itch.io

The snake is the symbol of medicine dating back to ancient greece. You may have seen the Caduceus staff which is sometimes drawn as two snakes coiling around a winged staff, and occasionally one snake with a head on each end coiled in the same manner in other depictions. Its a worldwide well known symbol. There are similar symbols in chemistry, and the Ouroboros, the serpent devouring itself from the tail forward, is commonly referenced in various philosophical practices, including alchemy.

I don't claim to have insight into the developer's thoughts, but it seems likely to me that it is related here.

Made me care about people.
Made me hate people.
Made me care about people I hate.
Made me care about people I should hate.
Made me uncertain about my allies being enemies.
Made me uncertain about my enemies becoming allies.

Made me need to know more about everyone, regardless of whether I like or trust them or not. 

Do not stop.

(Also upset me when I reached the end and several characters are no longer available to chat with, likely to return, but off limits at the cliffhanger. Annoyed about that, but in the end its proof I'm invested beyond surface level.)

EDIT: Note that all of these statements (apart from the annoyed part) are to be considered praise.

the new UI is kind of bright and the low contrast text makes it hard to read. Also it seems to now cause menus to extend off the screen in some rooms. I think it was the west hall. Any chance we could get the option of an inverted color scheme?

Not asking for the old UI back or anything, but the black UI was a lot easier on my eyes. Also it would be nice to have the dossier and quest list be dedicated buttons always on the screen again so I don't have to click through multiple menus to open them up. I was constantly flipping back and forth through them before, so its going to make the QOL go way down this way. A keyboard hotkey might also suffice, though having it on the header would still be ideal.

Another usability issue is.. I can't tell which save is my newest one anymore. Used to be whichever one had a different color text, but they all look the same now and needing to compare time and date stamps on like 8 pages of saves is going to be a nightmare.

Hidden Voices appears to be broken for several characters in Act 2, with anyone not having a character paperdoll in act 3 having their talkChar value improperly updated. Ard becomes cmDefaultBoy instead of cmArd, the Lamia in the mountains retains the value of cmRobinThink or Talk from the previous line written, etc. Most of the time this results in NPCs having the "I shouldn't try to read minds while speaking its too confusing" or "I can't hear their voice, its like its muffled somehow." lines.

As a result some scenes like with the Lamia are actually locked off an inaccessible, while other scenes may still advance but the player won't be able to get the necessary context they should from hearing the character's normal thoughts.

Most of the housemates work, but this seems to be because they are the ones who have paperdolls. I suspect assigning talkChar based on the base image for the paperdoll is the problem. You should probably check that file, or just use a switch statement that checks characters' display names instead of doing anything too clever with image files. In programming clever is only clever until your foot has a bullet in it.