Nah, you can never take horror too far x3 at least not for me anyhow, haha. I really loved how creepy The Housemate was, and while I still haven't played even half of the jam's games yet, it remains the most disturbing one I've tried so far! Don't get me wrong, I adore all kinds of horror, so all the cute, quirky, funny stuff is still super enjoyable, but I do like to be genuinely freaked out by horror, and so far, your game is the only one still that's made me feel legitimately unsettled (in the best possible way!)
Yeah, I definitely couldn't work at a helpline myself x3 I'd love to help folks, but my anxiety prevents me from using the phone most of the time, even when I really need to >.<
I'm sure some assignments and such must've been put off for a few folks on our team too, haha. I did say a couple of times to everyone to make sure to put that stuff first cos the jam is just for fun x3 But I know it's hard when you wanna be working on something. I get super absorbed in jams and can't stop, haha. I find it helps heaps with depression and stuff though, having something to really dedicate all my time to because it gives me a purpose and doesn't give my brain a chance to pause and think about negative stuff!
Oh, hell yes, things like that eye on the title screen and the flickering sprites are the icing on the cake! I'm an absolute sucker for details x3 Anything like that gets me super excited, haha.
That really sucks about the bug though >.< and I sort of know how you feel because there was a bug in ours that I thought I had fixed, well, I had fixed it, but then one or two people I know who tried it out managed to find a way to bypass my fix xD There's basically this weird Unity bug I ran into and couldn't properly solve because upon searching online, others who encountered it just got told along the lines of “Unity must be borked. That shouldn't be happening unless you deleted it yourself.” And no fix suggestions were offered >.< It was to do with a transition material trying to be accessed once it had been deleted or something. Well, like the other folks posting about it, I hadn't deleted anything like that either. It was just something that randomly started happening on this one line of code that was no different from any other line where I was making a character exit. The bug in question meant that if you scrolled through that one line of text too quickly, something in the shadows would break. The game would continue as normal, and you would be unaware anything had gone wrong, until you try to save. Saving after the bug would just basically crash the game.
My fix involved putting in a wait command so that players physically couldn't scroll through the line in question too quickly, therefore preventing the bug from occurring in the first place. Problem solved. Or so I thought >.<
I didn't take into account the fact that the skip text function ignores wait commands T_T So when a player has skip text active while passing over that line, it jumps my wait fix and breaks the save function >.>
I guess it's not too major because it's near the beginning of the game and completely avoidable provided you're not using the skip function, but still incredibly annoying when I spent ages researching the issue and thought I'd finally found a way to stop it from happening!
I'm not a programmer though, so things like that do my head in, haha. It's very difficult for me to figure out a fix when stuff goes wrong.
If the bug you guys had only affected some computers though, I'm sure at least some of the judges would be able to play :3 And hey ya never know, you might've aced the exam! I've thought I've failed exams in the past only to find out I did just fine in the end :D
I'm sorry for rambling right back at ya anyhow x3 But I always look at jams as a fun sorta learning experience :3 I seem to learn a lot more when I participate in these things, and they're always a blast! It's really nice to get to interact with such an awesome community too! I mean, I know we have the discord server and I do lurk there, but with my anxiety, I don't like to type much there, haha.