A Slice of Life

sasha-v 2021-10-04 21:57

Hi! I liked this - really loved the art, and it's a cool topic to discuss via a narrative game. Definitely some food for thought.

With regard to constructive comments, for most of the questions I was not too sure why they influenced the outcome, as in using everyday tastes to say something about gender identity seemed to kinda play into gender presentation stereotypes, which seems to be the opposite of the game's aim? Or maybe I misunderstood completely and the answers didn't directly influence the outcome and that's the whole point? (In which case that's really cool actually but I'd love to see a hint about that in-game?) Hope this makes sense haha!

Another bit of feedback I had was about the dialogue - the characters seemed to have pretty similar voices, speaking in full complicated sentences etc, while in an online chat I'd expect at least some people to speak shorter, and just from the narrative standpoint would be nice for them to have distinctive voices - although I appreciate it's not relevant to the plot :)

Overall, really like the idea of a choose-your-answer game to make you question your biases, perfect format for that! And by the way great to see another narrative game - we made one as well, seems like very few teams went for this format :)

casa-ocho 2021-10-05 00:36

I love the concept, a short icq style chatboard with friends planning a party. I think this type of narrative game would've benefited a lot from having music or ambience, maybe even the pc fans humming and keyboard noises.

jeffrey-hwang 2021-10-05 00:55

It was an interesting take on the theme. Art was refreshing and stylistic. I wasn't able to replay it to see what other choices do, as it seems like the choices are maybe cached somewhere? Or maybe my game was stuck in some state. Either way, it was a refreshing take on a game and the theme! Great job!

chikentear 2021-10-05 01:01

@casa-ocho We had music and lots of little visual things to add, unfortunately one of our teamates had an unforeseen situation this weekend and we had to tinker with it urgently to finish everything on time. But we have planned several additions, the images are ready, the music too, simply, we did not have the file or the skills to implement everything urgently. Thank you very much for your feedback, anyway!

@sasha-v Your remarks are relevant, the person in charge of the writing wants to take the time to answer you but after a night of sleeping lol

chikentear 2021-10-05 01:06

@jeffrey-hwang thank you a lot, like i said before, we running out of time, so there are indeed bugs. None of us specialize in development and we did the best we could. Thank you very much, the theme is particularly important to us and we have tried to bring a little more diversity in this gamejam

ty 2021-10-05 04:36

lovely art, and really cute story! the narrative was interesting, although i didn't understand what happened in the ending. but i'm super impressed by the art <3

kitcate 2021-10-05 09:03

@sasha-v The whole point was to play with stereotypes, to show that tastes and expression of gender and gender are three different things. The choices you make have an influence in the game, one choice tends to the "feminine", one to the "masculine" and one is neutral. It's a number variable : when this variable is under 3, you'll have one ending, when it's more than 7, you'll have another, and between 3 and 7, another one. The balance is voluntarly biased to tend to give a fluid ending to most of the players, to make people think about gender codes, and think about their own bias.

Some narrative choices and association "things = this gender" were quite random, 'cause sometimes you're qualified with a gender for things that seems random. Main examples are the first and last choices you can make in the game. I mean "loving this plant = you're a man, or woman, or non-binary person" just doesn't make any sense but in our society, there are random things like this.

Also, the reaction of Nour and Marwan are not really significative of the gender you'll be associated for this choice. It was also a way to express that tastes and gender are far more complicated and deep than just a little game and a random list of things. It was a challenge for me to produce subtle texts and convincing relationship between these three characters in such a short time. I understand the confusion and I'll try to make the game and choices' influence clearer for the improvements we have planned.

And thanks for the writing advice, it's so true. In one hand, I wanted to let things readable for lots of people. Sometimes we forget that people with certain disabilities are not able to understand short sentences or abbreviation so I didn't want to use too much of that. But in another hand, I totally get this impression and I'll improve the writing keeping your advice in mind.

Thanks for your detailed comment btw, it's really helpful!

deborah-messaoudene 2021-10-05 10:20

I like the narrative content, the story is cute ! Game art is also nice. I found a little bit difficult to read with the text on the background image and it would be great to have music and SFX :) Overall I like it !

hobzone 2021-10-05 11:15

Wan't expecting this kind of game for this ludum. Quite a good surprise. I Really enjoyed it !

rodeseze 2021-10-05 11:31

This was an interesting experience and a very good idea for the unstable theme but I didn't really understand what in my choice made me go for one or an other ending and perhaps the end result would have been more understandable with more text at the end to explain.

sasha-v 2021-10-05 12:19

@kitcate thank you for taking the time to respond in such detail! It's really interesting to see your logic behind this, and yeah I totally see where you're coming from. Thanks for this game and good luck with future projects :)

jane-wei 2021-10-05 14:55

When you mentioned the SOPHIE concert I felt so sad :'( Lots of relatable references in there hehe :3 Really cool that you're making this kind of game to help spread awareness of different experiences and gender expressions! Dig it, and keep doing what you're doing :)

We made a visual novel as well, completely different genre though :p

helen 2021-10-05 16:52

I agree with the others, that music would be cool and some variation in writing styles. Is there a reason why the colours of the names are changing? It was a bit hard to read. I played it twice with different answers, but had the same ending ^^"

gorypixels 2021-10-05 17:00

Very good format for a game jam! very inspiring for next jams for me :) Loved the graphic presentation also! Great great job :D

gord10ahmet 2021-10-05 18:38

Great interpretation of the theme!

binaryprinciple 2021-10-07 23:45

Nice take on the theme and good concept, although the execution might push people away since it requires a lot of reading... well's that what we do on daily basis. Nice story and decision tree.

mrknd94 2021-10-20 19:53

To be honest, I didn't like the game. It was just a lot of reading, and I couldn't be bothered to read all of the text, so I resulted in just clicking the interactive text randomly. The story might have been interesting, but I wouldn't know. It would be a good mobile game though I think.

omiya-games 2021-10-21 06:06

To be honest, this game is very confusing to me. For context, I'll admit that I am a straight, cisgendered male, so I am quite ignorant on the subject like these. There may have been some intentional design decisions or details that I completely missed.

I think my confusion began within the first exchange you have with Nour and Muwan. It appears like the two had friction between them, so I initially thought this conflict would drive the plot throughout the story. I was sort of surprised, and a bit bummed, that this issue was never brought up again. I also got stumped during the movie suggestion section because...well, of the choices given, *Fight Club* was the only movie I've seen, let alone know the plot about. So that was a really awkward moment. I get that the writing was intentional conversational, and moreover, is supposed depict just a moment in our player character's life. But I also found that a bit...aimless? It wasn't what I expected, and I confess I didn't find the banter between the three characters compelling, at least to a point that would encourage me to experiment with the multiple choices.

I did read your reply to @sasha-v to get a better understanding of the intent of the game. It sounds like the "gendering" of each choice was deliberately arbitrary? In context, I do think that makes sense, and the game was effective at catching me off-guard on that. For example, given I'm Japanese-American, I went the full-Japanese route, and got what I assume is the queer ending. It's kind of funny, given I frequently use the cultural differences between Japanese and US culture as evidence that gender roles are artificial. That said, I thought the way this point was presented wasn't very clear. I wonder if there was a more direct way to bring it up, e.g. by exposing the stat in the background, or perhaps use some sort of up or down (or left or right) arrow animation to indicate what sway each choice had. That way, the feedback would be more immediate to the player, and might help them realize the muddy nature of their choices.

Again, I probably wasn't the best player to go through and attempt to analyze what appears to be a complex topic I have no depth of knowledge in. Still, I did like the diverse representation added in at the end. The art and illustrations are all fantastic, too: a shame the music couldn't make it in.