Writing: I looked at the list of submissions, and the short description of this one piqued my interest (I almost wrote “picked”… I guess I’m no better at English than the witch that says “my curiosity was peaked”… sorry for nit-picking on the spelling of that one word. I actually had to peek into a dictionary to be sure how to spell it. I don’t think I noticed any other words being misspelled.
The story is interesting although it ends a bit soon. But it’s nice to know that the VN won’t punish me for not caring about romance. So many VN genres are about romance. (And strangely enough, it’s quite common in fiction for MCs to fall in love with others who sometimes don’t fall in love with the MC, but the other way around is kinda uncommon, but I think mathematically it kinda has to be just as common).
Audio: The music is nice to listen to and fits the story. And yeah, it’s also pretty consistent with itself. The different pieces sound like they do fit into the same “style” even though there are obviously some. I tend to listen to the music while typing feedback, and the music in this VN was suitable for that, so that’s nice.
The flask sounds on the main menu fit the game well, and there’s also GUI sounds in the game itself. And there is of course a sound effect when something wakes up the witch. And when I saw “[T]here’s a light clinking of potions. The sudden noise startles the stranger” I expected a sound, but oddly enough I didn’t hear one. Turns out it was drowned by the music. Maybe that sound is a bit dim. And I guess “A large avian creature gives an abrupt honk” seems like a kind of thing I would maybe have wanted to make a sound… but I guess it’s kinda hard to have sounds for all the things that could make sounds. And I think other than that volume issue (maybe you can edit that sound to be louder), the sound effects worked pretty well. I think the sound effects in this one are probably better than the average of the jam.
And yeah, I feel a bit dumb for how often I play entries without VA and suggest that VA could have worked well, but since this one seems to only have two speaking characters (unless you’re adding more later on) I think it could be a good addition. If so, consider also voicing each menu option, especially in the main menu because I can’t easily see which flask is highlighted if I’m highlighting them with the keyboard rather than the mouse.
Art: I like the backgrounds, especially those multi-layer backgrounds that move when yo move the mouse. I almost missed that effect though, because I was using the keyboard and not touching the mouse.
And that green creature is nice too and fits into the same style as the backgrounds (actually, if you look carefully at the outline colouring, there might be some inconsistency between poses… but I guess I only spotted that because I was comparing them to the background. And the different expressions and poses are nice too.
Fun: Sorry for saying something you probably already know, but I think the story is interesting but a bit short. It’ll be interesting to see when you expand on it.
And this is where I should probably mention a small issue with the main menu. I liked those flasks, they fit the game, they move when you point at them and when you stop pointing at them, that’s nice. But some are upright when not selected and then there’s some that are upright when selected. If for some reason you can’t see the mouse (or you’re selecting them with the keyboard instead of using a mouse), you can’t always easily see which one is selected.
Accessibility: I do see and hear well (at least if the audio is balanced properly… I can miss things if the music is louder than the other sounds, or if I’m in a noisy place while playing). But I decided to try enabling some of those accessibility features anway.
Changing the font seems to work for the normal text but not for some buttons (main menu and quick menu). In the case of the options menu, the menu has to be reloaded for it to work, but then it does work. Self-voicing also doesn’t read those buttons aloud. Are they image buttons? If so, I’d probably consider making them contain icons and/or make different sounds when hovered. (Note: I already said this in the audio section, but it’s hard to see which items on the main menu are highlighted with the keyboard. Maybe I’d add a white border around the highlighted flask or something like that).
I’m not sure if the font colour change does anything. I didn’t notice a difference though. Maybe it’s not working as intended?
The “image descriptions” also seems to do nothing. Not even text mentioning when there’s screen shakes. I believe the example that comes with the template you use does show some way to have screen shakes described… Okay, I found it:
$ shake()
show eileen surprised with dissolve
ic "The room shakes."
That’s certainly one way to do it, but maybe instead of using the ic character for it you might want to add another character and use that, for example:
# This is based on the template's ic character, but changed so that it always shows up if screenshakes are disabled:
define shc = Character(_(None),condition="persistent.image_captions or _preferences.self_voicing or persistent.screenshake")
And about audio captions, they seem to work but with two cavets:
- When a sound effect and a music change happen at the same time, only one of the two things gets shown. I’m not sure what’s the best way to solve this, but it would probably involve editing accessibility.rpy to create some function that plays a sound and some music at the same time while showing a message about both actions.
- Some of the music descriptions are a bit long for how little time they’re shown. If you look for “screen notify” in screens.rpy and read the next couple of lines you should be able to change the delay by changing a number there. I think there is a way to make the time change depending on the length on the text, but I haven’t tried looking into that. Sorry.
Oh, and if I may throw in an accessibility-related suggestion, maybe when you’re done writing the text in English you can add a translation into some easier-to-read variant of English. I’m mainly thinking of words like “critter”, “jiggly” and “trellis” maybe being a bit hard for non-native speakers to understand. (I think I didn’t know “trellis” before seeing it in some other entry from this jam that I read before this one.) Not that I had time to add such a feature to my entry either (in fact, I didn’t have time to add any accessibility features other than what’s built into Ren’Py by default).
What I liked most: The story and art.
What I’d suggest changing: Other than continuing the story? I guess you could add some white borders around highlighted flasks in the main menu and fix the issue with audio captions getting in the way of each other.
And I just realized I’m writing feedback this during the ace week. I wasn’t even aware of that week until it had started. Well, to those who celebrate it somehow, happy ace week!