Hi Goddess-of-Gales, thank you for playing 'The Inbetween' and taking the time to leave your review of the game. We appreciate the playthrough and would like to take this opportunity to explain some of the design choices made in the game that may have caused some of the mixed feelings that the game has left you with. :)
First, thank you for your compliments regarding the voice acting, Noah did a fantastic job and we were so glad to have him join us on this project. Also, the visual style can be totally attributed to the ‘Hyaku’ part of ‘Hyakuten’- we were happy to see you enjoyed the aesthetics.
As the writer and game project manager, I am happy to cover the constructive feedback you have (I'm the 'Ten' of 'Hyakuten'.
I think the key issue here is the length of the game, as that seems to have left some dissatisfaction and much of the constructive criticism stems from the small word count and the lack of explanation that comes with it.
As a development studio of 2, we both work full time in other jobs and both submitted individual entries into Nanoreno for the first time. So, ‘the Inbetween’ was a small, fun endeavour, making games as a pair as we enjoy each other's company. The philosophy being, the ‘journey is as important as the destination’ - if we had made it longer, we may have strained the capability of what we could do enjoyably and comfortably. But I can understand that as a piece in isolation - it may be brief and sparse.
We would definitely categorise it as a ‘micro’ visual Novel. We do intend to create a sequel, so perhaps some of your concerns regarding character motivation, lore and world mechanics might be better explained in that game. We had an only one of any asset mentality to develop the game on time and enjoyably, (which is probably more apparent when the context is provided) - which is why there is a significant amount of ‘tell’ and not ‘show’.
Having no narrator was a design choice that we've made in a couple of our titles. This one, in particular, was to leave the player in as confusing a situation as the MC themselves, it may seem vague and confusing and that is a valid perspective, but that was partly intentional, but we can understand that it may leave some players dissatisfied. In our first major title, Royal Duality, we extensively explained lore throughout the game, and many reviews felt the game spent too long explaining the setting and not allowing the characters to be characters. So we are still balancing and playing with the narrator concept in different games and seeing what sticks.
As there is a planned sequel, we unfortunately cannot go into details regarding Hellion and his motivations. But rest assured, the scamp has motivations that have been intentionally hidden so far.
To be candid, we were unsure if there would be any appetite for this game, it is a significant departure from our signature style of dark fantasy which is generally humourless or lacks humorous content, as a title, it was designed to test the waters. We were pleasantly surprised that this was by far, our best performing game - so we feel confident to make a sequel that will, we hope, answer many of your questions (if you wish to play, of course 😊).
We'd also like to address some of the points made in the video review regarding the punctuation. As the writer of the game, I can truly relate to the dislike of poorly used punctuation - and it is fair to say I dislike multiples of ! and ? being used without any value. But we did, in this title, use them in a playful fashion, there is no specific justification aside from us having a bit of fun!
Once again, we’d like to thank you for your review, feedback and playthrough.