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Great little game. I think it's amazing how much you were able to put together in such limited time. Really great work on the visual aspect (as always) and music just as well. I'm curious about the music, I've briefly seen you working on it in the post jam video but couldn't tell if you're using keyboards (synth) or you can do it just on computer keyboard.
Overall a fantastic work! You've done well, both with the portrayal of the character and with your gameplay itself. The mechanics are fluid and work very well, and the art style is simply lovely! My one suggestion for improvement would be a bit more music and sound design, but I can say it was very nice to play overall.
I thought that "Trauma" was a horror game (cause of the name), but it turns out is more of the opposite of that. The history behind it is very deep and well thougt, I know people that have passed to similar experiences and i can tell this game is not going only relax them with the soundtrack or with the chalenge, but also is going to help them mentally.
This game is great, I was totally suprised, i thing maybe it coulded have more levels, but there was enought to like.
at first i thought a game were trauma was cards you used for platforming would be poorly written and insensitive, red flags were there and clear. I am happy to say was i wrong! i don't know how you did it but great job at a uniqe platformer that deals with heavy topics respectfully and with tact. alot like celeste in that way but still its own thing. overall a near perfect game!
Thank you so much! It felt like a bit of an impossible task to tell a story that worked with the mechanics while being nuanced and effective in the middle of a game jam. I must have spent less than an hour on the writing, all things told.
As you said, there were so many ways it could go wrong, and I didn't feel equipped to be explicit about any kind of traumatic experience without alienating some portion of the audience. So I omitted a lot of the detail and focused on the emotional component. All we know is that Amy identifies as a girl, and feels guilty about feelings she experienced that led to falling out in her relationships. We don't know Taylor's gender, or the coworker's. We don't know whether Amy acted on her feelings or to what extent. We don't have enough data to judge her, so all we can do is empathise with the parts we can identify with.
Trauma happens regardless of justice, morality, ethics etc, so I just avoided them altogether and focused on the process of confronting the feelings that build after trauma. I couldn't do it justice in 10 minutes of gameplay but I at least wanted to try and convey that sometimes truth can lead to hurtful outcomes, and that acceptance of truth is better than avoidance, especially where that hurt is outside of our control.
This is super impressive for 48 hours. The overall representation looks great for such a small amount of time and the whole game remains consistent in its polish. It took me a while to understand the rules/mechanics, and after some time it became a bit of a chore to keep switching cards, but other than it was great and weaving an emotional story into the gameplay completed the whole experience. Amazing work!