Loved this! Such a unique entry and a fun riff on the theme too. Having the option to play on an actual phone was a great touch (excuse the pun) and definitely felt like the best experience. That combined with authentic multi-tap typing really boosted the immersion!
It took a while for that mid-2000s SMS typing muscle memory to kick in, but when it did, it started to feel much more fluid than I expected. The glossary and single letter shortcuts were really helpful too. It might be tricky to implement but if you were thinking of developing it further, it would be cool to add the T9 predictive text model the 3310 used to speed things up even more.
This style of game very much hinges on the writing and you've done a great job there too. Just the right dose of humour and I like that you threw in the odd option just for fun (I've played way too much Monkey Island not to instinctively try to pocket any syrup I see lying around...). Great work!
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Cold Case's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #34 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #64 | 3.458 | 3.458 |
| Quality | #88 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Completeness | #93 | 3.375 | 3.375 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Thanks for the feedback! Not sure if I'll develop this any further, the typing gimmick is probably just annoying and cumbersome outside of the game jam context... But I had fun making it, so who knows.
I was actually thinking of implementing T9, and in this case that would probably be pretty easy (since every room has a list of valid commands, it would be easy to check the current input against all valid commands and figure out which one you're after), my main reason for not prioritizing it was that I couldn't decide on the best way to swap between t9 on and off.
I wish I'd had more time for adding odd options! It was not just for fun, it was partially to avoid the player getting "invalid command" every other sentence, but also to fill up the list of commands shown by the help command so that it doesn't just give away the correct options.
Thanks again for a helpful comment!
this entry is the one that embraces the nokia concept the most, i liked it, a well-written text adventure, like others in the comments said the fidelity to the nokia hardware is both the strength and the weakness of this game, very original idea but the player needs to be patient if he wants to go on with the story.
neat job!
Simple but solid story with well-written characters, a creative puzzle, and many interpretations of the theme. The additional mouse controls make the game accessible for everyone, 10/10.
Very original way of sticking to the Nokia theme, it's the first game I played this jam like this and it really hit the feels.
I love old text adventure games and this was a treat, very well executed. Also glad I tried it on my phone, it works well and makes it easier to type. Well done!
First of all, props for embedding your game in the Nokia "hardware", and for building out the controls with the actual buttons on the phone - incredible.
Also a really wonderful take on the theme and the restrictions. Extremely well done, I look forward to spending way too much time on this.
Thank you!
The "hardware" part actually happened almost by accident, I first intended the game to be played by keyboard only. But I want my games to be playable on phones and not just on PCs (and I had no idea how uncommon that was in this jam), and while I quickly found a way to display the phone's built-in telephone keyboard, it came with some challenges I couldn't quite solve (like how those keyboards have different layouts on Android and iOS, and how you have to enter a submenu (at least on Android) to select the * and # symbols), so in the end it was just easier to build my own keyboard instead. And I first intended to hide it in desktop view and only show it on phones, so that desktop view could show the display in full screen, but when I started scaling up the display, I realized that for a game almost only containing text - and in a quite large font, too - anything larger than 420 x 240 pixels felt way too large. So in the end I just kept the keypad in in both views.
Let me know if you need a walkthrough or something!
This is a very fresh idea for the Nokia game jam! The "help" menu was extremely helpful when figuring out what you could input, but it makes me wonder if using the number pad to pick from a list of numbered options would be a little more user friendly and faster to progress through the game. However, I think the old-school typing is a fun throwback and is a big part of the appeal to your game!
Thank you! Yeah, numbered options would definitely be a LOT more user friendly, but I'll gladly admit that for this game I prioritized gimmick and nostalgia over user experience. The moment I got the idea of making a text adventure game played on a Nokia, I knew that it sounded absolutely stupid but also that I *had* to try making it. Just picking options from a list would also be very similar to games I've made in the past, and I wanted to do something different enough to do a couple of things I've never done before - like a simple text parser.
Glad you liked the help menu! I intended for it to be very optional, so that you don't actually need it, but you can use it if you're stuck.
Very creative game! I liked and disliked how loyal it was to the Nokia lol. Although overall I like the idea and how true it was to the Nokia very nice!
super creative, I bet this is the only game submitted (?) with this type of old-school-typing integrated. lots of fun, great game!
hi! niceh game 5/5 innovation I said. This is truly a nokia 3310 experience! nice memories with those dials haha rated!
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