itch.io

Best bits: It's great to see a fully-fledged story in an RPG Maker title. It's clear you put a lot of effort into the character art and setting up a narrative with a three act structure. It's fun to have a game with a bit of drama, so I enjoyed the villain's arc, even if I should have seen it coming with the title! 

Ideas: Having a surreal and bizarre place the players enter from the normal world is a tricky thing to pull off. I liked how the characters deconstructed the logic of it. It would be fascinating to understand how it works a little more. What powers did she use to create this evil world to punish the others? 

Thanks for submitting the game to the jam! 

Best bits: Other than the Madden games, gridiron is a neglected goldmine of gameplay mechanics. I like the focus on the cumulative runs, making each round of gameplay add up, and the variable difficulty settings, helping players get a better feel for the control scheme. 

Ideas: Feedback on when players are doing things right or wrong can help them improve at the game. It isn't clear sometimes when a down is caused by a rear collision or a time limit. Maybe an indicator for out-of-view enemies or increasing the field of view could help with this.

Thanks for submitting the game to the jam! 

Best bits: Making a golf game is a very difficult undertaking. It's physics-based and fiddly. Creating a workable golf game in a short amount of time is a great achievement. There are some fun design twists to the various holes, such as barriers and exposed parts of the course. 

Ideas: Have a look at how other 3D golf games help the player understand how much control they have over a shot. Some ideas you might like to try include having the camera follow the ball, using the mouse to set the trajectory, and having more visuals to predict the ball's direction! 

Thanks for submitting this game to the jam! 

Best bits: This is an amusingly morbid variation on a classic genre in the sports game that reminds me of early NES games. Local two-player co-operative games are a great idea to explore how to create competitive game mechanics without having to get too technical with an AI. 

Ideas: There's a great  foundation here to build on a sports game. Think about about how games like Pong keep the pace of the game fast and fair. How could the puck behave to help keep the movement more consistent? And what could happen when a point is scored to make it fairer?  

Thanks for submitting this game to the jam! 

Best bits: This is a strangely contemplative and eerie game. I found the experience of rising dread as the others disappeared and the obstacles became more ominous was highly effective.  It works well in leaving the real sense of horror to the player's fertile imagination! 

Ideas: The game has a good approach to passive gameplay with a fairly clear fail state. However, a player might like to know how well they're doing in a run so they don't abruptly get swallowed up by the God of the River. How could a player know if they are falling behind or are ahead? 

Thanks for submitting this game to the jam! 

Best bits: The game is a minimalistic interpretation of a sports title. The idea to minimise the use of a graphical interface is innovative and reminiscent of the creativity of early computer games to convey things in a non-visual way. I liked the country-based stats to add a bit of a Winter Games theme. 

Ideas: The biathlon is an endurance challenge that involves a long stretch of action. Finding ways to keep the gameplay unpredictable and varied can keep the player interested and motivated to complete the gameplay loop. Maybe some QTEs during the skiing could keep players on their toes!  

Thanks for submitting the game to the jam! 

Best bits: The game is a ping-pong tennis title with a interdimensional twist. The addition of voice acting subverts the concept and adds a bit of humor to the experience.  After all, ping pong to save the fabric of reality carries a few more stakes than an average game of ping pong in the garage! 

Ideas: Ping pong physics are quite hard to nail perfectly. The use of increasing speed and difficulty could make the pace more exciting for players. In a longer experience, an interesting design choice would be to figure out how to make the game slowly more difficult without making it inaccessible. 

Thanks for submitting the game to the jam! 

Not gonna rate this one so it can be fair - but I absolutely love this pessimistic depiction of the ultimate end of labour under capitalistic exploitation and the doomed social structures it will engender. An effective metaphor for the toil of the labourer as death in the sense that the worker makes many sacrifices to capital - whether it be having an allergic reaction, poisoning oneself, or falling down a chute that is very big and also under a carpet for some reason. A beautiful nightmare.

Thanks for submitting Dropping Into Work to the SCREAM LITE jam! 

This role-playing game is quite an open-ended ruleset acting as a platform to tell collaborative stories based on crew missions in a sci-fi setting. I like the simplicity but fairly wide scope of the die-roll gameplay and the latitude given to both DM and players. There are certainly a lot of gaps that could be filled but there's something appealing about having general principles to navigate things like action success, combat and health. I like the sheer amount of flavour you've added and it really evinces your passion for creating fun settings. I'd love to hear how this goes if you play it with others!

Thanks for submitting Cerebrus Reach to the SCREAM LITE jam! 

This is probably the most elaborate interactive fiction piece submitted for the jam! I like how you use the interactive features of Twine to elaborate on certain characters or settings mentioned in-text to provide better context to the reader if they so wish. I think the commitment to the setting is admirable and I like the imagery you conjure of the mall. It's also really interesting to see the parallel narrative told in flashbacks resolve itself in the climax of the story and provide the player with a meaningful dilemma to resolve, although I didn't quite expect where the 'defy' choice would go! 

As far as constructive feedback, from a writing perspective, I think the only thing to pick up on is using dialogue as exposition. It's important to balance use of dialogue to convey realistic interaction of characters and as a sort of delivery method for the story, which can sometimes seem quite artificial. But this is just a minor point - I think you have a lot of talent and the story is very well-written! 

Thanks for submitting Sweat Like Drops of Blood to the SCREAM LITE jam! 

As a game composed in twelve hours this is a great fusion of jamming with the 'flash fiction' tradition. I love Twine as a platform and the interactive potential offers. This story is fitting for the jam and offers a surreal and disjointed journey confronting a number of twisted mythological and just plain odd characters. I think the game works well as a dreamlike vignette. The inclusion of multiple endings is great - I ultimately was able to climb into the mirror and reach a resolution to the story with my doppelganger. From a writing perspective, this is a great achievement for flash fiction, but if you continue with this model of composing, I'd encourage ways to explore creating a more structured narrative, as this may be able to explore core ideas in more depth. But as a horror experience, confronting a surrealistic set of random disturbing images and characters works well. Good job! 

Thanks for submitting You Are Alone in a Dark Room to the SCREAM LITE jam! 

This is a simple but effective collectathon! The surroundings have a real MC Escher-like quality to them that is perfect for the running and jumping action that creates the fun and action in the game. I think being pursued by mindless skeletons is pretty freaky, but I appreciate the inclusion of lots of stairs and platforms to trick their pathfinding and get the one-up on them. I think an avenue to restore health could be useful to add a bit more depth to the game. Otherwise, good work for a first game! 

Thanks for submitting Sangre to the SCREAM LITE jam! 

Okay so this is like The Mummy except actually scary instead of with comical CGI. I like that there's a bit of challenge with the stealth mechanics and the issue of lighting adding an extra threat to the player's sense of mobility. The game looks great and nails the ancient Egyptian tomb aesthetic quite well. I think one thing is that player sense of direction can be tricky, especially with a finite amount of assets to demarcate unique rooms. That said, getting lost in the tomb is part of the horror I guess! 

Thanks for submitting Cursed Gold to the SCREAM LITE jam! 

This is a really well-thought out survival horror game. It reminds me of all the games inspired by Ao Oni and the idea that the player is trapped in a house with a very mobile monster out for blood. I think this game uses its side-scrolling design quite well. The monster itself is very uniquely designed and the way it dominates the screen and requires very quick action to avoid is a lot of fun. I think, feedback-wise, starting out with a more forgiving challenge that then increases as the game progresses could be useful. Ao Oni is a good model for using the monster pursuit mechanic in different ways, actually.

Regardless, it's very clear this game is the product of a lot of effort and skill. Great work with it! 

Thanks for submitting Walueke in the Darkness to the SCREAM LITE jam!