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A jam submission

A Sea Of Tar And OilView game page

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Submitted by BeastInTheCave — 7 hours, 10 minutes before the deadline
Rated by 4 people so far
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Play kinetic novel

A Sea Of Tar And Oil's itch.io page

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What, if any, Jam-Specific Challenges did you include in your entry?
-No spoken dialogue
-Under ten minutes
-Antagonist POV

Does your game require playing multiple routes to get the full experience?
Nope

Approximately how long is your game (in minutes)?
Five minutes

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Three things I liked about this entry:

  1. It's short. I don't have a lot of spare time, so I appreciate that the experience isn't padded out.
  2. The controls are as simple as it gets.
  3. The backgrounds set an appropriately creepy tone.

Three things I did not like:

  1. The visuals could be better. It took me way too long to understand how the second minigame relates to the story because they are kinda abstract images that just get lighter the more you click on them. Even the backgrounds, while they are related to the story, are pretty abstract too. More visuals could have made it even better.
  2. There are sounds, but no ambience? Dunno if it's a standard for kinetic novels, but it strikes me as a missed opportunity.
  3. I don't know how else to say it, so I'm gonna put it bluntly: this feels low-effort. It needs something more, be it a longer, more developed story, some choices for alternate paths, or just more done with the content that is there (like more animations, backgrounds, sounds, etc.). I don't know what kind of effort actually went into this or what challenges were overcome to deliver this entry, but compared to the competition the presentation is lacking.

I am glad that you made an entry, despite my criticisms, and I appreciate it's short, simple nature. Keep making cool stuff!

Submitted(+1)

The writing was  interesting and I really liked the visuals. The looping of the story was confusing and I almost didn't realize it :D

Submitted(+1)

A twisted, psychedelic visual novel that's pretty short but contains more to it. The looping structure is somewhat threatening, and being unsure whether you were supposed to finish it more than once I read it three times.  The story is more absurd, but I feel like I got my own idea what it could about, and that's what matters. And it fulfills the theme of this perfectly, something that many other game has struggled to do. The game is a poem, kind of, great job writing it.