For what it is, (which is a play on tamagotchi, obviously) its pretty spot on. And clever.
Wait time was a little rough... Also, I have tried to figure it out, but I have no idea what Im doing in the card game? Is it Poker? High low? Everytime I pulled cards out I wasnt figuring out if it was going or staying.
REGARDLESS- Good job.
Thanks! I'm glad that you liked it. Card game is similar to poker.
I think this is a great concept. However, there seems to be some discrepancies. The card game won't show up. And it seems that if that is the first need in the list, then food won't show up and you can't give it medicine. It took me so long to get the card game to work that it got hungry and sick and it wouldn't let me fix that. It also sometimes takes food and medicine to too long to show up.
Thanks for a bug report. I'll fix it today.
At first I was really impressed, but then I soon realized that it just follows a simple pattern- Feed, clean, play cards, converse, sleep. Nothing is random. I realize that you made this in a short amount of time, which I am usually very generous on when it comes to ratings and this is a cute game that amused me but the fact is, when you have a Tamagotchi like game and it's just a pattern you repeat over and over again, it kindddd of defeats the entire purpose of a Tamagotchi game. It doesn't FEEL like you're taking care of the creature's needs. It just feels like an obviously programmed code. "Oh it's going to need fed, now it's going to need to poop, ect." I predicted what it needed perfectly, because that's exactly what it did. It never differed from the rails.
However, this can easily be improved, and I hope you do to make the game better. One feature that I loved, that made it different from other pet games, is that you could actually talk to your pet. I hope you one day come out with a sequel that adds a lot more to the game- by making it longer, giving a lot more conversation options, a randomized pattern of care with more to do, and maybe take out the evil part aha. I mean I realize this was for the deception jam which is totally fine. You did a great job, and this is my favorite entry so far! But you seem pretty good at making Tamagotchi games so I'm just saying I'd love it if you one day made a sequel and built onto this idea.
Every day always begins from feeding and ends with sleeping. But everything that happens between those 2 actions is absolutely random. It seems that it was just a coincidence that you stumbled upon exact same pattern. It's random after all. Thanks for the feedback!
PS: There'll be an update with alternate endings and more dialogue options.
Wow, I have to sit down for as second.
That was a really great game, the sounds were absolutely excellent, pretty terrifying, etc. The fact that he went from a cute* baby squid to Cthulhu was pretty interesting. I liked the ending. It was pretty interesting.
Thank you very much! I'm glad that you've liked the experience.
This game put's player in a very interesting position: he can either let his pet grow by feeding it, and then, eventually, get devoured by it, or let it die from disease and then get the usual "game over" ending. By such a clever positioning, game makes player, who use to think that he occupies active side in the gameplay, realize, that while playing seemingly on his own behalf he was actually acting on someone else’s behalf. I is almost as if you know that something bad is coming, but continue nevertheless, seduced by the game's space promise of cathartic closure. The main difference here from, say, movie being that it is the player, who is actively moving the game forward. It's interesting how, using its gameplay, this game manages to convey the idea about the activity of space and illusiveness of the freedom of choice.
With that said, though, I felt that as a game it could've been much better experience, if it had some progression in terms of gameplay, not only narratively. On each of the stages of your pet's development you have to perform exactly the same actions (usually in exactly the same order) with no change of rhythm, difficulty or variety. Due to your pet developing no new needs and requirements, the whole caring process quickly becomes boring and repetitive.
The only two things that kept me playing were narrative and audio/visual design. While the former was interesting and thrilling, but quite simple to follow and somewhat predictable, the former was amazing to watch at and listen to. Measured pace of background movements and wonderful ambient sounds created nice contrast with the simplistic tamagochi-like interface and sounds. It was almost suggesting that behind this friendly facade something sinister and ancient is hiding in the oceanic depths. This audio/visual theme well complemented the overall sinister feeling of helplessness in the face of coming doom and added some aesthetic variety.
I'd like to thank author for creating this wonderful game and wish him many more successful releases. In my opinion, your game is very smart and neat looking, but it's gameplay, the mechanics, that make any game a game, somewhat lags behind it's narrative and visual appeal.
Thanks a lot for this detailed review! I'm glad that you liked my game! You're totally right about the repetitiveness. This game was made just in a week for a jam. That's why I hadn't much time to implement all the features I wanted. I'm planning to release an update soon which will include multiple endings that will depend on player's choices and more variety in player's actions.