A lot of the time spent on this game, SSS for short, definitely went on the development of original assets. Those are good and at times you somewhat forget you are playing a block game. The game's story is a solid middle score, not bad, not great. Its puzzles are not satisfying and the game leans too heavily into its randomisation features. Nathan (game's author) probably also should have cut some content rather than leaving it in the submission, because a half-baked feature is often worse than not having it.
The game has persistence issues. In SSS, the items you find around the ship are decided randomly and also do not persist permanently. The ship's power status can also be reset by logging in. This leads to a very poor sense of direction and guidance, as if you are never quite sure how to follow a chain of logic to complete the game. It is also possible to accidentally skip loads of content, such as speedrunning the route to the end after (game event that is a spoiler) instead of waiting; or by getting lucky and collecting many ID cards at once, then proceeding to an area with a 2-3 security level gap from your last important door.
The game leans too heavily into randomisation. The loot randomisation has many nonsense results, such as finding officer ID cards in the Cadets' quarters or my personal favourite, a brownie in one of the captain's filing cabinets. I know the game development had limited time, but I think statically placing the objects would have worked better in the Jam Time; that way they could be placed logically.
Excess baggage left in the game hinders it: the airlock and the engineer's toolbox should both have been scrapped/commented out. The airlock I found particularly bad because I accidentally played with damage disabled, and so I went around exploring and got stuck. I think you can force damage on, which would be much better. The engineer's tools had me thinking there was a second puzzle after the first repair puzzle, but all I had to do was find the exit. I don't want to spoil its location for anyone reading.. but it would have been way easier to find if doors would easily indicate to you whether they have enough power to open. As the game exists, you need to re-check doors regularly to know if you can access them now, due to power and security restrictions.
The importance of sound can hardly be understated. I know the Jam was a great opportunity for Nathan to practice his asset creation skills, but it's pretty rough to have made high resolution textures with stable diffusion only to have zero walking or door sounds. Sounds really take a game from something happening on a computer screen (visual) to a much better experience (audio-visual). Things like the computer boot time would be more intuitive if a sound played in the interval between right-click and boot finishing. I think the Jam's wording discouraged asset re-use but personally I re-used the Minetest Game sounds and was very happy to have them compared to no sound in my entry.
Lastly, I watched Nathan's post-Jam review video/livestream before writing. He was dismissive of the accessibility issue with red text - which is not a problem with colourblindess, because it's not about hue, but it's an issue with simple colour contrast. There are accessibility guidelines about colour contrast for good reasons.
A lot of the time spent on this game, SSS for short, definitely went on the development of original assets. Those are good and at times you somewhat forget you are playing a block game. The game's story is a solid middle score, not bad, not great. Its puzzles are not satisfying and the game leans too heavily into its randomisation features. Nathan (game's author) probably also should have cut some content rather than leaving it in the submission, because a half-baked feature is often worse than not having it.
The game has persistence issues. In SSS, the items you find around the ship are decided randomly and also do not persist permanently. The ship's power status can also be reset by logging in. This leads to a very poor sense of direction and guidance, as if you are never quite sure how to follow a chain of logic to complete the game. It is also possible to accidentally skip loads of content, such as speedrunning the route to the end after (game event that is a spoiler) instead of waiting; or by getting lucky and collecting many ID cards at once, then proceeding to an area with a 2-3 security level gap from your last important door.
The game leans too heavily into randomisation. The loot randomisation has many nonsense results, such as finding officer ID cards in the Cadets' quarters or my personal favourite, a brownie in one of the captain's filing cabinets. I know the game development had limited time, but I think statically placing the objects would have worked better in the Jam Time; that way they could be placed logically.
(continued in comment)
Excess baggage left in the game hinders it: the airlock and the engineer's toolbox should both have been scrapped/commented out. The airlock I found particularly bad because I accidentally played with damage disabled, and so I went around exploring and got stuck. I think you can force damage on, which would be much better. The engineer's tools had me thinking there was a second puzzle after the first repair puzzle, but all I had to do was find the exit. I don't want to spoil its location for anyone reading.. but it would have been way easier to find if doors would easily indicate to you whether they have enough power to open. As the game exists, you need to re-check doors regularly to know if you can access them now, due to power and security restrictions.
The importance of sound can hardly be understated. I know the Jam was a great opportunity for Nathan to practice his asset creation skills, but it's pretty rough to have made high resolution textures with stable diffusion only to have zero walking or door sounds. Sounds really take a game from something happening on a computer screen (visual) to a much better experience (audio-visual). Things like the computer boot time would be more intuitive if a sound played in the interval between right-click and boot finishing. I think the Jam's wording discouraged asset re-use but personally I re-used the Minetest Game sounds and was very happy to have them compared to no sound in my entry.
Lastly, I watched Nathan's post-Jam review video/livestream before writing. He was dismissive of the accessibility issue with red text - which is not a problem with colourblindess, because it's not about hue, but it's an issue with simple colour contrast. There are accessibility guidelines about colour contrast for good reasons.