Thanks for playing the game! I learned that the CRT shader the game uses sometimes distorts the text in a way that makes it unreadable. Thanks for pointing it out.
Respectfully, just because someone believes the message is little too doomer/disagrees with what the developer is saying doesn't mean the developer should change their message.
I'm not necessarily defending the game's themes, or disagreeing that there are nuances. I'm defending the developer's freedom as an artist to express their view, or a view, of the world. And consumers are free to agree/disagree/criticize. That's the beauty of art.
Nailed the theme, impressive polish, great visuals, atmosphere, and execution. I feel like there was enough time for the tension to build and make the payoff satisfying.
Thank you for playing and I agree it definitely needs more balance. Since I couldn't perfectly balance it in time, I decided to prioritize fun instead. I figured becoming overpowered would be more fun.
I enjoyed the art and the ominous boss. It was fun seeing the bulletin board become filled with papers and unproductive sticky notes as time went on.
I personally didn't have the most fun time with the gameplay, as I felt like I was just walking around the office most of the time. I ended up just delivering all employees, regardless of their productivity, to the boss. There didn't seem to be any downside to that.
I like the challenges the game presents and I was excited to play and try it out. However, I don't think the game gives the player any options to overcome those challenges. I didn't feel like I could do anything but play cards with high reliability. And even then, I still got betrayed.
One of my favorite games so far. It captured the essences of both its inspirations well. The game had a sense of discovery, the puzzles were satisfying, and the boss was difficult and punished greed like a true souls boss.
I think the environment art and grocery art added a lot in terms of interest and visual story telling, leaving interpretation up to the player rather than the game explaining it, which I much prefer.
For gameplay, it initially seemed like a lot at once but then I figured out I didn't need to do anything other than "inspect for shoplifting". There didn't seem to be any incentive to helping the customer, keeping an eye on the store inventory, or inspecting customer carts. And as far as I could tell after completing day 3, gameplay did not change from day to day.
Fun game! I liked that each "enemy" felt distinct and had its own mechanic you had to deal with. Dealing with the first squirrel and thinking it was nothing, then finding out that it starts barraging you with acorns is a fun moment.
My critique is that if I played the game without reading how it fits the theme, I wouldn't have thought this was a game about trust.
Very nice art and fitting music. The different endings was a cool addition, although some of them felt kind of random to me and I didn't really feel like I had control over it, even when I assigned the noble with the highest appropriate skill. But that could either be a skill issue on my part or betrayal.
This game knows its audience lol. I got a kick out of the names and the ending. The sound and visual feedback was very crisp in a good way.
The only thing lacking for me was the gameplay. At the end of the day, the game is about reading emails without much of a twist, which isn't the most fun thing to do.
It's a cool idea of spending time shooting enemies to gain money and balancing that with the time limit.
The game could use some visual/audio feedback to communicate what just happened to the player. It was unclear whether shooting the enemies was doing anything. I would see money either explode on the enemy, or it looked like money would shoot through the enemy.
I'm not sure if the enemies with negative effects actually added anything to the gameplay. When I saw one I just jumped ahead to the next level.
Probably a bug, but I reached the top level with like $10k and it said I lost.
Took me a while to figure out how to operate the elevator, specifically how to go up. I was unsuccessfully clicking on floor levels and the game wasn't responding. It made me question whether the game was actually working.
I eventually figured it out, then later realized there are up and down arrows on the lever. But I feel like that should happen in the opposite order. Meaning the pixel arrows, especially in full screen, were not clear.
Clunky controls in general are not inherently bad. The controls in this game did grow on me, and I think they contribute to feeling like you're actually operating the hellevator, which is a good thing.
I ran into a bug(?) where if you press R to restart the level during the death animation, your character respawns but you can't move. Maybe that's an intended troll xD
Solid game! I liked the character art and animation. My critique would be that it didn't do much in terms of the theme. There's some word play with the tutorial character's name and that's it.
