The Branch

by poffle

co-authored: @octopoid, @tigermouse, @rodobodolfo

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.92

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.52

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.67

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.94

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.06

Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.32

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.87

Welcome to The Branch

The Branch is a ‘slice of life’ documentary looking at the staff who work at the local high street bank.

In tonight’s first episode we meet branch manager - Clinton Meeks. Clinton’s obsession with currency is preventing him from ever loaning the bank’s money to anybody! In charge of the Bureau de Change is xenophobe - Mildred Pew. An elderly woman who’s only interested in the GBP and wants to get rid of all other currency. Then finally there’s body builder, branch security and delivery driver - Derek Armageddon, who’s suffered a severe spinal injury since using the vault as his personal gym. For these 3 people - currency is their life.

Tune in now!

The Branch is a simple narrative driven experience. Meet the characters and play out their day to day activities. There is no winning or losing, just doing. Have fun!

If you’ve played our other Ludum Dare entries then you’ll know what to expect, questionable gameplay, questionable voiceovers, and stupid humour. We hope you like it!

https://pointbleepstudios.itch.io/the-branch

https://pointbleepstudios.com/

Linux Version Untested!

Tags: #comedy, #meaningful choices, #mockumentary, #voice acting

Genres: adventure

Comments39

Zandecki Alexandre1 May 2019, 12:29

The game was quite simple but it was a really cool experience with nice humor and a lot of things to do. Congrats !

SeriouslyCrunchy1 May 2019, 14:49

Top points for humor and mood! As a Brit I found it spot on. Simple gameplay indeed but enough laughs to keep me playing.

HugoVaz1 May 2019, 15:22

THE FUNNIEST GAME. Its like The Office but its about money. I was really entertained by the dialogues, you should really develop that to be a full game.

Sholyu1 May 2019, 15:56

Really nice, quite simple but really cool, i liked that the goal is to be awful with people, its pretty original! Nice job !

JofersGames1 May 2019, 16:14

Haha, fun :)

CodingNinjaJoas1 May 2019, 16:15

Really good game, one of the funniest games i've seen so far. Good job!!

Riftpoint Entertainment1 May 2019, 16:15

That was amazing! Very funny. I love this kind of game. I was one of the best of this ludum dare. Good job!

Qwantumline1 May 2019, 16:16

Love it!!!

Pedro137BR1 May 2019, 16:30

The graphics were really good, i loved the audio and the voices were really funny, it was super fun to player, overall i really loved the game

Spiffy1 May 2019, 16:38

Well made experience.

itsjustjord1 May 2019, 17:32

Easy and a great experience great job.

Riddhee Dutta1 May 2019, 17:32

Clean Graphics and nice artsyle, good game man ;)

Lakrits1 May 2019, 17:35

Pretty impressive dialogue-heavy experience.

brinkhousegames1 May 2019, 18:23

Wow, your game and mine have some similarity! Love it. Great work!

tinykidtoo1 May 2019, 18:27

I was really sad when this ended. It was a lot of fun, kept me giggling to myself like some crazy school child the whole way through. The music and art fit perfectly for this silly story line. Overall very good work, I would love to see more.

XMPT-Luke1 May 2019, 19:52

Really loved the humour in this. It's rare to see a solid narrative-focused game like this in a jam. Nice job! :)

XMPTEd1 May 2019, 19:57

Enjoyed the style of this one - and the humour was right up my street :) Lack of much gameplay meant I lost attention though - I know that's what you're going for, just wasn't my cup of tea!

refraction1 May 2019, 19:59

That was a great little game! Took me a while to realise what I had to do, the objective at the start wasn't clear, I didn't realise I was the banker dude lol, probably not paying attention. Really pleasing art style, the humour was great and the sound track and voice acting was spot on. Good job all of you!

Pixel_Error1 May 2019, 20:07

What a story, Mark. Voices fit well to characters and jokes are great.

PixScope1 May 2019, 20:39

Very funny ! I loved it !

CocaPasteque1 May 2019, 21:19

Ok, this game is pure gold. I found it very amusing and the sounds/voice acting is really good !
Couldn't understand what I had to do in the beginning but when i found out, it was so fun !
Great job guys !

Cikyt1 May 2019, 21:33

❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ )

sahoskins11 May 2019, 21:59

Loved playing this! Genuinely would have been happy to just sit there and keep playing if this had been a long running series or something. Well done!
I played this on Windows but if you still need someone to test the Linux build then let me know and I'll boot up my Linux machine tomorrow for it.

techsec2 May 2019, 01:26

The style is something really unique I enjoyed it quite a bit.

AfroAnt2 May 2019, 04:56

The eye and (especially) mouth animations blew me away. The visuals were so good. It's cool playing LD games with full voice-acting. I liked the effort you put in the documentary. The gameplay at the end was...interesting, after listening to all the preceding ramblings. Dialogue went on a bit long at times, but I guess that's just documentaries for ya :P Thanks for the experience!

MashUpGames2 May 2019, 12:48

Very unique game you have made here. It has that sort of narrative similar to The Office, and the dialogue is very funny. I did find it a bit slow at times with the dialogue, but it was still very funny and it's clear you put a lot of effort into it. Well done!

Poffleauthor2 May 2019, 12:59

@afroant
@mashupgames

Yep! Totally agree there with the dialogues. If we hadn't run out of time I would have liked to have taken a knife to the script to trim the fat. I'm glad you both still enjoyed it! Thank you very much for your reviews!

Octopoid2 May 2019, 13:11

@refraction @cocapasteque yeah, you're quite right, it wasn't entirely clear who you were at any given moment. I think in retrospect there should have been some kind of onscreen name badge and objective to make that more obvious. Thanks for your kind words though, glad you enjoyed it! :grinning:

Octopoid2 May 2019, 13:14

@afroant Thanks, that means a lot! I wrote the eye shader/controller and @rodobodolfo took care of all the lipsyncing for the mouth. I wish we'd had a bit more time for actual gameplay, or even to finish the throwing minigame properly, but that deadline is a harsh mistress! Thanks for your review! :smile:

Poffleauthor2 May 2019, 13:16

@xmpted Glad you liked the humour and yep, didn't think it would be everyone's cup of tea! Thanks for playing and giving feedback!

@tinykidtoo Thank you very much! Glad you liked it! We might flesh it out after with some more characters and games to make a full "episode". Thank you for playing and leaving a comment!

Poffleauthor2 May 2019, 13:21

@riftpoint-entertainment Aw. Thank you very much. That's kind of you to say. Glad you enjoyed it!

TiagoRrech2 May 2019, 16:51

The kind of game I really don't expect to see in a game jam, and different from everything else I played so far.

The facial animation on the characters was great, as was the humor and the voice acting. It was like a cross of Monty Python with Stanley's Parable.

Also, REALLY good take on the theme, probably the best I've seen so far. Phenomenal work, guys!

Solah2 May 2019, 19:29

Very funny, but it's sometime difficult to know what to do next and what choice will make the funniest situation.

Good job!

Luis J. Benitez3 May 2019, 07:01

Well for me in the game there is too much blabling and little interactivity. Just my opinion. Good Job becquse narrativism/interaction its just a choice.

SoggyBreadHands4 May 2019, 01:55

nice, it was a pretty funny narrative to play through with good voice acting, good job, solid entry!

Drauthius4 May 2019, 11:32

That was "bloody brilliant" :laughing: Great voice acting, great humour, great everything!

Avon4 May 2019, 16:11

I always look forward to your entries, and this one did not disappoint. Very funny, great voice acting and music. The 3D graphics were great as well.

Jorne5 May 2019, 17:33

It made me laugh so much! Especially Mildred, who reminded me of a real bank employee in my nearby branch. Excellent voice acting and facial expressions! I could clearly see on the faces of the other employees that they had a tough time working there. It would have been nice to interact with them too in some way. The game felt a bit short, and the dialogues a little too long, just a few more people to shortly interact with would have made this even more entertaining.

Poffleauthor6 May 2019, 08:24

@avon Thank you very much! We always look forward to your review!

@jorne Thank for the feedback, I'm glad you like it. Yep. We had more interactions planned for the roaming around, talking to the workers or hidden areas that would open new dialogue and whatnot.... and your poor bank if anyone is like Mildred haha

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