Let me just start out by saying that as someone on the Autistic Spectrum I do in some ways understand where Saffie is coming from. The art is very nice and I liked the music, I thought the option to choose the gender of the voice of Snowe was a really cool feature as its something i don't think I've seen before. I know this is just a feature in whatever engine you are using (or at least from what I'm told) but it made me happy to see in the history log that little clock feature that allows you to go back in time. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit but it took me till half way through the game to connect the character Snowe with the name name of the title. Anyway I ended up with ending 6 all in all i thought it was a pretty well made game so you should be proud of it.
Viewing post in Sapphire Snowe: The Bear, The Beast & The Blizzard jam comments
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out the game and leave this comment! :3
That’s great to hear that you can relate to aspects of Saffie and her story! I was honestly a little afraid of even mentioning ASD in the story because, while it was a way for me to work through my own feelings of recently being diagnosed as autistic myself, I realise that everyone on the autistic spectrum will have very different experiences and outlooks on things. For that reason, I thought it was probably better to lean more into the anxiety and depression side of things than write too much about ASD specifically.
I also didn’t want to end up accidentally making Saffie me, haha. So I was very careful to only include elements of myself and my life in her story and try to make her her own character :3
When I got diagnosed with ASD back in October last year as an adult, my immediate feeling was relief at finally having an answer to so many things, followed by deep despair x3 Despair for my future, and despair at the realisation that a lot of the trauma in my past was a direct result of being autistic and not knowing it >.<
It means a lot that you liked the music because that was what started the project in the first place. I was so deeply depressed after my diagnosis that I didn’t have the will to do the things I normally enjoy doing, like making games. When I eventually felt a spark of interest to get back on my PC, I was just messing around with some samples and 1 of them made me feel so strongly that I started making a track around it. That spiralled into me making an entire soundtrack as a way to process and vent my feelings, and the words for the story came afterwards, haha.
That’s also great to know that you appreciated the choice for the gender of Snowe’s voice :D That’s a feature I’ve been trying my best to include in all of my games for a while now :3 It’s a lot of extra work, but I like how it can make a project more inclusive. When I write my characters, I don’t really imagine them as being specifically male or female, and I’m a big fan of androgynous looks, so it all fits well having different voice options :3
Yeah, it is a very handy feature to have the backlog and rewind stuff! I think most visual novel engines have a backlog feature to keep a log of all the text, but as far as I’m aware, not all of them have the rewind text feature. That’s something I found immediately attractive about Naninovel :D
I think ending 06 is probably the most innocent ending of them all, and I guess the most healthy one for both Saffie and Snowe, haha. Thanks so much again for playing and for leaving such a kind comment :3