I have to say, I’m a little surprised at the amount of attention that Judith has gotten! The reception has been pretty interesting, to say the least… There are some people who got the point of the game right away, saw what we were trying to do with it and liked it for what it was – but then there were others (quite a few others) who absolutely detested it. I can totally understand people not liking this – it’s naturally something which isn’t going to appeal to everyone… but I guess I don’t really understand the sheer amount of anger directed at it.
I think, maybe, some of the writeups and more positive comments led to people having very unreasonable expectations for it. Expectations that it can’t really live up to – after all, it really is just a sketch of a game, flawed and rushed in all sorts of ways.
In particular, a lot of the complaints I’ve read seem to be terribly concerned that it’s not even really a game – because it’s so linear and non-interactive. I feel like this isn’t really what these people are annoyed about, though – Judith doesn’t lack interactivity – hell, it’s about interactivity; what it lacks is gameplay.
And that’s fair enough! We did consider adding more complex puzzles to Jeff’s side of the game, but ultimately it wasn’t really what we were interested in doing with this. Perhaps we could have expanded the gameplay side of things without impacting on the real point of the story, I don’t know. In any case, I accept that it’s a valid reason not to like the game. I guess I just wish that people weren’t so angry about it…
Anyway. I’m a little tired of all the drama just right now. Thankfully Ludum Dare is this weekend – I’m looking forward to maybe doing something a little less serious.
