Bedlam at the Harvest Festival

Category	Rank	Score	Count
Overall	266	3.11	23
Fun	282	2.85	23
Innovation	109	3.54	23
Theme	224	3.38	23
Graphics	294	2.88	24
Audio	253	2.61	24
Humor	169	2.68	21
Mood	209	3.11	23

oter 2023-01-10 02:34

I can't leave a rating because I didn't submit a game, but I've been watching along this event and just finished playing your game. I liked it! I tend to like these sorts of games, and this was well made, especially for a compo game! In case it helps, I got 4/5 solved in a bit over an hour. I got stuck on the 5th and had to come back in a fresh play session, but eventually brute forced an answer (see below).

(*minor spoilers*): First, most of the people in the play seemed out of order, so I couldn't figure out who to blame. Second, I got confused on the hearsay mentioning a director because there is also someone with the title of festival director, so I kept trying to sacrifice that person.

But hey, by the end, I felt like I had a special connection with some of the characters I was trying to sacrifice :smirk: and overall I was sad when it was over.

victorrypl 2023-01-11 12:56

@oter Thanks for the awesome feedback! You're totally right, the ambiguity between the festival director and the *other director* went over my head

fnelix 2023-01-11 15:08

Very happy to see this kind of deduction puzzle in the compo! I just had time to play for a short while and did not get very far, so i can't say how the puzzling works out. But I really like the concept and style. Cool entry!

vrerabek 2023-01-11 22:14

Wow, great idea! Sadly I cannot play much longer now, but I'm bookmarking this and figuring it out later! :smile:

Love the oldschool art. Music gets repetitive after while, but hey it's jam game.

Good job!

duzzondrums 2023-01-12 00:44

This one really got me thinking! I only manged to please 1 goddess in the half hour I played, had some other leads but needed to work on it more :D I like how simply the info is laid out but how much depth there is in everything. And it's a really interesting setup in line with the theme too!

allov 2023-01-12 01:19

I really tried hard to figure out who to sacrifice for a good 30 minutes without any luck. I even tried to "brute force" some names in there, but the lack of any form of feedback made trying or understanding what to do really hard. Also, font isn't the best in the sacrifice screen as names are hard to read. Music was really simple but somehow catchy! I liked the art of the characters too. I don't think this is a bad entry though, I'm bookmarking this and coming back to see if I can figure it out later!

xandruher 2023-01-12 22:20

Cool game, even tho I was not able to finish it since I do not have that much time. But I enjoyed the minutes spent and also liked the visuals pretty much.

leggy 2023-01-12 22:44

oh, a nice brainy entry. It was quite tricky to follow every line and get the right intuitions but I kinda like this type of games. A bit unusual for its structure but one of the best compo entries I've seen so far. Congrats :smile:

achilnos 2023-01-12 23:24

I had fun with trying to work this out. It was a nice puzzle. Managed to work out 3/5. Couldn't quite work out the play and the offerings. Regarding the family trees, it seemed like some people had 2 mothers which made things rather confusing with working out the number of bags of grain? The game was a nice change of pace. Overall I liked it and spent a long time trying to work it out so good job!

juanrod707 2023-01-13 21:11

I really liked how the hole game is put up, It's very nice to have all information available and going back and forth. Didn't finish yet, but I'll shelf this one for later. Great and unique entry!

substain 2023-01-14 09:47

cool idea! Unfortunately only got one of the godesses happy, but it was nice to figure out what might've went wrong for each goddess. Certainly a great entry, considering you did this for the compo :)

antsa 2023-01-16 22:41

The game definitely seems interesting, but I have no clue where to even begin. I don't usually play these kinds of games and the first impression was quite a text dump. Also the font was a bit difficult to read, especially at the last screen, I could barely make out the names.

mastoast 2023-01-16 23:17

It's so cool to see that kind of entry in the compo format. I can definitely feel the Golden Idol inspiration, that was one of my favorite games this year, and you managed it pretty well

I think that finding a way to give information more progressively could help to ingest information, step by step, because there is a lot to take when launching the game, and it can be hard to go through every page for lots of people (kids nowadays don't read anymore :older_man:), but i don't have any specific idea on how to implement this

Also i think that some kind of tools integrated in the game (like maybe the possibility to write custom notes or draw on the pages to make diagrams or arrows) could help players in their reflexions, and also help with attention and commitment to the game

I'm very curious, how do you design a game like this ? are you starting with the rules first ?

doctor-zeus 2023-01-16 23:42

Nice work!

I enjoyed working out the puzzles, some of which were definitely tricky. Keeping my notepad window at the ready certainly helped! I particularly enjoyed the twist of logic that helped me solve the "mother" sacrifices, that one was very clever.

In this kind of game, I expect that the presentation of the game is intentionally a bit hard to interpret (like with some folks' sketchy signatures, or the sometimes tricky-to-read fonts). Trying to present the information as flavorfully as possible is the goal, any obfuscation we pick up along the way is just upside :smile:

I think that the only major hiccup in the logic of the game was related to the line: > All citizens of this village who erred, either through intent, disattention, weakness or the guidance of others must die.

Some of the goddesses (thinking of Slainte in particular) didn't seem to quite be as strict as that rule would indicate - not that it's a problem, but I imagined that more people were involved in the chain of failures that made the problems occur. The blame game certainly is a tricky one, but when I did land on the accepted answers I was reasonably satisfied with the logic that got me there.

Related to that, I appreciate how lenient the results-checking was. My minor concerns with the little fiddly details of my answers were almost completely mitigated by the ability to just check my theory directly without downside.

Stepping outside of the direct experience of playing the game, I also appreciate what you were able to put together while keeping the game's technical implementation straightforward. It's hard to balance that sort of complexity against story, flavor, and writing, and usually the non-"gameplay" elements are first on the chopping block. The fact that you picked a design that let you flip those typical priorities upside-down makes for a refreshing entry.

Great job, thanks for putting together such a cool game submission!

cybek 2023-01-17 00:24

Looks like a game that really needs the focus to play it. I will do it later. But first feedback I can give you is that the font makes it really hard to play. The names of the people to sacrifice are small and pixelated. Maybe it's due to the resolution of my laptop and browser, but some texts are readable, where the names are hardly. But looks like a game with nice story, so I will add additional comment after playing it properly.

2023-01-17 22:22

This game is way too complicated for a game jam.. most people just won't bother trying.

joror 2023-01-18 22:13

Cool style of game! I could logic myself out of 3/5 puzzles, one accidentally, and one I did not get (the Mother) Music was fine, if a repetitive after a long puzzle.