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A jam submission

The Way to Dusty DeathView game page

A Western in a can.
Submitted by ItGrindsAndItRoars — 1 day, 2 hours before the deadline
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The Way to Dusty Death's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted

The visual style of this little game is combined with the polyphonic "organ" music so harmoniously! I really wouldn't think that this things can go together.
The story is fragmentary and incomplete for me. But it perfectly holds my attention with intonation and dramatic tension and unusual characters.

Submitted

Thanks for the game!

The theatrical framing deliberately makes the player aware of the artificiality of the experience. Yet, it also sets up a very artistic tone and makes up for a reflexive and meditative experience. I liked how the player is told that they will 'play' the part of the character, but the word is used in a less gamey and more theatrical sense. This was definitely something different!

Submitted(+1)

I really loved the music and your art style. I would be really cool if the story branched a bit more, but obviously it's a jam game! Captured the western vibe nicely. 

This feels really well put together and a pretty solid effort all round. Good work.

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Host(+1)

The aesthetics were great for this from the colors to the music to the sprite work. The story is nice and the writing is quite solid. It feels like a traditional western, and I'd love to see more of it. I really like the frame around the visuals which gives it a more silent movie kind of vibe to me. Great work! 

Developer

Wow, thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm happy to have had the opportunity to participate in this game jam.

Submitted(+1)

I love the audio and graphics and writing on this! It's a great format for the story and the pixel art on this is beautiful. Would love to see this expanded upon the aesthetic is just gorgeous.

Developer(+1)

Thank you, that means a lot (especially from you, you seem to know aesthetics very well!) I'm not well practiced but I tried to jump around in perspective and keep it sorta cinematic. The music is actually excerpts from two classical guitar pieces from an old guitar class I transcribed (I had the sheet music lying around). 

Submitted(+1)

Nice format for a short story! The byte-sized texts were fun to follow and the limited palette pixel art was pretty appealing.

I played it twice out of curiosity to see if there were more variants to the story events, which were pretty subtle, but it could be something interesting to expand upon and give unique consequences to the dialogs.

Developer

Thank you for playing! Definitely in my next attempt at a visual novel-style story I'll have some consequential choices woven in with the less consequential dialogue. 

(+1)

Pretty nifty pixel art!

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

this is super beautiful. I look forward hopefully to a long novel.

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

I like the bite size narration and the pixel art. I wish there was some challenge and animation in the game so I could feel engaged with the narration.

Developer(+1)

Absolutely. I had in my original conception that there was going to be some quick-time events that would divide the narrative into a pass branch or a fail branch but figured I didn't quite have the time. Thank you for the response.

Submitted(+1)

This has a wonderful look and atmosphere also a really unique way to tell the story, great job!

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

God this was awesome! I loved all of it! I might have to go and play it again to see if there are alternate paths, but this is super cool. The style, the writing, just everything fits! Really really cool!

Developer(+1)

(I wouldn't recommend a second play-through, as it is pretty linear.)  It's great to hear you enjoyed it so much, thank you.

(+1)

Well done!

Beautifully thematic and cleanly executed.

Really made great use of the time and told a good story quickly.

Polished to a point that surpasses most jam games i have played!

Developer

Making it so simple allowed me to work on the details, I really wanted it to feel brief yet have some complexity and it sounds like it worked. That is wonderful to hear.