I don't get it...honestly. Maybe the writeup isn't very clear, maybe the concrete narrative of this god's guilt and anxieties and history are not very clear, but that's what I got, so I bravely went into the music.
The OST is very interesting and has a lot going on, with musical variety sprinkled around like the various elements of this subject's mind and origins. I think this works, although there are moments where I think the music would be overpowering to the game experience.
Still - the images, the writeup, and the music form the gesamtkunstwerk that the game would ought to be, and I think even though I don't get it - I can definitely see the effort and the results. Well done!
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Hmmm...not sure, but here's some questions that I think might help me:
It's clear that there's supposed to be some relationship to this dead god and their own progeny, but what is it that they did or did not do to feel guilty or regretful?
Do the duo of mindwalkers really grasp the abstract meaning of the things they observe and engage with in order to cleanse the dead god?
What really constitutes cleansing in this mindscape? Do things fade away or do they reconcile and change for the better?
A lot of this stuff are things I purposefully left up to interpretation or omitted from the final itch pages to avoid dumping hella lore on whoever bothered to read everything, but my idea behind the relationship between the dying god and his son (the sun) is that it is a miscommunication between the father and the son. The son (the sun) loved his father and was happy with who he was. The father (the dying god you enter) wishes he was a better father and is convinced that his son resents him and that his son is trying to overachieve because of this. The guilt creates the reflection (the false sun of shadow) which represents that misunderstanding and the dying god's misconception of his son.
The mindwalkers lore is something I do wish I clarified more of. They are a clan in a sense, being in god mind worlds changes them and makes them more reclusive so they congregate amongst themselves out of an introverted belief that they are lesser, but they are well respected and good people. The mindwalker duo (the two players, my idea for this was that it would be a co-op game), do understand the mind world and their role. Each god is given a mindwalker who watches over the door to their mind world (let's call this mindwalker 1), these mindwalkers that the gods are given, once in the god's head they are essentially immortal never aging until they leave. I played around with an idea with the concept artist that these mindwalkers while not aging, become affected by the door and become more abstract in the time spent in it's proximity but he didn't have time for the concept art of the mindwalkers. The second mindwalker (mindwalker 2) comes from the outside. Two mindwalkers are required to enter the door, a representation of the two halves of the brain.
Cleansing in the mind world is the god reconciling with their guilt represented by the shadow/reflections. The mindwalkers as they venture through the mind world defeating reflections/shadows of the dying god's guilt ease their mind. Once all the guilt is cleansed the god is at peace, the mind world fades away and the god can die without destroying reality from the outburst of guilt/shadow.
I hope this helps! I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for the world building of this jam and now I am wishing I included more of it in writing because looking back it is pretty confusing