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Captions's itch.io pageNames and Email Addresses of Team Members
natalie@cuthbert.co.za
Categories Your Team is Eligible For
Narrative, Diversity (trans?), Overall
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Names and Email Addresses of Team Members
natalie@cuthbert.co.za
Categories Your Team is Eligible For
Narrative, Diversity (trans?), Overall
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Love the narrative design! Beautiful story... Here's a link to my playthrough. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1646635912?t=00h26m48s
Absolutely loved this. The way the visuals and mechanics complimented the narrative was just awesome. The experience overall was deeply moving.
And I found the game play compelling with it's constant choices and surprises with what each image would be. Definitely feels like something that could be expanded on or further explored.
Being such a personal, specific story I didn't feel like there was need for branching narrative or different endings (in fact I think that kind of thing would be a misstep). If you do land up wanting to work on it post jam, I think the addition of audio would add to the emotional resonance of the game.
Overall, this is just a massive win. High fives Natalie!
This was a deep experience and I appreciate the inclusion into the overall narrative.
My only change would be to have more image options to cover each of the responses. This coupled with a branching story could lead to a more nuanced playthrough.
This seems like a really personal story and I feel privileged getting to vicariously experience a slice of it. Its moving. I don’t want to comment on the craft of the game because I don’t feel like that’s what this is about (And I know you’re a crafty badass). As an expression of experience its beautiful. Thanks for sharing <3
Thank you for sharing the personal story - a part of me enjoyed the abstraction of the story, but another part of me wondered whether the point of the game was a ‘choose your own adventure type game’ or whether the player was captioning the image. Perhaps the abstraction in the game is a part of the intended game. With regards to the theme its likely easier to read this comic than to experience this, so I think it fits the theme pretty well and I found it really interesting to read this. Thank you for sharing Natalie!
Story wise it didn't seem to make a difference if I started as a boy or a girl, by the time I got to the clothes swap in both my playthroughs it seemed to think that I started as a boy?
Instead of a single path I'd have liked more of a tree shape where I can start/end up anywhere on the spectrum, which can be an improvement for the future.
The art is a bit rough, some of the images came out a lot cleaner than others, and I'd have liked some more unique images for the options.
I played this yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since, although I didn't quite know what to say because it feels so personal and raw and I felt as if I was intruding on your life, except then I would remind myself that you chose to put this out there so it's ok, and you are expecting comments.
I am not fond of AI generated art but I think this is a rare example of a use case exception that works extremely well, especially since the generation is still not perfect and the imperfection (or, rather "something isn't quite right") is a good mirror for your state of mind in the narrative and the journey we experience as we go along with it. If you had made the art yourself it would have been perfect and wouldn't have had as much impact.
I like your specific choice of "New Yorker" style cartoons. (Not just the art style but because one often reads New Yorker cartoons and goes "...what?" - or maybe that's just me.)
The only thing I would change is in the cases where the options all lead to the same image, I would present the image up front so the "player" can select the caption that feels most right to them, giving them a bit of agency in the experience (or maybe that's contrary to the point of the story - one feels as if one has no agency?). With the options that lead to different images I would keep it as is, so the player picks the caption that seems most apt for the story and then the image appears as a surprise - and it may not quite be conveying what the person was expecting, which I think is very appropriate to the confusion and doubt that the narrative wants to convey.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback Mandy. It's appreciated 💕
The images as an addition were quite nice as an atmospheric effect, though I found the chapter pages with the different colours to be even more effective in establishing a mood. The narrative had nice pacing. The end felt like it left me hanging a bit, but it also ended with a very nice final line, so it at least had a sense of closure in that regard.
Some of the DALL-E images had a borderline disturbingness to them, and the ones with random almost-letters was quite strange to look at, making each choice an anticipation. I even went back to choose some different options for different pictures, and was mildly disappointed that some options had the same picture for all of them.
Interesting Typography and storytelling! This game would improve with human made illustrations ;)