That means a lot! Thank you so much for checking it out :3 I can never tell whether anything horror-related that I make is actually scary or not because I consume so much horror that I’m kind of immune to it myself >.< haha. 

I sure hope the team is proud of what we managed to put together too :3 I’m certainly proud of them even if I can’t quite find it in me to be proud of myself and my parts in it! I certainly couldn’t have brought the idea to life without such a wonderful team!

That’s a very good point! I always feel somewhat helpless when it comes to accessibility in general with Naninovel/Unity having less easily available options for accessibility stuff >.< It’s one of the many things I’m envious of Ren’Py games for. I use Naninovel precisely because I’m not a programmer and have no desire to be, so adding anything into the actual options/settings menu of the games I create is something that’s far beyond my skill level, sadly :( I wouldn’t even have a clue how to begin. I can just about create new appearance for UI using art assets, but on the technical side of things, I’m hopeless.

As soon as I read what you said about having an option to turn off flashing images/lights, I started racking my brains to think of a way I might be able to achieve it in some form! The best I can think of is maybe to have a popup upon starting a new game that asks the player if they wish to turn flashing images on/off, then make a note of that preference so that when the script reaches a scene containing flashing images, it can switch to an alternate version of the scene minus the FX if a player has selected to turn them off.

The only problem with that is that if a player wanted to switch the setting mid-game, there would be no option to do that >.< They’d have to start a new game to access the setting again. I suppose that would still be better than not having the option at all though!

It’s definitely something I’ll keep in mind for future projects, so I really appreciate you bringing it up :3

That means a lot about the page! All the art assets for the page were designed by our lead artist, LazyPolarBear :D I feared my description was pretty poor in comparison to her beautiful art x3 writing stuff for the page is something I always struggle with every time I try to release a new project, haha. I’m not very good at being concise >.< so summarising anything is a nightmare. I’m glad you think it advertises the project decently ^-^

Hope you had a tasty hot chocolate!! I also treated myself to one last night but put a cheeky shot of banoffee vodka in it to help soothe my sore throat x3 Thanks so much again for taking the time to check out the game and for leaving such a lovely comment :3

That’s great :3 Thank you so much for checking the game out <3

Aww, well it means a lot that you decided to comment :3 Thank you very much for taking the time to play the game and for writing such sweet feedback ^-^

So glad you enjoyed it ^-^ And sorry about the Simon Says stuff x3 It’s only supposed to result in doom for story purposes, but I can see how it would be frustrating to never win!

Definitely wouldn’t have been possible without such an awesome team to work with :3 It’s a lot of fun and also pretty stressful trying to make jam deadlines sometimes when I give myself too much work to do x3 but I do love it! The madness of jams is pretty addictive, haha.

Thanks so much for checking it out and taking the time to leave a comment :3

Sorry my reply is so slow >.< I’ve been away from home going to visit different spooky attractions, and then I got ill in the process, haha. Caught some sort of nasty cold from somewhere!

Anyways, thank you so much for checking it out and for streaming it on your YouTube <3

I don’t blame you for wanting to punch Simon xD I certainly did while testing, haha.  Glad you found parts of it creepy cos I can never tell if something is genuinely creepy or not since I consume so much horror I’m pretty much immune to it at this point x3 Thank you again for all your kind words! I really appreciate you taking the time to play the game ^-^

Weeell, this is some kinda spooky coincidence cos I just finished playing your Spooktober game and was typing up a comment on your page when my browser crashed (thankfully, I'd already copied most of it to a text doc before it happened, so I only lost like a sentence, haha) and when I reopened it, I saw an itch notification saying you'd commented here! Which means you officially beat me to it x3

Anyways, my brain is trying to refuse to compute that I could possibly be anyone's favourite Spooktober writer x3 I feel so vastly inferior to everyone, haha. But I feel incredibly honoured that you think that and wish I could give you a giant hug of appreciation!! Thank you so much for playing this one and for leaving such lovely feedback <3

I certainly couldn't have made the game that we did without everyone's help and amazing talent :3 It was a bit of a bumpy road in places, and there were times we thought we might have to resort to cutting out big chunks of the game, but we made it in the end. I think this might actually be my first-ever project where 100% of the art is original (none of it by me, of course, since I can't draw to save my life T_T) Cos usually, even when I've had the opportunity to work with awesome artists during other jams, I have still ended up using a few paid or free assets here and there. This time, aside from the fonts and a handful of edited asset pack sound effects, everything else was original stuff made for the jam by various folks on the team ^-^

That's so cool that you tried both pairs of voices too! There was a point where it was looking like it might only be possible to get the BxB pairing fully finished in time for the jam deadline, but thankfully, with a lot of work and not much sleep, we got the full lot of voice combos in there, haha.

!!!There be spoilers below!!!

Hehe, weeeell, you were supposed to be able to play hangman as well as Simon Says, but that was one of the things that very swiftly got slashed with the scope knife cos I realised there was no way we'd have time to add 2 minigames, and also didn't wanna add to the list of needed UI assets >.< So yeah, instead Rhime just has a convenient headache if you try to play hangman xD

Speaking of managing to get stuff done, that point you mentioned about the "credits" well, we had a backup plan to end the game just before there if things went drastically wrong and it wasn't possible to actually finish the remaining sections of the game in time for the end of the jam, haha. I even had an extremely rough alternate draft of the hospital scene where Rhime's reasoning for what happened prior to that is similar but different x3

I would've been gutted if we had no choice but to go with that alternate version because it would've meant ditching the whole idea of Rhime being a deity and all the meta stuff, but it was better than not having an emergency backup plan at all I guess!

I totally agree about going meta being hard to pull off, and I'm still not entirely convinced we managed it here without being somewhat cringy in the process, haha, but it was a fun experiment to try out :3 I haven't done any forced quits in my projects since Impostor I think, and that was years ago back when I was still using Tyranobuilder!

Aaaand, I can also see people being annoyed by the shutdowns as well, yeah x3 In fact, I annoyed myself when I tried to playtest on my potato laptop because on my PC, the game launches pretty fast, but on my potato, it takes like 30+ seconds to launch sooo, it's kinda painful trying to get some of those endings when you have to keep re-launching the game on a terrible system T_T I really don't think using Naninovel/Unity helps the situation either cos I'm sure it would launch and load waaaay faster if it were a Ren'Py game!

I'm glad that you at least found it amusing more than annoying though :3 Tbh, it wouldn't surprise me if something similar had already been done in some form by someone else! Especially with how meta stuff seems to be getting more popular these days. With any luck though, there's nothing tooooo similar out there >.<

xD I love that you did a full psycho playthrough, haha. That's like what I do when I play stuff like Mass Effect, haha. Always pick the choices that come naturally to me on a first play (usually the 'good' choices), then 2nd play, full renegade :P

Yeeeeah, the cat was a bit of a contentious thing x3 I even said that while a CG would be cool for the shock factor, it might be too upsetting for a lot of people, so maybe it would be better to just have Li close their eyes, and handle that scene in darkness with just SFX in the hope it would somehow make it a bit less grim... but then NeonSaphir drew the CG anyways, and there was no way I was gonna waste it, so we just thought, screw it, it's not like the player is forced to take that action, so let's go for it x3 I have a bad feeling that the animal death content warning might put a lot of people off of even playing the game though >.<

And thank YOU for playing it and for being so sweet and supportive! It means a lot and I really appreciate it :3 Gonna go splurge my ramble about your game in your comments now! Mmmwwaahahahahahahaha :D

So glad you had fun with it! It was an absolute blast to make even if I was exhausted by the end x3 And hehe, yeeessss, unleash the inner troll :P 

We have the legend that is NeonSaphir / Xavier to thank for CG 12 (and also 13 + all the CGs in the first part of the game) cos CGs 12 & 13 were veeeeery late additions, haha. The idea popped into my head, so I figured I'd drop a quick message to the artists in the team discord server to ask if anyone happened to have the time/fancy drawing a couple of bonus CGs, fully expecting a hard nope with how little time was left, but then NeonSaphir volunteered and blew us all away with the result :D I almost didn't ask cos I felt like it was a bit cheeky >.< but I'm glad I did :3

I was kinda anxious about the timed choices cos as a player, I'm not a huuuuge fan of them in games x3 but I figured we'd run with it in this cos I felt like it suited the project. Thank you so much for being so sweet and taking the time to play it + leave feedback <3

Hooray for spoopy surprises :D 

I felt so bad asking the voice actors for so many meows x3 But then when they all delivered, I was blown away at how amazingly they went for it! I tried to explain to my brother how happy I was to get such a great variety of meows for the project, and he just gave me an unimpressed look like he often does, and said something along the lines of "What is wrong with you?" >.< haha.

So glad you liked the OST cos I poured my soul into it x3 I'm very rarely proud of or satisfied with whatever my contributions are to a project, but that soundtrack is one of the few things I at least feel content with for once xD I'm absolutely proud of the team as a whole though :3

To me, that's one of the most magical things about Spooktober Jam in general, the fact that you can team up with complete strangers and somehow make a game together just stuns me every year! (Well, not everyone on the team was a stranger x3 but a fair few were people I'd never met before who I was only able to team up with thanks to the jam recruitment channel on DevTalk!) It's such a cool thing to be able to do, and I love it a hell of a lot more than solo dev :D

Hearing you say you appreciate the pronoun and voice options for Linnet makes all the sleepless nights extra worth it ^-^ I can't lie, it did reach a point in the jam where I was beginning to regret the decision to have 2 voices for Linnet & 2 for Rhime xD Well, not regret having them because it was important to me, but regret trying to squeeze them in for the jam deadline >.< Because we were supposed to have an audio engineer on the team who was gonna help me cut voice lines, so I figured the workload for VA wouldn't be too bad if we split it between us, but then she got ill right as the jam began and I wound up having to do it all myself x3

The sensible thing to do at that point would have been to decide to add the remaining voice options post-submission deadline in an update! And I did think it might end up coming to that. In the end though, I decided to just push myself harder to get it all added in time. It would have felt wrong to not get it all in there because, while I never expect to win anything personally, I at least like to hope the folks I've teamed up with might stand a chance for their individual contributions, and I really didn't want to deprive the VAs the opportunity of competing for best voice actor when they'd put so much time and effort into recording their lines!

I hope the team sees all your kind words cos I'm sure it will make em all smile the same as I have while reading your incredibly sweet feedback ^-^ I really appreciate you taking the time to check the game out and spending the time to write such a thoughtful comment too! It means the world to me after I spent the month running myself into the ground to get it done x3 and I couldn't have done it without such an amazing team :3

I did manage to apply the scope knife in places, which is something I've previously failed at, but I definitely need to give myself less to do in the future, haha. Cos as people keep reminding me, skipping sleep and meals because I'm working on a game jam is not an acceptable excuse xD

If your friends do end up checking it out, fingers crossed they have fun as opposed to thinking, what on earth is this insanity?! x3

Thanks so much for checking it out :3

Hehe, Simon is a lil bugger x3 That's really nice of you to say about the project! I'm kind of surprised you would mention the cinematic scenes cos, at the time I made em, I thought they looked quite cool & cinematic, but since I started playing other people's spooktober games, I've realised that others have pulled off waaaaay more cinematic scenes than what we have in ours, haha. And yours is one of those extremely cinematically impressive ones :P

That means a lot about the music & audio design too cos we were supposed to have someone help us out with most audio-related aspects of the project, but sadly, she got ill right at the start of the jam and didn't start feeling better until the very end, so, unfortunately, I wound up tackling all things audio myself x3 I was originally just supposed to make the soundtrack, haha. She was gonna master all the sound, help me cut VA lines, help me come up with voice FX ideas, and create some additional SFX for us. Pretty sure the sound would've been better overall had she been able to work on stuff, cos I just dabble and hope xD whereas she's actually studied that sorta thing at uni, haha.

But omg, you should totally join Yandere Jam next year if it ends up running again (tends to be in February)! It's only a small jam atm, but it would be so cool to see it grow more :D And if you happened to make a yandere-focused game in the style of your Spooktober game, I imagine it would be spectacular! 

Thank you for all your kind words :3 And props to you too because your game is epic! You can really tell a lot of love and hard work went into your project ^-^

I did wonder if I should put some sort of notice up that animal death is totally avoidable x3 because I worry that having that warning there might completely put some people off from even trying the game >.< which would suck if that were the case :( 

Anyways, thank you so much for checking it out and for leaving such an epic review ^-^ I almost cried when I read through it x3 Also, I adore Final Fantasy even those bosses do drive me crazy, so that comparison made me smile, haha.

I guess I will write the rest under spoilers :3

SPOILERS BE BELOW HERE!!!

That’s honestly a huge relief to hear about the player’s lines after telling Rhime to let Linnet live! Cos I kinda agonised over that, haha. There’s no way on earth I could actually predict what people would want to say, and if it wasn’t even close to how someone playing was feeling at the time, it would kinda kill the immersion if it’s supposed to be you, the player speaking, but everything coming out is at odds with how you actually feel >.< In the end, I just tried to go with how I’d feel if it were me having a go at Rhime x3

So glad you got what we considered to be the happiest of all the endings after going through all that :D The very moment I saw that CG finished I just thought, ahh, it’s so nice to have something warm and welcoming in the game when everything else is so bleak xD

And again, it’s a massive relief to hear that things were smooth on the technical side because it’s always my biggest fear >.< haha. I’d be horrified if a team delivered amazing assets and then I messed up putting it all together!

Regarding programming and Unity, I mean, I can only thank Naninovel for that! Had I been using Unity without it, there just wouldn’t have been a game to submit at all xD I’m not even a programmer x3 I can only get by on helpful scripting languages for folks like me who get headaches from trying to write proper code, haha. I still have niggles with both Naninovel and Unity, but I do think Naninovel is a godsend for people like me who are too lazy to learn to code properly >.< Well, I’m not too lazy to learn, it’s more that I tried to but hated it so much I knew I’d never want to make games if that was what I had to do to get them working xD Naninovel makes it just about bearable for me, haha.

Anyways, with any luck, the rest of the team will see all your kind words and smile cos they certainly made my day better just reading what you wrote ^-^ It’s always nice to get feedback from other devs who know just how hard you’ve worked your butt off to get something done :D 

I have to thank our editor for writing up that walkthrough cos I certainly wouldn’t have had the brainpower to do it by the end of the jam x3

Thank you again for taking the time to write up such lovely feedback!! It's very much appreciated <3 

Holy moly, thanks so much for taking the time to write up such a detailed review/feedback! I massively appreciate that :3 I thought I was writing a lot in what I was typing, but you've definitely done waaaay better than me, haha. Reading what you've written, I feel like maybe I should've expanded more on my thoughts on each story I've read so far! Cos I feel like I've been too brief with just summarising >.<

Anyways, *high five* for the Saw love :D Hope you get to see the new one if you want to to! I was planning to this week but I've been too busy and exhausted, so hoping to catch it next week instead :3

I guess I better say everything else under spoilers x3

Ahoy there! There be spoilers below!!! 

I know what you mean about content warnings cos I'm generally unphased by most things in the content I consume x3 It's very hard to upset or disturb me because I've consumed so much horror throughout my life that I'm pretty desensitised! That one was one I was worried about when thinking of players though, and as a player myself, if a game gave me a choice to do that, I wouldn't pick it, I would also kill a human character before an animal one if it came down to it xD Tbh, I had the same reaction when I first saw the finished sprite for bloody-mouthed Sorbet x3 LPB made her such a cute kitty, haha.

That's so cool that you figured out the names were anagrams! <3 But yeeeah, hangman as a minigame was one of the victims of the scope knife xD Fem voices almost were too because I wasn't anticipating having to cut all the voice audio and add fx myself this time since we were hoping to have my best friend's sister join us for all things audio-editing and SFX design, but she got ill for the month, so, sadly, that didn't happen. It was definitely a struggle to deal with, but I'm glad I still managed to get it in there in time for the jam deadline cos it would've been extremely unfair to the VAs if I hadn't :(

So glad you had fun with Simon Says at least :3 I'm not really a lover of minigames or puzzles myself x3 so it's always really difficult to know if I've done stuff like that justice as a dev when I dislike it as a player, haha. I really wanted to try and include something like that though just to attempt to add more jeopardy to Linnet's escape!

That sucks so badly that you couldn't get past the eventual relaunch though :( It sounds horrible to say, but I hope it was cos your computer is clunky and old xD Just because I tested it on my PC and my potato laptop, and most of the team have played it by this point too, and none of us had an issue getting it to work, so if it is a problem with the game, I imagine it'll be a nightmare to try and figure out the cause and fix it T_T

More than that though, I wish Unity wasn't so slow on older systems >.< because I'm guessing that's what the issue is :( I don't suppose you remember if it took a while to launch the game the very first time you started it up? And if you experienced kinda long load times at the points where there were loading screens? Aaaand, when you tried to relaunch and got a black screen, how long did you wait until giving up on it?

You don't have to answer that btw cos I imagine you're probably busy! I thought I would ask just to see if it's maybe the same problem I had when I tested it on my potato laptop x3 Basically, on my half-decent PC that I made the game on, startup only takes about 3 seconds whether it's first time or relaunching for story purposes, and load times are around 5-10 seconds on loading screens.

BUT

On my potato laptop, it's a different story >.< Startup takes around 30 seconds, loading times on load screens take between 33-45 seconds :( And relaunches for story purposes take between 30-50 seconds on a black screen like you mentioned T_T

It all loads eventually, but it's so, so SLOW, haha. I get the splash screen come up pretty fast on the potato, but then it stays on a black screen for ages before everything actually kicks in. It would be interesting to know if it would have eventually loaded on yours after a considerable amount of time like it does on my potato, or if your computer just straight up says nope and nothing will ever happen no matter how long you wait >.< Cos I firmly believe my potato is more potato-y than other people's potatos xD The stupid thing takes around 15 minutes to actually boot up from sleep or shut down, haha. So I kinda use that as a way of thinking, well, if it works on this awful thing, surely it'll work on anything x3

It's an issue I've noticed with everything I've ever made using Naninovel/Unity :( And when I've asked about it to try and improve performance on potato systems, I've never gotten further than the answer 'It's just Unity' >.< Which is beyond frustrating, haha. It makes Ren'Py seem vastly superior because games made using that run much more smoothly on my potato (unless they include animation like blinking/lip flaps and stuff, in which case, my potato just freezes up and dies xD)

But yeah, it's especially irritating in the case of this project because only 1 of the 5 endings can be reached without relaunch >.< I suppose while I'm asking questions, I should probably ask which ending branch you were on? Just to make sure it was one of the intentional crashes you reached and not a random unintentional one that we somehow missed in testing x3 Again though, please don't feel as though you have to answer!

Anyways, I'm glad it didn't spoil it for you at least x3 It is still really annoying though that I can't seem to find a way to improve performance in any of my Naninovel games :( Funnily enough, I had the same issue with my older Tyranobuilder ones too! My first game took something like over a minute to launch on my potato laptop o.O And I always try my best to optimise assets, but that doesn't seem to make any difference to overall performance, just total download size >.<

What confuses me even more is that, with Tunnel Vision for example, on my potato, once things have eventually loaded, everything runs really smoothly, like no lag on button presses or with transitions and stuff like I get when I try to play some Ren'Py made games on it, but those launch and load times with my Naninovel made projects are beyond horrific instead T_T

I'm sure Philip will be over the moon to hear your thoughts on his voice acting if he reads this :D And same goes for LPB for the fact that you pointed out the colour palette cos she had a very specific vision for the artistic direction of stuff :3

I'm also a happy bunny to hear you enjoyed the soundtrack ^-^ I actually love making music more than I do writing nowadays xD To the point that I think next year, I'm just gonna try and join a team as a composer if anyone will have me cos I keep kinda running myself into the ground being project lead giving myself waaaay too much work x3 I was working 15-18 hour days for Spooktober, and that's just, well, daft tbh and I don't know why I put myself through that >.< (well, I do, because I have issues with obsession and tunnel vision thanks to my ASD xD) I think if I'm just focusing on making music, I'll have a much more relaxed time jamming for once! And it'll be a totally different experience to join someone else's team :3

Thank you so much again for taking the time to both play through the game and for such amazing feedback ^-^ I appreciate it more than I can even put into words and I'm sure the rest of the team do too! Also, right back at ya with the congratulations cos your team's project is an absolutely thrilling and funky bundle of fun <3

(Edit:) Also forgot to say thank you as well for posting here and on the page comments too! I've been doing that as well + rating 5* on both the jam and game pages, haha. Much appreciated :3

Same to you!! You have no idea how happy your spooktober games have made me over the years x3 I really need to check out your other stuff at some point not just your Spooktober projects! I actually just played Trashwing Crowchild, so I'll drop my rambling on your awesomeness over on your page rather than going on about it here, haha.

That's very kind of you to say anyhow :3 It means a lot that you think so cos I'll be damned if I can figure out myself whether I'm managing to nail that stuff, haha. It's so hard to tell when I still have next to no confidence in myself or anything I do >.< It's like I can have a blast working on projects and I'm able to be super proud of a team I've worked with and what we've created together, but actually being truly proud of myself and my personal contributions is still kinda out of reach, haha. Sometimes I wonder if the only thing holding me together is the kindness of others x3 (Getting extra sentimental here cos I'm typing both this and my thoughts on Trashwing Crowchild while I've still got your game open and the main menu music is playing, haha.)

Glad you think so regarding refusing to respond :3 As a player, I'm not the biggest fan of timed choices, especially not if they're combined with QTEs, haha, but I do like how that sort of snap decision making can give a bit more weight to choices. I had a few instances of choices timing out leading to a bad end or a different reaction from a character in one of my main projects, so I thought it would be cool to kinda expand on that and lean into the whole, doing nothing is also a choice kinda thing x3

I really appreciate you taking the time to check out this one :3

Thanks so much for checking it out and for your kind words! I'm still bowled over by how beautiful your art is!! x3

Was kinda worried about the minigame cos I'm not a fan of them as a player, so I figured that might mean if I tried to make one, it would be bad >.< haha. But I think LPB's awesome art helps make it more interesting! I'm glad you enjoyed it at least :3

Hehe, that made me smile! I very much want my timbers to be shivered during spooky season x3