FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD58 → Curio

Curio

By anothersomething

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall22
Fun21
Innovation21
Theme22
Graphics22
Audio22
Humor19
Mood22

Comments

mushlord 2025-10-21 16:49

The game is very good, the pixel art in the game is simply mind-blowing. For some reason, the game reminded me a lot of Va-11 Hall-A. I can't even believe this is your first game, very good work.

kobato-games 2025-10-21 17:40

Nice atmosphere and interesting dialog. Wish there was a way to play through more quickly to try again and please the collector.

brainloaf-studio 2025-10-21 20:29

I adore the artstyle! Something about the presentation and overall feels really polished. I also want to shout out the tooltips when you hover over anything, and the fact that everything takes place on one screen. As Kobato Games said, I also agree it would be nice to progress faster for a second go-around but I understand that the dialogue is the main aspect of the game! Really nice work!

acidofil 2025-10-21 21:00

This is awesome(even brilliant for a first game)! The concept is interesting and all art are beautiful! I will be happy to see more from you!

fivecyclops 2025-10-21 22:45

@anothersomething I think you should try testing and rating about 20 games to increase your Karma and make your game more visible, so that other players can test it.

fivecyclops 2025-10-21 23:01

Well done on this game. The dialogues are very touching and accurate. And the atmosphere is enhanced by the magnificent pixel art and music. I really hope you get the 20 votes required for the final count. **This kind of game is truly unique in Jam.**

kalgynirae 2025-10-21 23:06

The music, art style, and dialogue sound effect are great together and really set the mood well. I also really like the font used for the dialogue! I sadly only had a few minutes to play, so I didn't make it very far into the game and thus can't comment on the gameplay. I wish there had been something to do (other than advancing through dialogue) a bit earlier so I could have gained a sense of what the rest of the game would be like.

nbumgardner 2025-10-22 02:16

The outlines of the art are excellent and the tooltip system is helpful. If it is a game it is very slow paced. I would recommend removing the conversations and see if the game is still fun to play. If you do keep the text, then some things to make it more approachable may include:

- Host a web build on itch.io with an expand to full screen option. It would especially make it easier to read the text on the starting scroll. - Hide the Quit button for web builds, since it will freeze the game. - Allow advancing text by making a click go from some text showing to all text for that box of dialog showing. - Allow the player to do something around the shop between customers walking into the store. If someone knocks and the player clicks on the door, then the player may feel more invested and willing to listen to what their visitor has to say.

The fade in and walking animations of the NPCs are good too. I look forward to seeing what you make in the future. Congratulations on finishing your project!

nbumgardner 2025-10-22 02:17

A way to jump further in the story for returning players could be good too, especially in case they refresh the browser, but usually that is hard to set up in the limited time of a game jam.

fireslash 2025-10-22 07:20

This is REALLY good. I love all the choices you've made here on where to spend your time and what kind of experience to tell.

I was originally going to gripe about the lack of click to complete text, but you you use punctuation as an expression mechanic which lets you add a lot more emotion into your characters, and skipping that would dull the experience.

Others have noted a "skip" feature would be nice for second playthroughs.

Otherwise no notes. It's great. I love it. Awesome work!

sergs-workshop 2025-10-22 07:25

Good artwork and an amazing soundtrack. Unfortunately, there was a bit too much text for me, so I didn’t get far enough to reach the gameplay.

ingi 2025-10-22 08:00

Very beautiful pixel art, interesting characters, and great dialogue

megalukes 2025-10-22 12:48

I loved the idea, and I have to say that the pixel art looks amazing and well made. I felt the text speed was a bit too slow, and maybe the game could use a bit more interactivity overall. Still, it’s a great game, and congratulations on your first one!

7uc4s 2025-10-22 20:20

Pixel art is really nice, wished the text appeared a bit faster though, very original :)

omiya-games 2025-10-22 23:12

I really like the pixel art and music in the game. I also like the idea behind each item having a backstory, and how that needs to be taken into account when slotting said items to the cabinet.

Personally, though, I found the text display slow, and really, really long. While I found the wide variety of personalities interesting, given how much they spoke, I started getting tired of their speech patterns very quickly. I especially found the widower's purple prose and fisherman's weird beliefs grating. It would have been nice to see these backstories summarized a bit further, even if it sacrifices the shopkeeper's personality (which I'd argue the priest conversation does a good job of enlightening, anyways.)

I appreciate that the game provides a last-minute "slot your items here, now!" screen. It would have been nice if in said screen, hovering over each cabinet slot still gave the description of the item to be placed. I somehow managed to get the right answers the second time playing, so the slot descriptions were sufficient enough. I did kind of wish I could have skipped the dialogs faster, so I could get to the cabinet slotting part sooner.

cassowary 2025-10-23 05:35

This is super awesome, and I love the art/music especially. The attention to detail in the user interface with the tooltips and click and drag effects and stuff was also great. Seconding the feedback in the comments here that the text display felt a little slow and dragged the experience out. Overall wow this is quite good! Thank you for making it!

yellowkamel 2025-10-23 17:44

Music and art are impecable. Text speed could be sped up a bit though. Liked the overall vibe.