IGF Feedback: Tanaka’s Friendly Adventure

Tanaka’s Friendly Adventure is a short exploration game created by Bentosmile that I later ported to Flash and encouraged submission to the Independent Games Festival 2010 Main Competition.

Below is the copy-pasted section of the IGF e-mail I received covering the game scores and comments from the panel of IGF judges.

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Tanaka’s Friendly Adventure scored best in: Overall

And scored worst in: Technical

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I really enjoyed the simplicity of this game, once I wrapped my head around trying to uncover all of the paths to get all of the friends. Very interesting work! I do feel like it is missing something though. Perhaps conflict isn’t where this type of game should go, but maybe something to create more of a game experience. Perhaps a map to help you, which you must earn by exploring. Anyway, I found myself exploring for quite a while looking for new friends.

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I really enjoy games like this which change the concept of what games are – in this case, the ‘completion’ but the ability to return repeatedly is really fun, and the collection screen makes you want to keep playing. Bravo.

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This is the beginning to a game, but is far from complete. At some level I want to appreciate a game that doesn’t have combat, but there needs to be something that makes it a game. I like to think of good gameplay by giving the player a choice, which is essentially a trade off. Much like life, if you go left, you get the money, if you go right, you get friendship, for example, but it’s very difficult to get both. Good game design presents the player with choices. In this game, my choices do not close doors or make a tough trade off.

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Deceptively uber-simple. The humor was awesome, I loved the individual random friend stats and descriptions. This is deeper than it appears on first run-through, but I still just wish there were a little more game here. However, I found myself thinking about it when I was lying in bed that night after I’d first played it, plotting out little strategies.

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Cute experience. I don?t feel motivated to try out all the different paths though since it takes no skill whatsoever, just paperwork or a good memory.
The animals are cute and it?s fun to see them in the ?zoo.?
Sounds and music makes me want to stay longer but it?s not enough.

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It’s cute – and they’re onto something conceptually in terms of paths and content collection, but there’s just not enough entertainment value to what it does offer. The bulk of the experience seems to be in perusing the “friends” that have been met, and the amusing descriptions of them (which are very well written…they’re brief, but all well crafted) – but the “gameplay” seems to be little more than alternate route finding

Tags: igf, igf2010, news, tanaka

This entry was posted on January 7, 2010 at January 7, 2010 and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.