So there's "programmer art", and then there's "artists programming". This will be a grand accumulation of the latter. Very nearly gave up from frustration over dropdown menus earlier today...it's always worse when you expect it to be easy.
Haven't been able to sink much time into this today, but there's a loop. Just need to actually fill in the data, do some balancing as much as possible, then hopefully work on some actual art.
Super simple concept, select experiences, press continue, calculate stats, voila life.
This game made me think of how each choice you make in life has it's own consequence and some choices prevent other choices from becoming a reality. Very well done.
Would have been nice to have something like a line of text for each chapter depending on your choices since you're 'crafting' your life so feel like your choice matters more, but it's an interesting concept and the art is pretty lovely :)
This is so good! I love that the character is mostly non-binary for the entire game and that you are able to craft your own life story (game story) as your play. It's such a wholesome video game and I think it has such a positive potential for its future development.
It would be cool if there was a way that you can reflect back at your choices to see how they affected you throughout the game and learn from them as you continue to play through.
I think the time/energy/money/etc. bar could be replaced with something else in the future so that it's not so literal? For example, if the energy bar was visualized as the character actually getting more and more tired, it might be a nice way to show off the progression as you interact with the choices.
It's a bit hard to read the bar when you select choices. It's hard to know how much -3 will deduct from the bar and how much of the bar that you have left - but this could maybe be solved with some divisions inside of the bar so that you can read it a bit more?
I'm really glad that you didn't give up when you were feeling frustrated over dropdown menus because you did a great job! This is one of my favourite games so far :) Well done!
Thank you for playing! There were many things I wanted to do but was limited by skills or time, exactly how I wanted the game to feel, but it ended up being me doing the feeling instead xD really glad you like it, and thanks for the feedback!
Great concept with some really fun artwork. But lacking quite a bit. It is way too difficult to die and by the end, in order to die, I actually had to specifically choose options that would kill me. I like that some of the paths can only be done if you tried other paths but overall your choices can be easily reversed in the next screen and its ultimately missing a good hook.
The game has great potential but lacks endgame and lacks a reason for me to stay. There isn't a lot of fun to be had here and I find myself just wanting something so much more.
From a technical standpoint, while it looked nice, it was missing some music to really set the scene and it would have been really nice to be able to overwrite an activity with another while close to the energy cap without having to chose "None" first.
I usually didn't know how my choices would be influencing the character (apart from knowing it would make some other part of them worse or better), which is quite realistic. So while I think the technical aspect can be improved, I kinda like that I couldn't fully plan my life. A nice middle ground would be to have more impactful choices. Right now I feel like I'd be able to play a few times and make fairly different choices but still have the same results (which is completely understandable given the game was made for a game jam).
Also - apart from being very cute, nothing made me connect with my player. I do think having events/consequences after making choices and seeing the character react will help with this. Right now the character develops visually, but that doesn't translate to the game itself (apart from the gym and dating choices leading to others later, which was cool).
I was hoping I'd be able to look back at my life after it ended :<
Suggestions aside... This game looks great! I loved the style and character a lot. One of the earlier posts used the word wholesome, which is 100% accurate. I especially liked the end screen.
If you ever continue working on the game, I'd happily play again :)
This was interesting and I liked the art and the intention behind the concept but I also didn't feel that I connected with it or the choices and found the actual playing experience to be frustrating and confusing.
- The first time I played I didn't even see the Time bar because I was so distracted by all the bars on the left and what they were supposed to mean that I didn't see it was being affected by my + and - choices. I also kept getting the "it seems some experiences are incomplete" popup and I found that frustrating (more below) and distracting. - I found the Needs bar to be very confusing as I didn't know where 0 was. In a number of playthroughs a few days ago I got it all the way left (or thought I did) and all the way right and it didn't seem to do anything. Today I paid more attention and played a bit only focussing on it to see what would happen and I did trigger an early death (all the way on the left). - I don't understand the "it seems some experiences are incomplete" popup. I don't understand what does or doesn't trigger it; in other words, what I am doing "wrong". Sometimes I'm allowed to "progress" by only filling in one or two boxes; other times it wants me to do something more, but not necessarily as far as selecting something for every single box. - I played six or seven times but didn't see wildly different outcomes (bar the early death) even though I tried to make different decisions.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I'll hopefully be more skilled up by next time. Then maybe I'll be able to do more with the gameplay than I was able to with this one (while staying wholesome).
Comments
This will be a grand accumulation of the latter.
Very nearly gave up from frustration over dropdown menus earlier today...it's always worse when you expect it to be easy.
Haven't been able to sink much time into this today, but there's a loop.
Just need to actually fill in the data, do some balancing as much as possible, then hopefully work on some actual art.
Super simple concept, select experiences, press continue, calculate stats, voila life.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1UcE_xpwTpTq1tnMAAJFF-qFek9c0rWoj
Doing it.
My internet is from the 90s, so it's gonna take a while for this to upload.
Same version as submission.
Very well done.
It would be cool if there was a way that you can reflect back at your choices to see how they affected you throughout the game and learn from them as you continue to play through.
I think the time/energy/money/etc. bar could be replaced with something else in the future so that it's not so literal? For example, if the energy bar was visualized as the character actually getting more and more tired, it might be a nice way to show off the progression as you interact with the choices.
It's a bit hard to read the bar when you select choices. It's hard to know how much -3 will deduct from the bar and how much of the bar that you have left - but this could maybe be solved with some divisions inside of the bar so that you can read it a bit more?
I'm really glad that you didn't give up when you were feeling frustrated over dropdown menus because you did a great job!
This is one of my favourite games so far :) Well done!
The game has great potential but lacks endgame and lacks a reason for me to stay. There isn't a lot of fun to be had here and I find myself just wanting something so much more.
From a technical standpoint, while it looked nice, it was missing some music to really set the scene and it would have been really nice to be able to overwrite an activity with another while close to the energy cap without having to chose "None" first.
I usually didn't know how my choices would be influencing the character (apart from knowing it would make some other part of them worse or better), which is quite realistic. So while I think the technical aspect can be improved, I kinda like that I couldn't fully plan my life. A nice middle ground would be to have more impactful choices. Right now I feel like I'd be able to play a few times and make fairly different choices but still have the same results (which is completely understandable given the game was made for a game jam).
Also - apart from being very cute, nothing made me connect with my player. I do think having events/consequences after making choices and seeing the character react will help with this. Right now the character develops visually, but that doesn't translate to the game itself (apart from the gym and dating choices leading to others later, which was cool).
I was hoping I'd be able to look back at my life after it ended :<
Suggestions aside... This game looks great! I loved the style and character a lot. One of the earlier posts used the word wholesome, which is 100% accurate. I especially liked the end screen.
If you ever continue working on the game, I'd happily play again :)
- The first time I played I didn't even see the Time bar because I was so distracted by all the bars on the left and what they were supposed to mean that I didn't see it was being affected by my + and - choices. I also kept getting the "it seems some experiences are incomplete" popup and I found that frustrating (more below) and distracting.
- I found the Needs bar to be very confusing as I didn't know where 0 was. In a number of playthroughs a few days ago I got it all the way left (or thought I did) and all the way right and it didn't seem to do anything. Today I paid more attention and played a bit only focussing on it to see what would happen and I did trigger an early death (all the way on the left).
- I don't understand the "it seems some experiences are incomplete" popup. I don't understand what does or doesn't trigger it; in other words, what I am doing "wrong". Sometimes I'm allowed to "progress" by only filling in one or two boxes; other times it wants me to do something more, but not necessarily as far as selecting something for every single box.
- I played six or seven times but didn't see wildly different outcomes (bar the early death) even though I tried to make different decisions.