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I enjoyed the creative choices in this game. The large trees in the vast snowy expanse, the dimly lit and quiet warehouse. Great vibes.

I appreciated that sound design was prioritized as well, both tapes made good use of it to create ambience and an engaging setting. I'm a particular fan of the low hum of the fan on the side of the wall in the warehouse.

I also like the different kinds of horror at play. The snowy place is more like existential horror, of trees impossibly large, a force that demands to be fed who you cannot understand the goals or motives of, the spirit in the forest that whispers to you. There was good focus on elements being oriented towards those more unknowable and large mysteries that are threatening. Whereas the warehouse is much more claustrophoic by comparison: the lack of light making you only able to see so far, the small normal sounds around you that nevertheless feel threatening themselves. To then be capped off by the lights coming back on, and the reveal that being able to see better isn't actually enough to save you, that it might actually be a worse thing. Again, thoughtful design.

The conceit of jumping to different worlds through different tapes is a fun idea, ambitious too. I'm pleasantly surprised we got even 2 tapes, each had plenty of good details and, though brief, could be made to stand on their own.
I've been trying to focus on game ideas that I can create completely within the timespan of the given gamejam, so I don't know that I'd take a similar approach, concept wise. But that's also because, after this game jam, I don't really think I'll be working on my game further (even if there are lots of things I had to cut and couldn't get to). However, I notice that a lot of submissions to gamejams in general are focused on being a demo or snippet, Where it's expected to be worked on after the jam. Neither is the better approach, it's just interesting to consider these different approaches. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that, like, did you go into this knowing that you wouldn't be able to get all the ideas for different tapes in, what would it look like if you re-approached this knowing the scope of what you'd be able to accomplish, that sort of stuff.

This was a great submission to the jam, thanks for much for all your efforts. :]

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You understood our idea perfectly, which actually makes us really happy! Your post is a very good elaboration of our initial concept with the 2 horror levels.

You raise a very good question. This is my second game jam as a programmer. In my first one, I aimed for a hyper-casual game. I usually want a complete presentable project that I can take away for my portfolio, so scoping was extremely important and we spent a whole day on planning. Our idea spawned off of the V/H/S movies, which we also watched in our downtime to get a better understanding of the different horror elements. Personally, for me, I go for smaller ideas and a possibility to combine them because itā€™s easier to program; write modular code then reuse it.

This was also our writer/designerā€™s first time writing for a game. So short, self-contained ideas also gave them room to explore the elements better. We had a very good understanding of each otherā€™s work where the writers gave me room for technical development and vice versa. Considering this, we would likely have come up with the same outcome but perhaps with a more polished product (less bugs, better graphics and QOL changes). It was a conscious decision to make smaller tapes to keep within the game jamā€™s time frame which worked out as a happy accident in a way. We did have more ideas that we never got to, which we will be adding in later on. Therefore, at the end of the day, things would be slightly different if we scoped this with a better time frame, but not vastly.

I hope this answers your question well. Iā€™d love to connect and talk about this in depth if you like. The horror elements and game mechanics you used within your game were very memorable for me and Iā€™d love to know your process as well.