itch.io

The demo intrigued and delighted me with its fresh approach on familiar genres. I loved the otherwordly vibe of the world, and the sneak peek into the bigger plot and cast of characters. I'm very interested to see what the journey to the other side will end up looking like.

Some general positives:

• Beginning cutscene has a beautiful painted arstyle with gloomy vibes
• The gameplay itself utilizes high-quality pixerart with skillful use of painterly lighting
• Ethereal music provided by the Finnish natural instrument kantele creates a memorable soundtrack
  
• The characters are intriguing and endearing
• Interesting progression system based on memories and power words
  
• Exploring even the demo's small environment and its puzzles was fun
• Mini games such as kantele tuning and song battles fit well with the rest of the game's motifs
• Loved the themes of death, memories, loss, and letting go

Things that can still be improved:

• More window modes would be appreciated
• The collected souls follow you quite slowly
• Song battle system was a bit hard to understand

I did find a solution for the flickering, my own game also uses a lot of visual. I assume it's not present in your offline version, so this is a browser issue? I have a preloader created by Avajarvis and modified by TheMadExile, it's first on the credit list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1751yvUabwDGyxF8K8uLeFdPdveKtrloyjyCrgQ3ryxU/...

I also use a loading screen when the game is first launched: https://twinery.org/cookbook/loadscreen/sugarcube/sugarcube_loadscreen.html

I really liked this! The imagery you used was stunning and the atmosphere was great. Really made it feel like an old school adventure story. I'm curious to learn more about the world.

Something I was kinda left wanting was more diversity with the portrait choices, as well as shorter paragraphs on some screen to make reading more enjoyable. I also noticed that the screen was flickering to back when switching the background imagery, is that something you're looking to fix? I had that issue myself before.

The item selection at the beginning was a nice way to create branching possibilities later down the line; really good idea there!

Fixed. Thanks a lot for pointing it out, and my apologies.

-Great UI
-Superb buildup on the setting and the feel of it
-Loving the visuals and the music
-Good scope of meaningful choices and branching paths

-Snapping at Mila was a bit sudden, only time I felt control was taken away from me

Great game with superb visuals and technical presentation. Very strong and focused vision as well. As a suggestion, I thought that the machinery (being one of the few interactive parts) could've been used to reveal more detailed information about the test subjects.