This game is good in theory, but the green and cyan is a problem. more notably, the instructions for the last part are garbage. I really don't like the slider because I wrote out a cheat sheet and I still can't make sense of why it keeps exploding. It's a good idea, but it's obviously rushed. if it had a bit of polish it could work really well
Reviews for "This Date Blows!"
crow-seeds responds:
Yea, the entirety of the game (except the subtitles and medals) was made in 3 days for a game jam. Planning on revisiting later, thanks for the feedback!
For the slider, the slider should equal the total sum of the symbols. So if there are 2 green triangles and 2 white triangles, the slider should be set to the half way point (1/4 + 1/4 + 0 + 0).
Hmmmm, this is a really rough one for me!
I actually really, really like the concept and the game was exactly what I was hoping it would be, where you need to manage two tasks simultaneously in a chaotic juggling act. Trying to maintain eye contact with your date and answering her questions correctly while also memorizing complicated bomb defusal rules and cutting wires is a hell of a combo and, once I finally grasped it, I found very fun!
But that's just the thing: the game is very difficult to grasp and play due to so many confusing and janky elements. It took me multiple sessions to even understand how to play and what people were talking about as it dumps so much on you.
I understand that you added subtitles to try and help with the overlapping audio and such, but I felt like your execution incredibly hurt my experience more than helped. It made no sense to me that I could only see the subtitles for the date and not the bomb guy when I'm looking at the date, and vice versa: they're both clearly talking to me all the time, so why not display both of them? The entire point is that you're trying to listen to both of them at the same time no matter who you're looking at, so it makes no sense to only be able to read one at a time. At the very least, you could maybe have a set of subtitles grow or shrink when you switch who you're looking at, but again that makes no sense as you should always be seeing subtitles for bomb guy since he's in your ear and is more important.
The game also just gets really hard way too fast without any break and it was exhausting. It felt like the bombs were constantly going without a single break to look up and talk to the date. Might be a case of the game being set too hard because the developers have been play-testing it too long and didn't feel like it was a challenge anymore. I feel like I should be able to quickly defuse a bunch of bombs to reward me a sufficient break period to then talk with my date, but the bombs just kept coming and coming! Anyway, this led to the game feeling way too bomb-focused instead of date-focused: I wanted there to be more questions from the date to feel like I needed to keep both juggled equally, but the date questions only ever seemed to be dumb jokes.
Also, and maybe this is just a nitpick, but the whole defusing bombs through a phone just seemed really weird and nonsensical: felt it would work a lot better if maybe you were defusing an actual physical bomb in your lap and you just keep getting deeper and deeper into it. I know it seems like a minor thing, but I think it did add to a lot of my initial confusion.
Definitely not too shabby considering its a game jam game as it sells the concept: just wish there was a better, more polished final version of this that fixes a lot of the issues I had with it. For all the difficulties I had with it, I do want to come back to this and try it some more and get an actual good ending, so well done in that regard!
I am not good at this game
uhh... kaboom?
i got boom ending :( good game though