next »

[Maniulo]

Hi all,

So this is an #LDJAM game about the life of an owl family, made by my wife and me. Your goal is to remember the past, one New Year's Eve at a time. This is a post-jam version, with sound and improved player feedback.

People seem to like the game (second top-rated in puzzle section on GameJolt), but most of them note that it took them a while to understand how to play it. If you play the game, please let me know:

- How long did it take to understand the controls? What was the most confusing thing?
- How many of the 'puzzles' you solved by understanding what's wrong on the screen, and how many by just clicking on everything in sight?
- What do you think about the graphics? Good enough for a larger paid game (with different gameplay)?

Everything else you can say about the game will be greatly appreciated.

Play: http://gamejolt.com/games/puzzle/owls-ever-after/41300/ (Unity, Web)

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Use mouse wheel or keyboard arrows to move between different years
• Some memories are hidden in darkness - turn on the fairy lights to unhide them
• You can turn on fairy lights with LMB - but only if you have a light power of the same color (see color indicators on the radio)
• There are some mistakes in your memory - click on the things that don't belong to see the real truth. Successfully doing so will give you more power for fairy lights
• Look for red markers on the radio - it hints you that you can do something in that year
• There is no win or lose condition, but you can light up all the fairy lights!

Thanks!

[Rarykos]

Wow this brings me back to old flash days!

- How long did it take to understand the controls? What was the most confusing thing? Those text instructions are fine, but they're quite small.

- How many of the 'puzzles' you solved by understanding what's wrong on the screen, and how many by just clicking on everything in sight? Now this is the main problem I had - I don't know what is "wrong". You tell players to click on things that are wrong but nobody instinctively knows what that means. When you show an outcome like "mom don't cry" then I have a clue, but usually it's just clicking on random stuff.
And I feel like you couldn't decide if you wanted to go with:
a)changing memories so they tell the truth while future memories are your clues. I liked that chain with keira's first boyfriend.
b)changing things wrong on screen because what characters say contradicts the screen , eg. keira got a science kit when it shows it's a squirrel.

Because having both makes it very chaotic and unpredictable, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. Mostly I'm surprised not by the truth, but because this memory is wrong when I had no reason to doubt it. Like when uncle owl is drunk and it clearly looks like he's drunk ,he's somehow drunk in a different way!

I didn't understand how uncovering dark regions works. And how radio works. Eventually I learnt about colours but it took me a long time, lights of this colour are here so I need this colour to uncover this region. I think your instructions were too vague.

- What do you think about the graphics? Good enough for a larger paid game (with different gameplay)? I think it's cute and clear, but I don't know what kind of different gameplay you want so I can't answer that.

Good job! It was enjoyable for me, but it had some problems.

[ThemsAllTook]

Looks neat! Any chance of a desktop version?

[Maniulo]

Rarykos, thanks for the comment!

ThemsAllTook, I re-activated the desktop builds, they should be available now.

[Quicksand-S]

My biggest issue with figuring out the controls was just that there was no indication of what was clickable. I was clicking on owls, dialogue and objects. Then I realized I had to click on nothingness, which seemed strange. Then later, there was dialogue I did have to click on, which was even more confusing.

There were things that seemed wrong but nothing I clicked on fixed them, and there were things that didn't seem to have any puzzle at all but when I clicked on blackness new scenes appeared anyway.

Other times, I clicked on something that seemed wrong and it did nothing until I'd spent a few minutes clicking on other things and returned. I'm not sure why, because during the time I was away from that screen I didn't manage to change anything else.

I never really got the point of the colors, either. If they always correspond to the color of the area you're supposed to change, that seems like it would take away any challenge. They don't seem to correspond to anything half the time, though, which just makes me wonder what they're for.

There are some typos as well, like, "If you go that party" instead of "If you go to that party".

The top of the tree trunk fades in from nothing during transitions, which looks a bit weird considering the tree always exists in some form.

I really like the visuals. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to know if an owl is male or female, which could be an issue when someone is being talked about and that's part of an incorrect memory. I think you've done a nice job giving these characters personality, though, just through the little bits of dialogue you've chosen to include.