YEEEEAH IM STILL IN
seriously though, I can probably release the source code as well… And the other games are worse, so I’m glad this one stayed in!
3 Likes
Ok so, I just need a palate cleanser. I’ve technically already played this when it dropped.
venice vacation, by Tabitha
venice vacation is a micro lite-VN made in INK, following two friends on vacation. It has a tiny conversation, one single choice and two endings. It’s a silly little thing around an absurd joke (which I don’t want to spoil). It rests on visual comedy.
Why it is not a REALLY BAD IF game?
~ It was funny. Especially the deadpan delivery of one ending, and the wheeeeee movement of the sprite in the other.
Why it should be considered REALLY BAD IF?
~ It’s just one joke. There isn’t much more.
Final decision: Only if “too short a length” is considered bad…
5 Likes
Yes, please! Mad science code should be shared with the world, so we can all do some code crimes!
It’s not a REALLY BAD game though 
could have been made REALLY WORSE
~
Ok, I’m off for real! I will continue these tomorrow maybe!
3 Likes
…is it? My game is even shorter…
Tempted to do this, actually, once finals end so I have something braindead to do.
4 Likes
That’s the thing. I am not sure if length is good or bad, or just dependent on the game. TWMAG took me 5 hours and it was a lot, Terrence was shorter in playtime but truly felt longer than it actually was. Tabitha’s games were supper short but neither are truly the worst? (I also really like short games (see the Neo Twiny review thread ).)
Maybe tiny games are truly bad, maybe they’re not really. We’ll see if this jam will give us an answer 
4 Likes
You missed some things!!
- Ugly/clashing/painfully bright colors of the UI
- Mismatching art style of sprites and background
- No indication of which person is saying each line
- The “story” making absolutely no sense
- The background actually being a painting of Amsterdam in the 17th century, not Venice
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- I mean it’s not great but it’s still contrasted enough.
- It wasn’t that much of a mismatch. I’ve played VNs where that was the case, and this is faaaaaaar superior than those (imagine 3D sprites on children’s doodle level).
- It starts with just one character, so I assumed the order that way
- Fair but it was also funny because of it.
- I actually recognised the painting the first time around (I’ve been to the Rijks many time ) so it made it funny from the start.
4 Likes
Wow! It was cool to get a review this quickly. Thanks so much. This was the intended effect.
Overpricing the game vastly was one of those last-minute touches I just had to add once I saw it. In a future update, I may guilt-trip the reader for not having paid the requested donation.
Those were “bad” I didn’t want. They’re largely related to Itch needing case-sensitive files while Windows doesn’t. (Also, I Did Something with the sounds.)
It’s fixed now, if you dare to go back (and use the option to skip the timed text, I guess. It won’t hurt my feelings too much.) I have a hard time organizing stuff for release and checking it in Twine. I know what to do, but there are so many things to check off. Perhaps this cost me my hoped-for 1 out of 5!
So that is fixed in an update, and the juice and cookies room is expanded too. (It’s about the only real branch in the game.) I would not blame you for not wanting to revisit it, especially with all the other bad games to slog through. I won’t spoil the changes publicly (at least not yet,) as I’m proud of what I did. It’s a good piece of bad writing.
Hot Pockets, of course, have no vegetarian options. They’re not that sort of food. Perhaps they did once, but I imagine they sold really, really badly, as they’re not exactly catering to the health food crowd.
Hot Pockets are a bit of a cliche as “food the antisocial blogger eats.” They are maybe a US thing, and I think they were particularly popular to reference back in 2010. I could have gone with ramen, of course, but it didn’t have enough weird flavors. Plus it had (gasp) vegetarian (or at least vegetarian flavored) options.
There’s more I’d like to put in a post-mortem.
========
But wait.
What is this?
Bing AI has a review of it, too!
“You’re the Judge Now, Dog!” is a very, very bad entry into a game jam for very, very bad creations. [t’s a quirky and unconventional experience, but it’s not likely to be considered a “good” game in the traditional sense. If you’re looking for more dog-related games, you might want to explore titles like “Nintendogs” and beyond, which feature cute four-legged friends in gaming2. However, keep in mind that “You’re the Judge Now, Dog!” intentionally embraces its absurdity and unconventional design, so it might appeal to players who enjoy offbeat experiences. You can find the game on its itch.io page.
========
I will cherish this terrible, over-general review replete with misunderstanding of the context of “dog” in ways your more thoughtful review can never be cherished. I hope you understand.
However, what I might not cherish is the realization that Bing has rated many of my other efforts, ones I worked very hard to try to make good, as “quirky” as well. (Yes, I’ve asked.)
8 Likes
3 Likes
Welp… I got distracted today, messing around with binksi. I’ll still try to play a couple tonight.
BUT first: we must speak about the elephant in the room. And I’m talking about:
I PROMISE I AM WORKING ON THE GAME by… me.
It was raised by multiple participants that I, the organiser of the best jam ever, dared to not only great not-a-bad game, but that this game was actually… pretty great. And they were not the only people who felt the same way: just look at those comments.
So let’s see where I may have gone wrong here:
I PROMISE I AM WORKING ON THE GAME is a binksi game, set inside a computer (my computer, but like a lite-version), where you can explore different programs my moving the sprite mouse around, snoop through documents, answer some messages, or procrastinate… It is a half-joke half-mini-real-life snapshot (the “bad” messages in there are a toned-down version of the real thing). There’s one “ending” (though bitsy’s loop back to the start automatically).
Essentially a day in the life of me, as I keep struggling to work on a project I haven’t touched in about 2 years (not the only one lol). Turns out, writing is hard.
Why it is not a REALLY BAD IF game?
~ too many people enjoyed it (I mean… that’s the big one against this entry, isn’t it…)
~ “the pixel art is pretty good” (verbatim comment)
Why it should be considered REALLY BAD IF?
~ Binksi (and bitsy’s in general) are so annoying to navigate. You will seriously end up hurting your fingers if you play too long with them. And it’s faster to quickly press the arrow buttons multiple times in a row than long-pressing (the animation is really slow). [my reasoning for making a fairly “large” binksi where you have to walk around a lot, turns out, it’s not even a good argument ]*
~ typos (I think?) and text formatting.
~ very whiny.
Final decision: Out of fairness for this jam and the other entries, it has to be disqualified… 
*I mean… look at InGirum. It is much larger than this (and also much better) and people still loved it!
8 Likes
I’ll have to try harder in the next Really Bad IF jam, it seems!! 
5 Likes
We can always get worse at making games
4 Likes
OK, some actually serious affairs now.
The Simuloid Affair: Infinite Possibilities, by C.E.J. Pacian
The Simuloid Affair: Infinite Possibilities is a short timed (turns) parser starting (well, more like ending) with a bang! You wake up from a strange dream and find on the other side of the barrel of a gun pointed at you, your partner in crime, hunting you down for being… not a human, it turns out. OH! and there’s also a bomb that will blow up in a minute (about a dozen-ish turns?).
The title suggest an infinite amount of ways to get yourself out of this sticky situation, with many ways of escaping and be free of all of this, maybe even learn if you’re truly a simuloid or someone up-high has done this to get back at you. Kinda gives me heavy Blade Runner vibes.
Except… well. You’re not really a dexterous person (somehow!!! considering you’re a hunter??), so getting out of there is tricky. Really tricky. Almost impossibly tricky.
If you don’t manage to get out, or just want to stay a bit longer because Ursula (your partner) needs to unload (hehe, she has a gun) what’s on her mind, you’d learn quite a bit about yourself, how everything got to this point, and your environment.
Who am I kidding… not a single command works in this game. You can try your best! But you will get at best a proper fail response, or just a random one that is barely related to what you just typed.
The game (I started with failing on purpose at first) has such a great setup that you can’t believe it would just end like this. I mean, I should have expected it, but it still managed to pull the rug under me EVERY SINGLE TIME. Damn it.
Why it is not a REALLY BAD IF game?
~ the premise and expectations on this entry is just… so cool.
Why it should be considered REALLY BAD IF?
~ Not a single command will work.
~ You can only fail.
~ Frustrating as hell, because it tricks you into thinking you’ll play a masterpiece.
~ I WILL SCREAM IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.
Final decision: Please, make the actual working/non-bad version of this game, it sounds insane and I really would want to play it.
9 Likes
NEXT UP before I need to go:
Work In Progress, by Hidnook
Work In Progress is a game(?) where you are in a room and there is a book in front of you. And… well, try to test out some commands, though you won’t go far. Or anywhere.
Because… the reason can be found within the source code (available for download on itch too!), where the 99% of the document is actually comments, for a game we were supposed to have, but never got. This is, as the title suggests, the WIP of that wanted bad game.
An ironic? side-note: this “game” with notes of what it could have been if they had the time was submitted at the start of the jam (second entry to be submitted). With 25 days left before the deadline. And has not updated since
Why it is not a REALLY BAD IF game?
~ I don’t think there is anything to save that one.
Why it should be considered REALLY BAD IF?
~ Nothing works.
Final decision: Can it even be considered a game?
Did my due diligence though: WIPtranscript.txt (1.1 KB)
(about as big as the source code )
7 Likes
Wow, you went a lot further in your transcript than I expected!
My crowning achievement is replicating the default item text as a room description. I can claim the award for shortest code ever! Or maybe the greatest comment-to-code ratio.
I saw the jam, thought, “I have so many great ideas I can take from the forum and implement”, looked at my schedule, realized I have finals, and gave up. Alternatively, I came, I saw, and I conquered within 15 minutes.
Please say you played with 4’33" in the background.
4 Likes
Not even “quit.” 
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Does that mean I wasn’t disqualified for making a good game? 
Wait…
I do have some detailed thoughts on that:
Summary
Game mechanic spoilers: the parser has been completely hobbled. Basic pattern matching determines which category of error message you deserve will be most helpful. I spent some time researching error messages from different libraries and games. While doing that, I noticed that one of Inform’s default responses is simply “Done.” so I threw that in there for a laugh. It’s up to you whether receiving that message counts as “doing something”.
6 Likes
My Disappointment is Immeasurable and My Day is Ruined
(also no, it hasn’t been disqualified. It’s bad, as in it sets your expectations high and does not meet it one bit!)
Like I said, I did my due diligence
Unless someone wrote a novel in comments of their code, you probably won. with a ratio of 1:8.3 (words/comments).
We were denied a probably great terrible game 
Input command to do something
3 Likes
On Manon’s disqualified entry, has given me an interesting insight:
interactive dev diary !!
who wants to experiment with the interesting concept ?
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
2 Likes
Less dev diary, more personal/autobiographical IF games, I’ve seen some made in bitsy on itch. It’s pretty cool.
(don’t tempt me, Piergiorgio! I have too much I want to do already).
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