I don't know if I'm just missing something, but after I get the passport, the guy asking for it says that I don't have it, other than that, the game is good!

@yellowzombie I'll look into that in the morning, it's possible I made a mistake with the event flags. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Same here, no dice after getting the passport. I'll try the updated version tomorrow then :-)

Let me say for now that I really like your game so far! The graphics are really cute. Some of them could be a little clearer, e.g. in the apartment the bathroom floor tiles look like walls but this does not really hinder gameplay in any way.

A little technical thing, I can walk into solid tiles here and there, usually only from some angles, not from others.
Also the doors do not really indicate whether they can be used or not. In the apartment building it is clear, one door has a different color than the others but when you walk around town you usually only see one door at a time, making it hard to know which of the two tones of brown this specific door has. Of course you can just try going in so no deal breaker here either. I am just trying to give you some hints for improvement :-)

The intense, arcady music is very cool! It really fits the story.

A very nice detail is the fact that whenever we tell somebody that we do not have much time left, we actually tell them the current number of minutes. Well done, very nice attention to detail there!

You did a great job on the writing and world creation. Everything feels right, the music, the graphics and the characters give you the feeling of being in a tiny, real world. Sometimes I will see games where one character looks out of place or where the sounds don't fit the graphics but your game is really cohesive.

Great job! Keep up the good work!
I will rate your game as soon as ratings are activated.

@yellowzombie The event flags are fixed now. There's always something stupid I miss before I hit "Publish"!

@gonutz Thanks for the feedback! The unusable doors should be all the same colour, both in and out of buildings. I'm glad you like the music! It's my first time composing in TIC-80 and I wasn't sure how it come out, though I like the steady heartbeat rhythm it has. I noticed the collision detection issues but didn't have enough time to try and fix them as I was frantically trying to piece the rest of the game together. I'll take a look when I have more time.

Hi ! I've seen your game when you published your title screen and I instantly liked the story!

Now that it is published, some thoughts:

1) great game

2) the story: good job having about two characters each room with one being useful and the other not. Lets you deliver some silly stories behind our own and it works good.

3) the music : really good ... but for 10 loops max ^^' after it gets super annoying. But that fits the "I have only one freaking thing one my mind right now" experience. Plus you were compo so ...

> TIP : did you thought of making some silent moments here and there ? to lighten the repetitiveness and having different types of tension ? (maybe the moment we enter the gym and we know for ...?)

4) the playtrhough : 15min is a bit too much when we run like a desesperate guy across the city, as I did. Thus, I ended the game in less than half of the time (I had like 11min or smtg). So: a) this is cool because I didn't know it until the end and thus was stressed out as intended; but b) maybe to reenforce the difficulty you could strech out the city and/or add more useless people and/or keys and doors. idk

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Also :
- sometimes the hitboxes for speaking to a chracter are a bit tiny
- in the scene with the police officer, at a moment we are speaking but it's marked "polieman" instead of our name.

Overall great game dude !! Really liked it, fits the theme, is not too long nor too boring and you manage to do something that feels big with little. Which is a good sign of nailing compo, in my opinion.

see ya ;)

Hey, I am back and I played it through - great game still! ;-)

Two more little things that I noticed:

The position to talk to somebody is often a bit off. For example to talk to the police officer, you have to stand one tile to the right, not directly under her/him.

At the end it says "Press Z to play again" but pressing Z does nothing.

Again, these are minor things and I just list them here in case you want to go back and fix them. As I understand the rules, fixes like these are allowed because they do not alter your game in any significant way, they are just bug fixes.

Anyway, great game, thanks for the effort you put into it. Nice ending by the way :-)

@pl4typus: Yeah, I thought 15 minutes might be a bit too long in the end. I wasn't sure how long it would take people to read through the dialogue and figure out what to do. I wanted to put more explorable buildings in the game, but I just ran flat out of time. Good job spotting the dialogue issue, I'll fix that.

@gonutz: Those are serious enough issues that I'll allow myself to fix them. I knew about the wonky chat hitboxes but wasn't quite able to fix them in time. I'll get another patch out tonight. And I'm glad you enjoyed the ending!

Thanks for all the feedback so far, it's really appreciated.

@f1krazy Yay! I'll go replay it in a bit to give a better opinion of the game

I liked it a lot ! It was fun and the game respects the theme perfectly :v:

Wow. It is so sad, even without any kind of effects. Good game

I really loved the concept, the sounds, the art, everything but sometimes it was really hard to hit the conversation hitbox of some characters. When I got to the fastfood I couldn't speak to the girl behind the counter unless I glitch through the counter but then i got stuck inside so I couldn't finish it. But I loved the experience until that point, it's an awesome game! :)

@tamail Collision detection is the bane of my existence. I hate it. (Also, just for the record, you don't need to speak to the fast food cashier to complete the game - although you do need to speak to the other two people standing at counters.)

Wow I really enjoyed this game! The graphics are nice, and the story is so good too, all the objectives are clear and I didn´t get stuck at any point as usually happens to me with this kind of games. You did a really good job, congrats!

Nice work! I was actually thinking about doing a similar in terms of plot with our game but we ended up going in another direction. Glad to see someone did it effectively, would have never thought to do it in such a cool retro style. Kinda has an "Earthbound" vibe to it. Well done!

Yay, got it with 11 minutes to spare. I like it, I like these ridiculously circular puzzles from time to time. The art style adds a bit of cartoonishness to the panic which helps round it out. The music also helps with this, but it is a bit much, especially looped the whole time.

People have already pointed this out, but I do agree that the collision detection for talking was a bit iffy--sometimes I'd stand on top of the person and it wouldn't work. That plus the time pressure lead to some pretty hectic moments (even if we didn't end up needing a full 15 minutes).