Judge feedback is anonymous.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lp8WAtLTkT66a7zHoYAAGjdTH6TlfnkI0BZ1J01mQUQ/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.lr899156xjnx
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Join the RAPIER program, become the sword amongst the stars, the weapon that protects us from above.
It's time to wake up, soldier. Best of luck.
Controls:
WASD to move
E to interact
Tab to toggle task pad and switch view (when prompt available)
LMB to interact with UI
Ctrl to exit UI
L. Shift to sprint
C to crouch
Esc to unlock cursor
We'd love to hear about your experience, what you enjoyed, how it made you feel, and any feedback you have for us to consider for any patches we may apply to this project in the future!.
If you entered the jam, congratulations, and we can't wait to check out your submissions!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
This game explores the crushing weight of personal responsibility in the most extreme of situations, the dehumanisation of isolation, and the moral imperatives of those unlucky few who find themselves standing on the precipice of devastation of unknowable proportions.
When the order arrives, would you become the weapon?
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Best played in a quiet environment with headphones on. Take your time to explore, read and ponder; we put a lot of care into the little details, and we hope you'll enjoy discovering them and piecing the story together. Thanks for checking out our entry!
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I absolutely adore this game. It feels like a nearly Steam-ready game. Not every game needs to be long or convoluted to be good. I loved the suspense of the game. It slowly rose as I went about familiarizing myself with the ship, finding my crew mate's room closed, listening to the radio, then getting the call to ready the weapon really got my blood pumping!
The audio design was very well done. The writing and world building was ON POINT. I was totally immersed immediately. I felt like I was on an f'ed up starship or a mental patient THINKING I was some kind of hero. Lol. I was very motivated to search and read everything to find out what was really going on. The mystery was really engaging! I really can't say enough good things about this game.
One thing I'd like to point out is that I did have trouble finding the keycards. Took me two playthroughs to find them. XD I figured they were in the rooms, I just didn't look there for some reason. Moving them below the shelves with the stuffies would help tbh. That's where my eyes went looking first for some reason. When I turn towards the door I was already mentally out of the room and just did not see the keycards.
I'll be following you to see where you go with this game! It's the best one that I played this jam and I am going to continue playing it because I see now I may have missed some things. Love that. Maybe make the intro scene skippable on multiple playthroughs when you launch this.
Thank you so much!!
Absolutely seconding the comment above - thank you so so much for the incredibly warm support, it means the world to us! It was especially wonderful to read about the route you took through and how it made you feel, honestly we couldn't have asked for more. Thevibe was one of the first things we settled on, and it's truly so rewarding to hear how strongly it came together.
We're extremely excited to keep working on this game (hopefully with a Steam release in our future!), we've been collating all the feedback everyone has kindly shared and adding it to our own thoughts from playing it through.
I have to take credit for suggesting hiding (moving) those keycards, I'm so sorry ahaha! They were originally just on the desks, but I felt they deserved lil'in case of emergency homes but I can absolutely see how that made them a bit easy to miss. I've added a note to the feedback sheet, under the shelves totally makes sense, much more intuitive!
Menus and replayability smoothing/skips are definitely a high priority, they narrowly fell out of scope for the jam but are a must for sure.
Once again, thank you from us all for playing, and for leaving us such emphatic encouragement and support; comments like these are responsible for keeping our creative fires lit!
Congrats on finishing the jam! I played through both routes :)
I think that the game is really well done for a game jam and I think it's a concept worth exploring more!
I think the story might be more impactful with more lore to make the player question the situation. For example giving some background on the situation that required peace talks. What is the player's relationship to the situation if any? Could we show the Commander being correct early on and so you may think to not doubt them later? Is there a way to have the player's critical thinking skills come into play? Where the player is fed pieces of information that may or may not be biased and they need to determine what is right? Essentially - can we trick the player to being in the character's shoes?
Otherwise the art was pretty solid and the audio was good. There was a bug where the player kept walking even when I was standing still so the footsteps kept being triggered. The radio also took a very long time to start playing audio when switching between channels - I thought it was broken.
Nice hidden room with the definitely not a body. I hope that wasn't our dear friend - gives some questions on our own character.
The endings felt a little lacklustre. I expected to see the planet blow up, or us blow up because we didn't choose the right option. Instead I didn't even realize the game had ended.
Otherwise great job! This is a good base for expanding the concept!
Thanks for playing through our game and the kind words!
A lot of your feedback mirrors what we'd have liked to do with more time, so very glad to hear our feelings for expanding the game validated. We're going to revisit the game once judging is over, and we'll definitely be looking at expanding on all the things you've mentioned!
That's good to know about the footsteps and radio bugs, we'll try and look at those.
The ending not being very in-your-face was a deliberate choice. It's not really a game about big kabooms - not that those aren't fun - but just not what we were aiming for here. We'll think more about how we can keep the tone we're aiming for with a bit more oomph though.
Thanks again for your feedback, and for taking the time to get both endings!
You managed to create a very moody atmosphere. The sound design is excellent. As a player I don't feel the weight of the decision. I feel like if I'm not the weapon I lose the fun, but it might just be me. I really like what you did as it almost feels like an escape room.
Congrats, your game is fun :)
Really great vibe and setting. The aesthetic reminds me a little of 90s/00s grainy point-and-click adventure games, and I'm here for it. I think the aesthetic might even be better improved if you leaned even farther into that. The controls were a little unwieldy and the tasks were a little dry, but everything else made up for it.
Unfortunately, the dealbreaker for me were the crashes I'd run into that would force me to restart, until eventually I gave up. The first couple times were from trying to jump over the wall in the wellness room (that one's on me, so I forgave the game for that.) But the third time was when the coworker's room's door was open and I walked in just for the game to crash.
Playing around with some chunky shaders would be good fun, there's relatively limited places that need high-details; a perfect idea for the post-jam season!
Yeah, completely agree, the controls were definitely something that took a hit with the web-build. We didn't want the tasks to be too distracting from some of the thinkin' that might be going on in the later moments, but I do agree that they could be slightly tuned up, will mull it over.
Ah, that's pretty lame, don't blame you at all - thanks for giving it a few chances to behave itself. Thankfully this is the first time I'm hearing about full-on crashes, so hopefully a rarity, but sorry to hear that happened! Again, web-build was a lil' lousy in places, and something we'd hopefully leave behind if we did develop it further as a PC version.
Thanks for the kind words and useful feedback, it means a lot to us. Have yourself a wonderful jam!
Thanks for the kind words and for giving our game a play!
Really sorry to hear about the crashes, hopefully this is just a web-specific thing but I'm more than happy to look into these.
Can you give me some more details - what browser you were running it in, any useful browser messages that came up when the game crashed, even computer specs would be a great help.
Really enjoyed the game and its atmosphere. Though I couldn't figure out how to accomplish the tasks needed to fire the weapon. Was gonna try to decode what I think was a base64 encoded message but couldn't tell the difference between i/I/l to copy it down correctly. Awesome job overall!
It's wonderful hearing how much you enjoyed the vibe we've cultivated, we really appreciate it.
We'll most likely be reviewing the ship layout/taskpad instructions to see if there's a way to make some of the navigation alil' easier without impacting the atmosphere; nothing kills suspense like getting stuck.
We had a couple different ideas for that encoded message planned, but I think we ultimately ended up with essentially lorem ipsum in the final draft as it isn't directly involved in the solution and we were stretching ourselves thin as it was, so you get full points for recognising the encoding format whilst avoiding a rather underwhelming reward for the effort it would have taken to decode!
Thank you for playing and for sharing your feedback, it'll be useful for some fun upcoming dev conversations!
If i woulda got hit with a lorem ipsum after transcribing all that I would have not been happy lol. I thought it was gonna be the admin password and lead me to an easter egg. If you keep it in maybe add a copy to clipboard button if that's possible. But yeah again I really dug the atmosphere. One extra bit of feedback, at the immediate start I almost quit because I was given a lot of options in the bridge right away (two different computers each with a lot of buttons on them), at first I thought it was gonna be some kind of simulation game. Maybe either start the player in their bedroom, or remove the computer on the left? because it's the same as the one in the server room i think.
True, an important lesson is using 'temporary' text during a jam, hard to know if you'll have the time to come back to it.
The atmosphere was a big focus during the design and dev discussions, glad it paid off!
We'll definitely be looking to sand off some of the rougher edges in the flow of the game, thank you for the bonus thoughts. I'm quite excited to play around with some bits and bobs outside of the jam crunch, who knows where the bridge console might end up!
Edited 'cause the formatting from posting via the mobile site was bugging me.
This game is really cool, and I'm kind of a sucker for melancholic space games. I ended up getting 3 endings, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to reach the disc in the wellness room. This was really polished and it shows! the voice acting is nice, the story is engaging, and the atmosphere is nice! The music felt at home here too, especially with it being mostly ambient with light instrumentals. This was a wonderful little story and I'm really glad I got to play it! Good job getting your game out there :D
Oooh, we reached our target audience! It's great to hear that you explored the ship so thoroughly, sounds like there was scarcely a server on RAPIER 06 unturned. Ahh, the disc issneaky, if you were able to spot it you were probably just a crouch and a wiggle away, without wanting to say too much!
I (slightly extremely biasedly) agree that everyone on the team did an amazing job, and it's really nice to see all the different bits and pieces being noticed and appreciated. Thank you for embracing our lil' game so fully, and for leaving such wonderfully glowing feedback; it truly means the world to us!
I really loved the atmosphere, the 3D also ran really smooth, though I would have loved if there was a settings menu for the mouse sensitivity.
Some issues I had was the task pad going through objects when I was walking too close to stuff. And also my tiny brain being unable to remember the password since I can’t press Tab to see it when in the terminal.
To whoever made the “It’s Spreading!” disc. Thank you. I was basically listening to that the whole time hopping around the ship while trying to find where I was supposed to go. I would constantly restart it, so a looping option would be great.
To be honest, when I was playing around with the game, it seemed to really fit a horror theme, I wonder if your team has considered making a game (be it this, or another) with a similar atmosphere but horror based?
I’m also not sure why, but performance was a little laggy in Google Chrome, especially with the opening sequence being unskippable making it painfully long. But testing the game in Firefox made the performance way smoother with 0 lag.
Thank you bread, that's super helpful! The menu is a good reminder, there's alwayssomethingthat just slips through the cracks in a jam - brightness, sensitivity and volume sliders would be great additions.
The taskpad disobeying the laws of physics has been so close to the top of our bug fix pile all jam, it was just unfortunately beaten out by a few slightly more game-breaking ones, and expanding the story. We'll def look to get it quantumly untangled in the future! The password is a good reminder too, we'll consider picking an appropriate, memorable word instead (although our lead dev did manage to memorise it during the course of his playtesting, insanely).
Ahaha, we're very pleased with the "It's Spreading!" references, we're glad you enjoyed them too. Lead dev/soundster PiersSK smashed it, as always! I'll add looping music discs to the "ideas to consider" pile.
There's definitely an adjacency to horror that we were very aware of and deliberately tried to avoid stepping too far into, but definitely something we'll revisit when discussing the tone, or keep in mind for future projects! We tend to make more light-hearted games, this one may end up being a bit of a one-off, but I always remember the Jordan Peele quote - ""The difference between comedy and horror is the music."
Yeah, totally agree, web-build has had so many weird quirks to it that we can't wait to leave behind - framerate issues, not being able to bind 'esc' without it also popping you out of fullscreen and unlocking your cursor... not the mood.
Thanks again for playing, and taking the time to leave such thorough feedback, it's really useful! May your jam be ever delicious.
I really liked the sticker on the taskbar. I don’t think the password needs to be a memorable word, but I feel the taskbar or sticker being able to be viewed while in a terminal, or the sticker being on the side of the terminal instead. Since it wasn’t a thing that was meant to be hidden, considering it was stuck to the side of the taskbar rather than having the player memorise it, I don’t think it’s bad to make it easier for the player to view it.
The horror theme seems definitely interesting, as even throughout the game, such as the ladder lights flickering, or diverting the power, it all provided to the atmosphere of a horror/dark themed game. It gave me a slight feel of a Chilla’s art game, which is really great as atmospheric/psychologic horror seems to be one of the more popular themes in that genre. The game in itself currently is already pretty dark themed so it fit really well. While certain horror games use jumpscares and blood, I feel games that use more atomosphere, like Subnautica are also really popular. You mentioned Lethal Company, Iron Lung and Mouthwashing, which I feel all tie in to this horror theme. I don’t think it’s easy to make a game that makes the player feel nervous/anxious while building up anticipation with a dark atmosphere. So many times, like when I first diverted the power, I was thinking if climbing back up the ladder would give me a jumpscare, or even the locked room opening. I scrolled down to the description a few times to check if it was a horror game.
But at the end of the day, it is up to you and your theme to consider. Since you mentioned making more light-hearted games, this type of games might be things you personally dislike or are uninterested in exploring.
That's a good suggestion for the note, a happy middle-ground for sure. A lot of the non-narrative text will likely have a bit of a review so plenty of room for some wigglin'!
Yeah, that's a pretty compelling series of points, I think I'm just being unnecessarily picky about the definition of a horror game, as I initially imagined it as more of a psychological thriller, but you're totally right that we dipped into the horror toolkit pretty heavily to build the suspense, and ultimately the difference between the two is quite slim - it will be interesting to have a think about future changes with that perspective in mind.
I don'tthinkI've played a Chilla's Art game before, but some of the titles feel familiar - will check them out for some inspiration!
Weirdly enough, I love watching video essays discussing the themes in horror games and movies, but rarely play/watch them myself. So, I could see myself making one (or can understand where those influences came from for this one), even if I would be too much of a coward to play it myself ahaha. We'll see where we end up!
You've given us a lot to think about, thank you!
Really ambitious project for a game jam, and I think you pulled it off really well. I love the way you build up suspense and tension as the time slowly runs out. Also, huge props to whoever did the voice acting, great job there!
Ah thank you, it was quite ambitious, some ideas had to be left behind but glad to hear we didn't lose anything too dear!
Technically 3 different members of the team did voice acting for the game, quite impressively! I shall ensure they all feel equally complimented for their performances (please do not say which your favourite line delivery was or there will be a fight).
Thanks you for playing and for your lovely feedback, we shall cherish it. Have a blessed jam!
I honestly enjoyed this a lot. the game reminded me of how Mouthwashing plays out but i enjoy that format a lot. The ending sequence was great, and i enjoyed how the ship looked visually. good game, nice story
This was really coool. First time I had the "good ending" but second time I definitely got the good ending because I didn't have time to do it on the first playthrough :D This definitely has potential to be something bigger in the future! Only issue I encountered was that when I moved my mouse, it sometimes glitched and I was looking in a completely different direction? It was really weird and random, but other than that the game is great! Good job to the whole team! :)
Oooh that's encouraging to hear, I was a lil' worried that ending had ended up being a bit too hidden! It's always real nice to hear when people hop back in for a second run, too.
Ah, yeah, it's a known, web-build-exclusive issue that only seems to kick in on some machines, so despite periodic playtesting by the lead dev we didn't catch it until super late in the process. Regardless, glad it didn't spoil it for you!
Thanks you for playing and for leaving such lovely, warm feedback; we appreciate you. Have a wonderful jam!
I really like this game, I found it very engaging and interesting. Atmosphere was on point. Well done.
This is an amazing game. From atmosphere, to graphics, to storytelling. It all fits together. This is an impressive entry for a game jam, and the loneliness you feel up there is perfectly crafted. Notes left around the map, and small secrets to find. The diegetic UI was amazing, and I rarely see games attempt it. I love this game, and I think you could make a full game out of it (idk where you'd take it, but this is amazing!). Masterful work, amazing job!
Ah, such nice feedback, you've made us feel extremely seen with all the attention you paid to the decisions we made!
We're definitely getting more keen to expand it with each kind comment that comes in ehehe - we love where it starts and ends, so we might expand it to include some story beats and rooms we had to cut for time during dev, but who knows where it'll go once we start tinkering. Exciting things to think about!
Thanks again for playing and sharing all the bits you liked, it really means a lot. Have a lovely jam!
Beautiful game. You always have a choice. Really well done, from all the modeling, to the interactive elements of each section, to the music and voice acting, storytelling. It's all there. Not much more to say other than fantastic job! <3
Really captures the loneliness feeling for me, there is no one and nothing around to divert you from being a weapon in someone's hands. I've read everything about how weapon was bad bad and ran to the button to do the BOOM BOOM
Visuals are great. Sound design feels nice. VA was unexpectedly good, except some times where different voice lines would trigger at the same time. The story can be pieced together into something coherent pretty easily. Have nothing to critique here to be honest.
Great job! Would listen to 69FM all day long
Thank youuu, that's all such wonderful positive feedback to hear! Bad bad boom boom do sometimes be the state of the situation, sad to say. We hope you felt a glimmer of choice in the matter, but the angry man yelling at you is hard to ignore.
Yeah, that's really valid feedback, sadly we just couldn't get the VAs to stop talking over one another in the booth (there's some clean-up to be done in the triggering conditions/priorities, to be sure ahaha).
Thanks for checking it out and for your lovely lovely words, we shall cherish them!
What an experience! Enjoyed the storytelling and how both the art and the atmospheric audios complement each other. It was wild with the timer, for some reason I thought that I needed to hack/overwrite to stop the shooting process, not realising that doing nothing was the play. Poor humans, I thought might as well shoot and see what this ending is like XD. I proceed to speed ran the other ending and listen to the music player the remaining 5 minutes lol
This was such a lovely comment to read, thank you!
Just between you and me, you might be on to something with those dangerously disruptive ideas; reviewing and balancing the different paths is definitely high on the list of post-jam priorities, one might be a bit too hard to find at the moment.
I can't blame you, curiosity is hard to resist, especially when it's so red, round, and pressable! Really nice to hear that you went back in to check out another path, hopefully you had a very zen, mindful wait ahaha.
Appreciate you playing it through and giving such warm feedback, have a lovely jam!
Really solid storytelling and atmosphere! Didn't have too much trouble getting the required tasks done once I was oriented but was a little slow the first time through. This works well though since there was plenty to look at, explore, and clues to find.
Bug report? Ended up getting stuck on the disk selection page on the bridge during my second playthrough, mouse wasn't visible. I had been alt tabbing and using fullscreen so maybe my own fault and limitations the browser.
Very reassuring to hear that the game's flow felt good, it does get a lil' hard to tell how navigable it all is to a fresh pair of eyes when you've talking about where everything is as a team nonstop for 2 weeks!
Does sound like a browser-build issue, but I'll add a sticky note somewhere to review it. It's nice to hear you went in again, though, we snuck a lot of lil' bits in that we hoped would be enticing enough for a quick "hmm, I wonder if..."-type second run.
Thanks for checking our entry out, we really appreciate hearing how folks have gotten on with it!
You have the name of locations on the pad, but not in the world, so it took me a bit to find the different things along the ship.
I tried to get as much information that i could, which was kinda fun, to figure out the story.
The controls and general gameplay could use a bit of polishing (have entering a console be the same key as exiting, make clicking on things a bit easier or add an highlight, small stuff)
A fun take on the theme, especially with the specific ending.
Ah, the different sections of the ship are marked on wall panels in/near each respective section, but it's helpful to hear that it was possible to miss those, definitely don't want people feeling lost.
It's really nice to hear that you were actively exploring the ship and the story, we wanted players to feel that way, and it's always tricky to know how much to show versus tell.
We totally agree on some of the controls needing tweaking, to be honest, we went back-and-forth on some of the bindings during development, not being able to overwrite 'esc' unbinding the cursor/exiting fullscreen gave us a fair bit of hassle in particular.
Thank you so much for checking it out, and for the kind words and thorough feedback!
So cool, very well put together! My brain very smooth though and I couldn't figure out how to calibrate the weapons haha, but love the aesthetic of it.
Fantastic game! I loved the atmosphere of the game and the panic felt real near the end. I misread one of the final steps . It said location "Bridge, Hallway and Server" I thought it said "Sewer" and was panicking because I didn't know where the sewer was xD
Good art
Good voice acting
Great submission overall I enjoyed it.
