Experiments in inter-medium semantic enrichment: results

It's been about two weeks since I released St George V Dragon and the jam's officially over. 

I was curious in general about how it would be received, and I was interested in two points in particular. 

The first one regarding the reach and permeability  of the creative process I underwent making the game. Some of the comments address it directly: "I didn't expect that, and it is what makes the game good ! ", "And there I was trying to play as St George when I realized I was on the wrong side of the fight.", "What a sudden twist of events", "Cool interpretation of the tale!".  

Players were in deed expecting to be St George upon clicking play, and it was experienced as surprise when they discovered they were not.  

The second one regarding game mechanics and deliberate lack of context as part of the design. The idea was to replicate a situation in which you don't have time to assess who you are but your reaction remains a prerequisite for engagement. The intention was for players to lose the first iterations at least to set the conditions for the lose state, the real painting hanging in the museum, and amplifying the win state, the dragon alive and resting peacefully.  Some of the comments address it: "The description is on point and I was quickly able to figure out what to do", " During my first 10–20 attempts I kept thinking, ‘Stop defeating me, woman, please :))’. But once I figured it out, it turned into, ‘Ha! You deserved that.’ ", "died more times than I would like to admit, but it felt great when I finally won", " first 2 battles I was bested, by round 3 I was hot on the mouse and ready to go".  

A lot of players commented positively on the art and visuals, which I understood from the beginning to be the hook to pique your interest, but I wasn't expecting so many comments about it. Definitely the strongest of the components, right off the bat. 

The 'strike any key' functionality didn't permeate, nobody mentioned it, and while it remains a semantic component, it doesn't make or break the experience. This might be a gold nugget for future projects-if it doesn't make or break the experience, adds to reinforce but not to aggregate and might fly under the radar, is it even worth considering? 

And last but not least, people like napping under the sun as much as dragons.