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How does the game fit the theme?
You can’t blindly trust what characters tell you. The NPCs give information based on their perspective, the player has to interpret clues instead of following instructions.
The protagonist can't fully trust himself either. The world and its characters are tied to parts of Atlas that he suppressed or misunderstood. Even the title plays with the theme. Better Left Unsaid reflects Atlas’ initial belief, but it may not be the right choice...
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
- Dialogic system: the dialogues are managed by this Godot addon.
- Inner system made for other games that could be reused in this project like the Audio management or the interactions.
- Shaders(transition, outlines)
How many people worked on the game?4
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Comments
Interesting entry!
You did a great job setting the tone in the intro cutscene, I found it very relatable, and the music particularly stood out as helping carry that along across every track. Music was both competently made and very well tailored to the narrative and emotional tone - big props to the composer!
Visually, everything was clear and understandable which is the most important thing. The sprites were well drawn, but the walking animation maybe looked a little off.
Couple of minor bugs here and there that I think you could spend a pretty short amount of time figuring out before your next jam and you'll be able to handle them very quickly. The most obvious were the missing font glyphs (I think it was an apostrophe and I noticed one later that did render, I didn't go back to check if it was the same font but if so it probably means the "broken" one was likely trying to use the typographic apostrophe " ’ " and the working one was the more common typewriter apostrophe " ' ") and some iffy z-indexing (godot has a native y-sorting feature).
I enjoyed the overall narrative and writing, some dialogue could be cleaned up but I am very guilty of crunch writing and know how messy things can get in a jam lol. As far as the narrative goes, I thought your idea was super interesting and made me want to see more about how the protagonist went about reconciling his conflicting feelings, and how he might approach similar problems in real life after this experience, and different problems in the same way in the future. I'm not saying I think there should've been more content, I think what you have is a good amount for a jam, I just think it was intriguing enough to explore further!
Keep it up, I look forward to seeing more!
cool game
This game was such a treat! Im glad the main character was able to confront himself and the narrative devices were nice! The world transforming was pretty trippy. Great job! :)
Thank you for playing! Im glad you noticed this details!
The music and the scenery is so lovely, I got lost for a few minutes but I figured out eventually. Lovely game :]]]
Thank you for the compliments! :D
I give this feedback to everyone, but its important to remember. 17,000 people signed up for this jam. 2,200 abouts submitted. That alone puts you in the top 10% of devs. You had an idea. You finished it. Its that follow through that takes a dev far.
Now your game was a great little visual novel. I don't play games like this usually, but something about a dreamy soundtrack pulls me in like a moth to flame so, i read it all. Seems a deeper meaning here. Has like a - modern art sort of "it means to you what you want it to" sort of vibe. Something about loss, self loathing, forgiveness. It was a cool vibe.
Couple bugs I saw:
text emoji artifacts
I had to restart once cuz i filled my inventory w crepes and couldn't pick anything else up
Onto the critique and feedback!
run animation is hilarious. I did the exact same thing when i was learning walking anims - decided to use tweens instead because i couldn't get it down. Head bob would help. And start with major key frames, then go back and add the middle ones, then do it again, and you'll end up with a really smooth animation.
Code-wise for movement, watch your sprite's feet. You want to set the sprite's movement speed so it seems the foot is landing and staying planted on the same pixel to avoid that "ice skating" look
The window illuminating was a GREAT communication to the player of "check this next"
But returning to the guy to exhaust all dialogue options to get the ring wasn't immediately apparent, and I returned to the house immediately to return the paper flower. Thought the game bugged but figured it out. Most players would find that frustrating and just decide its "broken"
Another indicator like the window, a glint to draw attention would be a great addition.
Love the little walking dust trail particles. Not to sound like an ai, but that attention to detail goes far. It's something that really helps a game come to life.
Z-indexing. This is a common prob for new devs. But i think your engine is godot. There's a simple tick box you can use called Y-Sort-Enabled. Turn that on and your sprites can pretty consistently order themselves based on the Y value of their position in the scene. If you set your sprite so that the 0,0 origin node is at their feet, this works really well to keep the overlap from happening.
Overall: This is a great stepping stone on your game dev journey, and i think if you keep at it you'll look back on this fondly with great appreciation for how far you've come :)Thank you very much! I appreciate you taking your time to write this feedback. I'm really happy you noticed all the details and the way I tried taking the player's attention to the window with the light. Did something like that for the dialogues with the blinking "E" to interact button. Though it probably was not enough. Also would really appreciate a description to what you did to receive more than one crepe, since I should have locked it out. And yes, you did understand that there is a deeper meaning behind the game idea and the feeling you describe is exactly what we wanted to convey for this game. The text emoji artifacts seem a browser only problem, since it's just a " ' ", I've noticed it but didnt think it was enough of a problem to solve in this "bug fix" period. Your advice on the movement speed is on point, I usually did it but for the time crunch it went over my mind, thanks for remembering me. About the z indexing and Y sorting, it was a nightmare. It's my first time making a top down game so it wasn't clear why in Godot it didnt work. Guides on it are not updated and seemed the last of our problems during the jam so we defaulted to z indexing.
Your feedback was awesome and gave me the energy to become a better developer tomorrow.
Of course!
Maybe i did things out of order.
After the cutscene I went to the mouse before the guy.
Asked about the mouse.
Asked about the crepe.
Got the crepe.
Gave crepe to mouse.
Got flower.
Clicked around, flower didnt do anything.
Talked to Nostalgia, saw same dialogue options.
Clicked the ask about crepe.
He gave me another.
Then another.
Tried to bring them to rat.
No luck.
Talked to Nostalgia about the ring.
He gave me one.
Not in inventory.
Hard stuck lol
Also, i love godot, and mainly work in 2d. So if you have any weird issues you can always hit me up and ill probably have hit it before 😊
Thank you! Yes definitly wrong order but not your fault though! The mouse should have been hidden before you talked to the first guy and witnessed the house cutscene. Thanks for playing, ill take note of this bugs :)
Hello, it seems I have the same problem like the other guy. After giving the rose book to Anger, my game just went back to main menu (well after the sick terrain transformation). I'm kinda curious about the story :(. My suggestion is that maybe you could make the player make the dialogue go faster, or skip to the next one during the 1st cutscene of the game (by tapping mouse/button).
Thanks for playing! I replayed the game on browser to make sure everything was alright and it seems to also show me the last cutscene, did it not do that for you? I'm happy we made you curious with the story, that's what we're looking for! For the skip button, I thought of it but for the time crunch I couldn't put it in time, thanks for the advice, it was on point!
UPDATE:
There was a setting used for debug remained in the public build, now majority of last reported bugs are fixed. If you want to replay the game to have the real feel of it, I would really appreciate it!
So after the other guy told me he was me, was there more? I couldn't figure out what to do next. I love the music.. the whole game felt really relaxing and eerie. I wish there was more world building, but I know it's hard with 7 days :P
Thanks for the compliments! The game should have played the cutscene after finishing that dialogue, if it didn't then it's definitly a bug 😅 We wanted to add more content initially but had to cut scope unfortunately, will look to add more content if enough people liked the idea!
bit confusing and I managed to get soft locked after talking to the man behind the house a second time and getting a second ring after I gave the first to the red man and couldn't figure out where to go from there.
I feel like the story could be really interesting it just needs some polish and some guides to help the player progress.
That's really strange, could you add up what you did to receive another ring? Thanks for the feedback, will definitly look on some guides for the player post jam
I was a bit confused on what I actually needed to do and it could've used some more polish, but honestly I really like the story and the general direction of the game. Nice work!
Thanks for playing it! The narrative was really important to us, happy you liked it
The art style of the game was cool. The story was a bit hard to follow, and I got lost very quickly trying to find the goal of the game. Besides that, good job.
Thanks for playing! We had to cut a lot for the submission unfortunately so a lot of the explanations coming later could not be implemented. Thanks for the compliments :D
The music is so calming and serene! And the cutscene art style is so simple yet so lovely! Great job on your entry!
Thank you very much!
I love the message of the game, nostalgia is def my fav character though, congrats on getting this game out!
Thanks for the kind words, we really thought out the message!
Designer of the tilesets and character portraits here!
Glad to see that you liked Nostalgia, as he was our favorite character while developing!
Really liked the cutscenes and the message of your game, also that mouse is sooooo cutee.
Thanks, I really appreciate the compliments!
Interesting game, enjoyed the story and the mouse
Thanks! The mouse dialogues were the hardest, happy you liked them 👀
Lovely game - I really enjoyed the storyline
Thanks, I appreciate it a lot!
This was a neat little game, I especially liked the cutscenes with the smiley face people. Only thing I'd like is if the rest of the game matched that style, it was a little jarring how it changed after the cutscene and I had wished it looked like that in the game.
Thanks for the kind words! Was not expecting so much love for the cutscene figures, since they come from my inability to art 😅 Was really happy knowing they added up to the game. Thanks for playing!