itch.io

The characters, CGs and backgrounds are incredibly well drawn and suit the game's atmosphere. The point and click mechanic is a nice touch and switches up the dialogue. The soundtrack is also fitting, though it did get a bit repetitive at some point. Or maybe that was just me.

At the same time I feel like the game lacks in content a bit. The point and click feature only contains one item per room and that made me wonder whether it was really used to its fullest potential. The sound effects that are there are approporiate, but I sometimes felt like there could have been more. Especially for opening doors, moving things and the shotgun blast. 

Lastly, the writing seems to build up to a larger story than is actually there, mostly because of the references to Ellen. Ellen could probably be removed entirely without it affecting the story too much. I also think the beast appears seemingly out of nowhere. To be clear, the scare at the end was properly handled; that one being sudden is appropriate. I was talking about the moment where Kate looks out the window. It probably would have worked better if there were more signs of some kind of monster building up to this reveal. I think the story could be improved a lot by not mentioning Ellen and by adding more moments where the monster is heard stalking through the house and by adding more signs of previous incidents prior to its first reveal.

Thank you so much for taking the time to play it and all the kind words! 

I agree that it has a slow start and I also struggled with this while writing, but at the same time I'm not sure what I could have cut to make it go faster. I was also worried that I might rush to the first fight too fast if I didn't have those earlier chapters, but in hindsight that might have been due to me feeling a little insecure about it. For the future I will definitely see if I can pick things up faster.

You have a point about the naming feature. I wasn't sure if the main character's identity mattered that much beyond their history as a husk and could therefore work with any name or gender, so making this changeable and ambiguous made sense to me. I guess it's still a point of improvement, though, because it shows that I could have given more commitment to fleshing out their identity rather than leaving it open. I will definitely keep this in mind depending on what I do next!

And thanks for the compliment with regard to the combat scenes as well. I actually have to admit that the black scenes were there because I was on a major time crunch and could not finish all the art in time. I'm glad it still worked out for you!

Copied from my review in case anyone wants to respond:

The premise is interesting enough, but I do think you can do more with what you have and can add additional content beyond the artwork.

Let's start with what I like: Ember's personal struggle is interesting and it's easy to root for her because she's both sympathetic and competent. She's clearly determined to free her mother and has a plan for doing this. Her character art is also pretty. So, at its core, you have an interesting story to tell.

At the same time, however, you might want to look into the game's presentation. I'm not talking about the missing art here, because that kind of work simply takes time and you shouldn't rush anythign for a game jam. Rather, it's about your Ren'py settings. First of all, you didn't add a background to the main menu even though you could use one of the cgs from the game or perhaps make something else. The main menu is one of the first things people see, and changing it to be at least different from the default could really help you. Second, all the characters have the same color name. This is really easy to change because you just have to add who_color="[color code]" to the part where you define the character. Lastly, the font is still the default and probably does not suit the setting you've chosen. Specifically, you might want to turn it into Cambria, Times New Roman or another font that suits a fantasy/historical setting. Changing the font is not that difficult when you know where to look, so I recommend that you look up how to do that. Lastly for the presentation, I would recommend that you add transitions like 'with dissolve' when you show and hide characters because now they just pop in and out of the screen. You don't have to change these things right away, but you probably want to get take care of them as soon as possible because it helps to make your game more appealing to newcomers.

Lastly, I have some small notes on the writing. The story itself is good so far, but the text could use more description because it kind of feels like you're rushing through it. For example, you might want to give a more thorough description of what the Ember/Ivar illusion actually looks and feels like. This not only improves the emotional impact of Liebert's reaction, but also makes it easier to understand what's going on. It could have just been me, but it was not clear to me at first whether Ember was acting or whether the son had actually appeared from some kind of afterlife, which could be solved with more description. The other comment I have on the writing is that you seem to have two different ideas for your opening. First it shows the mother, then Liebert, then talks about the mother again, and then goes back to Liebert. Especially the first shift from the match scene to the performance is a little jarring, even if it is explained later. I think you might want to rethink the order in which you show these scenes. You can either start with the mom and how she was captured, then cut to Ember's plan and execution, or start with her performing for Liebert and then later on reveal why she did all that. Personally, if I had to recommend something, I'd say that you could start with the Liebert performance and end that on Liebert agreeing to some sort of favor without saying what it is, then show Ember's history with her mother and state her goal of finding her, then show the checkpoint and how Liebert is conveniently on guard duty and describe him doing the fake checks, then round off with an explanation of how Ember found out about this man and what they agreed. That way, the reader can already sense the conclusion of Ember's plan as it is explained to them. Of course, if you do start with the scene of Liebert and his son, then you should also add some background information on Ember's history as a performer or something along those lines so it becomes clear what she's actually doing in that moment. These are just suggestions, though! Ultimately, it's up to you how you tell your story.

Copied from my review for others to read:

Unique take on death and what comes after and very well executed! I especially admire the courage to not only allow the game to end randomly, but to even ask the player not to open it again. Personally, I lasted eight spins and didn't play again after that.

I was surprised to discover that I actually ended up caring about death/gregory despite the short time I spent with them. I think this is partially because I like their more restrained personality, but mostly because his views on death and the meaning of life will be very relatable to a lot of people. It's also hard to not feel a little bad for the situation they're in.

I really have nothing else to say. This was very well made and perfectly captures the mixture of fear and uncertainty that comes with death.

Copied from my review:

I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought. I'm not usually into fluffy and wholesome things like this but I figured I should give it a shot and I was absolutely impressed.

I can very clearly see the effort you put into this game, from the animated intro and backgrounds to the variations between endings! I am very impressed with what you've done and you truly deserve to get a lot more attention for this game you've made.

The only downside for me is that I prefer longer stories because those give me more time to get invested and get to know the characters, so for that reason I did not feel as much emotional attachment to the story as I otherwise would have had. That said, I think the length is perfect for what you set out to do. If the stories were increased in amount or length it would probably become boring at some point, so I think this is actually the perfect length. So, in short, you've done really well and I am very impressed.

As I also shared in my review, I think the story is too short at this moment for me to really give proper feedback on it, but I'll try my best.

To start with, I think Trindle is interesting and that there's a lot of potential to show scenes where you gradually get to know her better. I do think there are two things you could improve here, though. First, you could leave certain things a little more mysterious to entice the reader to keep reading. As it stands now, she shares the story of her parents and why she lives alone right away, but you could also consider hiding these things away a little more. Second, ending three does not contain any actual details where you get to know Trindle. It says something along the lines of you starting see more in her and she in you, but does not actually show this interaction. I would recommend that you show this as a conversation between the two characters or that you share the story in exposition afterwards. This is a moment readers will be looking forward to and they should see more of it if you want to make it memorable for them. Perhaps you could share more of her history with monsters or people and also hint at those things earlier on.

Other than that, the art looks clean and well made even without color. I think it could add a lot to the aesthetic if you add some soft colors to give it a little more of a cozy feel. If you want, you can also leave the outside colorless to make the cabin more appealing by comparison.

Lastly, I noticed that you jumped to the same choice menu and then used an if statement to check which label to jump back to. There is nothing wrong with that, especially for a project of limited scope, but in the future you could consider using call statements instead of jump statements for this purpose because they automatically return to the label they were called from when their lines are finished. There should be plenty of documentation on how to do this.

Overall, I'm giving it five stars because I think you did well considering the limited scope. I don't know if you're planning to continue development of this project, but I'm interested to see where it goes if you do.

Hey, I just read your progress so far. I don't have much to say on the plot and lore yet except that I'm interested to see where it goes and what you have in store for us.  (Oh and belated congratulations on the one year anniversary of your visual novel!)

Especially William is interesting as a protagonist to me because he's just very different from me personally, so it's fun to see how he thinks. Things like sneaking out and worrying my parents (again) is something I would never do, but it's entirely in character for him. So you did that very well. You also properly characterize the parents because I have a pretty decent idea of what they're like, even with the relatively short playtime.

So in terms of what you're planning for the story, I think you're very well on track!

I couldn't help but notice that you didn't write a devlog for version 3.0, though. Maybe this was intentional, but you could be missing out on potential readers. Itch allows you to mark a blog as a major update, which will make your game appear in the most recent and new and popular tabs again. You might want to do that, assuming that 3.0 is indeed substantially different from what came before. Related to that: one of the images on this page is outdated. It still shows an image of a werewolf I assume is copied from somewhere when the game itself already has a proper sprite.

I also have a few points of improvement, but those are mostly technical things I wish I had discovered earlier myself. Hopefully they help you in some way.

It might seem like a lot, but don't worry. The length mostly comes from me wanting to explain myself properly.

Presentation:

-You probably want to look into changing the font and the interface because those are still the defaults. There's plenty of premade ones you can use for this purpose so long as you credit the creator. Like these, for example: https://itch.io/game-assets/tag-gui/tag-renpy. Even if they're premade, they still add some personality to your project. But do make sure to check what their requirements are in terms of credit and things like that, because that might vary. Same with the font. You can stick with something common like cambria or times new roman, but you should at least change it from the ren'py default. 

-There's nothing wrong with using real life pictures as backgrounds, but you should edit them a little first so it doesn't break immersion. The image of that village in the alps (I'm assuming it's from there, at least) is not cropped properly so there are black bars at the top and bottom. You want to make sure the aspect ratio of the image fits that of the game. Additionally, you might want to put some kind of artistic filter over it because that generally looks better for visual novels than an image without one. I personally use GIMP (https://www.gimp.org/downloads/) for both of these things, but most image editors should be able to do what I just described. Maybe it won't even matter because you're already working on getting artists, but I figured I'd mention it just in case.

-For the scene where William falls deeper into the cave, it would probably work better if you have the images directly transition into each other instead of having black in-between. It better captures the motion of falling (or maybe that's just my opinion)

Some programming things:

-You put "PROLOGUE" and other chapter titles in the text box, but it would probably be better to display it as text on the screen. Either directly with text 'prologue' xalign 0.5 yalign 0.5 or by making a cover for the chapter as an image separately and displaying that the way you would normal images

https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39750

https://www.reddit.com/r/RenPy/comments/chr6te/putting_text_in_the_middle_of_the...

-You use two different images for a screen for day and night (the living room and village each have two variants), but this can needlessly inflate the size of your game's files. You could try changing the alpha property of an image to make it darker (more transparent, technically. But it has the practical effect of making background images darker because there's a black screen behind them). So

show background:

    alpha 0.2

You can also do this by adding a matrixcolor as an overlay to the image, which gives it a different shade. If you do this with a dark blue color, the image will appear darker.

show background:

    matrixcolor TintMatrix("[html color code]")

https://blog.argentgames.co/post/2021-03-22-renpy-layeredimage-colortint/

https://html-color.codes/

Obviously, this is only practical when all you need to change in the image is the brightness or add a filter.

Writing style:

-You typically don't want to front load your lore like you did. It's not that long and doesn't contain unnecessary details so it's not that bad here, but ideally you would introduce these details once they become relevant. Perhaps a better method would be to have William recall parts of this story as he's being chased by the werewolf? (Unless he's not supposed to know that piece of history, of course)

-You don't have to say "end of prologue" when you already give a chapter title immediately afterwards

-You could use something like Microsoft Word or Google Docs to write your text in first and then copy-paste it into ren'py. That way you have a spelling and grammar checker available. Because you can already write it in the format of w "..." and all that so you won't lose time translating it into code. I noticed a number of spelling errors and I won't list them here, so this is the best piece of advice I can give in this regard.

-The writing style can get a little repetitive because sentences tend to have a similar structure. Most of them go something like "I go into the living room, waving at my parents." There's nothing wrong with writing like that, but you could consider mixing your sentence structure up a bit more because I started to notice that most sentences had a structure of "I do x, y-ing as I do it." So, going back to my example, you could also say "I wave at my parents as I enter the living room." or "I walk into the living room. My parents turn to me when I enter, so I wave at them." All of these sentences are grammatically correct, but it helps with the flow of your story when you vary them like this. Most of this was in chapter one, though. It already gets better in later chapters, so I'm assuming it will be okay. Maybe you're not a native English speaker either, so then it might not be reasonable to expect you to notice these things. In that case you can just ignore it because it's not that big of a deal overall. I just figured I'd bring it up because sometimes it's harder to notice these things when reading one's own writing.

-You switch back and forth between past and present tense. "And with that I book it." is present tense and is immediately followed by "I wanted to break the line of sight...", which is past tense. You mostly use past tense in your story so I'm assuming that's the intended one. So be careful not to add present tense by accident.

-You generally don't want to write a setting note like "back in William's home". I understand that you want to transition the scene there, but this looks like you didn't know how to do that properly and just gave up trying, which can turn some people off. So, instead, you could write it as a transition. Something like "While William was facing a danger not yet known by his parents, the mood in the living room grew heavier and heavier in his absence", and then you move on to the scene like you did. You did this correctly when switching back to William, though. So I'm guessing that first time was an exception.

-It doesn't make much sense that William can't see the spear while he's outside, but can see it inside the cave. Why are you only introducing that detail now instead of earlier? (Really specific, I know.)

-You might want to be careful with how often you use exclamation points. They can be very effective, but they can also lose their effectiveness when you overuse them. https://www.tckpublishing.com/3-mistakes-when-writing-emphasis/. You don't use them that much, so it's still okay, but you sometimes use them for internal monologues when you don't really need them: "just live my life in unknowing bliss  moving forward as if nothing has ever changed at all!", "I wanted to never let it out, lock it away where it would never be seen again!", "Maybe nothing has changed!". If you do want to add extra emphasis to these lines you could also describe how William feels a sudden surge of relief, realization, horror, or whatever else is appropriate in that case.

The reason you want to avoid this is because using an emphasis like that can come off as insecure to some readers, as if you feel the need to clarify that something is exciting or important. I get that you want to show how William is frustrated and confused, but you already convey that with the way you write the sentence (which you did well in most cases, by the way). This is a very minor point of course, so there's no need to get hung up over it or remove all of them everywhere. I would just advise you to use them a little more sparingly in the future. I should also mention that you used the exclamation points properly for dialogue, so no need to worry about that. I was mostly talking about internal monologues.

-Another technical writing thing is something called a comma splice. You might have heard of this one before as it's a common occurrence. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/maybe-you-like-comma-splices-maybe-you-dont. Basically, you want to make sure that complete sentences are never separated by commas (formally, this means they have a verb and a subject). You do it here, for example: "Don't be sad Alex, there will be a time when you will be able to go in the forest on your own aswell." This comma should have been either a period or a semicolon since it's connecting two full sentences.

Having said all that, I should clarify that these points aren't meant to tear down your work. Like I said, the story itself is good. It's mostly the presentation and how you convey things that could be improved. 

I also want to add that some of my points with regards to writing can also be seen as subjective or stylistic choices. You don't have to follow every rule perfectly all the time. What I'm mostly trying to say is that you should consider how these things might impact the flow and impact of your story.

Yes of course. I totally get that you don't want to spoil it yet! I was just making sure to get my theories in early. 

Also, a little unrelated but did you use any references for the poses in the first fight(and if so, which)? James charging with the sword and especially the shot of him winding up the punch look a little familiar.

Just read the most recent build and I have to say that you've made a lot of progress! James's lifestyle is described more consistently and you show how his injury from the fight with Cyro influences his life. I also like how you share a little more about the other countries without saying too much at a time. This is already much better than listing them all at once. The art is impressive as well, especially for the fight scenes.

There are three points of improvement I still have:

As others have already pointed out, it's weird that James does not warn anyone about Fernando's plot. He might have been able to warn Dylus, but he had the perfect opportunity to mention it to William, and he also had three more weeks to approach someone else. I'm not sure how to address/fix this, but you could try making Fernando's conversation in the alley less explicit. You already do this pretty well when he says the line about such a big wolf being scared of blood, and you could do a similar thing with the priest by just having him say something like "I'll have a chat with the priest later". That way, it is not immediately obvious what he's talking about at the time, but becomes clear when you find out what's happening. The point is that the bad intentions behind this conversations should not be immediately obvious.

Another thing is that James's views on violence don't always match. He seems to have been taught values of turning the other cheek by his father, yet engages in virtually every fight he can. I think it's a good thing that James is willing to fight to protect his friends and himself, but his views on violence are never explored. Maybe this is something you could delve into in a future chapter, since he's exhausted and lost now anyway and thus has more time to think about such things. It doesn't have to be long, but some kind conversation would be nice. He could talk to someone about how he doesn't want to fight, but seems to be forced to. Or, alternatively, that he notices how he has some violent tendencies (since he does seem to enjoy fighting) and needs to make sure it doesn't get out of control. Or you can come up with something else, of course. The point I'm trying to make is that James's willingness to fight is an important part of his character, and should be explored a little more. There are two questions here that you should answer in this story: 1. why does James fight (probably to defend himself and stand up for the weak)? 2. how does he justify his violence, and especially his enjoyment of it, when he generally stands for peace and tolerance? How you do it is up to you, but I would recommend you to write a scene on this is in a future chapter.

And lastly, it's a small thing but aren't felines and boars on opposite sides of the continent? In terms of military alliances, this one does not sound particularly likely. If they had attacked the wolves separately, this wouldn't be a problem, but they did it together. Maybe there is a reason and then you can forget I even wrote this part, but as it stands there seems to be little reasoning behind this alliance in particular. From a writer's perspective it might have made more sense to have the boars ally with one of the species closer to the wolves. You probably have plans for all the species already so there's no need to change it around now, but for the future you should keep these things in mind and pick a combination that would make the most sense. Or maybe they're actually much closer to the wolves than I think, but then the criticism would be that the map is not that clear in terms of borders, so that I don't know if they are direct neighbors to the wolves or not.

Since you also asked if people had any theories, I'll give a few of mine here:

• Benignus doesn't want to talk about his parents and experiences prejudice first hand from Harobes. My guess would be that his parents were also discriminated against for being a mixed/hybrid couple.
• Fernando feels like the king does not do enough for foxes in the kingdom, or at least for the foxes where he came from. The king also tries to hide James's presence despite him being allegedly very important. It seems to me that the king also has his own interests and isn't just trying to serve the kingdom and fight the evil. I expect that he either overcomes this flaw at some point in the future, or becomes somewhat of an enemy.
• Dilefor has attempted to convince James that he's alone and that the others don't care about him etc.. He also wants to use James in his conquest somehow, so he's probably trying to tempt him. I believe Dilefor will probably try to gain James's favor by offering him a way to go home, essentially tempting him towards evil.
• James's arrival is part of a prophecy of some sort. In this case it probably means that a human would arrive, and that it just happened to be James. He's clearly an important person for both sides in the coming conflict, so that leaves the question of who/what brought him here. James already felt some evil presence before stepping into the portal, so my bet would be that Dilefor or some other villain is responsible for it.
• Dilefor must have some plan for conquering the world. If I had to guess, I'd say he'll start by corrupting/invading some of the southern countries. The boars and avians control a lot of mines, so he could cut off the supply of important raw materials to the rest of the continent by attacking them first. Also, the sheep are powerful and wealthy and those are found in the north so he might not be able to take them on without building up his strength elsewhere first.

Yes, of course. Just to be clear, I totally understand what you're doing and why! I think your ideas are all good and I can see why they're in there. It's just the fine tuning of how to implement them that could be improved for future builds. 

Like James having a lighthearted meal with friends while introducing them to human food. Good idea, but would pizza really be the thing he'd choose as a somewhat professional martial artist? Or perhaps he could only give them pizza while clearly stating that he's not eating any because of his strict diet or something (or did he already do something like that? I can't remember). 

Same for using the upcoming duel as a method to introduce more backstory and lore while also building up tension. Good idea, but why a sword fight instead of boxing or wrestling? Both kinds of duels would make sense in this setting but the second one gives James more of a realistic chance.

Having a premonition to introduce the villain and add some mystery is also a good idea. But you should think about how this affects the characters at that moment.

I'm sure you get the point by now. Your ideas are good, but you could think a bit more about how exactly to implement them the best. Again, no need to change things you've already sunk tons of effort into! (aside from the small/easy issues, maybe). I'm not saying that you have to do this and that to make it better or anything like that. My advice would just be to explore the options you have for implementing each idea and then choose the one that fits best with the characters and setting.

Oh, and don't overwork yourself. We all understand the struggle of balancing school/work with hobbies. There's no need to rush or stress yourself out.

It's a lengthy comment, but I hope this feedback helps a little. The short version is this: line art and general story pacing are very solid, but you can still improve your coloring/shading and certain story elements might require more thought in the future.

The line art all looks very solid to me, but some of the coloring could be improved for the characters because most of the colors are still rather flat. Like Dylus only having one shade of purple, for instance (aside from shading). It kind of looks like the colors were filled in with a paint bucket tool because of that. I understand that this simpler look is a stylistic choice in a way, but you could still benefit from looking at other furry artists and how they draw things like fur. 

 A related thing about the art is shading. Light not only creates shadows, but also leaves highlights on the objects themselves. You can think of this as a kind of reverse shadow, where light is reflected back when it hits an object, leaving a slightly brighter spot. There's plenty of tutorials on how to capture this in art. In short, I think the fundamentals are all good but you could still improve your coloring.

About the writing. There's the grammar problems that others have already pointed out. You said you already have someone looking at that, though, so that's good! I'm only bringing it up to say that I might have misunderstood some parts because of it. So if my comments don't make sense or if you disagree with them, that could be why.

Something I really like is that you don't overload the reader with information. There are times when James reads about history or one of the characters explains it to him, but those are spaced out enough not to be jarring. Well done! The same goes for things like character backstories and other important revelations. This aspect of pacing is something you're clearly good at!

MINOR SPOILERS

The biggest point of improvement I can offer is that you should think through what your characters would realistically (be able to) do. I do need to stress that there's no need to change what's already there! It's advice going forward, and there's no need to go back and rewrite everything. Some examples:

• James holds his own in a sword fight while only having practiced martial arts in hand to hand (as far as I know). Sure, he loses to Thorin, but the story builds up his eventual duel opponent as if James would easily beat almost every other fighter. The inclusion of the training scene makes this a little better, but I still think having him engage in such high stakes sword combat this early might not have been a good choice.
• At some point, James exercises by doing (I think) hundreds of push ups and pull ups in one go. This is humanly possible, but James wasn't portrayed as a professional athlete before. I always got the impression it was more of a hobby to him. Combined with his skill in sword fighting, it makes him look unreasonably overpowered. And if he does turn out to be a professional athlete, as is implied by him studying PE and martial arts, then it doesn't come up adequately. Professional sports shape your entire life, yet James still eats pizza and only exercises occasionally. You don't have to describe every time he trains, of course not, but it should be more clear that it's a major part of his life. Also, a smaller note, push ups are much easier than pull ups while the scene implies they are equally challenging.
• James somehow knows the surface area of the earth off the top of his head. While this does lead to an amusing scene where he realizes wolves don't measure in kilometers, it's not really believable and could have been handled better. More importantly, giving the surface area of the earth has little practical meaning so there's hardly any reason to mention it here. Having the characters talk about the differences between their worlds is good and interesting, but it should be believable and involve more than a single number. Dylus gives things like the number of continents for his world, but James does nothing like that (not at that moment, at least).

But like I said, these aren't jarring problems that need to be fixed immediately. It just became somewhat of a pattern which you might want to look into for future chapters. 

Another issue I noticed is that some important events seem to be forgotten rather quickly. Dylus doesn't seem to care particularly much that James broke into his home, for example. It's pretty much ignored once their initial fight is over. I can understand if you want a scene where Dylus is the first to meet James and after that introduces him to the others, but this might not have been the best approach for that. Another option is to still have James break in without it resulting in a fight (because the fight kind of was about a misunderstanding in the first place). Another thing is that James' stomach wound doesn't get as much attention as it might deserve. While he does talk about the moment where he felt like he got stabbed, they all quickly dismiss it by claiming that Dilefor probably would have done something worse by now. While that's a reasonable expectation, it's contradicted by James' wound because it wouldn't be there for no reason. They don't even consider why this happened to James in particular, or why it happened so soon after he got here. I think it would make more sense if it's such a serious subject that they just don't want to talk about it. The way it's written now almost trivializes it.

This again comes down to thinking about what your characters would realistically do. It's great that you build up Dilefor's threat level like this, but you can't forget that the characters' reaction to his possible return can make it much more impactful. I'm not sure how seriously they take him at this point. But like I said, there's no need to go back and change this. Just make sure you keep issues like this in mind for future builds.

I played this game a while ago and remember really enjoying it! I found it very easy to get through and it really keeps you interested by feeding you just enough information at the right times. I always felt like I understood what was going on without the story being predictable.

If I had to give a (minor and specific) point of improvement, it would be the following:

SPOILERS

The twisted ending shows Aspen and Crowe attracting more visitors so that Crowe can keep doing what he's been doing. I have no problems with this turn of events and it fits the choices that lead to it well enough, but I would have liked some more buildup to this moment regardless. It's not that I don't find Aspen's cooperation believable, just that I would have liked to see more of  a transition. Perhaps a scene before the time skip, where Aspen and Crowe argue about whether there really is no other option. The way it stands now, Aspen's final development is not really shown and that's a shame because this was always done well in earlier parts of the story.

Other than that, really well done!

Just finished the newest build and I'm loving it so far! I'll definitely read more once it updates. 

Do you have a sequel or anything planned? Kind of hard to believe we're already halfway through, and it feels like there's a lot more coming (but maybe that's just me).

It's a minor nitpick, but the skip button seems to lag the game a lot. Maybe that's because of the many transitions and character movements (which are good, I'm not complaining about those!) or because of the size of the image files. Then again, you probably can't do much about it and it's not a big deal for linear games anyway. I thought I'd point it out in case someone hasn't yet.