This was engrossing, to say the least, read it in a go from start to finish and never felt for a moment like something was just filler. The ending was perhaps a little....abrupt? This is what I got:
"During the night, with flashlight in hand, the two of you follow the trampled path back to the IORATA. You call to your crewmates, and even search for them but no matter what you do, you only find Cleo and Jake dead in their sleeping pods. It's unclear what happened to the rest of them."
Not sure if there was supposed to be something after that. But I guess I can guess what will happen either way :) I feel like maybe there could've been something more with the...military styling of the crew of your ship? And also I wonder about the time discrepancy. But perhaps these things are answered somewhere else - fascinating, anyway!
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Yo, thanks for checking out the game! You're right, the ending does seem abrupt, I've had more than one person complain that they aren't sure what happened and it's true, I didn't write it in. It's not a very happy ending, they're supposed to all be dead aside from you and the one other person who decided to stay. But time constraints led me to kind of forget to elaborate on that. I'll be doing so once the jam is over, though.
Regarding military stylings, there really isn't too much going on aside from Sergeant just going by that nickname, even though you can choose to use a different name later. I didn't want players picking a silly name at the very beginning of the game because I felt that might ruin things, which is why I give you the option to do it later. I came up with the backstory that made the nickname make sense- it's the character's rank before they got to participate in the program. But that's about as military as it gets- the rest of the crew isn't meant to be military.
Also, what do you mean by "time discrepancy"? I can certainly answer any questions you have if they aren't answered in the optional document you can download. It's just a text file that explains some of the reasoning behind the names and other details.
Re: time discrepancy I just meant the discussion that the science team had been flying for, whatever it was, 5 cycles or something, and this team had been out for like, 28 or something, and I got the distinct impression a 'cycle' is at least a year but more like...many years. Whether that was a glitch in the AI or some relativistic trickery or what I felt wasn't ever explained? Or maybe it was.
Why are they all deaaad? Did they die from, like, hibernation sickness or something?
Aaahh yeah that was a bit of an unfinished thing. I wanted to bring it up again but I was running short on time.
Just to be clear, a single cycle is one thousand years! And without too many spoilers, I was hoping to expand that into the reason as to how the Paradisaea crew were on that planet for only a few years despite them having many thousands of years of travel time between them. Hence why the shock at hearing that they were only traveling for five cycles. No AI bugging out, it's more in the relativistic trickery I guess, but there really are all those years of space travel between them. Maybe a mystery for another time.
Also nobody's dead from hibernation sickness at the moment but I could definitely add a sad little secret ending or two just to add ANOTHER bad ending to the story lol