itch.io

I'm glad you liked it! Thank you for playing :)

This was a really neat experience to play through! The mechanic showing the reactions to the letters was very cute and it was nice to revisit the characters after playing The Case of the Serialised Killer and getting to know a little bit more about their backstory.

And Hawley sure did find out what Harry sounds like after three drinks but maybe not in the intended way

I really enjoyed this demo! The leads have really sweet chemistry and I could really tell how comfortable Hikaru feels around Aki ;_; 

You do a great job of making things feel very anime in a fun and engaging way without falling too deeply into stale tropes. The spookiness was also executed very well. I definitely felt that near-constant haunting dread from the spooky lady. I also liked the little prologue that provided some insight into Aki's perspective and revealed a few things about him we might only have found out way after the events in the demo otherwise.

I definitely want to see more of these two!

I really like the combination of the mundane horror of the workplace and spooky monster horror. Celia having to deal with all sorts of microaggression and corporate terribleness felt very real and you did a great job creating an atmosphere of stress and uncertainty in a place where nobody really respects you.

I hope you'll be able to make an extended post-jam version since I see a lot of potential with this premise. I'm definitely intrigued with what I've seen and keen to learn more about Celia and her circumstances.

I really like the combination of the mundane horror of the workplace and spooky monster horror. Celia having to deal with all sorts of microaggression and corporate terribleness felt very real and you did a great job creating an atmosphere of stress and uncertainty in a place where nobody really respects you.

I hope you'll be able to make an extended post-jam version since I see a lot of potential with this premise. I'm definitely intrigued with what I've seen and keen to learn more about Celia and her circumstances.

This was a great experience to play! I love the story concept.

(somewhat spoilery thoughts below)

Even though Goldie was a nice Doppelgänger, things still ended up going the way they usually do in these stories, which creates an eerie sense of inevitability. Mari might have remained stuck with her unsatisfying life otherwise, but being faced with an idealised version of yourself who is nothing but good and kind and only wishes the best for you didn't make it any better for her either. And it makes sense, because being confronted by who you could be without all the issues and ingrained self-manipulation and accumulated exhaustion from trying to get through life isn't something that'll feel good. 

It's very easy to turn into Mari and become too tired and angry and resigned to have any energy to even want things to be better. Putting all that aside to open yourself up to a chance to improve things is hard. I can definitely relate to her. Even when you know it's not ill-intentioned, people being unflappably optimistic to the point that it feels like they don't see your pain and your difficulties can feel very frustrating.

I think it was a great choice to not have a "good" ending where suddenly everyone gets along and is happy following their dreams. I appreciated the look at the bleak way the situation turned out no matter the final choice rather than having a feelgood message,

The music was well-chosen and really brought across the underlying horror atmosphere. All the aspects of this VN came together very well for a coherent experience. Great job by everyone on the team!

This was a great experience to play! I love the story concept.

Even though Goldie was a nice Doppelgänger, things still ended up going the way they usually do in these stories, which creates an eerie sense of inevitability. Mari might have remained stuck with her unsatisfying life otherwise, but being faced with an idealised version of yourself who is nothing but good and kind and only wishes the best for you didn't make it any better for her either. And it makes sense, because being confronted by who you could be without all the issues and ingrained self-manipulation and accumulated exhaustion from trying to get through life isn't something that'll feel good. 

It's very easy to turn into Mari and become too tired and angry and resigned to have any energy to even want things to be better. Putting all that aside to open yourself up to a chance to improve things is hard. I can definitely relate to her. Even when you know it's not ill-intentioned, people being unflappably optimistic to the point that it feels like they don't see your pain and your difficulties can feel very frustrating.

I think it was a great choice to not have a "good" ending where suddenly everyone gets along and is happy following their dreams. I appreciated the look at the bleak way the situation turned out no matter the final choice rather than having a feelgood message,

The music was well-chosen and really brought across the underlying horror atmosphere. All the aspects of this VN came together very well for a coherent experience. Great job by everyone on the team!

A fun, unique game! I like your sense of humour and the way you play around with tropes and common expectations. The poetry sections were also really neat! It must have taken a while to write the rhymes.

A fun typing game! Probably also a good way to practice your typing speed.

I like that it adjusts the difficulty depending on the player's typing speed. That's a neat feature!

A fun typing game! Probably also a good way to practice your typing speed.

I like that it adjusts the difficulty depending on the player's typing speed. That's a neat feature!

Thank you for making these music tracks! I used two of them in a little GB Studio game I made in three days: https://glueblade.itch.io/two-blobs-one-sunflower

(copied over from the game page so it's in both places)

Really cute art style and concept. A soothing little puzzle game.

Really cute art style and concept. A soothing little puzzle game.

(copied over from the main game page so it's in both places)

Very cool concept! The controls feel smooth and the graphics work well. Definitely a fun game to play.

Very cool concept! The controls feel smooth and the graphics work well. Definitely a fun game to play.

(copied from the main itch page so it's in both places)

Super cute art! The way the writing sort of lovingly pokes fun at a lot of anime and manga tropes is very entertaining too. I love the premise too. I definitely had fun playing this!

I of course ended up with the BL ending first because idols are ephemeral but BL is indeed eternal.

Super cute art! The way the writing sort of lovingly pokes fun at a lot of anime and manga tropes is very entertaining too. I love the premise too. I definitely had fun playing this!

I of course ended up with the BL ending first because idols are ephemeral but BL is indeed eternal. Time to make some boys sticky.

Ahaha, the part where everything you touch dies was definitely partly inspired by my failures to keep some plants alive. There's been some that seemed to start dying as soon as they passed my doorstep. But it definitely feels rewarding when something works out.

I'm glad that the melancholy mood came across and that you enjoyed it :D It can be hard to tell if things come across like I want them to, so it's great to get feedback on what the experience of playing it felt like to you. :>

Thank you for playing! It's really nice to hear such high praise for my art and storytelling ;_;

Thank you so much for this comment! I really like how you described the narrative ;_;

I generally write very short stories, so I stuck with a length that was comfortable for me in order to keep it achievable to make within the jam period. I'm glad it worked out well :D

Thank you for appreciating the art and character designs as well ;_; I think I almost spent more time on developing the visual style of the game than on the actual drawings, but I'm pretty happy with the result, thankfully.

Thank you! I can't really take credit for the music since I used freely available royalty-free music, but I'm glad I seem to have picked out something fitting.

I'm really glad you think so! I was worried the story wouldn't feel emotionally impactful due to the short length and having relatively little space to establish the characters and their relationship. And I'm happy you like the backgrounds too since I have relatively little experience with drawings BGs.

This is a very cool story concept and I was getting really intrigued when i started playing, but unfortunately I got an error message relatively soon into the game. Here's a copypaste of it:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While processing text tag {/i} in u'Seems he had been in a real rush.{/i}'.:

Exception: u'/i' closes a text tag that isn't open.

I hope this is an easy fix so I can keep playing soon >:D

(copied over from the jam page so it's in both places)

This is a lovely story! Very sweet and genuine with enough little details thrown in that there's a good sense of the characters' personalities, daily life and bits of worldbuilding. I love the cinematography - it's clear a lot of love and care was put into animating everything and adding neat little touches.

This is a lovely story! Very sweet and genuine with enough little details thrown in that there's a good sense of the characters' personalities, daily life and bits of worldbuilding. I love the cinematography - it's clear a lot of love and care was put into animating everything and adding neat little touches.

One small side note: I ended up downloading the game because the text was hard to read on the web version because the window is pretty small. Maybe check the viewport dimensions again to make sure you set those right

I really enjoy the poorly drawn ghost sprite. It's adorable. I think my favourite part were actually the spinny animations. They fit the overall lovable low-effort messiness of the game very well.

Thank you for the lovely comment! It feels very validating to have my writing described as "delicious" >:D O2A2 is a great way to try out some unconventional formats due to the limitations and small scope, so I'm glad this one worked out well.

And also thank you for pointing out that the web version is too small! I was in a bit of a rush to upload everything, so I didn't realise that the settings were off. I hope it's easier to see now.

If I make a part of the menu where you can check which endings you've gotten, would

1) The text of the endings (such as "good ending" or "demon queen ending") count towards the world limit?

2) Would having small icons to represent each ending be considered UI elements or would it be extra art and therefore against the rules?

I'm finally getting around to making my way through the O2A2 entries, and I'm glad I did because this was a great experience to play. The dense writing didn't make this feel short at all and you used the limited assets so well that it doesn't feel like anything was constrained or limited.

The writing for the characters is excellent - you get a great sense of the pâtissier's personality and the way it entwines with her passion for baking rather than making the baking feel like superficial set dressing. I also enjoy the sense of gradual progression without sudden twists or dramatics. It's just a quiet glimpse into someone's life.

I also love the art, especially the little animated puff of air. It really makes the cool workshop come to life.

The UI is extremely fitting and the musix-track is well-chosen as well. Amazing work overall!

I wanted to ask for some clarifications on what kinds of trans rep is looked for in the jam since the FAQ didn't go into detail on them

1) Does trans rep include representation of non-binary people? To my knowledge, non-binary people are generally included in the trans umbrella, but since the FAQ doesn't specify, I figured I'd make sure and ask before the jam starts. Would a character using they/them or nonstandard pronouns be enough to be clear representation or does it also have to be brought up in other ways?

2) What about things like sci-fi/fantasy societies that don't have a concept of gender or things like shapeshifter species that frequently change their appearance to match whatever their current feelings are? They don't technically fit the definition of trans since they wouldn't have an assigned gender, but it's still something that a lot of trans people see themselves in. Or is this jam focused on representation of real life modern day trans-ness specifically?

This was a really cool experience to play through. I started with not mind-reading and of course it's clear from the start that there's more going on, but even if it hadn't been presented like that, there's a couple weird things in the conversation that hint that things aren't quite that simple. Julius saying "I haven't had a conversation like that in years" had me going "what sort of social life do you have that you never have to do awkward catchup smalltalk with old classmates?". And then you get to find out what that statement actually signifies.

You could probably make some deep (tm) analysis of how we as the player only find out what was going on through the mind-reading mechanic and things remain opaque if we don't make use of it. But for the characters, it's clear what's going on and the route without mind-reading represents something for them that the player will only fully appreciate after playing through all the other possibilities.

I'm hoping Julius and Mark can manage to reconnect in the future, but the good ending works really well as an open-ended positive moment between them that might either be closure or the possibility of things developing further from there.

Seeing how differently two people may experience the same situation is my jam, and so is getting to gradually piece together what's going on, so I really enjoyed this. I'd definitely be interested in a prequel or expanded version that delves more deeply into their relationship. Julius's overthinking was really well-presented (it's the sort of thing that can easily end up feeling tedious or repetitive, but it definitely didn't in this case) and I'd love to look more into his mind and relationships. 

So for clarification, if we offer the game in two languages and each version is 1000 words each, that wouldn't be allowed because it's 2000 words total? Or are multiple languages allowed as long as each translation is under 1000 words?

I'd like some clarification on panning across backgrounds/CGs:

-  I'm assuming panning/zooming across a CG is allowed to the same extent as with a background. Is that correct?

- If my CG features e.g. a character sitting on a picnic blanket in a forest clearing and I start out focusing only on the clearing first and then pan to the character, is that allowed or would that effectively be considered changing scenes since it's making a character "appear"?

I sent an email. Hopefully things can be cleared up.

When browsing the submissions, I noticed two entries that appear to very likely be made with AI. Is there a place to report them since that's against the rules of the jam?

I really enjoy reading these devlogs! Also very much looking forward to putting a bouncy horse in my playgrounds

This is very exciting news! I love the pixel art style of this game, so I'm definitely looking forward to a full tycoon game with this art style. Good luck for the development!

Overall a very enjoyable read and basically exactly what I was looking for in a gay fantasy story. There's a good balance between familiar fantasy elements and some unique characters and worldbuilding that make it a cozy, comforting experience without feeling stale. I like the dynamics between the two leads as well as the friendship between Alwyn and the king. I very much enjoyed all the suggestive jokes and flirting, but there was no shortage of genuine moments and bonding through dangerous situations either.

Some resolutions felt a little too easy, especially where Alwyn's backstory is concerned. While I like the theme of forgiveness, it feels like it was too easily dismissed and the complexities of the situation not quite given the weight they deserved.

The prose was pleasant to read and I don't recall stumbling over any awkward phrasings or the like.

While the ending wasn't unsatisfying, there are still plenty of dangling plot threads left open, so I hope there'll be a sequel eventually - there is definitely potential for more developments both on the character and the plot side.

Thank you for this adorable story! It was really interesting to read how the story developed with reader input. I love your use of hatching, especially how expressive you made the imp main character with such limited facial features

I really enjoy the variety of designs here! So many fun shapes and patterns.