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The Last Boarding Call (#igmc2017)'s itch.io pageResults
Ranked 114th with 1 vote
| Criteria | Rank | Votes |
| People's Choice Vote | #114 | 1 |
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Theme
Earth is dying and the Order created the ark named Variola was made to bring the 20% of humanity to be mankind’s future in space. You have a family and need to secure tickets to escape the harsh earth. Has a twist and it works.
Gameplay
Gain influence and do “favors”. Has multiple endings based on how much of a terrible human being you are.
Presentation
Presented itself well but has some inconsistent graphics and could’ve done more in terms of polish, but it was a very nice effort. The writing is the strongest part of this game.
Engagement
Definitely an interesting game just need some more polish. One of my personal favorites in the contest.
Total – 58/80
Team Members
Schlitty
Engine
RPG Maker VX Ace
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Comments
Congrats on making your first game! It's even more impressive that you've managed to make a non linear game on such a short time whilst still learning. How many endings did you write? It might be cool to make a guide of them so it's easier to experience all that this game has to offer!
The MS Paint drawings don't really match the rest of the graphics, but they were a nice touch anyway, especially the cinematic style opening. There was a typo in there though- should be 'invasions'. Another typo when talking to the lady about her babies- it's 'predicament'.
When you get a chance you might want to look into finding a simplified menu script since the dead space of the default menu makes it look a little rough, but I don't think you'd lose points on that for a first game.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
So I think I got the worst ending possible, which was probably deserved, but I did feel like I'd been unfairly mislead. Getting punished after trying to do what I thought was right leaves me feeling a bit frustrated and I think I would have enjoyed it more if I managed to play it better but I guess life isn't always 'happily ever after' X'D
We all got the tickets... and died.
So I'm kinda questioning my ethics now but anyway, good job! :)
Thanks for playing! In a perfect world I would've learned tilesets and made my own facesets as well. But I had to pick and choose what I was going to accomplish in a month with the tiles and with the facesets just couldn't make anything work that looked decent to me. Definitely among my 'regrets'. Would've been nice to have a more fluid style throughout. But I'm no artist, just happened to have always played around with MSPaint since Windows 95 when I was a kid. But yeah, the art style "variety" is the visual representation of the many decisions I had to make to get the project done within the time constraints.
The typos are my biggest annoyance with the end product!! Being more or less just a story I swear to you I proofread the thing at least twenty times! Haha... But the two you came across (one new to me!) are sadly not alone. I let out an audible groan every time a new one is discovered...
!!!SPOILERS!!!
The misleading was definitely a part of the plan! I tried to present the situation with only what the player's character would know of it. Then I spent a lot of time trying to come up with moral situations that weren't too obviously pure evil (but still bad) to try to balance versus how much someone would be willing to risk/do to save themselves and/or their family. Not a ton of people have played but it has been split pretty much down the middle the way people have gone with it and the endings they get. Which is pretty neat from my perspective.
There's actually an ending I think is worse than yours; getting just two tickets! If you get just one or two you get to pick who gets the tickets from your family (you, wife, child). So you could technically do a bunch of questionable stuff for two tickets, be good and give them to your wife and child, and then yeah... Boom! Really though, there's mainly just two endings; You on the ship, or you off it. You getting on can happen with one, two, or three tickets and as long as you're aboard you get the ending you got. Your ride ends, and that's that. You not getting on can happen with zero, one, or two tickets. If you aren't on there's a little more of an outro. You get to choose three options (!!extra spoilers of the choices!! You can 'just go home', 'riot', or 'punish The Order for what they did'. The latter is extra enticing if you sent a family member to their demise!) Each choice is just another still MSPaint background and a short sentence to wrap it up.
Thanks for the tip on the menu. I only even learned of plugins or scripts or whatever they are, towards the very end of the Jam time period. I really was learning from the very basics. I didn't know up from down in getting any of that stuff and had other things to finish. There's a lot of polish and stuff I've learned about being out there just by playing other entries. Plenty of wishing and what ifs when it comes to polish. The program is so much deeper than I had any idea of!
First thing this morning I took a cup of coffee, downloaded your game and played through it. I gotta say the game aroused my interest immediately. I think those images you made with Paint were amazing, how long did it take from you to draw them? The gameplay itself felt similar to me like some bigger interactive drama games, such as the games of Telltale Games where there are multiple branches of discussion to choose from. Every character that I talked in the game had their own stories and personalities, which made them feel unique. In addition, the discussion options were diverse in a way that I never felt like the best answer was missing. Very well written. Towards the end I got a mixture of feelings, which left me thinking. It's great that even in such a short time it's possible to start caring about the fate of a game character.
Thank you for this experience :)
Thanks for playing! Glad you found some fun in it too. Writing in that conversation style was definitely a learning experience and I'm glad to hear it seems to have worked. The backgrounds weren't too time consuming when considering it was with MSPaint. But getting each one started was always a commitment and lots of erasing. Then I constantly revisited them after each playtest and was adding this or that or changing something entirely I didn't like. The small default RPG Maker VX Ace resolution confined me to a fairly smaller scale which helped for sure.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ending. Very good job with the execution of your concept, I loved the twist! I did an LP of your game here:
Haha, that is so awesome to see. Glad it caught you by surprise because some of your comments during the intro were great foreshadowing. And then you played it how I would to boot, was pretty neat to see someone choose those conversation paths. And just your comments about the people haha... You picked up on some of their personalities how I was hoping I wrote them. Really neat and thank you very much for playing and making the vid and all the comments throughout!
It was my pleasure, thank you for making it! :)
Wow! It had a really nice twist to the ending. I recommend everyone at least try this one considering it's pretty short. I appreciated the real anxiety the game pushes on you in the short time period.
(Spoilers) During my play-through, I felt like I was rewarded for some pretty nasty promises. My "influence" didn't really do much, even when I should have received the "bad" ending. Of course, that's just an excuse and I enjoyed the option to get back at the people responsible. Congrats on making it through! As a contestant, I know it was tough and would appreciate a play-through of my game as well. Have a great day!
Thanks for playing! I didn't really get a chance to let anybody playtest that didn't already know the story so good to hear a take on it. You just might've been the first to experience it "blind"!
(!!SPOILERS!!)As far as the "influence" goes, you can both earn and lose it depending on what you did. So you might've made a promise to one person but angered another. Lots of neutral outcomes too. In a perfect world I would've done more balance and made some "tougher" promises worth more but admittedly the outcomes with less "influence" are more interesting. ;)
And don't worry. Your game is at the top of my list when I dive into some later. :)
(SPOILERS) I didn't even consider that some influences could contradict other ones! That really increases the scope of choices, and thought put into the game. Although I'd like to play as many contest entries as possible, it actually sounds interesting to go back and see how things play out in different scenarios.