itch.io

I know that in one build, the stairs to the platform in the basement were missing. I believe this is fixed in the current patch, but if you don't see stairs, please let us know!

Satisfying cinematic at the end! So glad to see the monster get its due!

It took me a while to get the feel for what to do. I know tutorialization is one of the things you guys sacrificed to finish on time, but I eventually did find the red light that displayed the memory collection, and got enough of the monster's patrol route to find all the items.

I really enjoyed the music! I was sad there wasn't more of it while wandering around the house. I think it really would have helped with the ambiance, and be a good opportunity to warn when the monster was patroling!

Great job on constructing a cohesive house. It made the strange garden and stranger ghost/monsters stand out even more.

I hope you do keep it! I thought it was a really clever puzzle! The only part I didn't get was the candle counting. I even figured out how you wanted me to count, I just didn't come out with the same numbers! I bet a little redesign of that one room would go a long way to making it less frustrating!

This has a lot of potential! It took me a little bit to get a feel for how to complete challenges (I think I ran headlong into the black blob of doom 4 or 5 times before I finally found the bathroom!). You had me very curious about the meta story, and what exactly the data cubes were preserving! I also got  stuck trying to find the "Counting" datacube for Level 3 access. Even with the hint of "a dark place on the bottom floor" I couldn't manage to run into it.

Even though it's not as finished as you'd like, there are some neat things happening in here! I was enjoying the picture-puzzle unlocks, and every time I found a DataCube, I was excited to find out what terribly creepy short story would be in this one. I admit I wanted very badly to open The Gate and see what was inside!

Good atmosphere, and I really enjoyed the use of the creepy drawings. Good tutorialization for the journal! If you have a chance to come back to this for polish, I'd suggest lowering the base move speed of the character a bit, and use the current speed as a run funciton. I missed the wrench my first time around, beacuse I moved too fast to see the outline on it!

Unfortunately, I got stuck on the 2nd puzzle and couldn't figure out how to solve it. Let me know if you get a guide up, and I'll try to play through to the end!

What a cool little story! I adored the segment with the floor falling apart. Then tension build in the underground section was good, and I especially liked the use of a cell phone as flashlight! It made the character feel unprepared for the underground journey.

The voice acting was very good, and I thought the movement in the begining sequence was very well done.

I really appreciated how you began and ended the game with the same crackling fire. It was just a touch unsatisfying not to hear a giant fwoosh of a gasoline fire at the end. If you decide to come back to do some polish on this, I'd suggest finding a more intense fire ignition sound. You can keep the wonderful symetry by using it as a transition from the opening sequence to the gameplay, then use it at the end and have the sound die down to the same crackling of the fireplace as the begining.

Great jam entry, overall!

I enjoyed the hints of a story here! I had a very satisfying "Ahah" moment when I noticed the first cracked open door. 

I think I found four endings, with two variants of two of them, but I got stuck on a door branch that lead me to an endless expanse of road where I couldn't find anything to interract with.

It's a very cool concept, and I'm sad I couldn't figure out how to find all the endings, because I got the sense there was a deeper story that would be revealed once you'd seen every end.

I liked the use of scroll wheel to open the door! It made the choice of which door to open have more weight than a simple interact, and I loved that once one door was fully opened, the other shut completely. After my 3rd or 4th playthrough though, I was getting aggrivated at it. I think the scroll wheel control would feel more satisfying if the interact area was a bit larger, so I didn't have to adjust to follow the edge of the door to crack it open. I really did like the unconventional control, just needed a touch of finessing to feel good!

This game was an absolute joy to play. I found myself laughing in approval at the delightfully sinister character. The environmental storytelling through careful object placement kept me curious, even while I was stumped trying to solve puzzles. I especially loved your use of the UV light, not just for puzzles, but to create another level of storytelling as I re-traversed old ground. The narrative was incredibly well dolled out.

The Good:

• It's a tiny thing, but I adored your animation on locked doors. It felt good to see it rattle, and gave feedback even if a player couldn't listen to the sound.
• Instant feedback for correctly solving a puzzle was fantastic. Often, the reward was around a corner or in another room, but giving me a cue the moment I got something correct felt good.
• The layout of the main building and the shed. The rooms were decorated so distinctly that I was able to put together a really good mental map of the place—vital with how often you teased a puzzle solution before I found the problem. This ties in with your excellent narrative: I started associating people with locations, and found it even easier to remember where to go to find something I saw 20 minutes ago.
• The cheeky UV 'directions'. I was enjoying the creepy splatters and commentary so much I spent most of my second half of the game using the UV light. The variety of smears and splatters and arrows you used to direct my attention was fantastic. By combingng real puzzle solutions with 'keep this for later' pointers and story-only items, I never felt like using the light was an instant "Solve All The Puzzles" button. I felt like I was exploring and discovering instead of being handed the answers. That's a really fine line to walk, and you did it excellently.

The Bad:

• The secondary building is a big contrast to how well everything else was layed out. I stumbled into this early and noted the boarded up door, but by the time I'd obtained the crowbar, I didn't actually remember there was a second building. The shed is placed so fantastically within line of sight of the first exterior door you open, right next to a note giving you 'permission' to wander around. It immediately conencts the Shed to the 'home base' of the art gallary. But that second building doesn't have a good sight line, and the interior decoration of the first floor feels too similar to rooms in the first building. Once I'd broken through the door and got up to the second floor, it was easy to nagivate and find, but the "discovery" of your second building was difficult.
• Your clock puzzle was ambitious, and pieces to solve it were scattered from the begining to the end of gameplay. But because of that, every hint that mentioned "time" in any way was suspect, and there were a number of hints that didn't actually play into the puzzle. The note in the art gallery sent me off on a wild goose chase for almost an hour with the hint that "it's not when they died, but where", because I was certain that the painting placement would tell me something about the time I ought to associate with the clock. I loved the long, drawn-out puzzle, but I think to make it feel better, you need to double check and make sure you don't accidentally make time references where it's not related.

The Ugly:

• Solving the clock puzzle. This stumped me. I did have to get someone to give me the answer, and even once I had it, I couldn't quite figure out how to reverse engineer it. But I think the most frustrating part of this puzzle for me was that I felt like I had all the pieces, and it was still wrong. For the other puzzles, you have fantastic rewards for having gotten something right. I think because the clock puzzle was so big, and interconnected with other puzzles, this needed mini "You're getting closer" rewards. I think if each clock had given me a smaller version of a reward sound when I got it right, I wouldn't have been so disheartened having to ask for help on the final piece I couldn't solve. 

Overall, I'm really astonished with how much you managed to do for a 2 week game jam. It feels like a whole, cohesive game. The mystery was engaging, the puzzles were mostly really enjoyable, and the twist at the end made me clap with joy. Very satisfying, so long as it comes with a 'solution guide'! I hope to see you polish this up and put it up for sale.