Sunday Game Jam Review Thread (July 16 2023)

atomicshoreline
2023-07-17T06:43:51Z

Welcome back to the third weekly game jam thread.

Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam.

Longtime viewers AKA the 5 people to who looked at the 2 previous threads will have no doubt noticed I missed last week. During an unusually normie weekend I was busy awkwardly standing in a corner at not 1 but 2 different parties and was super tired when I got back I did not want to write this up. I hope you can forgive me. To ensure that this does not happen again I am moving this thread to Sundays which should give me more time flexibility and something to look forward to instead of sitting around dreading the upcoming work week.

Also as a bit of compensation for your troubles today I am linking 2 top quality longer games that you can really sink your teeth into this week. I am 100% cool with someone discussing games from any week in future threads so don’t sweat the time commitment and don’t feel you have to finish the whole game before returning to discuss it. Quality video games shouldn’t have an expiration date.

With that said lets get into the this weeks games

Infinimall: Dream Job!

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Authors: Pandora
Genres: Visual Novel

Coming to you with love from the the folks in the the proverbial vaporwave-dreamworld-liminal-mall-urbex complex, Infinimall: Dream Job! Is a dating sim visual novel set inside a surreal mall and originally written for the NaNoRenNo 2023 Jam. Featuring the Doomer Girl like bisexual disaster Mia(I wonder if its the same Mia as Heart Beat) as she navigates a dead end job and tries to get her dead end life back on track.

According to my calculations the game has about 100 book pages worth of dialogue over all its branches which should be a breeze for the text-only titans that walk the halls of this site.

Hypnagogia

Platforms Windows
Authors: sodaraptor
Genres: Adventure

Our second game is also taking us to the dreamworld but this time its inspired by late 90s PSX aesthetics, in particular, the cult classic game LSD: Dream Emulator which is fitting given it comes from LSD Jam 2020. It centers on a gameplay loop of exploring diverse dream worlds inspired by dreams from the developers own dream diary. I think the game is best thought as a sort of drug trip or spiritual experience in the same way as something like Superliminal. Go in with an open mind and I think most people can get something from the experience. This goes double for the games sequel Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams which is available without DRM on itch.io or with DRM on Steam if you are into that sort of thing.

However long it takes after you awaken from your strange dream let me know what you are thinking. Its okay I won’t die if you don’t like the same games I do though I will be sad. Its lonely walking the path of niche games but you can’t make friends if you never share.

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