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(1 edit) (+4)

Just finished both routes and boy it's great. Slick UI, gorgeous sprites, 10/10 would date Felix. The writing department of Tuning Out is strong, perhaps one of the best among the jam entries I have read so far. You can tell the dev put extra effort into refining the style of descriptive storytelling.

SPOILER WARNING, you have been warned.

I like how wildly different the two routes were yet they both captured the character growth of Holden in equally meaningful ways. One is through an even messed up, toxic situation, one is through a better newfound companionship. While Felix's route was a sweet read, I think I like Roy's route better because the portrayal of the MC being helplessly indecisive, self-loathing, etc. was well captured. The way Roy treated Holden made me very uncomfortable, it was a refreshing breath of air to be able to tell him to fuck off at the end. Props to you for evoking such emotions for the readers to swallow.

Moving on to the point systems. At first, I completely disliked it, especially in Roy's route: "Why do I get a minus for Roy?" "Wait now Holden too?" "What is the right choice???". And then jumping into Felix's route, everything was much more simple. I don't know if it was the intention, but at the end of gameplay, I found the juxtaposition kinda fits and reflected Holden's state of mind.

On the more technical aspects, one of the weaknesses of a long descriptive narrative is that you have to keep the interest of readers. Personally, I think there were some scenes where the lack of audio made the silence deafening (like in the abandoned warehouse). Another thing to note is pauses between scenes. It's simple, but transitioning from one scene to another that's supposed to have a big time gap without a proper pause in between felt a bit off. Speaking of transition, a simple dissolve (or any other transition) between backgrounds would make the presentation more seamless.

On yet another more technical aspect (this is me being really nitpicky), I think the text did not contrast very well with some backgrounds. I would consider raising the opacity of the dialogue box just a bit. One of the backgrounds of the city was a picture of nighttime, making me "Wait it's night already? Oh no it's still the afternoon."

Also, I think it's a mistake that slipped through. Just before the first choice, while Holden was talking with Roy, there was suddenly a line of dialogue spoken by Abby (?)

Overall Tuning Out is a well-crafted story about getting out of a toxic relationship and growing past it. Beautifully done!

(+1)

Thanks for your nice message !

We’ll add better transitioning in the final build. You’re right, it’s too blunt! Same for the opacity of the boxes, we’ll see what we can do. We lacked time : (

Same for Abbey speaking instead of Roy; that’s a mistake we’ll have to fix !

SPOILERS

The affinity points are intentional. You cannot do anything to please Roy, he decided he was done with you the second you quit college. I wanted to use the affinity system to induce a sentiment of hopelessness : you can’t win with him and whatever choice you take, he will dump you because he probably found someone to replace you. There’s no right choices in toxic relationships !

For the wind and the lack of music for the building, it was on purpose, but I’m not sure if it was the right choice. The goal was to enforce unease. And Holden only hears Roy and the wind. Maybe I should have found a music that would have made the same impression; it would have been better. We’ll modify it in the final build!


Thank you a lot for your nice message and for playing our game, we appreciate it a lot !

(+1)

Oh, so my guess was right. That's a clever game mechanic! If you plan to make another project, I definitely suggest using more non-writing elements to tell the story like that affinity points. That's a nice balance with your writing style to keep the reader's attention.

(+1)

We'll try our best ! If you have suggestions don't hesitate to hit me up on discord, we can definitely use more "show" like you did in your jam project