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I absolutely loved every minute of this game from the music to the art to the deeply personal story of loss and healing. This game really hit home for me as someone who has also lost a grandmother to dementia <3 

Small and cute platformer with a little twist! Love the art and music and little Sisao! Each puzzle felt perfect in difficultly. Great polish for a game made in 6 days too! 

Thanks again PJ! I'm so glad you liked the whole game! We put a lot of heart and love into each aspect of it ^-^ 

Thanks Haytham! It was super wonderful getting to create such a different game art and story wise over such a short period of time ^-^ 

I think indicating visually in some way which on screen character is talking by like greying them out or having them visually change is a great idea! I really wanted them to be able to change facial expressions during their conversations, but that was just wayyyy outside of the deadline goals. We may indeed implement that in a future update! c; 

Thanks so much Stark! Goodness all three of us were definitely working at top speed for each of our parts which I think was how we were able to do everything we did in the game. Definitely most happy with ow the overall vibe and atmosphere comes across in the game as well ^-^ 

And yes it seems like quite a few players have had to sort of just click around the screen to figure out how to progress which we definitely want to change in a future update hopefully c;  Really glad you liked the game overall though and thanks for the feedback! 

Thanks BabelFish! Had a lot of fun creating all the artwork to bring out the whole world of the story ^-^ 

And yeah I think if we get to go in  and do another pass we want to telegraph the point and click exploration parts a bit more so the player isn't as in the dark as to the what and why their looking around the screen. Thanks for your feedback! c; 

Thanks so much Pierre! We were definitely going for kind of a surreal Lovecraftian vibe, but with our own twist! Love the Annihilation comparison as that was very surreal and alien itself, and I've never personally checked out the Chris Becket book but the summary of it looks fantastic!  

Thanks so much PJ! We had a lot of fun with the whole creation process! Honestly I think we're all surprised with exactly how long it is given the time we had to create it! I'm glad the world really pulls you in c; 

Hey thanks for playing and letting us know about the issue! I just had another player private message me asking about the same problem.

I had found a problem if I clicked on Tenerife to go down myself. What you're supposed to do is investigate  the notes of whoever who've picked to go down to progress. Zamiras are on the left on top of the desk and Tenerifes are sorta off screen in a briefcase on the bottom right hand side of the screen. Tenerefes briefcase seems to be just offscreen enough that the hitbox for it doesn't activate unless you really press down in that direction and click around. 

I hope that helps and again thanks for reporting the problem! We're definitely  hoping to go in there and clean things up a bit more once the voting period had ended c; 

Really fun donut themed game! would definitely play again for more donuts and silliness lol. 

Really cute and charming donut game!

 Loved how wacky the narration got and had me laughing all throughout. Wonderful job for your first time using ink too! I just adored the overall fun comic-booky style of the whole story, and I would indeed play again to try to nab me some more sweet donuts c; 

Felt so emotional and powerful, I think this is honestly one of my favorite games of the jam so far. This one has definitely left the deepest emotional impact. Really awesome job <3  

This one really got to me T-T

Such a sad tale but the way you unfold every detail is quite beautiful and melancholy in a way. This his me in the feels quite a few times, like really painfully, but really well done. 

Loved how simple this was yet how tight the whole experience felt. I had to play through, I'm happy I found a way to give her some candles <3  wonderful job. 

If you haven't tried to refresh the game I highly recommend it c; 

Really well done within one day and now i'm so curious of all the other choices i can't see. 

Wow! Very snappy, definitely playable within 3 minutes. You did a fantastic job of creating this within one day! Loved the refresh feature and just how concise the entire thing was. Interesting premise too. 

Interesting! Well I think I'll definitely try dipping back into it then to try to get to that ending. I think it must've been that I hadn't quite found everything in the knowledge base since I had felt so close for that final "trial and error" section. I honestly think that section wasn't too bad, it was just going through it not knowing what else I needed to progress that was frustrating. 

Hey bud! Thank you so much for playing our little game! It means a lot after working our buns off for that weekend lol. I had a ton of fun drawing the backgrounds and creature in the game ~ it was really interesting trying to come up with something that would emphasize what we were coming up with story wise. 

I think we're all definitely hoping to dip back into the game and expand on the things you had mentioned and make a few fixes (such as the clicking area issue) after we have a little break. Should be very nice to do that minus having a crazy close deadline ^-^' 

Thank you so much! It was definitely a little crazy pulling it all together, but we somehow worked together and figured it out! We wanted Elena (the POV characters) to actually have a sprite but ran out of time so we angled it more that the player was seeing things through her eyes. I'm definitely hoping to actually add her character art into the game at some point as I think that'll clear up some of the confusion and it would just be cool to see her visually c; 

I really loved this game! Such a cute and epic turtle journey to go on, it felt like there were real stakes and real opportunities to mess things up which just kept me going. The writing and dialogue is super cute and charming, I loved talking with all the awesome fish buds. The art and music are fantastic as well! I'm shocked you pulled it all together for the jam, it's all really well executed. Would've loved a little more high stakes music during the "heist" but that may be for another time. 

Overall super charming turtle story with a dozen characters to fall in love with, would totally go turtle adventuring again! 

Oh man I really loved this game and it's whole concept, the groundhog day scenario and investigation elements really had me exploring every possibly thing I could to uncover who we were and what was going on. I love it when you figure out the whole thing, however I couldn't figure out if there was a way to end the loop. I don't know if I missed a path, or if that's intentional, but I'd love to know if there's a way to "complete the game" per say. Would definitely jump back in if I knew if I could get through to the end or not. 

Again really awesome woven together mystery/groundhog day tale that really makes you hunt for clues and rewards you for exploration. 

Me and my partner LOVED this game!

 It's hilarious, that catchy backing music track, it all comes together beautifully. Loved the randomized options, we played through a few times and still haven't gotten that dang SOFA! But it's just so much fun playing through it, we're definitely excited to play more! Would've liked to have understood more of the cause and effect of certain choices but I understand that the randomness is half the fun c; 

Excellent work for the jam and excited to play more to get that gosh darn SOFA!!  

Super enjoyed this apocalyptic narrative journey! I felt like I was reading a novel and it wasn't afraid to use deeper narration to set the story. Didn't feel rushed, just like we we're taking our time. Never felt like I didn't know what was going on. It definitely felt like the start to a larger story and I for sure would've read more! 

Definitely wanted to get to know our main character a little bit more, but maybe down certain paths the player can? Really enjoyed the main map visual too, but would've enjoyed being able to interact with it to explore and progress the story. I also played some appropriate ambient apocalyptic music in the background for myself which I felt like really helped to immerse me (I highly recommend if you go back into this to maybe add something like that c; ) 

Overall super enjoyed the game and would definitely dive back in to try out other paths! 

Thanks so much Southhall! (I'm the artist c; ) 

I don't think I've ever drawn so many things within 2.5 days before, my wrists are definitely a little sore now, but Im thrilled with how it all looks! I loved mixing the greyscale art and colored sections the most in the artwork, really made the whole story come to life. The dialogue boxes were our programer Sam's idea, I love what he did with animating them slightly! It was super fun just adding little details like that to signify who was talking.

Thank you so much Haunted Forest! (I'm the artist of the game btw) We really appreciate you playing the game! It was super fun trying to intertwine the visuals with our strange story in meaningful way within the game jams time limit. We'll definitely be adding name tags to clear up the choice confusion hopefully within the next week too, thanks for the feedback ;) 

Hi! My name is Michelle, I'm pushing to finish my first ever small point and click/visual novel game over the course of this next year (2020) that I started last year for the Extra Credits Holiday 2018 Jam using Tyranobuilder.  It was a fantastic experience, but I never got it past the demo stage. After all the feedback I received and requests to add more to the game I've decided to try and complete the game in-between a bunch of my other art related activities throughout the year. 

 Once Upon a Doll Story is the tale of a forgotten doll lost in a spooky attic filled with dark corridors and glowing  eyes. Unsure of who she is or what her purpose is this little doll seeks a way out of this dreadful place and seeks a girl called Emily. 

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The game can be played between 8-15min currently and is maybe 1/5th of my total vision for the game.  Considering the original game jam was only about 3.5 days long, I'm pretty pumped to really spend time thinking out the rest of the game in a much more relaxed timeline and really flesh out some of my story ideas I couldn't quite bring to fruition in the demo version. 

I'll be updating the devlog as much as possible each week (uh month? ^^') with what I'm working on. I'll probably start off with a summary of how my original run of making the game went in 2018, as there aren't too many devlogs for VN's made in 3.5 days that I've found. Then I'll dive into bullets of immediate things I think I'd like to add or change or expand upon for the full game that I never got to or have been mentioned by players. 

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I'll also probably be streaming over on my twitch quite a bit of the art creation process 

https://www.twitch.tv/mifuworks

I'll be alerting folks frequently on my social media when that's happening though to anyone interested. 

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Thanks so much for taking an interest in Doll Story! ❤

If you're interested in playing the current demo version of Doll Story it's available on itch.io here:

Itch.io: https://mifuworks.itch.io/once-upon-a-doll-story

And if you're interested in my art or any other updates feel free to check out my other sites:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mifuworks/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MiFuWorks

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MiFuWorks

Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/r4jos35

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mifuworks/

Would you be cool with me sharing your vid to some of my social media? It'd be awesome to be able to show to people a full play-through someone did of the game!

No way! Thanks so much for uploading your play-through of my game! This is just so flattering! I died when you reacted so well to the first appearance of the doll character! Super interesting to see how you navigated through the first section too. I'm for sure going to be extending the game to the "full version" I had in mind in the coming months. It'll be released all at once as the full game which should be approximately 5x as long as what you just played. Again just thank you so much, this was my first attempt at making any kind of game and it's just beyond heartwarming to see such a positive response! ♥

One of the most addicting games submitted to the jam in my opinion, this was for sure super fun and challenging. Never succeeding in harvesting enough flowers in time, but I'd definitely come back to try again. I liked the juggle of taking care of the plants and fighting off the swarms bugs. I really loved the visual style and bit tone music too. I also had the issue with seeds not planting in the plot of ground sometimes. I think with a few tweaks this'll be a very nicely polished game. Awesome contribution to the jam! 

This was a suuuper fun bullet hell to play. I thought the difficulty was set just perfectly, the centaur wrecked me but I loved it lol. Really liked the idea of trading off positive traits to increase something else too, very interesting mechanic. The music and sound effects worked really nicely with everything too. Lovely submission to the game jam! 

This was really fun! Wasn't sure what to do at first, but figured it out quickly enough. I think my only comment would be to increase the time a little bit as I didn't even have enough time to read through all the student descriptions the first time through. Really nice and fun game for the jam!

Thank you so much again PJ! I loved the audio engineering aspect of things, a little like creating a radio drama.  I've also got a bunch of links up on my main page linking to a lot of where I post my art if you're interested. Definitely hoping to make some more games in the future with my art! 

Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback! I'll for sure be doing an update in the future where the clickable areas are a little more obvious. I'm hoping to include an update where clickable areas will glow or get a shadow over them so the player knows it's an area of interest. 

Will there be an official theme announced? Or is it just to base it off your favorite TV show episode etc? Thanks!

Aw thank you so much T-Bo!  So happy to actually get to make a little game with some of my own art, and first time making a game so TWO big accomplishments. Loved your present game too, that wiggly little gift is precious! Simple but sweet <3 

Awww thank you so much for checking out some of my art! I'd love to do a game in the future featuring some like sculpted stopmotion characters or something. I'm a huge fan of Sendaks illustration work too so that's a huge compliment, thank you <3

Oh nice, I'm so glad I brought up the black box thing then! You never know how people will interpret things. Game jams are sort of the perfect place for using neat metaphors like that for things that are just place holders due to time constraints. I definitely think if you expanded the game you could make it a real visual element reflecting how the character personally see's themselves.  

Yes! I created the little visual novel one called "Once Upon a Doll Story", first time making a game and entering a jam so I learned a lot from the experience. I'm typically the person just doing the art and designs for stuff, so it was super fun learning a little coding to create it.  

Really fun simple game, loved the animation on the cute present you play as and all the cute animals. (piggy was my favorite).The mouse clicking was a little funky in the browser version, making movement a little tricky. Still a fun little game though! Nice job for the jam!

This was so cute and sincere which I wasn't expecting! This seemed from the description like it was going to be a funny game, but it was very serious and real and relatable. I liked the unique flappy bird choice system and despite not having music or any other visuals it really works. Plus Santa and Blitzen are super charming looking as the only art assets anyway. You got the bare bones of what the game was and it really works. Nice job for the jam!