Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → The March to heaven
By damakuno, Mayonaka Weisz, Kurlby and J-Shep
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 109 | 4.05 | 37 | |
| Fun | 1016 | 3.07 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 901 | 3.08 | 36 | |
| Theme | 33 | 4.40 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 29 | 4.64 | 39 | |
| Humor | 1031 | 2.31 | 31 | |
| Mood | 62 | 4.27 | 37 |
Is it legit to create so sad games? Feeling sad after playing a while this game :( 100% theme math, super good art, and overall game desing, convineient music, anyway very good perfect entry, i am amazed what people can do in two days) Rate my game pls too
Obviously looks and sounds very polished. Some more interactive gameplay would be nice, but you obviously had enough on your plate already with how the game looks and feels.
that almost made me cry! amazing game!
loved that it wasn't just reading and I had to actually juggle things and get perspective. I hope to see this become its own thing or see other games by you guys! good job!
The experience is exquisite (both visually and musically, especially with cute graphics).
wow. Seriously, I was not ready for the emotions on this one. Absolutely incredible, and seriously well written. The artwork is superb, and very adorable. 5 stars!!
I feel awful, I thought I had more time, but I spent it all making money to pay the bill. Then it ended abruptly. This is quite a well written and very well drawn game. Great job.
Started playing this without reading the description and had some crazy whiplash going from the art to the subject matter. This was such a well done game.
Thank you everyone for the very kind words ^^ We appreciate all of them!
Beautiful art, nice music, sad story, though I guess the ending (at least the one I got if there are multiple) was quite ok considering the circumstances. Great job making it!
Sad theme but understandable, the go to the park alone mechanic doesn't really make sense when you have another person to consider but other than that it's a solid sad story of a loved one dying. feel's like the end of a route of a VN.
A touching story, great graphics. Titanic work in just a few days!
Beautiful! Sad story, but death is inevitable indeed! I particularly enjoy the concept art you put on your page, it made me enjoy the graphics even more. Also, I really liked the music, perfectly fit with the mood of a visual novel. Nice job.
So many feels :( I really like the game it feels very solid - all the details are thought of. It's very well made. Is the game linear or are there multiple possible endings? Like how much you've managed to communicate and how well you accept as a result of it?
@apandso yeah there are multiple possible endings, based on how much "acceptance" you have at the end. It depends on actions and dialogue choices
Profoundly touching. The theme is front and center, and the polish is astounding for a jam game. A bittersweet, very memorable experience, and not only by jam game standards. Congratulations on a job well done!
A simple story yet touching. The dialogues are good and the artwork is cute. I played it 3 times and got 2 different endings. I would definitely love to play a bigger version of this game with more sim and a deeper story.
The gameplay is quite simple but the story is everything and you did a great job with it
this is a little gem. until now your game felt like the most sincere take on the theme of this jam for me. i could talk alot about it but i'll just say this for now: i'm really grateful for this experience!
Excellent work on this!
The art was great, and the game was very polished visually. I assume the music was borrowed from somewhere since you opted out of Audio, but the choice of music was good and went well with the mood of the game.
The story, while short, was powerful and bittersweet. It touched not only on coming to terms with death and loss, but also with the physical and mental toll being a provider or caregiver can be. You can work all day to try to pay medical bills, but that just means you are more stressed out and have less time to spend with your sister. The writing was simple but powerful.
I will say that it would have been nice to have a bit more agency over the story. It felt like there were a lot of dialog options, but the story didn't really chance course until the very end based on your choices. Although obviously there's only so much you can cram into 72 hours.
One final note, looking at the credits, I'm impressed that you had two artists on the team (one for UI) and had everything come together so smoothly. The UI and illustrations were so cohesive I wouldn't have guessed there were two separate artists, so great work there (and of course for @damakuno bringing it together with code).
@jeremy-ryan thank you so much for your well written and comprehensive review of the game! Can I just mention as well I'm a big fan of the game you made before: launch party? I put it on my stream while I was streaming the development process of this jam to let people play with it as I was focusing on the implementation ;D
@damakuno Aw, thanks! That game was a blast to work on and I'm glad you enjoyed it --- I'm sure the other developer on that game will be happy to hear someone is still enjoying it.
I also remember Moonshot Battles fondly, although I didn't play it until after jam rating closed. That one similarly has a nice bittersweet story.
Good luck for the rest of the rating period and in all your future creations!
First thing that struck me was the nice drawings. I gradually got involved in the story, and I don't think that the lack of agency is necessarily a bad thing, as the core of the game was the dialogues and narration. Very effective.
Very cute art! It amazes me to see graphic novel style games in such a short format game jam. Good Submission
Incredible visual novel made within a game jam. Loved the graphics and multiple changes in audio meshed well together. The story is compelling and has good dialogue although I wish I could see more of it. The gameplay seemed to be get money at the start of the 3 days then just go to the hospital, I would have hoped for more choices within the dialogue to add more depth of choices but for what you have done in a short time its truly amazing. I had an ending I was happy with and looking through your comment about having more endings that is very impressive.
This was really really good, thank you so much for making this 💖 I absolutely love the art, and I didn't expect the dialogs to be so well written and to almost make me cry at the end. Thank you and great job!
Very touching narrative. Great character art. The music and sfx fit well. Are there different endings? Gameplay wise, I thought the simple 3 choices each day was pretty effective, but I wasn't sure if there was an actions count or other way to tell how many actions I had left for the day. Overall, well done!
I'll write up a more full review soon, but for the time being, here's my Let's Play of it! https://youtu.be/7bpS9mbzmSM?t=358
Alright, the full review.
One of the bigger problems I see in visual-novel-y type games that covers these resource management of keeping a single person alive is the inherent stress level of dealing with limitations. In that sense, I was pleasantly surprised at the relatively few numbers and ease in getting what I assume is the intended ending. I think this was a good choice: the general cutesy aesthetic implies that while a heavy topic is being covered, it didn't want the player to come away feeling down. It's quite a difficult balance to pull off, and I think it's done pretty well here.
Other compliments that comes to mind is the UI. While I think some of the graphics could have been more clearer, the general layout was easy to read, and friendly for experimentation. I didn't really have trouble figuring where my character's stats were, and was able to make informed decisions. I think the only thing that wasn't really well translated was the passing of time, and more importantly when the day ended. This last part, of course, is important for me because it's when I had to pay my bills.
If I had to be critical about one thing, it's that I didn't like how verbose the ending was. I confess I lean towards more abstract and observational stuff, so a lot of explaining "the moral of the story" came across to me as rather preachy and unnecessary in my opinion. Perhaps adding an epilogue for our character was an intentional choice, but for this player, it didn't feel like it added anything to the story: the journey the sister goes through is enough to infer what happens to our character. ETA: now that I re-watch my stream, I think the other part this ending dialogue stood out like a sore thumb is the fact that most of the game's text is driven via spoken dialog. Having a narrator suddenly talk about "and here's the moral of the story" feels like quite a change in narrative style, and, well, I don't like it.
Well, that's enough rambling for now. This was a surprisingly heartwarming experience, a nice warm light to a dark time we live in. Thanks for submitting it to our stream!
Nice game. The art was good, and the game was very polished visually. I assume the music was borrowed from somewhere since you opted out of Audio, but the choice of music was good and went well with the mood. The story was powerful and bittersweet. It touched not only on coming to terms with death and loss, but also with the physical and mental toll being a provider or caregiver can be. The writing was simple but powerful.
I will say that it would have been nice to have a bit more control over the story. It felt like there were a lot of dialog options, but the story didn’t really chance course until the very end based on your choices. Although obviously there’s only so much you can make in 72 hours.
One final note, looking at the credits, I’m surprised that you had two artists on the team (one for UI) and had everything come together so smoothly. Great work overall, and congrats for finishing the Ludum Dare!
Congrats on your final ratings, especially Graphics and Theme!
@jeremy-ryan thanks for the congratulations! I really appreciate it!