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A Pretty Little Homestead

  • Liberty
  • 02/08/2019 05:10 AM
  • 1598 views
Memories of a Forgotten Home was created for a game jam in 48 hours. Considering the time and team, it was a pretty good job!

The presentation is interesting. There's a lot of lighting effects being put to good use and the mapping is quite well done, as expected of the team that put this game together. The grainy effect that was added over the top (either via a noise filter to the actual tiles or via overlay) really makes the game seem more unique despite the common graphics that were used, lending it its own identity.

The portraits are quite nice, though some of them seem a bit weird or sketchy in comparison to others, which look a bit more polished. Their size variance is also a little odd, but overall they work to showcase the emotions of the characters during the story.

Not sure what the cows were doing there but hey, it was made in 48 hours. Some things just need to be forgiven (though cow should have had his own portrait guys, come on!)

The music was quite nice and fit the scenes quite well. The sound effects were also well utilised to give more atmosphere and the overall aesthetic of the game is really nice.

The writing was well done, with very few mistakes that I can recall. The story was well told and the characterisation was also quite well done. There were some points where I expected one thing and got something else, not necessarily to the better (realtor is bestie in my headcanon) but it all worked out to give a coherent picture of the plot at the end and everything made sense so no issues there.

Gameplay was a bit up and down for me. The main component of the game consisted of scenes and puzzles, and while the scenes were quite cool, and exploring the house was pretty neat, some of the puzzles were a bit unintuitive. There were some puzzles where I thought the solution was one clue or piece of information but was just told to you through a scene I needed to see, and there was no rhyme or reason for some stuff when there was for others.

It felt a bit like it underused the house setting as a puzzle, and held the players' hand, doing the figuring out for them instead of letting them explore and play the game, explore the house, find the clues themselves.

That said, it was a short game, the house wasn't too big and didn't outstay its welcome, so running around from room to room looking for the next random trigger or searching each shelf for the third time didn't take too long to do.

Overall, the game is quite nice. The overall story and feel to it was enjoyable and touching, and it has a unique visible presence to pull players in. I hope it gets more love than it has so far, as bar the few weird aspects, it's a pretty little gem.

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Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
This is a really pleasant surprise to wake up to, libs! I know you said you liked it on stream but I genuinely wasn't expecting 4 stars, thanks so much!

Pretty much everyone's questioned the cow savepoint, which I pretty much expected, but it was actually a global game jam inside joke. They showed us an introductory video about drawing cows - it doesn't matter if you're good or bad at drawing cows, what matters is that you try. While looking for a save point, I was looking through the refmap sprites and jokingly suggest the cow, and Danish had the bright idea of us following through with it and referencing that video when you talk to the cow. We all liked the idea so we decided to use the cow in the end.

This review is very valid and all the issues you're pointed out are things we're mostly aware of, but sadly didn't have a lot of time to fix. I'm happy it was a good experience for you none the less though!
It sounds like we had a very similar experience Liberty. Although if you mean the parents' portraits when you say sketchy, I took the different style to represent the different relationship.

Also when did we become the nice reviewers?
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