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The Line's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #5 | 4.556 | 4.556 |
| Audio | #9 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #48 | 3.389 | 3.389 |
| Controls | #53 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Originality | #63 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Accessibility | #71 | 2.889 | 2.889 |
| Theme | #77 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
| Fun | #100 | 2.444 | 2.444 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.7
Theme Interpretation
You are a switchboard operator directing calls for citizens across the city's districts.
GWJ Participation Level
4,2,2,2,2
Team Size
5
Generative AI Disclosure
I confirm that this jam entry does not contain any AI-generated content
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Comments
Love the idea. Papers please but a bit different. Pretty hard to get started without a tutorial, but fun when you get the hang of things. Great job, would love to see a more refined version.
Great art, and great at the setting the correct mood with the audio and story.
Small easy QOL thing you could have implement is allowing to skip the text animation, which would have been really nice when you fail and need to have an unskippable cutscene everytime :D
Wonderful execution, really good job! The obvious highlight is the art style, but the controls feel nice and tactile as well. The game is pretty challenging and quite overwhelming at first, though I think the explanations provided in the game and on the game page are sufficient. Maybe just slow the customers down a bit at the beginning? But overall, amazing job! I wouldn’t be surprised if this game won!
The art and mood is great... but I didn't get it to work, even with your gif from the comments below 😥 I think the first 4 times I died during the second customer while I was figuring out, if it has any meaning which time or booth I assign. After that I was killed for no coffee 😅 and treason. After I got to the first night shift, the clock advanced too fast to get the connection right. The next try I put the person 1 hour later and it still wasn't enough. I never got a clear signal on the oscilloscope. Sorry, I think I really would have liked it, but I don't get the gameplay right 😐
Yeah, its currently in a kind of state where the ratio of carrot and stick is very skewed towards the stick side:D. Yeah you need to go through too much friction (the mandatory tutorials) in order to try different things and get to the same point in the game you were previously. This definitely needs balancing, and clarity. We actually started working on the 2 minigames(calls and the signal denoise) 2 days before the end of the jam, so we didnt have that much time to playtest and balance, which is very, very visible in the feedback:D. Mostly from what I read from your experience, the main issue seems to be the time limitation - it doesn't allow for proper experimentation with the minigames, it doesn't give the player the time to digest the massive amount of information in front of them. To figure out the signal minigame, you only need to turn the 2 knobs in both directions to see what makes the signal become less noisy, though that simplicity can fall apart under time pressure. I'll definitely keep the feedback in mind going jamming in the future. Thank you for playing!!
The art is phenomenal and I love the concept, however I found the game pretty difficult to grasp, I just couldn't get the signal frequency thing right (the one under the table), the eye in the corner was green and I suppose that means it was correct? The wire was still black though and I lost. Could you maybe explain a little more how the second part of the game works? And also I would love to somehow be able to skip the dialogs completely, they get pretty annoying when replaying the game, is there a way to do that currently? If not I definitely understand why, you developed such a polished game in like 9 days and the problems I listed are just tiny things. You did an amazing job, good work!
Thanks for the review! Yep we could have put more focus into making the tutorial more digestible (It's very raw). The second part works like this - if the signal under the table (the eye) is green, you're good, you just need to properly time the start of the connection, make sure that the address is correct. The wire being black means that there is no connection currently. If the wire ever becomes red, its a signal problem (you need to do the minigame under the table) If it stays black the entire night, it means that no one ever called - the address was incorrectly set. If it was yellow - it means the call got interrupted - either by bad connection or by being connected late. If it becomes green - it means there is currently an ongoing call, you need to keep the connection steady.
There is no way to skip the tutorial, this would be incredibly easy to implement (I had a flag for exactly this for debugging xD) but at the time of uploading I didn't have the foresight to foresee it being a big problem. Thanks a lot for the kind words :D!
I'm a HUGE fan of Papers, Please. And I think you got the vibe down, and was very excited to find out more about it! I'm so sad that I couldn't get past the night time where you're suppose to connect the people who got tickets to the designated address? I tried three times and couldn't figure it out :(
I would love to try it again if your team is willing to tune the difficulty problem a little bit!
hey:) we have this gif:
oh and here is a higher quality version of it https://streamable.com/oxe56b - 
you need to choose the booth first, then the sector (500-D) (number on top - letters below the "STR" title) and then the Building nr which in this case is 11. You also need to time it to be connected before 19 and ensure it is stable until 20 in this case - green wire means the call started. I know this is a lot xD. We'll add a better tutorial after the jam rating period ends:D. Thanks a lot for the good vibes!
YES! I'll try it again now!
I did it! I got successfully culled lol (I hope I was suppose to get that ending). And now that I figured the mechanics out, it got me more curious about the story... I hope your team work more on it! I did still got yellow lines occasionally, meaning the call was interjected. Does that mean I got the wrong number or booth?
yeah that was the true ending :D the one you get if you do everything right. NICE!! (please don't forget to rate!xD)
the yellow lines mean that the call was interrupted by connection failure or by you being late to connect it
The visuals are beautiful! It's OK that it's hard to understand what to do for the first… second… more tries but please make it fast to skip the intro and retry.
Thank you for the comment! Yeah, I also definitely think that being able to skip would be a good addition, we'll add it after the jam:)
I wanna like this game, I can see the effort put into all the different aspects of it but I felt very overwhelmed by the cascade of mechanics thrown at me. It felt like trying to learn 3 game's worth of mechanics all at the same time.
Heyy, thank you for the comment:) Yeah, during development we wanted to make the minigames complex, because it would fit the theme, but in the end didn't have the time to properly integrate the tutorial system. Taking the feedback to heart.
It's like Papers, Please, but with coffee! I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to do, though... Someone came in and killed me D: Clearly, the coffee was cold. I get it haha.
But yeah, I played a couple of times and never really knew if I was doing things right. Maybe a playable tutorial would be a good way to introduce new players to the mechanics!
Still, the art is sick! Great job! I think it's a really good game, it just needs to communicate things a little better to the player.
Hey, thanks for the comment:) Yeah, the focus was on the mechanics and gameplay loop. I balanced the game around how I (the balance and gameplay integration guy) wanted the game to feel. And as for the tutorial... maybe a flashbang of sticky notes and vague info through dialogue is not the best way to do it:D. I'll keep this in mind going forward.
I don't get it at all.
I tried it 3 times and I just don't understand what to do, where to look and time pressure is not helping at all.
At the same time I find it visually very beautiful, sound design is great and creates a very fitting atmosphere and, in general, I like the place where the game is happening.
But I am definitely an alien in a body of a man that intended to do very complex tasks.
Hey, thanks for the review! The lore we made does not account for the alien in a workers body theoryxD, unfortunately. The game was designed to be punishing, but I agree, this is not the right way to do it. Information overload does not fit any game, unless its the name of the game:D. I'll look into better ways of explaining complex systems to the player to use in the future.
Really nice visuals. I was really immersed in the story :)
Heyy, thank you:)
Kaz and I played the game and liked the visual and audio a lot.
However I struggled a lot (maybe I'm just too slow) for me at the start I was not able to get past the first few tickets and got them wrong a bit, I felt by the time I got one ticket in I was too slow to actually get to the next part of the game.
Hey hey, thanks for sharing! Nah, its not an issue of you being slow:D After looking at how others experience the game (I'm the gameplay designer), I noticed a lot of potential flaws or areas that could be improved. These areas are especially visible in the way we present the information about the minigames to the player. I think I have an idea how I could avoid this issue in the future:D.
Super cool take on theme. The art and music is wonderful! I found the game pretty difficult cause I didn't have a lot of time to go through tickets. But other than that, this was really cool! Nice job :))
Thank you for the review:) Our artists cooked, yet again. Yeah the difficulty is something like an elephant in the room for this game. I'll try my best going forward to address it in my future games:)