I like this game. It took me back to Berlin a little bit. I think that the narrator sounds similar to the voice of the Berlin underway, isn’t it ? However, Congrats in your entry!

Running into weird strangers while waiting for a train is such a good premise for a game, and you did a good job creating unusual and interesting NPCs. Art looks good. It's quite short but that's fine for a jam. I think the weak spot was the narrator's voice acting; it sounded pretty robotic.

The Crone's lines kept repeating when I was playing on Auto Mode. Otherwise, the game ran smoothly, and I liked the organic character sprite art style.

Writing: An interesting writing style and plenty of choices that do seem to matter. And even though I haven’t even got through all the achievements I haven’t got tired enough to stop trying (the reason I’m not done yet is I’ve also been playing some of the other VNs from the jam, so I decided to return to this one later).

Theme: It is spooky and halloweeny even if I don’t think it’s as scary as most of the VNs I’ve read from this jam. (Wait, did I just use the phrase “most of the VNs I’ve read from this jam” again? I should get better at writing, unless I’m writing poorly on purpose to show you that not everyone can write as elegantly as you did or something like that.)

Music? There isn’t a lot of different music in there, but I guess there doesn’t need to be. The one that there is does a good job at seeming oddly modern and traditional at the same time, just like those characters seem to mostly be older than any humans while also being in a U-Bahn station. And since the story takes place in that one place (and maybe a train) there isn’t really a need for having different music in different places.

Voice acting: Pretty good, but the inconsistent volumes take a bit away from it. Yes, it was worse when I first played it than this time, and yes, I saw in the post-mortem that you were aware of it. In the first version I had to turn down the volume when the narrator spoke and back up when others spoke, and now the difference is smaller. But maybe you could have increased the volume of some lines a bit more (especially some of the Crone’s lines… unless her inconsistent volume serves to show that she’s unsure about who to be and thus unsure how loud to talk or something). And by default the music is kinda loud compared to the voices, and the sound effect of the sobbing mother is also kinda loud compared to the narrator by default. Luckily it’s easy for readers to move those volume sliders.

And also some lines are missing audio and some have extra audio.

And also some lines are missing audio and some have extra audio. I mean repetitions. Well, at least it isn’t like the first version where some lines had audio from other lines. But I probably shouldn’t be too harsh on this considering I also didn’t get audio quite perfect myself either.

Eye candy? Well, why am I suddenly referring to candy as if I were trying to rate this entry by the joke categories that the jam somehow uses as rating criteria? If I meant to write a paragraph about art, I should call it art, but maybe that won’t be this paragraph.

Art: it looks pretty good. I didn’t even realize the background had been made in part by AI. AI is so good nowadays. It can even draw a forest with lots of different trees in less time than I can draw five trees and copy-paste them to make more. I think the art looks great and the camera panning and zooming works well too.

Fun: Well, aside from fun as in comedy which I guess I should count as writing, but it does make it interesting to read so I guess it adds to the fun too. And the achievements are also fun. I didn’t have time to implement achievements myself. And the minigame, though simple, was pretty fun.

I also read the post-mortem by the way.

mossinasi, my artist, was originally planning to make 3D station model but then didn’t manage to overcome 3D textures. Having little time left, we AI-generated the background, using Midjourney, then editing it manually.

I didn’t bother with 3D textures, my 3D was untextured and then I drew in some details on the rendered images. And for two of my backgrounds I edited photographs I had taken during the jam. I do suspect editing AI output would have been faster than what I did though.

no in-game credits simply because I forgot about them and haven’t had time to make… a credits screen

How uncool! You could have put them in a variable in options.py that makes them appear on the about screen (or the learn screen as it’s called in this particular VN). But yeah, showing them at the end (or in both places) would have been nice too. And don’t worry, I think putting them on the description page was probably enough. I just used a German word I felt like the narrator would have said if he’d read that post-mortem.

And I didn’t know about ghost stations. But they definitely seem like a halloweeny thing. I guess I haven’t spent a lot of time in Berlin (I’ve gone through Berlin on the way from one place to another though.)

I really love the way the cinematography of this game is treated - the zooming in on focused elements is a really nice touch that I feel like I don't see too often. The narrator's sass and interactions with the cheap-horned boy are also great. Adds some great subtle dimension to it all!

Super interesting game! The art was gorgeous, and I was very impressed by the VA. Even the GUI felt well-thought out and planned. The little detail of the subway lines under the names was really cool. The fourth-wall breaks took me a little too much out of the story- a lot of commentary on life and art and big meanings, and I kinda wanted more out of the Mother, Maiden, and Crone, less out of the narrator. Still incredibly cool, can't believe that was all put together in a month!

Please can I have the sacrificial lamb plushie from the outdated, evil vending machine that doesn't accept cards x3

Not gonna lie, I usually don't like anything in VNs that isn't just reading, so minigames and stuff tend to annoy me, buuuuut, as soon as I saw what sort of minigame it was, I knew I'd probably like it, hehe. I'm big into my rhythm games, and while it wasn't rhythm per se, anything with having to repeat pattern sequences is up my alley, so I had fun attempting to get it first time (which I did ^-^ so give me my plushie, damn it, not an energy drink x3)

Also approve of the Detroit reference :P That's one of my favourite games <3

The only problem I encountered was that the voice of the High-Spirited Girl was super duper quiet compared to all the other voices to the point that I couldn't really hear it >.< I turned the volume way up on my PC and then turned everything else down in the game cos I didn't wanna miss the voice acting :3

I don't wanna put the exact quote because I don't wanna spoil anything for anyone, but I have to say, I agree 100% with her on Marvel xD which I can feel my brother scowling at me for just for typing, hehe.

I am the father, apparently x3 But I don't feel like I've earned much or proved myself anywhere near enough T_T haha. Again, don't wanna spoil anything, but I approve of MC's response to being told their result :P

Overall, I thought it was a really nifty concept :3 It's not like any other game I've ever played, the story is interesting with plenty of humourous moments that put a smile on my face, the art is really cool, I actually liked the minigame, which is rare for me xD And I'm always a happy bunny when I hear that things are voiced cos I love VA <3 Narrator probably made me laugh the most with all the deadpan stuff, hehe. Really awesome job by the whole team! I'll have to try and see if I can get some of the other endings another time :3