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(2 edits) (+2)

Edit notes: minor grammar fixes & closing unclosed parenthesis and updating a concern/argument after rechecking the game's renaming screens.

This is... difficult to comment on.

You straddle the line between like camp and like an earnest kitsch (and of course, your kitsch is in conversation with your own works, even in the naming convention being primarily the acronym(?) rather than the extended name...  there is not quite many other comparable medias that have this same vibe or works with a similar sense of camp (that anime Shinzo which took me like 10 minutes to find because "anime where people fuse with cards" KEEPS bringing up Yu-gi-oh results which was NOT what I was thinking of and even then it's not quite the same, it was just the first thing that came to my mind when remembering "fusion" based anime with distinct personalities underneath... megaman's battle network fusions aren't quite the same vibe and DBZ has them as distinct characters but I digress in this aside)) and frankly, that's a hard line to walk and I think your aim of like... cult classic creation (for I'm not sure how else to explain some of these choices) isn't aided by some of your visual choices.

When I think of cult classics, the presentation isn't meant to be working against me. There are choices that feel like they're made purely because you can (the amount of highlight layers for the names or highlighting the text alone. You chose like a size 40 text. It was already pretty visible to read), as opposed to like aesthetic reasons that moved the narrative along. I would have understood the highlighting for the text more if you had two layers (ugh) in the textbox for a unmorbed character, and one layer respectively for each of their morbs, as garish as that would have been. It would have served the story in its presentation as opposed to just feeling like a strange aesthetic choice (and if you did this with the name plates... they were so visually noisy and so secondarily a focus I have missed it and it didn't stay in my memory as much as the garish yellow highlight).

The story is strongest when it deals with this disability/gender tale (perhaps most evidenced with what I think was your strong prologue of the birth scene) but it feels like you're dropping the ball with your earnest desire to like shitpost in the midst of a scene that's meant to push the narrative along. I was thinking during the stream that like it was an analogy test you see on the SATS--  Rag : References :: Unagi : Shitposts. We saw the relic of your shitposting placeholder that made it to the final build for the contest (e.g. Morbing instead of twaining for the renaming system. You caught it in the work itself but it lingered in the other section, out of sight, out of mind. The names themselves felt haphazard when going through the rest of the renaming elements-- why did the culture not explicitly evolve to be conscious of the naming conventions given the splitting of the child? You addressed many of the other elements which were great, as I'll shortly thereafter address, but missed out on building more into the naming for a worldbuilding element that essentially triples the amount of characters).

There's a lot of worldbuilding elements that I think are fantastic, like partially unmorbing to quickly share memories, the driver's license having three slots for all of the forms and how the government is giving the protagonist a double wage (because most people morb into two and work two jobs (which is honestly tragic. A world where there's two of you and you BOTH have to work. I can't believe you would enforce capitalism even FURTHER in this narrative of yours)). 

Those are the parts of your work that are singing the loudest, when you're leaning into the premise and the natural conclusions that draw from it, but then you just as earnestly in the same breath have one of the characters make an off-color comment about eating cats or TAKING the plot from bladerunner instead of the book YOU MONSTER THE PLOT MEANINGFULLY CHANGES BETWEEN (this part isn't as big I'm just malding as PKD stan). Or the "booba" dream. My man is speaking like a 13 year old. I'm wasn't laughing with him, I was like, cringing at how it felt unironically used, like some sort of developmental failure from his inability to morb, which I doubt was intended in this circumstance.

I suppose the most damning thing I can say is that we don't really quite get the romance, in the build you have. I missed the exact beginning but it's my understanding it essentially fulfills the promise of the title "There are two wolves inside of you" but sex isn't quite romance. It can be a byproduct of romance but like, we don't get to see that on the screen. We get an implied bi-directional crush (which funnily enough, isn't quite enough in the morbin universe when a relationship could contain up to like four people? and we only get the implication that the yellow wolf is into our protagonist via his own subconscious). It's not necessarily `wrong` that a romance takes a while to brew, but per the parameters of the game jam, we only get the implication of the romance. We're informed there's romance. We don't see it on the screen (double dicking down, again, isn't explicitly romance. The dragon roughly offers to do the same and the protagonist rejects that, which I think is proof enough for this claim).

I feel like you were more focused on your gags and shitposts (like literally having us play through endless iterations of rock paper scissors tentatively instead of like... simplifying it to a coin flip (which is still random chance as you wanted and what could have been the actual results behind the curtain instead of programming a theoretical statistically improbable softlock of endless rock-paper-scissors)) then taking the story to the conclusion of where the fascinating premise you set up wanted to go. It feels like you're focused on the shitposting and the garrish visuals to the detriment of the story premise you setup, at least, that's how it seems to me.

I can't help but feel, as is evoked in some of the other comments, that you're like appealing to continuing your branding of suspicious visuals and endless shitposting, but I don't know if the shitposting elements feel smoothly integrated? That, or they stood out more against a garrish backdrop of extravagant unnecessary highlighting.

It's like the critique they say sometimes on drag race-- usually more is more when it comes to drag, but sometimes some of the girls have TOO much and they need to edit it down. I feel like we could have gotten to your romance narratively if you didn't spend so much time with some of the visual and programmatic elements you wanted to introduce (because some of them worked really well! The baby's failed morbing attempts at the start-- that was chefkiss. It meaningfully helped move the story along with its visuals).

It's got a fascinating skeleton, but TATWIOY;BOTAG's "flesh" coating obscures some of the fantastic silhouette you devised with some instances of misplaced focus and choices that felt like they were done simply because you were made aware of them instead of diagetically fitting into the plot (we got it for the visuals for the morbed chars, but not their text too). 

Your peaks and valleys for presentation made it difficult so I averaged out to the center of the bell curve for that, and your creativity is a fantastic premise, but I feel like your story fails to meet the base requirements of one of the game jam's fields in its "game ready ready state""-- the romance is informed, underdeveloped and not adequately experienced with the length of the game. 

Still, it's quite a curious experience and it serves as an introduction for what I can only presume the Unagi aesthetic continues with your other works, and you definitely cultivate a presentation that appeals to those with the energy to endure it.

Oh, gosh, there’s a lot here.

Googles Shinzo Looks at Google Images Attempts to refrain from Googling for the rest of this comment

The Morb Status for the characters after the prologue is indicated by the rotation of the their name. If it is rotated to the left then it is a Yin and vice versa.

Morbing was not a shitposting relic, I just honestly couldn’t think of a better name until a few days before my submission.

I haven’t seen Bladerunner. I’ve only read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Also don’t think too hard about the dream sequences, IBWHIP will metaphorically murder you if you do.

Hopefully the rest of the VN when I release it will satisfy your romance needs.

The rest of your comment can basically summed with “You might be getting Unagi-ed!”

I think I responded to everything that I had to fortitude, 6 weeks into this jam, to respond to.

If there is something you need more clarification on then please let me know.

(1 edit)

I will COMMAND GRAB you for only fixating on the androids part of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and putting that foot first in the narrative instead of the dichotomy of the androids in tandem with the empathy boxes of the Mercerism religion not as a tale of AI overtaking the role of man but in terms of what does it mean to be human, when there are machines with the same feelings as man and man forced to use a machine to feel empathy-- it's a tale of what does it mean to be human not a cautionary creed about the AI uprising you MONSTER.

You could have just like... referenced Megan at this rate. Your reference pulls in the opposite direction of the dialogue you penned for that scene.

I am, however, living for your commentary of "I pretend I do not see it."

SPOT DODGE!