HOUSEKEEPING'S PROFILE

First, there were a few bugs. I wasn't able to switch characters at some point very soon after the tutorial for it. So, while the magey guy's larger skill set looked like it made him pretty overpowered, I wasn't able to use him, unfortunately. I also don't know if leaving the "to dust we will return" (or whatever it was specifically) text was meant to be on the screen for the entire game; I assume not. If it was, I found it a little irritating. There might have been a few more bugs that I let slip since they didn't impact the gameplay much.

Now, the meat and potatoes:
-The graphics were lovely--some of the better stuff I've seen in this competition, and I would stack it up against games like Painted Heart and Unraveled. Everything fit beautifully.
-Your music choices were fitting but generally forgettable. I saw that you used some music packs, so that's about what you can expect from them.
-That alarm sound will haunt my nightmares.
-I remember reading somewhere that you tend to do adventure games, and that shows here. The more adventurey segments, such as collecting money in the safe town, were the strong parts of the gameplay. Honestly, that part was probably the most engaging section for me. The only problem is that it looked like that section could have been skipped altogether with little impact on the game. I would have liked those choices to matter, and I would have liked stealing especially to have consequences.
-Your game had a lot of systems that felt unnecessary. Forgive me for not remembering the name of the 18 year old guy that you get in your party early on, but, what's the point of giving him a field ability to knock things over when you only use it once? Likewise, Jian's technical knowledge seemed like it wasn't used at all in hindsight. I think those are good ideas for an adventure game (or a hybrid rpg/adventure like this), but you needed to get more out of those mechanics.
-The rpg battles needed way more tuning and should have been a bigger portion of the game, or they should have been simply removed in favor of more adventure game solutions. Regular physical attacks seemed better than skills in a lot of cases, and enemies went down like they were nothing. Dust soldiers, for example, could have used some kind of balancing factor to offset their low health. I liked the low health part since it coincided with the story, but maybe high speed and attack would have introduced a priority factor to the combat. I never even got to use the ultimate attacks because the fights were over long before the meters filled.
-The story had an interesting setting and ground situation, but once you distill it down to its basic elements, it got a little by-the-numbers.
-This could have been offset by interesting characters, but the game focused more on conveying the plot than developing characters beyond their introductions. There was an emotional core to the story with the little brother, but that didn't get much emphasis after the initial portion of the game. I would have much rather played a game about the sister and her brother trying to make it in this horrible world (even though the dangers of this world were downplayed) than a game about overthrowing a government plot. It would have been a different direction, but when I was playing, I thought that THAT'S where the real story and conflict that the audience can connect to was, and it just kind of sucked that it was so downplayed.

Overall, this is still a gorgeous game, but some tighter writing and more concentrated gameplay would have made it worked much better for me. Good luck on the contest!

I think that different does equal bad in this case. It's easy to blanket everything as subjective, but the fact is there's a vast body of work that we build on as artists (if you're okay with calling us that). Let me give you an example. If I go outside and shit in the lawn and the neighbors call the cops on me, I can't say, "Look, it's a different way to do things, but it's not necessarily bad. I mean, logically, animals have to shit, so it's more natural for me to shit outside which will fertilize the lawn than to waste water flushing the toilet and creating a sewage problem." The reason this wouldn't work is that, even if theoretically I could be seen as in the right, society has grown in a specific way. Ignoring the rules that have come before you is therefore problematic.

That's not to say that you can't break rules, but you have to do so with a firm understanding of the rules set before you and artfully bend them. I think that the message is hamfisted in its delivery and simplistic in its philosophy. It might work for a very small amount of people, but I even think those people will have problems saying that it was executed well. There are too many things objectively wrong about it.