northerndevguy 2018-12-05 03:04
very interesting concept, good experience
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Solida Amationis
By omiya-games, frederika, muse-en-lystrala and j-h-freedman
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 726 | 3.17 | 28 | |
| Fun | 694 | 3.03 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 833 | 2.75 | 29 | |
| Theme | 823 | 2.98 | 27 | |
| Audio | 287 | 3.46 | 29 | |
| Humor | 289 | 3.31 | 26 | |
| Mood | 196 | 3.72 | 29 |
very interesting concept, good experience
Greg's such a bad boyfriend, he can't even walk two steps without almost dying. Cursed people aren't really my type 🤣
So for those curious, the dating simulator has 2 endings. Without spoiling too much, the former ending will almost immediately lead you back to the beginning of the game, while the true ending shows the credits.
Whaaat. I gotta admit I'm not normally into this type of game, but it's super interesting to see here and refreshingly different. Neat story, and good job setting a mood. In terms of user experience it was mostly nice, but the individual letters bit was just frustrating, maybe after the first few switch to regular text with a lot of ellipses in between the letters? I think I lost some of the words clicking through that part. Also a minor bug, image "bg streets A" didn't load for me. Again, cool story and experience though. "I really like physics, so I do it a lot" might be my favorite video game dialog of the jam. Nice work!
Alright. I had to google "Solida Amationis" to find out if it was a real thing. I'm laughing and joking playing this... then at the end...
****SPOILER POSSIBILITY (READ ONLY AFTER YOU'VE COMPLETED THE GAME)**** This was fun. I'm not quite sure if I hit a bug at some point or the effect was intentional, but I got an image not found and the text didn't display properly.
@rumor "Individual Letters:" Gosh, sounds like you hit a bug. Oddly, Python interprets a tuple with a single string as if it's just a string while looping through each elements when entered into a for loop, rather than a list of strings with one element. As a consequence, it generates a sentence that requires you to click through each single letter. Blarg, do you remember what topic it was, and the conversation thread behind it?
I'll also look into why bg streets A doesn't show up. The images was put in at the very last minute, so of course this would happen. :stuck_out_tongue:
Hmm, I was a man on a date with Faith. We were outside and I think I had just made mention of the lack of snow. Her response was something about it being cold, but was just 20+ individual letters I had to click through so I didn't really catch it. If it's a bug that makes a ton more sense!
Thanks, @rumor and @mrtroy. I found the problem and fixed it accordingly. It shouldn't happen in the latest build anymore.
Edit: And yes, I'm sure you already figured it out, but "Solida Amationis" is a made-up disease. I simply looked through an online English-to-Latin dictionary and had it translate, "Perfect Romance." Apparently, there isn't a 1-to-1 translation to "romance," but I think I got close.
That's brilliant. It really sounds like something a commercial would tell you to "ask your doctor about."
Had to play through several times before I finally got a good ending. Not sure if it had to do with my decisions - it felt a bit random to me other than having the correct items. I might have not figured it out if there was something else other than having the items to help. Interesting story though, I like the setup and the unexpected events. Nice job!
@aeveis Good question. Whether your significant other makes it or not is impacted by whether you use the proper item at a particular section *and* certain dialog trees. Sometimes, the significant other selects the dialog tree for you. Combined with the base probability of success at 80%, yes, it will feel completely random. Edit: with a few exceptions, I think almost all paths decreases the probability of success, so most of the game is figuring out how to keep it from dropping.
I confess this was a deliberate decision. Part of my line of thinking was to encourage the player to replay the game and help them realize the significant other is playing the same game as the player. Second is to make the dating part more stressful. I try this via a ton of randomization, thus not knowing what to expect next, and a ton of choices to make, overwhelming the player.
I'm not expecting the game to be a pleasant experience. Heck, the *story* alone is incredibly upsetting. With what little time I had to work on the game (I had to take two days off this game jam due to work-related reasons) I tried looking for some game mechanics to implement via Ren'py that would support this uneasy story.
A pretty interesting game, and a pretty weird story. I was sadly not able to find the good ending, but I had fun with the game anyway.
Not exactly my kind of game but I played through multiple times until I got the "good" ending. So I was able to see that there is a huge dialog tree as each conversation was different between the main events. I enjoyed the music and the overall experience. Good job!
Interesting story! The randomness element was a nice touch, as it made playing through multiple times to get both endings a bit more rewarding.
@omiya-games Ah I see. I think the different prompts that came up were good for variation and made the game feel like it had to be explored for some more ideal answers (and dialogue). Thanks for your explanation!
The VN game and this Ludum Theme does not click well with me, but the sound was good and writing too, even if it is not my cup of tea, I am sure that a lot of people will like it!
It's a great entry, I was hooked and it's fun and well written. Well done!
The art was very nice, and so was the soundtrack.
I think it was a nice story and the music and sound design really put me in the right mood. A small detail it was a bit strange to me when in the park , the text said there were not a lot of people there but you heard the chattering of a lot of people. The story was nice and quite funny, you had enough options to feel as tough you had an option and the nice visuals and sound gave me the feeling of being in the situation. The theme was also there although it was in abit of a backhanded way.
@shakedimus Haha, yeah, we ran out of time to make music specific to a park, so the really chatty cafe music just looped to the noisy part.
That's a very cool concept. I like the art a lot! The music was really great, I love how it changed when something was happening. Great atmosphere!