should match the color or borders for the 4 portraits below, or at least their colored dots on the map (these are currently all the same color yellow).
Hi! Saw your message on Discord and came to try the game out!
So,
Positives :
- Love the vibes, the theme and the general ambiance and writing. That is original and well done!
- The core concept is very very interesting. To give orders, make them move one by one, that's good gameplay
- Love the fact that the crew can go their ways, and mess up your plans!
So to me all that is here is really intriguing, and me want to play it more
However, my main problem is the clarity of the game
I don't think there is a tutorial? (if their is own i did not find it sorry)
So I went to the description part of the game, and did not find much more info.
I think I understood a part of the game, but definitely not all, and would have a bit more explaining
To conclude, really great concept, love the auto run mode ^^
And congrats on a great work, but i do think you should maybe try to explain a bit more (wish if funny coming from me since it's the number 1 critics i got on my own game ^^')
You can be proud of what you've done here
Thank you so much!!! Your comment means a lot to me.
I don't want my reply to be a defense of its shortcomings, I see a lot of that. I will work on the Tutorial and Affordances. Well landed.
Great to hear something positive about the AutoRun and concept. We will be making the inner logic of the NPCs more visible with more UI work, so AutoRun and them breaking ranks is more telegraphed.
But mostly, you are now the first person outside our team to give feedback. Thank you for that. Deeply, it really means a lot.
You are the leader of a small cadre of cut-throats and ne'er-do-wells. Run your crew through a heist in a 15th-century mansion, issuing orders and juggling the personalities of your henchmen. Race the clock to discover the secrets of the mansion before the guards find you. But be wary: your crew may have their own ideas.
I.E. They may argue with your Order or self assign Orders.