A Strange Package

Nice job with the music and art. It's a pity that there wasn't time for choices to be added in.

Sorry but I can't call this a game. While it was an interesting read, it was more of a powerpoint presentation. :/

The story is quite interesting. Nice work with art and music and the intriguing script. However I wonder what would happen with different choices…

Pretty cool but it but it got kinda boring quite fast because of the lack of interaction. By just allowing the player to pick the answers (even without really impacting the story at all, maybe just different messages after the choice) would make the main protagonist more relatable and make the game feel more like a game and not just a story set in stone.

The text on to box felt too crammed together to me. I don't think there was any messages that had more than three lines of text and there always was more empty space on the bottom. I'd prefer a bit more line height and text being aligned to the center vertically.

Visuals and music were good and fit together nicely.

edit: Oh yeah, few inconsistancies like:
"You say I don't know"
"You say you…"

I had a lot of fun with this game, even if it isn't interactive yet it was still a good read and i was hooked. I mean philosopher's stone, hangry girlfriend and some dude in occultist mask, what else you need? It would be a lot cooler with choices but it's understandable that with game jams sometimes you have to cut corners. Graphics are really good and and music / sound effects fit very well. In overall pretty entertaining 'experience' with solid writing.

More of a storry than a game but the art is quite nice. Adding interactivity will make it better. There is still a lot of work in the dialogs and art.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Anonymous is right, this isn't much of a game in the current state. I had some doubts about posting it at first in fact. I'm sorry about that.

@wizcas I'm already working on the final script for the post jam version so you'll find out soon :)

@AnttiHaavikko thank you for the insightful feedback. I will implement what you said in the post jam version.

@Zeriver I'm glad you liked it, thank you.

For me, it is a shame if a game has no interactive elements to it. I am aware you ran out of time, but as a result I just spent for minutes clicking and reading. I played it while streaming on twitch and my voice hurts a bit with all the reading I just had to do!!! However, the story pretty interesting, and the art was nice, and there was some decent humour in there too. Great work for 48 hours and a nice finish to it at least.

dude, the suspence you made with the music made me finish the game till the end. IT`S GREAT. But it is not a game . It is a story.

The story was really funny. It would have been cool to have choices available, but well, 48 hours aren't that much. But I think it could develop into something awesome if some choices are added. You already have great art and narration.

Well, as you only had time for creating one of the game paths, picking the "total disaster" path does seem to have been the most entertaining choice… :-)

The story was entertaining, funny and… weird! The interplay between the story, the music and the sound effects worked really well.

The art was very nice, it had a charming aesthetic which reminded me of classic book illustrations.

As Antti mentioned, even "fake" interaction (having to pick the (one) answer instead of just clicking to continue) would have improved the experience. But the game works very well as a teaser for the post-jam version. Now I really want to know what happens in the less catastrophical paths!

Legend in the mail.
Too good to be true? Perhaps…
Now chaos ensues.

Kinetic novel… Let me rant about that for a moment, will you. So the japanese make interactive novels with pictures and call them visual novels, a name which makes little sense as it would work for non-interactive novels with pictures too. Then someone drops interactivity altogether, going full circle, and calls it a kinetic novel… But it is just a plain old novel with pictures now! I'm annoyed by these things as you can tell, not your fault.

Right, to the review then. The graphics are ok and the audio does fit. I'm not a big fan of the story for two reasons. Firstly, it is very simple and predictable with little to say apart from the obvious sequence of events.

Secondly, the first person perspective, especially in a non-interactive structure, creeps me out. I'm not the protagonist, I'm the reader. Trying to project the feelings of the protagonist to me is not going to work. My feelings are influenced by the prose, but not dictated by it. Try writing "You see Tim, your archnemesis. You hate Tim!" and see how little I care. I don't hate Tim, the protagonist does!

Even with interactivity, a first person narrative is going to have these kind of limitation on what you, as the author, can do with the characters. The protagonist is the main character, you want to have control over their persona and motivations, surely?

I'm glad people are interested in interactive stories though, even if technically that isn't the case quite yet. Do keep at it.

O 5, G 8, A 8, G 1, O 5, T 5

Hi! We played your game with Danae on this twitch channel, and now the video is available on YouTube. Feel free to check it out :)

Danae plays: A Strange Package

Lovely graphics! I included it in my Alakajam #1 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/wEu1KZRTQq8