itch.io

Ehh… On the one hand, I can see where you’re coming from, but the jam is clearly focused on one thing and one thing only: positive representations of polyamory. All the rules exist for that purpose - and, importantly, they’re written for people who don’t necessarily know what polyamory is or what a positive portrayal might look like.

For example, the trope of a “love triangle” isn’t just two characters in love with the same character, it’s generally also associated with jealousy and competition between the two love interests, with the idea that one of the love interests will “win” and get the girl or boy. That’s not polyamory, but people unfamiliar with the concept might mistake it as such, so that’s why the rules call it out.

I can’t speak for the jam hosts, but I imagine a situation that starts out as a typical love triangle but ends with the connecting character choosing both, or with the three of them falling in love with each other, would be just fine. (This kind of situation is even one of the examples provided in the description of the jam.)

I absolutely loved this game’s story, characters, and overall vibe. It’s incredible what this talented team accomplished in just a month. Everything worked so well together, from the music to the art direction to the writing. The lovely (partial) voice acting added a lot to the characters, too. Great job!

It took me about 5 hours to finish one playthrough (reading everything out loud and spending lots of time theorizing what would happen next), which is an impressive length for a jam game. I went into my playthrough expecting to go for Garret, but I found all the characters so charming that I wanted to romance them all (including best girl Ophelia). I ended up with Mikel and was grinning like an idiot through the whole last act of the game. So fun!

The game provides the option to skip mini-games entirely through the Settings menu in addition to a hybrid approach where you can choose to move on if you fail a particular mini-game. I appreciated both options. While playing through the first time, I wanted to at least try the mini-games to get a feel for the experience the developers intended, but was relieved when they didn’t block progress. Then it was useful to turn off the mini-games entirely when skipping through large chunks of the game to get to certain choices and endings.

The game already felt pretty complete and high-quality with v1.3. With a little more polish, it’ll really feel professional. I’m glad to see some of the issues I noticed were fixed in v1.4. If there’s one more thing I’d like to see… Gallery, pretty please? 🥺 The CGs were so cool, I’d love to be able to revisit them easily (and also see how many I missed). Just a quality-of-life thing.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this game and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good mystery and/or romance!

Aww, thank you! And yes, updates will be posted both here and on Steam. Both should be up to v1.3.2 (as of the latest version, you can see which version you’re on in the bottom-right corner of the title screen, so you can check if you have the latest or not).

Thanks for the head’s up about the review mentioning the bugged achievements. ;o; I was able to get the “Full Closet” achievement while I was testing before the release, but for such a short game, there are an awful lot of different ways you can play the game and get to different things! So, it wouldn’t surprise me if there are specific scenarios that cause it not to trigger. I’ll take a look and see if I can get those fixed up.

So fun to see what you’ve done with the concept! I absolutely love the fairy tale-esque GUI, and you did a great job picking out music that fits the vibe. And the character sprites are really well done, too - especially Luna. I loved what you added to the story, like hints at a backstory for Luna and complicated relationship with her mom, and the fun back-and-forth with God.

There’s absolutely no need to apologize for not being able to put together a full game. As long as you had fun designing the game, that’s good enough! I’m sure you’ll pick it back up someday - once you feel like everyone’s forgotten about it and there’s no pressure anymore (that’s what always happens to me at least, haha). Best of luck!

Wow, awesome! I’m so excited to see what you do with the idea (no pressure, though!) ^o^

Thanks! Truly the hallmark of a terrible visual novel, hehe.

Thank you so much for playing the game and giving me some great feedback! I really appreciate it. :)

Totally agree that making decisions for all three girls is a bit tedious. I had planned to have it be a setting where decisions would be 1) manual for all three girls, 2) manual only for Lisa/Endaleus (the player character) while the other two are automatic, or 3) automatic for all three girls. In the interest of time, though, I only implemented the all manual option. I definitely plan on adding that setting in for the next (hopefully full) release, with option #2 set as the default.

Being able to customize the girls’ names and pronouns is also something I programmed for but didn’t get a chance to fully implement, so that will hopefully be included in the next release as well.

And yes, the poor game really does need some good music and sound effects. I decided to leave that until after the jam in the interest of time (even though I had already picked out some nice dice rolling sound effects), but it’s amazing what a difference sound design - or the lack thereof - can make! I’ll keep in mind to prioritize it higher for future game jams.

I do plan on developing this game further. I think there’s a good foundation there, both programmatically and thematically, and I’d like to see where it could go if I gave it a little more time and love.

Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to not only play my game, but also leaving some awesome feedback, encouraging novice creators, and spreading positive vibes. I appreciate you. <3