Play game
[GodotWildJam98] Social Signals's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #7 | 4.231 | 4.231 |
| Theme | #38 | 3.923 | 3.923 |
| Overall | #67 | 3.220 | 3.220 |
| Controls | #68 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Audio | #75 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Graphics | #86 | 3.077 | 3.077 |
| Fun | #89 | 2.615 | 2.615 |
| Accessibility | #91 | 2.692 | 2.692 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
Godot 4.4
Theme Interpretation
The player is a neurodivergent kid and has to decode the world around and social interactions. They sometimes also follow a mysterious signal. This signal has a significant meaning in the story... (Can't say more, or it would spoil the end !)
Wildcards Used
Left Wildcard
The first wildcard (description pending)
Right Wildcard
The third wildcard (description pending)
Discord Username(s)
SystemK
GWJ Participation Level
2
Team Size
1
Generative AI Disclosure
I confirm that this jam entry does not contain any AI-generated content
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Wow, this is such a unique concept! Definitely 5 stars for originality. I loved the simple art style and the music you used aswell! Amazing take on the theme, great work :))
Definitely an original concept! I was confused about the blur until someone mention it representing you hyper fixating!
The shader you used to represent being hyperfocused on one thing was a bit distracting at times, but I thought it was a really clever way to convey what being neurodivergent can feel like!
During my playthrough, I got stuck behind the TV while trying to play some music.
Still, I think it's a really solid submission! Nice work!
I was not sure what to do in a classroom, so after 2-3 minutes of hanging around and trying to interact with anything there I finished my playthrough. I still had fun though, it was pretty unique and original to view the world unblurred only in short range and angle, almost like not wearing glasses and having only a small piece of broken glasses :) The audio was very calming too (apart from that nasty tv in first level, which was of course intended).
Hi, thanks for your feedback !
You can turn-off the tv by interacting with it ;)
In the classroom, if you go near the teacher you can see instructions written in a color a bit different from everything else, just in front of her. She'll ask you to find your desk, grab a piece of paper (somewhere in the backward area of the class), take a pen, etc.
That being said: what would you change to make things more obvious as to what you have to do in this area ?
It was a unique experience unlike anything I've played before!
Wow thank you ! That's a super-nice comment <3
Fantastic concept that did well with the theme. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Thank you ! :D
Thank you for letting us know how it feels to be in sour shoes. It was a really interessting experience.
Like the space Frogs 🤭
Good take on the theme!
Thank you :)
Hahahah yeah I wanted to spend more time on the end scene but there were unanticipated events in my town and I lacked time ultimately. I'm glad you liked it !
(Also feel free to share advice, I'm here to learn. No offense taken by criticism if it helps me make progress)
What a weird but original approach to a flashlight mechanic. I feel like I needed to adjust the responsiveness of the controls or something, as it was a bit difficult to move accurately. Nice job though, love the concept.
Hahah thanks !
Sorry for the responsiveness, I didn't notice it on my end but I'm curious about this. Can you explain a bit more if you have time ? So I can think of a way to improve this when I do post-jam improvements ?
Sure, so take this with a grain of salt because player movement is really a personal taste thing, but from my perspective I felt that the player moved very rigidly/abruptly and at a speed where that was slightly jarring. I don't think the accelerate/decelerate style "platformer" movement is always appropriate but I think it would have felt nice in this game to have some feeling of momentum at the speed the player could move. If I wanted to tune it further than that I'd imagine the camera might feel better if it had slightly more logic to it, either following less rigidly or looking ahead of the direction you're moving in, perhaps. But that might not be helpful after adding acceleration. If you don't like the idea of the more "physics"ish movement, I think slightly slower movement speed would help in this one.
Anyway, all personal opinion obviously, but hopefully helpful to hear how someone else perceives it!
No I see what you mean and I agree. Thanks for taking time to write this !
I actually did this originally and had camera smoothing movement, but both resulted in the spotlight not following and being late on the character's movements. It gave an even more awkward feeling.
Maybe I should just remove the spotlight after the jam, I thought it was a way to convey how I (and a lot of autistic people) perceive the world detail by detail instead of something global (hence a different way to manage attention and notice things while forgetting totally other important things, or missing important info in our surroundings). But I also think it makes the game difficult to navigate so I'm unsure about this mechanic.
Maybe it's also due to the fact I'm very bad with shaders and it could be made so it adapts in a better way to the character's movements (and acceleration + camera smoothing).
Do you think after the jam I should look for a way to adapt the shader to smoother player and camera movements, or just remove the spotlight mechanic ?
Oh yeah using the built-in camera smoothing probably wouldn't work for this; I think you'd need custom logic that can be mirrored on the shader to get it to feel right. So it'd just be a bunch of extra work. Camera smoothing is also kinda hard to get right with low res pixel art games since it can end up being jerky and the feel of jumping to the next pixel is rough. There's ways around that too, obviously, but again it's more shader magic.
I do think that "spotlight" mechanic is the thing that makes this game feel unique, so finding the fun in it and tuning away as many of the problems in it as you can are probably worth whatever amount of time you're willing to spend on the game. But I think you could get 90% of the way there by something as simple as tweening the camera's position to follow the player's position and tying the spotlight position to the player's position instead of the camera's position so it tightly tracks the player sprite. I'd have to see how you put it together to be more helpful than that but I do think there's a chance you'd be able to find an easy and "good enough" solution that keeps the charm and helps the issues you want to solve. Good luck!
Well, this quite a piece of art. I love how purposefully unconfortable the game is at times, and I love the sense of piece we get at some points (when we finally turn off that TV, or when we listen to music). Very cute and fitting art as well! And I did have a good laugh with the end hahah. Congratulations!
Hi ! Thank you for your feedback :D
I'm glad the ending made you laugh. Sorry for the uncomfortable sounds at times. It's a simplified version of how I feel a lot of the time.
If you have advice to improve it or make a better game next time, I take it. Don't fear to upset me, I'm here to learn.
Sorry for the late replay, I was busy the last two days... I'll play your game too today !
Oh, don't apologise for the uncomfortable sounds, it absolutely adds to the game and is clearly designed to be this way!
About the advices, I don't think I have any about the game itself (as I'm also a beginner in gamedev, and I do it just as a hobby) - but for the jam itself it could help to leave comments for other people's games to get more visibility to yourself and your game. It really sucked when I had score lowered because not enough people rated my game (it was my first game jam and I only made the project available for downloads, and no web version).
If you ever need someone to playtest your games, or a second opinion on something, or anything like that, feel free to ping me on discord, I'm on the GWJ server :)