Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. You are very talented.
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Marzanna's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Game Design | #1 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Polish | #1 | 4.444 | 4.444 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.306 | 4.306 |
| Audio | #3 | 4.556 | 4.556 |
| Fun | #3 | 4.444 | 4.444 |
| Visuals | #5 | 4.556 | 4.556 |
| AI Use | #8 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Creativity | #8 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Originality | #26 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
hello am Mono136 one of Rockets! Developers.
i enjoyed playing the game its so much fun with really cool visuals!
Submitted
Rockets! Core fallWow! This was an awesome experience for me! GRIS is one of my all-time favourites, and I genuinely got a similar vibe while playing your game. The atmosphere, music, voice-over, and variety of gameplay mechanics were truly marvelous. The level of immersion was so good that I played the entire game from start to finish in one sitting. This is hands down the best game I played in this game jam!
I have just a couple of minor suggestions. The camera could feel a bit smoother while jumping, perhaps with some damped follow or a better follow target. Also, while the environment suited the gameplay, some of the foreground layers didn’t feel naturally in sync with the character’s jumps, which slightly affected the visual experience.
But honestly, these are negligible compared to how amazing the actual game is. I absolutely loved the experience. Superb work, you absolutely nailed it!
Submitted
The SeedingLoved the pixel art backgrounds, and the BGM is gorgeous. Really enjoyed playing it and learned a lot along the way :)
Submitted
Spell and TellThe game’s art style is awesome. The backgrounds are excellent. I liked the mechanics and the voice acting. Actually, I’m not entirely sure if the voice acting is for the main character, but the voice actor does a great job. At one point, I was expecting the game to turn into a Slavic mythology style adventure, but it ended right away. I’m not sure what the game is trying to do right now, but it has potential.
Submitted
Tokyo Night CourierThanks for playing! and for the feedback.
I wanted to keep it pretty simple, it should be like a 30 min play through for most people I think, maybe an hour.
The story is based on Marzanna - if you collect all the keys in the game you get little memories that kind of tell that story without telling it directly. Marzanna is a goddess of winter, and traditionally people burn a “version” of her every year to welcome the spring. Thats the story. 6 locations with 5 different slavic-myth/folk based things - the Domovoi (the house spirit in the stove), the drowned in the mill-race, the Poludnitsa (the Noon Wife in the rye field), the Bannik in the bathhouse, and the rusalki and will-o’-wisps on the river at the end.
The voice is a narrator rather than Marzanna herself, telling her story as she walks it. She never actually speaks, which felt right for a winter that everyone talks about but nobody talks to. It was inspired by the game Bastion's narration.
So it’s less a big mythology adventure and more one night: winter walking itself to the river so spring can come, meeting the old spirits on the way. The ending is the rite itself. If you collect every light and every key there’s an extra ending too.
Out of curiosity, where did it end for you? If it felt like it stopped early, did you make it to the end in the river? Any feedback is helpful for future games.
Thanks again for taking the time!
I think I only collected two keys. I don’t remember exactly where it ended because I played a lot of games today. I saw a deer while the burning puppet was floating in the sea, but I don’t remember what happened after that. I liked your game, and I wish you and the voice actor the best of luck on your future projects.
Alright so I like how this looks a lot, but I sort of hate this sort of tutorial-narrator-story in video games
Unless it's Portal and some evil robot is torturing me with puzzles, I hate being talked to by the game. Navi was annoying enough, and now it's an entire trope for how people structure game information.
But if I take my headphones off and just play the game, that part is great. I like the art. The progression is a little slow, and possibly overly-relying on this narration to "stretch" what's there mechanically.
In the context of jam games where people are just dropping in to check it out, it feels like it's difficult to "get to the meat of the experience" behind all that slow walking. However, if I was looking to buy something on Steam and immerse myself in, this is obviously headed in that direction. But who's even buying games in the modern world?
Submitted
Ski FusorTotally legit- my husband play tested it and hated the narrator too, so there is an option to turn her off and skip all her lines in the menu (and other audio controls).
The game is definitely built around the narration- pacing of the VO's was one of the biggest challenges for me. So certain areas can really feel like they drag I bet without it.
I really love narrative games, this one was inspired by Bastion's narration although of course it's no where near the level of perfection that is.
In regards to selling a game, I'm just having fun making games for myself really. I enjoy doing these game jams because they are like writing prompts or art prompts for my creativity, I get to learn new ways to use ai, push my limits, tell stories I find interesting and important. I really appreciate the compliment though. So so so much time and labor went into this game and I did a lot with it that I had never done before. I don't even like platformers, but I wanted to challenge myself to make something different while still preserving the kind of storytelling I wanna do.
Thanks for your feedback and for playing!
I felt bad writing the criticism because I do remember how Bastion felt when I first played it and I do think it worked at a time when one could be expected to really sit down and play something.
If anything I'm really attacking my own attention and wrapping it in a criticism of a design choice. I do think the game is very good, I wish I could get myself to play it. This could be said of many games though.
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