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Ash & Phoenix
Ash & Phoenix
By honey-pony
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 109 | 3.80 | 25 | |
| Fun | 253 | 3.17 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 19 | 4.21 | 25 | |
| Theme | 203 | 3.87 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 154 | 3.73 | 25 | |
| Audio | 18 | 4.21 | 25 | |
| Mood | 15 | 4.30 | 25 | |
Comments
This is a beautiful and gorgeous game! So many little details I really like * I love the font choice * The idea to make a typing game into a storytelling visual novel medim is very original - did you come up with that for this jam? I've never seen that used as a mechanic before. It's a nice way to engage the player in a visual novel beyond reading. * The music is very well chosen * I appreciated there was even a little love put into the sound effects of the envelopes. Not only do the envelopes make different sounds, but unless I'm mistaken the last envelope of each sentence has a slightly different "bassier" sound to make it feel like the end of a sentence too. Very nice touch.
So much attention to detail, very artistic game.
xwilarg
2023-05-01 10:42
Nice little peaceful game, maybe there was a bit too much text sometimes and it felt more like rushing to write down things than just enjoying the story
My only 'main' issue is that sometimes it would not start writing on the right letter (especially if you do a typo, boom suddenly you're out of order)
Wow. This was quite the experience. The ending hit hard and was masterfully done.
Honestly, the entire game was incredibly polished and laser focused on the story you wanted to tell - all the little sound effects and animations and timely pauses made such a neat package together. I really don't have any feedback on the graphics and sound and story - they were all amazing!
The gameplay was also really original and was an excellent fit for the story. I know that it's entirely optional and there are no penalties for failing, but I still really wanted to get every word right (and I did manage to do that except for the last letter). However, I had a few minor frustrations with it.
The first one is mostly me being quite bad at the game, which led me to focus more on typing and less on the story during the harder sections (longer sentences). This made my feel slightly bad that I only skimmed parts of the story, but I also didn't want to skip parts of the game. Still, this was an excellent opportunity to practice touch typing :)
The other one was that I felt being able to type words from later parts of the sentence actually detracted from the experience. This was mostly due to my typing becoming very chaotic when O get stressed (which happened a lot during this game), but multiple times I accidentally started typing a later word without noticing, and got frustrated when I couldn't type the word I was focusing on due to my keyboard being "locked" to said later word. Sometimes, I even accidentally typed that word fully (if it was "a"/"in"/"to" etc.), leading to weird "holes" in the sentence. Generally, I'm not sure how much sense that mechanic made sense in this game, due to you typing complete sentences and not just disconnected words.
Anyway, other than that, excellent game!
@frogman @xwilarg
The unfortunate thing about the out-of-order typing problem you both mention, is that I was absolutely sure it was going to be a problem... I just never bothered to do anything about it. I figured that, although I personally found it frustrating at best, it might be interesting to see if anybody else would end up having a different experience than me. So far -- it seems to be the case that everyone dislikes it just as much as I did. :sweat_smile:
It's also super useful to hear that the typing was a bit rushed sometimes. Of course, a little bit of this is intentional, but from what it sounds like it may have been worse than I intended.
Anyways, thanks for playing and for all the feedback!
@candlesan
Thanks for playing!
I don't think I've seen the typing-game-as-a-story thing before--I would say the game I was basing this most off of was actually ZType--so I guess in that sense you could say I came up with it for this jam. But I have to imagine *somebody* has done it before. :smile:
I can't say there was any intentional difference in the sounds for the last envelope in the sentence, but perhaps such an effect would be created simply due to destructive interference in the earlier sounds, or something? Or perhaps it's all psychoacoustic? I don't know, I'm certainly not an expert on audio. Either way, thanks for the detailed description of what you're hearing! That's super interesting to me.
tomssuli
2023-05-02 15:32
Good story!
Not being a native english speaker and not being at my own home keyboard at the moment made it pretty hard to follow when there was lots of letters. Fun idea though, good musics and overall mood even if was very simple game. Great work for such a short time!
Very beautiful in both visuals and audio presentation. I feel it's one of those games you have to set aside time for to truly enjoy or experience in full length. Otherwise it feels like some of the conversations drag on, but that's no reason to adjust them if someone wants a shorter story. I feel you put a lot of thought into the relationship between Ash and phoenix so I wouldn't risk reducing that that just to make things flow faster. I'm probably just inpatient anyways.
Regardless great work, this is art!
Beautiful experience. Perfect music, pause, and colorchanger at the end. Very emotional
zundou
2023-05-14 06:31
Sending one word at a time is innovative and fun! The contents of the letters also warm my heart :)
somnium
2023-05-14 21:54
An unexpected but interesting combination of game genres!
The many small details of the game work well together to create a strong mood that is both pensive and gripping. I especially liked the variation of "writing" sounds, including the special variants for finishing a word, but also how the background changed during the last part to match the story development.
At first I wasn't sure if the typing would "get in the way" of the story, but it quickly worked to draw me further into the game, making me feel a "part" of the story in a way. One thing I did notice was that the letters were case-sensitive - I accidentially enabled CAPS-lock at some point, and was confused why the game suddenly rejected all my inputs :D
All in all, this was a very unique and interesting experience!
awesome game! simple straightforward gameplay, its a good mix of typing game with a compelling story. I'm typing the words as if I am writing the letters, putting me in the mind and mood of the characters. It gave a good zen gaming experience, it has good replay value! overall I enjoyed playing this one! congratulations! keep it up!
sheol
2023-05-15 06:50
What a peaceful game. I started out just vibing with the whole zen-ness of the typing and then I sort of got absorbed into the story. The slight pause made me think the game was over but wow. What an experience. I'm not gonna spoil but damnnn aaa the ending :sob::sob::sob: . Really great job!!
Great game. Very soft and pleasant. The music is well chosen. 5/5
ditam
2023-05-15 08:45
A really neat concept, done with great polish! I found that typing out everything was a bit tedious, have you considered a version where the text scrolls by, and you only have to type key phrases? Maybe that could be a nice compromise between involvement and enjoyable gameplay.
During Ash's final letter, envelopes just flooded my screen - was that actually intended? If so, it was a very cool effect, but the way it was introduced (starting to overlap phoenix's last letter, mixing and covering envelopes) made me think it might have been a bug of sorts.
An other bug I ran into was that red letters kept showing up on words I was not yet typing - but reading the other comments here, I realize now that this is just due to allowing typing words out-of-order, which seems unnecessary. Either way, I still stuck around to read (well, write?) the whole story. A memorable entry, congrats!
I really liked the concept of typing the letters themselves, I just felt really tired towards the end trying to type everything, but it was worth it. The music choice was very nice
This reminds me of the learning to type games we used to do in school. They would have been a lot more fun with a story to tell and this format. You could add difficulty by having capital letters and forcing spaces as well. I enjoyed this!
This reminds me of the learning to type games we used to do in school. They would have been a lot more fun with a story to tell and this format. You could add difficulty by having capital letters and forcing spaces as well. I enjoyed this!
@ditam The flooding letters are absolutely intended, as well as the overlapping of Phoenix's letter. It's meant to throw you off, and to feel a bit broken. Interesting to hear it seemed like a bug. Thanks for playing!
Aww, I did not expected to get sad in a game like that!
Its a really good game that just feels complete. The music, the audio effects, it was nice. The only thing I would change is the symbol for the abbreviation of words, mainly because I usually don't use that in my native language and i needed half the game to find that key on my keyboard! Overall, nice game!
petronus
2023-05-15 18:41
Great game, a very solid experience and even got the emotions. I expected a straight line and was about to just stop, and then the twist happens. Was suprised, sad, and happy to played that game! Thank you for this lovely idea.
trexxak
2023-05-16 05:04
Ah, letters. Writing letters. We are in a position nowadays where handwritten letters always carry a lot of personal meaning, be it a letter to your crush as a kid, birthday letters to relatives as one grows older, but even more casual letters to long-distance friends, as a symbol of true commitment and personal investment. A slowdown, an inefficiency, if all our high-speed information highways are considered, yet isn't exactly that shortcoming what we can truly say makes us an organic being? With the rise of AI, the longing for analogue communication manifests ever more deeply in my soul, and with that, your game had me genuinely immersed.
...not that I wrote an actual letter, right? I was typing, but even this simulated experience gave me peace (surely the accompanied music was also part of that :D). Especially the apostrophes reminded me of how impatient I have become, as I routinely ignored them, grounding me even more in this rare place of contemplation.
Phoenix and Ash, The new spring of a forgotten relationship, doomed to whither away in time, yet there is no need to be upset. A new puppy will be adopted, the next sunrise is destined to come.
Thank you for this heart-warming journey.
This is such a clever way to tell a story and to come up with such a great idea during a jam and then develop the whole thing with such a lovely presentation and soundtrack is an incredible effort. I've said this on a few games this year I really wish we had a narrative category to really let games like this shine, though the other elements are absolutely strong enough to shine here as well.
The story itself was lovely, and I want to stress that I'm not just saying this for the sake of giving out good feedback but I really was invested. I went through the emotions of wondering what was going on and then being surprised by how clever the mechanic was. And then I just got sucked in. The longer delay with the letter at the end, the change in envelope colour when the first reply came in, the background changing were all fantastic little touches. The ending was tragic but really well done and I'm not ashamed to say that I shed a tear or two reading (or typing?) it.
The rating's not over but with only a day or so left I think I can safely say that this is my favourite game I played this year. Amazing job!
Dear game author
The beginning was a little confusing, but thanks to the help text in the OP I was able to start playing. I wasn't sure what I needed to type out, and there was no visual feedback so I couldn't even tell if the game was receiving my inputs, so I never got to the point of doing trial & error on all the text I could see.
[WARNING]: The following review contains slight spoilers
The music immediately set the tone dead on. When combined with the first few words I wrote I could tell this would be a wholesome story with an event of grief-but-grateful (I would have been unsure about the grateful part if I had't been following you for a while) somewhere near the end.
The game background was pretty in a way that added to the mood, but allowed my brain to completely ignore it as it looked for the next word to type out.
The letter animations and floating speed were good at what was probably near 60-80WPM. It was a great idea not to add a punishment for failing to type everything out. I failed a few times, but me kicking myself for it was a good amount of punishment, and it of course allowed you to add the moment where it was impossible to type everything (their feelings) out, giving your storytelling a lot more gravity/punch/depth.
At one point I realized I could type out the words in whatever order I wanted, twisting the meaning of the letter as a whole. I think that idea might have a lot of potential if explored in its own game.
Amazing work. This was like reading a good book (well, short story), but it was written in under 48 hours, and it made good use of the opportunities games give in storytelling.
~ LandarVargan/Lone_Wolf :P
PS: After finishing this review I quickly replayed the game, and I think on my first playthrough the flood of letters hit before the calm start of ash's letter, that added a lot to the grief I perceived. You probably could have taken Phoenix's letter before that out too (making sure to still keep the time gap obvious), which would make it be Ash's grief connecting them again.. ..but those are just my thoughts, in an area where I have little expertise.