Post by Rastagong in Vivica's Heart comments

Viewing post in Vivica's Heart comments

I loooved this entry so so much! I really really love time loops and you made such a good one! It was so rewarding to piece the whole story together across multiple playthroughs by exploring the house & through dialogue options (I think I went back and got every possible hidden variation of text ahaha). And the way you fused it all together with the amnesia, the amulet, the goal of it all? Just genius.

I loved the fairy-tale horror/dark fantasy setting as well, the prose was so evocative and fairy-tale like (loved the unexplainable magic and the way it mystifies you, especially on a first playthrough), which was really complimented by the incredible OST, the UI, and also the partial voice acting, which was so fitting here!

Finally the story itself was so so good, I really enjoyed piecing it all together, both the web of relationships and the reason why it all fell apart. Thank you for making such a beautiful story!

Cerise Makes342 days ago(+1)

Thank you so much for this incredibly thoughtful comment – and I’m very sorry I somehow missed it before, I’m not sure how that happened!?! I’m really glad to hear you enjoyed the game, and yes I love time loops as well so I’m glad we did them justice in your eyes!

It makes me happy to think you enjoyed the game enough to hunt out the different variations, though I apologise that there wasn’t more variety in some places - there were quite few extra ideas we didn’t quite manage to fit in the time frame which I was sorry to lose. Thank you also for sharing your earliest impressions, it’s always helpful to how the ‘mysterious start’ comes across to people, as it’s a quite odd entry point to a story.

I really appreciate you mentioning aspects like the VA/music/GUI too – it always makes me happy to see everyone’s work being recognised, and the project has definitely underlined for me how much work goes into these aspects!

(And one last thing – if you enjoy time loop stories, have you tried Rolling Crown’s VN ‘Jester / King’? It’s an unusual story with very clever mechanics all centered around a time loop, and definitely keeps you guessing. I found it from a bundle, but I think they often do sales, too.)

Rastagong342 days ago

No worries for the delay, ahaha, it can be hard to keep up with comments or to even what to reply!

The variations were honestly so good and rewarding to chase already, can’t imagine how much work you all had to do to put it all together under Spooktober’s timeframe (and the brevity fit the fairy-tale theme/storytelling so well already!).
And yeah, the “mysterious start” was just perfect to me, I was honestly hooked so easily from the very start.

I wasn’t aware of Jester / King at all, thank you for the rec, I’ll look it up!

itch.io

Viewing post in Vivica's Heart comments