itch.io

Hello, it's your giftee ^3^ I think this game is great! I've never played this type of game before, but it was very easy to get a hang of! Requires a surprising amount of strategy and cam be genuinely nerve-wracking at times - I really got into it! You did a great job with the music and incorporating my favourite things. (Speaking of which, I really like the transformation sequence on the magical girl! And the cute little giraffe mouse pointer.) 

I still haven't been able to complete the first level of story mode, but I won't give up - anything to beat that utterly terrifying giraffe XD Thank you for making me this wonderful game!

Managed to draw a semicolon that consistently gets recognised as one. (At least, when it gets recognised at all.) Going to bend my own rules a bit and use Google Lens on it whenever I need a semicolon.

Oh no. 

I just realised something.

If Google Lens doesn't recognise handwritten semicolons... then how am I going to add CSS?

o_o;

Three sticky notes to implement, again, three lines of code. Unlucky number? Well, at least I got something done today. Though I'm starting to worry Google Lens is going to get stupider the more I use it.

The sheer silliness I've been going through trying to implement three lines of story JavaScript. Google Lens CANNOT recognise handwritten semicolons and it's been having a bit of trouble with spaces vs no spaces as well. Going to try to get the top one to work and probably ditch the other two.

Edit: It still won't accept my semicolons :') Don't know how it recognises stuff on random signs if it can't even see this. Anyway, I think Config.debug = false; might actually only be necessary to enable the other two lines of code. (Was borrowing the code from my other Sugarcube game and couldn't quite remember before.) 

Does that mean the JavaScript was a waste of time? Probably! But that's the point of the jam, I guess. And honestly... I still had fun :).

(Though I may or may not be thinking of finding a replacement for Google Lens just to see if it's better >.>)

Behold, a working intro! Starting to learn a few things about how to make this work. Saving the more difficult stuff for when I have more brainpower. Coding should be... interesting.

I will also be making all the music and sound effects with an out-of-tune kalimba.

(That's this thing here, in case you were wondering)

How it will work: I'll write the code on large square sticky notes stuck to the pages of a sketchbook (for convenience and to avoid weird looks from my family), then use Google Lens on my phone to copy the text digitally. I discovered it has this nifty feature called "copy to computer", which means I can paste the code into Twine straight away! The code will include CSS  and (minimal) JavaScript, and exclude passage headings. I will also be editing my code this way.

I will be working with the Sugarcube story format for the second time ever, so there's a bit of a learning curve attached. So far I've done a bit of preparation in terms of story notes and creating the passages I think I'll need. These are all empty.

This whole thing is pretty daunting to be honest, and I can only hope I'll have the time and/or enough sanity to complete it all. But this jam is so cool that I couldn't not join in. Better to at least try, right?

Stay tuned for (hopefully) more updates! Let's see how much of a dent I can make in this thing.

This is a cozy game. I really love the concept. Though I was wondering, if the customers are giving memories away, wouldn't they forget they ever had them the second they did so? Anyway, I liked the story and its slice-of-life nature.

The game had me genuinely struggling with one of its choices, which says a lot about how much the game made me care about the story and characters. Though related to that is something that confused me. I chose to give the Serious Woman's memory to the Handsome Man, and that seemed to help him. But then later on Shopkeep tells the Rich Gentleman that she needs the Handsome Man's memory back. But even though that memory was precious to him, the other memory seemed to be what he needed, so why the determination to get his old memory again? Of course it turned out that you're supposed to give that memory to the Serious Woman later, but Shopkeep couldn't have known that. I certainly didn't.

Overall though, this works really well. I like the way the physical memories are presented and described, and the little hints that the game takes place in the past. And I genuinely did not see that twist coming.

A very down-to-earth tale with well-written, personable characters. Well done!

The main character is soooo cute! The story was also very cute and sweet. You established a good rhythm with how events played out each day, which was good for the setup as well as the payoff when things began to deviate a bit. I really connected with Dream Lady and wanted to see her happy. And I got worried when she stopped turning up. I'm glad everything turned out okay in the end. :)

The art is simple but charming. I especially liked the crayon drawings. It's clear that a lot of work and love went into this. And of course you get points for even doing the voice acting yourself!

I enjoyed this. Great job!

The writing style of this game has great voice and really helps you engage with Kazan. I love the main mechanic of composing your own letter, I thought it was pretty fun. Are there multiple endings based on what you pick? I also like the mystery of not knowing where these letters come from or why. The music is lovely.

There was an issue with the screen size, though. The game's display was too big for my laptop screen so text was cut off at the edges, making it harder to read everything. The issue actually seemed to get worse as I got further into the game. It's a shame I wasn't able to read everything properly, as once again I do like the writing style and was curious to learn more about Kazan. There's also a bug where if you go back to the main menu after completing the main game a second playback of the song starts up but the first one keeps going, so the song is playing twice at the same time, if that makes sense.

Still, this is nice work!

This was such a sweet story. I like how such a common phrase was both made literal and used as a metaphor for the love the two main characters have for each other. And the music is really pretty. 

There's a bug with the text when you look at the items (when I looked at the picture and then the wedding dress, the picture text didn't go away so I couldn't read the text one). And there's a small spelling mistake in the wedding scene. But other than that, this is done pretty well!

Good job getting this in!

World's most delayed anagnorisis, LOL.

Thanks for the feedback! I've been wondering whether or not it was a good thing that the game takes multiple playthroughs to understand, so I'm glad to have someone chime in on the matter. It was a pleasant surprise for me to discover during development that I could incorpirate an unreliable narrator. I'm not sure if the slightly hidden text is just your screen/monitor setup or an actual bug; I was able to read the final message in its entirety both in and out of fullscreen. 

I'm glad you enjoyed it! (And understood it... eventually.)

(Yooo! The opening "Ludum Dare 32 - Track 5"  is in my game ROSA! Song buddies! :D)

Super SUPER well-made. The idea behind this is really intriguing. At first I thought the deteriorating environment was literal, but it started to make sense when the main character returned home. I liked the teddy bear as a symbol of innocence and hope. I also loved all the little details sprinkled throughout that convey both story and atmosphere. (Though I have to ask - why is SquishypuffDave in this game? XD EDIT: Oh my gosh, I can't believe I noticed SquishypuffDave but not myself XDDD It's an honour! Thanks!)

As for the reveal, I'm not sure it recontextualizes everything that came before because there's not much story prior to watching the tapes. Or at least, there doesn't seem to be. Why does the main character go to the house? Does he know he's going to do what he does in the tape, or is at least considering it? Or is the tape an unexpected wake-up call on where his life is going? Both those things are probably difficult to convey in such a short game, espcially when you need to focus on the main events.  In any case, it definitely works as a reveal for both the main character and the player, whether it be literal or metaphorical.

The only real issue I saw is that there doesn't seem to be a way to exit the Windows version at the end. (Also if I knew my thumbnail would be front and centre, I might have spent more time on it XD Thanks for promoting us all though!)

Excellent job!

Now that I've finished it, I can say this had a great reveal! It recontextualizes the whole game and even the title screen. It's a well-conveyed, lovely story too. I really like the new addition you've made too - where while Scarlett's chasing the dog the music gets quieter and the city noises get louder. I'm pretty sure it's new, anyway.

There are still a few bugs. I can still make Scarlett walk under the tall plant I mentioned before. And you might want to check the lampposts/objects outside, I could walk under several. Also Scarlett briefly disappears the last time you interact with the dog before her sensory overload. I think that happened the first time too, but I forgot about it. But those are smaller bugs that you'll probably work on later. 

Nice work!

Thank you for the feedback! I did hope it would be replayable, but mainly because the player would be either going through things again to see the hints/foreshadowing they missed or picking [RIGHT] every time to fix things, lol. As for the ending, it was meant to be an ambiguous cliffhanger - you don't know if you're about to be saved or destroyed.

I wondered about the significance of there being two of that red-and-yellow pendant thing. Did the protagonist need them both for some ritual/to assert their dominance? Actually now I'm thinking that it gave the guild leader some kind of power, and now the protagonist has two of them, therefore twice as much of it. (Or maybe it was just two halves of some extremely valuable item that needed to be put back together.)

I agree that there are a lot of ways to interpret the ending. In any case, it was pretty surprising.

Good work!

So apparently you're supposed to cook breakfast on the stove first... ;;;>.> It was like 6am when I played this, don't judge me.

Anyway, I still found a few places where you could walk where you weren't supposed to. For example, you can walk over the left wall in Scarlett's room and end up in the other one, and you can walk on some things in there as well (like the bed, which I danced on). You can also walk on the fire extinguisher in the hall ouside Scarlett's apartment, under the tall leafy plant at the top right in the flower shop, and on top of the flower shop's front counter if you come in from behind it (yup, danced on that too). Those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

I also noticed that expressions seem to remain even after you've moved on to different interactions (like how seeing the food stand in the beginning made Scarlett sad, but she still had the crying face on when I had her greet customers at the store).

And I also got stuck at the exact some point as Toaster Strooder. When both Scarlet and the dog are next to the big hole the game freezes and I can't continue.

So far though, I like what you've done with this. I think Scarlett's text box is a really nice detail. Another small detail I liked was how the guy at the food stand also reacted to the barking. I really want to know what's in that bag. I wasn't quite sure what it was that distressed Scarlett. Was it it the barking noise? The stress and frustration of having to chase it? The apparent rejection? It made me wonder, in a good way. And I like how it came right before an important reveal.

So, I couldn't leave the house because an invisible wall kept stopping me from getting Scarlett's breakfast ^.^; (I'm assuming it's in the brown paper bag? It could be the chopped food as well, but I couldn't get to that either). I haven't rated the game - I want to complete the whole thing first :) I'm sure updating it should be fine if it's to fix a game-breaking bug. 

Speaking of invisible walls, I noticed quite a lot of them in this first part. Though maybe that's to clearly show where you're not supposed to go. Though I could walk on the fridge and table. (I may have made Scarlett dance on top of the latter.)

I like Scarlett, though. She's cute.

Hi, the desktop RAR file appears to be empty. You might want to check that out.

This was a pretty solid puzzle game. The last puzzle took me way too long to figure out, though. As for the story, I liked how the interface changed as the character's awareness did. You did a good job at making me feel for them too. I didn't get to open the first two doors in the dream world though (probably because I didn't sleep enough - I thought bad things would happen if I did, lol). Also, nice adaptive music.

Great work!

This has excellent art direction. The old picture book and paper doll style (with white paper creases and everything!) appeals to me quite a bit. Much like you with my game, I had to play this twice to try and understand what was going on - but I think I might have gotten the basic twist the first time because of the very last shot. It's just that the events were so surreal that they had me thinking I was missing something (read: a lot). As far as anagnorisis goes, does it recontextualize the rest of the story? I don't know. It seems like the new context is something you could've already intuited from the visual style alone. Though maybe that's part of the foreshadowing. (Or I'm misunderstanding, like, everything.)

I think what I liked best in terms of ludonarrative was the scribbled-out dialogue. That's because even though you don't know what's being said, that's not what's important about it. What is important is what it conveys about the situation, mood and in particular the narrative arc, which is achieved via things like context and music choices. I like how these things allow the player to infer for themselves whats being said, even if there's still some mystery. Very well done.

I hope the boy stuck on the ceiling is a reference to Roald Dahl's "The Twits".  I didn't notice until the second playthrough  just how creepy and robotic his laugh was. (Just like how I didn't notice the lying down half-face in the cover image until I was rating the game. Was that always there? O.o)

Fantastic job!

Thanks for the feedback and for playing the game so early! I guess based on what you said it might need a bit more work to get people to understand the story on the first playthrough. 

Also I really appreciate the suggestion about the font and colour choices - it's something I only really thought about once during development. I want to improve the UI by a lot over the next three weeks so the extra symbolism could be something to consider.

Hello there! (I love your username btw)

I'm so glad this made you happy! I'm happy I got to make something for you. Thank you so much for playing! <3 

I'm glad you thought the little blob was compelling! That's what I was aiming for, haha. Thanks for playing!

I just realised why the cow is considered the holy one. "Holy cow." It took me almost a week to get this. 

Slowbrain. Literally so much slowbrain.

Start screen: *starts glitching out*

Me: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nop-

---

So yeah, I wasn't really sure how I was going to handle this one, which is part of why it's taken me so long to get around to playing it. (My apologies.) Of course, the horror aspect is incredibly well-done. Despite the game going hard with the imagery early on, there was definitely a sense of progression in terms of ramping up the scares. This is especially apparent with the soundtrack - the way it became more distorted over time (along with the occasional screaming) was an excellent detail. 

One thing in particular that stuck in my mind was the writing style. I could tell almost immediately that the voice was very different from that of Detective Rivers' back in the main VN. It was odd and old-fashioned, with weird emphasis on certain words (which of course made everything feel even more "off"). This threw up all sorts of questions - was this a different character? Or was this the same character after the end of Monochrome, when he's learned the truth? Is he the one adding all that blood? I think I figured it out in the end, but it really got me wondering the whole while. Almost as if I, myself, were trying to solve a mystery.

What's interesting now that I think about it is that it's almost like Rivers wasn't aware of the change in his mental state, yet that shift was what made him more "receptive" to the reality of his existence, hence why the All-In-One decided to pay him a visit. Which is not only a great example of implicit storytelling but also contributes well to the cosmic horror nature of the piece. Great work!

Obviously, this scene does need the extra context of a whole other game to fully understand. Does it stand up on its own regardless? As a horror experience, definitely. As its own narrative? Well, the events do seem to be mostly self-contained, focusing on one location with only slight references to the case,  and without the context I'd imagine the events are more mysterious than confusing. The idea of not being able to fully comprehend what you're seeing and experiencing is also very Lovecraftian. So it still works out in the end, I think.

(Another small note: something that creeped me out immediately was the crude drawing of a boy's face in Rivers' apartment. Like, what is that doing there? Didn't he have issues with kids from the FBI case that went bad? It looks like a child drew it too; just where did he get it from? Why is something like that framed on the wall when he lives alone? Really weird.)

Haha, I see your point about the blob making a good tattoo! And I'm glad the note from Elise inspired you so. Thank you for the feedback, and thanks for playing!

Thank you for your feedback! I'm especially glad you understood the story and felt like everything was clear. Someone I know who played this said they were confused by it so I was worried everyone would be. So this is really reassuring!

(And I'm glad you like the vector art, it was my first time making it! ☺️ The presentation too; I was worried the layout might've looked sloppy despite all the work I put in trying to fix it (though I did get to a point where I felt it was just okay enough to submit).)

Thank you! I adore the little blob too, lol.

Oh! So it didn't happen again? That's good I guess, lol

Hmm... Tried playing the game on itch both logged in and logged out but I can't seem to replicate this error. Very strange. I'll try and look into fixing it but I'm not sure if you're allowed to update your game during the voting period of the jam I submitted this to :(.

(You know me from your Discord server though, so is it okay if I DM you to ask you some more questions about this? I don't want to clog up your comments section.)

Really? There should be a pretty obvious tick/cross each time you input a code. That's weird, I checked everything was working before I made the game page public. I'll be sure to check that out. Thanks!

I didn't think it was abrupt! You built up to the reveal with the status of the dimming pendant. I just meant it was surprising in a plot-twisty kind of way. I meant that comment as a good thing, lol.

Like I said, Harlowe is the default, but if you somehow discover you were using Sugarcube that format has built-in capabilities for audio (though you'd have to read up on the documentation for that). So you have options!

I'm glad the feedback was useful! Keep up the good work!

This had plenty of nice touches - the phone screen pictures, the countdown sound effect, the cat... The way you have the player slowly piece together what's going on is really well-done. You've given just enough info on the context, setting and backstory for the player to feel grounded in the plot. And you really feel bad for the protagonist no matter what happens. Wonderful job.

A couple of bugs I found: Some of the links pulse in time with the countdown (perhaps to highlight their importance, lol), and when restarting the game some of the links show text that suggests you're clicking on that option a second time (e.g. the one about unpacking the boxes), and there's also other links that seem like they're showing up early, or text that isn't exactly the same as the very first time you play the game. If you're using the Harlowe story format, I'd suggest using the (restart:) macro for your Play Again link to reset all variables and visits while taking you back to the beginning.

Played through it a few times to get all the endings. I enjoyed it a lot! I'm glad you were able to submit this!

Used "Ludum Dare 32 - Track 2", "Ludum Dare 30 - Track 5", "VGMA Challenge - July 18th" and "VGMA Challenge - July 30th" in my latest short game, Dawn. Thanks again for the great music!

Hi! I'm not sure if it'd be fair of me to rate this, since the main game didn't run very well on my potato laptop. But I will say that I certainly didn't expect the game to actually be in Latin. Helps with immersion, I guess, but also makes things a bit harder to understand. From what I understood, your goal is to keep the republic from falling? Overall though it was difficult to figure out what exactly you were supposed to do. The setting is interesting, though!

Dang, this was brutal! The combat system was interesting, though the prospect of actually winning felt a bit hopeless. But maybe that's the point. The writing was good too! Really had a dramatic, gritty feel. Keep up the good work!

I really felt for Naomi during this game. It sounds like she's been through a lot and is feeling depressed and confused. You handled the story really well here. That woman scared the crap out of me though, haha.

The only thing is that I was able to walk onto the right counter in the kitchen (and all over the donuts ;-;). Also I wish I could've been able to play this in fullscreen (the title of this jam was so long it kept sticking into the viewport, lol).

Great work!

I liked the characters in this one, especially Garth. Both the family bond and the conflict within it were subtly conveyed. The post-apocolyptic setting was hinted at just enough to give the game some atmosphere. Nice job!

I've gotta admit, I was taking pretty off guard by that ending. It wasn't until I got to it that I was able to see how well you'd dropped in hints of the backstory bit by bit. You did a good job setting up the whole pendant thing. There were some minor spelling and grammar errors, and I was a bit confused about the dwarven lady, but other than that I found this to be an interesting story!

(By the way, did you use the Harlowe (default) story format for this game? If so, there is a way to add music, by using the Harlowe Audio Library: https://twinelab.net/harlowe-audio/#/ Hope it helps!)