It has potential to be okay, but in its current form it has no redeeming qualities. There's no story aside from the choppy text that tells you almost nothing, you have no idea who She is, you don't know who the character is, and there's no explanation for why you're doing what you're doing or how you got to this point. Why are you the last one? Who is She? What do those "*inaudible*" annoyances in the recordings hide from us? Who are we? Where are we? What's our motive? What's She's motive? The fact that none of these are answered in these two minutes of gameplay shows how terrible this game is. It's like one bone in the skeletal base of a larger platformer, but it was released as if it's a finished product. The fact that this took ten days is rather surprising, considering that some people that enter contests only allowing for one day of work on a game can make stories and gameplay more complex than this.
Reviews for "She."
A little bit explanation about the "*inaudible*" - the objective of the jam was to come up with a game based on a famicase of a non-existent game:
http://famicase.com/16/softs/07.html
Along with the famicase, there is this text that serves as an introduction to the story:
Message 1/1: Friday March 3rd, 1989. 03:16AM “I was wrong. She has found us. Please don’t co— *inaudible*.”
I've decided to follow this convention with additional "recordings" left along the way. That's why I've incorporated *inaudible* into other messages to introduce ambiguity. I'm totally aware that those messages are super cheesy if you don't suspend disbelief. But hey, that's how video games (or any other form of entertainment) work! ;-)
For me, this whole famicase is about ambiguity, fear of the unknown and filling up the gaps with your own imagination. I'm glad that all those questions cropped up in your head but I purposedly didn't want to answer them. At least not in a such short production.
Yet another boring platformer. I know this was made for a jam but it's still garbage. There's really no way you can make this interesting. It's poorly designed and just terribly dull. Why?
"Oh boy, it's the thing from the start! I bet the game really starts now, and I get an actual hint as to what 'she' is! "
"Oh. It's over. Without any payoff whatsoever."
Booooum sound is annoying, story doesn't make some sence, but at least there were some good puzzles to solve. It can be completed in 3 minutes, which is not good. I saw longer games made in 448 or even 24 hours.
If you don't make a serious, long and fun game using this awful short timewaster, you are going to regret it for sure!
I don't mean to be an asshole, but this game just does not seem finished. The BGM became a nuisance after a while, the plot was very vague, there was literally no atmospheric scenery, and there was just no challenges whatsoever (The only challenging aspect was the gravity-lifts and even that was child's play.) If the game is supposed to be atmospheric, wouldn't it be more intriguing to allow the player to be introduced to a change of scenery after they reactivate more and more of the power? I also think that it would be a greater success if you offered more of a struggle through the introduction of puzzles and environmental hazards to avoid (I wouldn't add any enemies though, seeing as there is only one true antagonist inside the game.)
In conclusion, you should peruse through some of the games developed by the Newgrounds community in order to gain a better understanding of game design and a game's atmosphere. Hell, I could even suggest a few games for you to try.
On a plus side, I thought the art style for the protagonist was nice. Reminded me of Issac Clark.