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How does your game meet GBJam's theme
in the Icon and Oak, the player tries to preserve and reenable the current of technology that was present in early XXth century Eastern Europe. the game is based on the stories left from the 'custodians' of that time, teachers, and people we would call alternative technology developers now. talk to the people who defined that era in this part of the world and affected how people see technology nowadays. the game tries to dig up old 'gold' , both the one that was preserved and is shiny, and the one that was buried deep in ancient forests and has to yet be fully recovered
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I was a bit confused as I am entirely uneducated in this particular field. However I really like the interpretation you did of "Old Gold" and even though I wasn't quite sure what is going on, some of the words will stick with me. Thank you for the experience.
would often say confusion is understandable here. this is grounded on a field of research that is now often called post-digital and also related to alt-tech (in a sense of non-digital tech). this, being a gb game, is an adaptation of a certain historical moment into a small rom for that old gameboy. this touches on the small fragment of our interests, though to get started with the topic, would recommend to check those articles:
https://habr.com/ru/sandbox/257108/
https://medium.com/@lithuanian/the-ladder-between-centuries-how-a-17th-century-p...
https://www.academia.edu/172655464/Vernacular_Stone_as_Business_Continuity_The_A...
https://www.academia.edu/143892731/%D0%A0%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1...
there are multiple more, but the field is still considered to be 'marginalized' either because of 'bigtech' or natural reasons
for people wondering about the story of this, take a look at 'Technologies of Usable Outside' by Belarusian-Canadian academian Ilya Sakol. Leonid Samokhvalov's findings also make just a bit more sense in this context
I had a hard time understanding this experience. It was as if the game was speaking in a language of interaction foreign to me.
yes, this is quite tricky to adapt the language of alternative-tech and analog-tech of early XX century to today's conventions really, so we think this may be happening quite often as for player experience, being both a bug and a feature, and, in a way, je suis la plaie et le couteau as Baudelaire has put it to word
I guess I will just let you know I was intrigued. As for adaptation towards the language of games, as an engine of experience, I think Gabe Newell said it best:
The point I would make is, if I go up to a wall and shoot it [and nothing happens], to me it feels like the wall is ignoring me. I'm getting a narcissistic injury when the world is ignoring me. So it is like, to me, I was trying to convey to the user a sense of, “Yes, you were making choices; yes, you were progressing.” Which meant the game had to acknowledge that back to you. If you shoot at a wall, there have to be decals. If you kill a bunch of Marines; the Marines have to run away from you, right? You have to have this sense of the game acknowledging and responding to the choices and actions and progressions that you've made. Otherwise it loses any sort of impact.
I think some level of mechanical reaction would make the experience a bit more sticky and interesting.
It was kind of difficult to understand what was going on but that may have just been me. Might be worth revisiting the audio though, it felt very repetitive and took away from the story experience. Great job!
thank you for playing and giving a constructive feedback! this is our first game of such kind, we try to tell stories that are really kind of not easy to grasp and are quite history-specific (depends on quite literal events that are subject to detailed historical research right now). as for some of the mechanics, mostly this one is a walking sim, but has some other things in it too
I see, that makes sense. I do totally get it, this was out of my comfort zone and a huge learning experience too. Good luck!!