Kwing's Reviews

[Dreamy Collide (Oneshot) Movie]

The length of this animation is pretty impressive, but it's flawed several times over. The dialogue is pretty broken in terms of grammar and it's not especially clear what the plot is. The subtitles and pauses also slow the animation way down and make it a bit tedious (some voice acting, even Speakonia, would have made this feel a bit faster.) At the same time, a lot of the animation loops (like the wings flapping) happen way too fast and the quality of animation just isn't there. Especially for a looping animation the audience will see over and over, it would be a good idea to put some more time (and frames) into loops like these even if you have to cut corners on other parts.

[School Dayz]

The animation is really well done but I can barely understand what the characters are saying so I can't even begin to understand the jokes. As a quick tip, this is how you can keep Flash from compressing your audio:

Publish -> Publish Settings -> Audio event/stream -> Higher bitrate and "Override sound settings"

A couple things like the dick cutting gag weren't unfunny in the sense that they were offensive but rather that they just felt boring. I'm not sure if it's just that the joke was fundamentally unfunny or if a difference in timing could have sold it a bit better.

[The 10 Plagues of Egypt]

The art style for this is REALLY good. These are decently funny, with a few being a little too short (death of firstborn) and a couple being really entertaining (I liked how the livestock keeled over so suddenly, same with how abrupt darkness was.) Couldn't ask for too much more for an interactive movie, this is great.

[Tracie's Pursuit]

It looks like the game has a glitch, I was able to "fill up the affection meter" with one heart and IM Pico, he said his backpack and locker were open when they weren't. I assume the two endings are getting blocked and getting friend zoned?

For two weeks this isn't bad (especially seeing as you did everything yourself) but it's obviously quite short. It's really lacking things to do - even the quest items just help you fill up the affection meter which triggers the next scene, so there's no real problem solving or item usage to speak of, just collecting. It's also bizarre having what imitates a dating simulator but only getting one choice at the start of like three conversations you can have with Pico.

None of the components (art, gameplay, music) are bad, but nothing stands out, either. Many Game Jam games flop because they overscope and a half-finished game is released, it feels like this had the opposite problem with a fully functional end product but not a lot going on in it.

StormyDew responds:

Thank you for your in depth review <3

[Homecoming]

The animation here is really fantastic and I'm really rooting for this to win best animation with interactive elements because it really does look stunning. For the length of the Jam it's also a really impressive quantity of animation to produce at this quality.

Story-wise I found the choreography and dialogue good, but I didn't really understand why it started and ended when it did. From a narrative perspective we begin with the status quo of "protagonist alienated from family," then a conflict where she's forced to engage, and that arc is resolved by the character removing herself. The funeral and eulogy don't tie into this original arc, and we don't even get to hear the eulogy. The story also starts a little slow, it's not until the argument with the mother that the conflict came to the surface and I felt really engaged.

I suspected this was nonfiction so perhaps there are privacy reasons for the actual eulogy being omitted. If this is true, it also makes sense that there's no catharsis or conclusion because real life doesn't get wrapped up like that and as Bojack's writers would say, you can't have a happy ending because there's always more show. But Coming Out Simulator is a great example of how you can take creative liberties or even just break the fourth wall to make a story feel like it actually has an ending.

Bleak-Creep responds:

It’s not quite non-fiction. While the characters themselves are based in truth, the story itself is entirely fictional.

The funeral and trying to navigate all these complicated feelings surrounding her father are really at the core of what I wanted to do with the project. The conflict is meant to mostly be an internal one; what is she supposed to say? It’s all about balancing the expectations of others with her own experience. In my eyes, the speech is in the events preceding, having one at the end would only feel redundant.

Thank you for playing and all the kind words! :)

[Los Tostadores]

The wild west aesthetic is cute and charming and has some real silliness with the main character being a piece of toast.

The bullet time in this game is REALLY satisfying. It's simple and the gameplay is generally pretty easy (minus the boss) but it's so smooth it feels good anyway. Speaking of the boss, the fact that it changes windows faster the lower its health gets makes sense, but it's almost too hard at the end. It's not hard to beat but I wish there were some different behavior (more of a phase 2) rather than just increasing the difficulty of that one mechanic more and more.

I notice that you have to get all the targets in a single jump but you don't have to for the bandits. There's an opportunity here for optional objectives where the player DOES rack up a huge combo in one jump.

[Bludgeoner]

I'm an easy target for djent stuff, and this is damn good. A tad repetitive, but enough changeups to keep it from being a glaring issue (with it going full Doom toward the end.) Mixing is a little muddy but otherwise tight.

[Would Rather]

I like the layering a lot, but I'm kind of lukewarm on the sample choice. The drums are a little weak, and sometimes it just feels like there's too much going on, especially with the samples being kind of short and repetitive.

Curious to see how this sounds with vocals over it, the tone is different and the 3/4 time signature would be challenging to spit to.

glitchs2d responds:

Thanks for the feedback. The beat may still change a bit by the time the full album is done. I have been listening to a lot of Ka and Roc Marciano recently, which is why the drums are on the weaker side. Honestly, I may remove them altogether in the end.

The flow of this song is atypical, to say the least. Most of the project is pretty traditional, but I really wanted to break out of the typical hip-hop structure for a few tracks to push my creativity.

[Rock Candy V2]

Great tone and wonderfully groovy. Fantastic production. Melody could stand to be a bit more complex.

[Lady]

I'm a big fan of this art style. The high contrast and simple shapes make this really stylized.

[MPN: Shakedown]

Crazy amount of detail and great contrast between the low saturation characters and vibrant background. The bullets in the foreground are a bit distracting, especially with the blur effect on them.

[Character Design]

This is a really cool concept, I'd like to see the folding/unfolding of this character animated! Certain parts of the body lack a bit of detail, and the wheel itself really just looks like three concentric circles.

Zechetto responds:

yeah, the left/closed version is without perspective or depth. It's purposely made that way for study reasons, that's how I get to the right version one. I don't really wanted to make a detailed concept. Just a study, but I like it very much how it gets to the spirit of the character and I do love the painting.

By the way, this is one of my first paintings with a brush I made from scratch, and is much better developed now