The Curator

Unfortunately, I couldn't play the Web version, but I can't download it.

It's a good and interesting game. namely, it was interesting to find out the other endings and what would happen next. There is also a good story in this game.

I went through 2 endings. The game was somewhat reminiscent of "The Stanley Parable" game.

Spent 25 minutes waiting in a room 10/10
I can definitely feel the stanley parable influence here, good work!

@semenchk Thanks, I've added it as an embed for easier access.

A memorable experience, with a hint of Stanley Parable throughout. I started blindly obeying, fighting to contradict our narrator, annoying him, and telling myself “I'm a lab rat” before seeing the concept through to the end.

Too bad about the music; a little background sound would have been great.

Loved the stanley parable, loved Begginer's guide, so this one really scratched that itch too! Cool entry, great idea, could be really big with more content and polish but is quite great as it is. Congrats.

hey dont mess with my brain xD ok now for feedback: the web version for me had no sound, and my character turns the whole time without touching the mouse. after going for the blue ones and colecting a lot there was one chance to collect a red one and i changed the blue focus to this one red, but unfortunately there waas no reaction from the curator that i changed suddenly to the red one in the room, that would have made my day , but nevertheless a nyce entry!

Top notch on everything!!

@truedat Ahahah! Yeah, there’s no sound in the jam version unfortunately. The system is ready to play VO for Letho, just no audio recordings attached yet. I had a lot of fun experimenting and designing the narrative system with event-driven dialogue, which was way bigger than i thought, so it ended up text-only for the jam.

As for the color switch, you actually discovered one of the narrative paths that didn’t make it in time, I'm sorry ahah! I had a few more endings in mind for that kind of choice, plus some less obvious patterns, lots of ideas on the table.

I really appreciate the feedback! I’m hoping to come back in a few months to add sound ambiance, VO, SFX, and a few more events to give it a proper finish outside of the jam on Itch.io.

I couldn't get it. I think this is just a boring game in my view.

Hey @huihang, thanks for the honest feedback! You're absolutely right, if we look at the core gameplay loop at face value, it really is just "run to cube, collect cube, repeat." I'll be the first to admit that mechanically, it's pretty bare bones.

This type of game lives or dies by its narrative hooks and how much the player engages with the meta-commentary and different story paths. When that doesn't land, you're left with... a pretty boring collection task.

I totally get why it didn't click for you. The gameplay itself isn't carrying the experience, so if the narrative angle doesn't grab you in the first few minutes, there's not much else there to keep you engaged.

I'm planning to work on more meta-narrative games going forward, and understanding how to tackle that boring aspect is definitely something I need to figure out. Missing sound/music doesn't help, but there's a deeper design challenge there about keeping people engaged while still making the key point about mundane tasks. It's a big critique of these types of games in general.

Maybe mixing meta-narrative with another genre could help address the engagement issue, though that'd be a massive undertaking for a jam timeframe. Another approach could be leveraging proven dopamine mechanics, like clicker/incremental gameplay (similar to Clickolding), which might keep players hooked while still delivering the meta-commentary. But it'll always be some kind of gamble.

Anyway, I'll stop here before I dive too deep into design theory. Appreciate you giving it a shot!

wow like it very much very meta! Questioning the theme of collecting. i think its clever. loved it. great job :)

I have been collected.

I haven't played Stanley Parable so I don't have that connection, but I did like the narration commenting on my actions. I kinda expected commentary on collecting different colors, though, but it looks like that was planned but just ran out of time, no worries! I do wish there was some audio, but otherwise, nicely done!