Play fairytale
Sapphire Snowe: The Bear, The Beast & The Blizzard's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| AUDIO | Did the game have great music or sound design | #71 | 2.887 | 5.000 |
| VISUAL | Did the game have nice graphics or art direction | #92 | 2.887 | 5.000 |
| MOOD | Did the game have atmosphere or make you feel something | #124 | 2.309 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #132 | 2.078 | 3.600 |
| IDEA | Was this game super interesting or innovative | #162 | 1.155 | 2.000 |
| FUN | Was the game satisfying to play or did it bring you joy | #169 | 1.155 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Let people know how long you've been working on the game
2 months (originally started for Winter VN Jam 2023, but was unable to fully finish by the end of the jam due to Christmas stress and stuff, so worked on getting it finished in January 2024 :3)
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Comments
Let me just start out by saying that as someone on the Autistic Spectrum I do in some ways understand where Saffie is coming from. The art is very nice and I liked the music, I thought the option to choose the gender of the voice of Snowe was a really cool feature as its something i don't think I've seen before. I know this is just a feature in whatever engine you are using (or at least from what I'm told) but it made me happy to see in the history log that little clock feature that allows you to go back in time. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit but it took me till half way through the game to connect the character Snowe with the name name of the title. Anyway I ended up with ending 6 all in all i thought it was a pretty well made game so you should be proud of it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out the game and leave this comment! :3
That’s great to hear that you can relate to aspects of Saffie and her story! I was honestly a little afraid of even mentioning ASD in the story because, while it was a way for me to work through my own feelings of recently being diagnosed as autistic myself, I realise that everyone on the autistic spectrum will have very different experiences and outlooks on things. For that reason, I thought it was probably better to lean more into the anxiety and depression side of things than write too much about ASD specifically.
I also didn’t want to end up accidentally making Saffie me, haha. So I was very careful to only include elements of myself and my life in her story and try to make her her own character :3
When I got diagnosed with ASD back in October last year as an adult, my immediate feeling was relief at finally having an answer to so many things, followed by deep despair x3 Despair for my future, and despair at the realisation that a lot of the trauma in my past was a direct result of being autistic and not knowing it >.<
It means a lot that you liked the music because that was what started the project in the first place. I was so deeply depressed after my diagnosis that I didn’t have the will to do the things I normally enjoy doing, like making games. When I eventually felt a spark of interest to get back on my PC, I was just messing around with some samples and 1 of them made me feel so strongly that I started making a track around it. That spiralled into me making an entire soundtrack as a way to process and vent my feelings, and the words for the story came afterwards, haha.
That’s also great to know that you appreciated the choice for the gender of Snowe’s voice :D That’s a feature I’ve been trying my best to include in all of my games for a while now :3 It’s a lot of extra work, but I like how it can make a project more inclusive. When I write my characters, I don’t really imagine them as being specifically male or female, and I’m a big fan of androgynous looks, so it all fits well having different voice options :3
Yeah, it is a very handy feature to have the backlog and rewind stuff! I think most visual novel engines have a backlog feature to keep a log of all the text, but as far as I’m aware, not all of them have the rewind text feature. That’s something I found immediately attractive about Naninovel :D
I think ending 06 is probably the most innocent ending of them all, and I guess the most healthy one for both Saffie and Snowe, haha. Thanks so much again for playing and for leaving such a kind comment :3
Before I leave my comment I wanted to say im not really a fan of visual novels so Im trying to push those feelings aside while I rate. :)
The art and ui/general design in this was great. I got ending 4. I honestly didnt connect well with the story, especially the ending, but I get how some people would I just dont think I was the audience for that. The music was great, and you have it FULLY voiced which is huge, if you ask me. My attention span is too low to read for long periods of time so the voice-over was great for me.
The author words after it was done was pretty touching. Its nice that you dropped the info in there. It was also cool that the player's choice decides the character/voice you run into later.
Well, it means a lot that you even decided to check it out if you're not a VN fan :3 I honestly didn't expect anyone to even rate it for the jam, haha. I figured I'd submit it though since it fits with the spirit of the jam + I'm a bit of a jam addict in general x3 It's a really neat jam concept! I'd normally manage to complete my jam projects within the jam timeframe, but this is one of the few projects that I started for a jam last year where I couldn't manage to fully finish by the end of it thanks to the madness of Christmas encroaching and other irl issues.
I wouldn't worry too much about the jam ratings anyhow since from what I've been told during previous jams, the jam ratings don't really count for all that much anyways like regular itch ratings do. (Someone told me that with normal itch/non-jam ratings, anything less than 5* is damaging to a project's visibility on the site which is so silly >.<)
Hehe, yeeeeah, the story in this project definitely won't resonate with everyone or even be that many people's cup of tea, I imagine x3 I'm glad that you can see how it might for some people though even if it wasn't for you :3 Since I initially wrote it as a way to soothe myself during a dark time, I did wonder if it was even wise to put it out there at all! In the end, I figured it can't exactly do any harm, haha.
That's fantastic to hear about the music and voice acting! Having stuff voiced is one of my main motivators for even making games. If I know I can't get a script voiced, my passion kinda fizzles out >.< Plus I'm dyslexic, so it really helps when in the testing phase to have stuff voiced so I don't have to slog through silent text over and over again xD
I really appreciate you taking the time to play through it and leaving feedback as well! Thank you so much and I hope you have a fantastic rest of the year ahead :3
(PS. I need to poke one of my friends and show her your game because she absolutely loves cooking games of all kinds!)
Wow. Definitely couldnt tell you were dyslexic - the text seemed very well put together. Im trying to get use to game jams; I tried for the last 6 years but wasnt able to finish on time for them until after switching to godot in the last year because I put myself in my work and its hard to release something that just...isnt ready yet.
I think its cool that you wrote the story to help with your real-life issues. I think video games are one of the most expressive types of art - it is definitely the most interactive art mediums.
I went ahead and followed you. Im a fan of people who put their passion into their work and id like to see other work you do.
Thanks for poking your friend - Id love to hear her feedback. :)
Weeeell, I also have ASD, and I think that makes me quite strict with myself on sorting out any errors in my spelling and grammar, haha. I usually just type up a draft first however it comes out, but then before I put the text in-game, I always run it through Grammarly to help me catch anything that needs correcting! :3 It doesn’t manage to find everything, but it does help a hell of a lot, haha.
I’ve heard good things about Godot! I’ve never used it myself, but I’m curious about it, especially since it seems like a lot of devs who used Unity switched to Godot after all the crap that went down with Unity x3 I’m kinda stuck with Unity for the time being though because I pretty much only make visual novels, and the software I use is a Unity extension >.<
I feel you on not wanting to release stuff when you know it isn’t ready yet! When you put so much passion and time into a project, you want it to be the best it can possibly be when you release it out into the wild, and if you know yourself that it’s not at that point, it’s kinda painful to release it :( I had that happen a few years ago with a game I was trying to make for a Valentine's-themed game jam >.< I was really busy with other stuff at the time so I didn’t have as long as I normally would to work on a project, and even though I put hours and hours into it, it still felt rushed because of the jam deadline, and I almost just deleted the entire project because I was so ashamed of it x3 In the end, I decided to release it still because I didn’t want it to completely go to waste. But it’s not a project that I’m proud of at all. It just didn’t turn out the way I hoped it might, and it has the most typos and stuff of any of my games, which I find quite irritating even now years later, haha. I will probably try to go back over it at some point and fix what needs fixing, but yeah, sometimes I do wish I just didn’t realise it at all cos it’s not representative of my usual standards >.<
I totally agree about video games being one of the most expressive types of art :D And as you say, definitely the most interactive! They’ve always been a big part of my life. I was depressed and stuff even as a kid from the moment I had to start going to school, haha. Video games were my sanctuary :3 They were the greatest form of escapism I had, and if not for being able to lose myself in those stories and immersive myself in other worlds, I doubt I would have even made it through school at all!
When I started getting into game dev, I found that the escapism was even more powerful when trying to make games than it was when playing them, haha. So I got kind of addicted to trying to make visual novels x3 It really does help me cope with life because it means my passion feels like it has a purpose :3
That’s so sweet of you to say! I’m also intrigued to see what sorts of things you make in the future, so I’ve followed you right back, haha. It’s kind of funny because I once read someone say in a Discord server that devs don’t follow other devs, or that visual novel devs don’t play visual novels, and I just thought… huh? But I follow loooooads of devs of all different sorts of games! x3 And I love playing visual novels as much as I do making them, haha. I don’t give myself enough time to actually play games these days cos my brain always guilt-trips me into thinking I should be working on my own projects every time I try to relax and enjoy others people’s games >.< but still, I’ll never stop being a gamer just because I started trying to make games x3
I’ve let my friend know about your game, but she’s got weird work hours for the rest of the week, so she’s probably not gonna get a chance to check it out until sometime next week >.< but whenever she does, she’ll probably let me know her thoughts right away, haha. If she doesn’t end up leaving a comment or something herself, then I’ll just post whatever she says to your game page I guess :3 Tbh, I don’t actually know if she has an account here on itch yet cos she plays most stuff either through Steam on her laptop or on her Switch!