Train

Seeing that this game was developed in conjuncture with assistance from Pastel Game Studio, I thought I am in something marvelous. Turned out it's the exact opposite of greatness. Don't get me wrong, this was an interesting attempt by an eager participant with neat plot. The game just couldn't meet its own lofty expectations.

THEME (2 out of 5)
The story of time travel, cliche and done to death as it is, was put to good use as a mean of escape from oppressive society where one can truly achieve freedom. The focal setting of train is nicely imagined as one can freely explore the metallic conduit to reactivate it. Sadly, the intriguing concept was done in by boring and repetitive gameplay that neither innovates nor interests beyond its captivating and compelling intro.

IMMERSION + APPEAL (2 out of 5)
Right from the start, the introduction grappled me into the setting of oppressive society and its iron fist over the world.

I was hooked...
I was engaged...
I was ready to flee the world that seeks to end me because of my desire to be free...

Sadly, the game does nothing to back its thoroughly thoughtful introduction. See the train? Reactivate it by finding bunch of energy modules so you can escape to your freedom! Yay. The lack of variety and puzzles killed what remaining of my interests as I slog myself to finish the game by finding all energy modules before the time ends.

CONCEPT + INNOVATION (1 out of 5)
Nothing new was attempted here, aside from the interesting introduction. The gameplay is a straight rip-off of vastly interesting 10 Gnomes series, only that the use of innovation was attempted to be tied directly with the story to increase tension and drama. Such attempt was met with failure because the repetitive gameplay of search-and-find doesn't feel engaging nor does it fits well with the story.

PLOT + COMPOSITION (3 out of 5)
As I mentioned, big prop has to go to well written and thought-of introduction that managed to engaged me until the game started. The lack of in-game story and even a climatic conclusion are the biggest offenders to the plot that was established at the start. When people start to read the introduction at the start, they're expecting additional details within the game and at the end. Not seeing any of these would amount to our waste of time.

GAMEPLAY + TECHNICALITY (3 out of 5)
The game, once again, doesn't have engaging system of play. Search-and-find gameplay style definitely does not fits with the structure of your story. The typical escape game set within a warehouse would have been more interesting since it will allows you to construct in-game story to flesh out its setting and history. Or you could easily add some few notes and other puzzles to extend playtime and add variety.

Additionally... NO time limit and NO pixel hunt. I do not like to feel stress while I try to scourge through every possible nooks and crannies.

During my playtime, I found absolutely no bugs. Amazing! But one can easily use the TAB button to highlight hotspot, so one can definitely cheat as I found out myself. Perhaps Pastel Game can show you how.

OVERALL (2 out of 5)
Interesting game doomed by its unmet gameplay potentials.

GENERAL INFO/HOW TO PLAY:

How to Get Inside the Engineer's Booth:

LOCATIONS of the PULSATORY CORES:
Directly in Front of Train—

Front Right Corner of Train—

Side of Train, Near Front—

Middle of Train, Lower Part—

Middle of the Train, Upper Part—

Side of Train, Below the Engineer's Booth—

Rear End of Train—

Inside the Engineer's Booth—

Like the JIG audience, I was also unsatisfied with the graphics and environment. Please give us gorgeous images that we want to stare at and explore in every angle!

I wanted much more cohesiveness in the story. I think the opening could be written a little tighter, perhaps as very short movie with less explication (instead of the slow click through of wordy narration).

And, I also wanted...no, expected, more story at the end...especially after the opening set-up. A different bit of imagery and resolution for losing, collecting the minimum, or finding all cores would be nice. Three endings—bad, good and perfect—are always a welcome feature.

Yet, for gameplay itself, there is indeed an audience who loves the seek-and-find type games. Don't be discouraged away from making this type of game again. You just need to make sure your opening sets up the player for what they're going to get so they don't come in expecting one thing and end up disappointed because they had another. Disappointed players who find themselves in content they don't want can be the harshest judges.

Lovely art, on the other hand, will attract those who don't care about gameplay as much as they enjoy looking at interesting images. Take a look at Memohuntress as an example. There were many players who hated the game, did not like the lag, did not like the game mechanics, did not enjoy the gameplay. But the players who appreciated the amazing design and conscientious attention to story development far far outweighed the naysayers.

When you win the players' hearts, you've won their vote!

You could improve on this one specifically by tightening up the story at the beginning and offering more reward for succeeding at the end. Then, next time, try using well-composed photography or hand-drawn artwork for your exploring/hidden object game.

Anyhow, I did very much enjoy your game! I look forward to your next endeavors.

I quite like the idea of the "Escape" theme being used as a motivation for the character and not as a literal escape the room. I thought the use of the timer was actually a nice touch for that. It was a little stressful, but hey, the protagonist had to be stressed too, and at least for me that helped with immersing myself into this character who's frantically searching the train.

The introduction was a little long and slow, though. Totalitarian governments definitely provide a motivation for escape, but most people have seen quite a lot of them. This particular one didn't do anything to set itself apart from the trope. Repression? Seen it. Torture? Seen it. You did a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Just saying the word for something horrible doesn't usually call up the feeling of "oh god, I need to get away." Think about what kind of world your story takes place in, what specifics the horrors would take, and how the character you're writing would feel about them. Is he somebody who's barely kept a step ahead of the authorities and can't stop thinking about what they would do to him? Is he somebody who's been doing this for so long that he's just weary of even worrying? Does he feel cornered, or tired, or simply even done with all of this? Is he really the last person around who opposes his government, or is it just that for all he knows, he could be? Has he never been caught, and as far as he knows, the worst possible thing he could imagine will happen to him if he is? Has he been caught before and knows exactly what would happen?

And if you're using horrible things as a plot device, and you're using the fear of those horrible things to motivate the main character, it's generally a good rule to make the player squirm, too. You don't need to be gory or explicit- vagueness can really work, because people have a tendency to fill in the blanks with what's personally unsettling to them. Just give us a little more to extrapolate on, okay?

The text also comes up a little bit slowly, which makes the reading feel slower, and there's nothing to do but read. Maybe add some more interactivity to your introduction? This isn't a visual novel, it's a point and click game- and I'm saying that as a VN fan and dev! But this is obviously geared at a different audience, who aren't signing up for a reading-things-and-clicking-to-read-more-things experience. Interactivity and things to point and click and puzzle out are pretty necessary in this genre. Interesting visuals are good, too. Remember, your introduction (and your start screen!) is your first impression on the player, and you want to make a good one.

(And on that note, a small nitpick about the start screen. Bleeding Cowboys is a very pretty font, but it's also very recognizable as Bleeding Cowboys, and using a well-known font like that can make your game come off as unoriginal.)

On to the main portion of the game! I get the sense that (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) you had an abandoned train in your area and you wanted to take pictures of it and use that for the visuals of your game. There's nothing wrong with this, but the way you connected the train exploration to the main story didn't quite work for me. The protagonist knows that there's something up with the train, and... then suddenly time travel? It would have made more sense to me if he already knew that the train was hiding some time-travel project, or even that it might be hiding some time-travel project. If it's just probably hiding something, then why is he there, instead of making a run for it? I think it would also be more believable if he'd been researching the train previously- maybe there could have been a previous level, where he was just looking around the train? Having a narration sequence, a train sequence, another narration sequence, etc, could have cut down on the narration the player has to read at one time, and also made the game feel more tied together, since the narration and train wouldn't be completely independent of each other. Building the threat gradually might have made it feel more real, too. Or who knows, maybe this isn't the right story for this game. It's your plot and you obviously had a lot of love for this train. Find a way to make the train feel connected, or find a different plot that you can connect to the train in a more cohesive way.

I agree with some of the other commenters that the filtered photographs felt a little lacking. Filtered photographs can be a good place to start, but they can also feel a bit flat and lazy, and sometimes, it's hard to tell what's even going on. Drawing on top of them can make them look better and also draw the player's attention to the places that can be clicked, which is another problem I had here- sometimes I had to use the tab feature to figure out which places could be investigated, and which couldn't. If you don't feel like drawing on the photographs is something you could do well, I suggest working with an artist. There are plenty of people out there who are talented, but new to game art and looking to develop their skills.

I did enjoy the exploration, though I felt that:

1) There could have been more to do than just collecting things. Finding the button made the game more fun, but there was only that one extra piece of gameplay. I would have really enjoyed unlocking the train for exploration piece-by-piece, or just having more ways to interact with the train besides hunting and clicking. Hunting and clicking can be frustrating and monotonous (especially with the filtered photographs) so having a few more things to do could break that up and make it more exciting for the player.

2) The red things were a little... strange and unexplained? How do they affect anything? What is the protagonist doing when he "activates" the train? If he doesn't know what's going on with the train, then how does he know how to activate it? I like mystery, I like protagonists not always knowing what's going on, but this felt like it was too much. Maybe show something happening to the train as the player collects the red things, and some way to activate it that the player can see?

3) The endings didn't feel very satisfying. You just... hear that the protagonist escaped, without much explanation or tie-in to the story. What does he feel? If you're asking us to care about this character, give us some closure for his story. A positive ending for a game is supposed to be kind of like a reward for the player- maybe a cute image, maybe a nice little bit of story, maybe something fun to do at the end. There wasn't much in the way of closure.