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Like previous comments, this game serves holiday horror through the decisions it makes in visuals and sound design. You appear to fret about how short the game is but I wouldn't ever really worry about what you accomplish in scope because it is only a week long jam, and you delivered on a strong prototype. Having a great game experience is not dependent at all on how long someone plays- I surely had a fright with this one! Great work! Have a happy holidays!

Simple to understand, cute pixel art graphics and fun sound design. I had to try a couple times to roll for a better starting hand but Krampus always won in the end. Perhaps an ability to choose between difficulties, like Easy/Normal/Hard could be fun to diversify the gameplay a bit. Nice work and happy holidays!

An eerie walk home from the Christmas Market. The choices in sound design help to build that unease as the player walks home. Well done in your submission, and happy holidays!

One of my favorites for this jam. That Jingle Bells cover is so funky and silly, I almost want that track to be uploaded somewhere so I could play it for the holidays lol. It made me laugh as I was searching for presents. At first I was like, ah, another horror game using scavenger hunt as the foundation of the game design, but then was enamored by the fun twist.  I almost wish Santa appeared even more horrifically. The way he approaches is pretty menacing, though! Great job and happy holidays!

Interesting take on Santa having to collect wishlists; I'm not very familiar with how Orthodox Christmas is celebrated in Russia so this was something learned for me. In the US it is common for children to send their wishlist off in the mail to Santa, Santa only comes by the house to deliver presents. I was not sure how many wishlists I needed to collect so it would be helpful if a counter stating the total number of wishlists found over total needed was shown. It would also be fun to have different ways to deter or hide from the orphan children so that the player could do more apart from strafing within the level design. Fantastic work in the art style for the sprites, and the sound design, especially when orphans detected you, was a good feature. Well done to the whole team and Happy Holidays!

Fun little spooky scavenger hunt game. Could see it being a mini-game as part of a larger project. I was pretty bad, did two runs and could only secure 12 presents, I think I'm just too easily lost. The Entity Reaper has a neat design! Well done!

Great VN prototype. Could use some more accessibility features such as settings in-game to adjust volume, and an ability to skip cutscenes. I did not detect any use of the theme as part of Christmas Scream Jam.

AboveEarthDigital, thank you so much for taking the time to play and leaving us with a wonderful review! Happy Holidays! 🐦‍⬛🎄

Thank you so much for playing, Xeiden!

Omg Emily, an honor to have you check out our game! Thank you so much for taking the time to play!

Hi JoshuaDistortion, thank you so much for playing! Mikel may fancy you as well 💚

YAYYY I'LL PLAY SOON! Thank you for letting me know 🥺

Thank you for taking the time to play TSUL! ♡

Hehe, thank you so much for playing lunat1c! We're also big fans of Garret 🥹 We're hoping to provide a build for Mac if there's enough considerable interest in the nearby future. I am glad you got to enjoy our VN in-browser at least! Happy Holidays!

If you are referring to the merch storefront, it is currently closed! The merch was a limited run, but Team Treats has plans for new merchandise in the future! Thank you for your support!

Hello! The demo is out now and free to play! Thank you for your support!

Hi Waltzforveenus,

Thanks for your feedback! We hope you're able to enjoy TSUL for what it does have to offer in storytelling, and will take note of your comment for future projects. Cheers!

The game is now available to play! :> I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading!

Awesome!! Absolutely going to check this out and rate for yall!

YAHOO! Can't wait to watch!

Thank you Xepheris for playing TSUL! Mikel says you're certainly not bad for a mere mortal! 💚🦑

I'm here after attending the livestream with MisterShins and the developer team Q&A! I was able to watch from after the first bumblebear encounter up to the very end of stream, and from my shared experience with everyone who tagged along, I can confidently say this is one of my favorite entries of the whole jam.

It's an incredibly wonderful, excitable, curious, and dare I say cozy VN. I remember the developers mentioning that it was a surprise so many of us had found it cozy, but I think it's because the beautiful blend of writing, artwork, and music all come together to create a story that many who mindfully choose their answers will come to enjoy. I almost don't want to know what an alternative ending could be, because the message left with us at the end of the livestream left me with a very strong sense of resolve and contentment. But I am just as much as a "silly" player as I am a well-intentioned one. I fear only death awaits me. LOL

Just, well done. It's fantastic. Kudos to everyone who worked on this project. It is certainly something to be proud of.

Whoohoo! Huge congrats to the whole team!

mistling, thank you very much for the lovely compliment and for checking out TSUL! 💙

Ah, I was able to download from the jam submission page just fine! That worked! Yay! Ahhh. Thank you!

Yes, the link for when I tried to download from the game page does contain [ https:// ].

Hi there! Yes, I tried downloading V1.2.8 Windows and I'm doing so via Chrome browser.

This story reminds me of so many, blended into an amalgamation of gruesome, cutesy horror.  I thought of Coraline, and Hansel & Gretal...I was more bitterfully reminded of how wasps pollinate and die in figs. I can't ever look at the fruit the same again. 

I could see where the story was going very early on, but the pacing and build up into the monstrosities was done well. Poor Ruby.

I got Ending 1 after playing for 30min.  The UI design for the Main Menu is really lovely. The character designs of pixies were creepy-cute, and sprite work for Margaret and Ms. Thorne were my favorite. I really enjoyed the whimsical backgrounds, and the sound design added to my sense of unease. 

Well done to the whole team, and Happy Spooktober!

Hi there! I tried to play this but as mentioned it's not displaying correctly on chrome. I could not figure either how to open the game in a different browser. But, from what I could gather from the screenshots and descriptions, this game seemed very interesting.

Dear beloved Martha. I'll cherish her to the end.

Very curiously creepy, and as everyone has chimed in, I adore the Tim Burton-esque character designs. The monster reveals were super cool, the colors and backgrounds added to the shifting atmosphere of unease to warmth and familiarity. Voice acting was a nice touch (I'm here for MissKatonik HIIIII and the VA for Cethin/Grimes did a great job as well. I wish Martha's VA lines were also a bit louder!) Nice work with the animated sprites as well!

Cheers to the whole team and Happy Spooktober!

Hi, I wanted to play this but I am unable to download. Itchio is prompting me to try alternate download mode but that is also not working. Not sure what is happening so wanted to relay the issue to the team.

Had a lot of fun with this VN. Enjoyed the sprite work and character designs, but really loved the raid battles. I died at my raid at Kyo when facing Azai. That regen is brutal. And he got Oda in one hit. Lol. I was wondering if I missed something; was stamina the only stat I could boost with money? 

All in all, a fun time, certainly a joy for RPG enjoyers (such as myself). Great job!

This was such a treat to play on my own night off.  Batman served me...injustice. I'll need to play for the other endings. Adored the art style, from the colors, linework, and each animation and scenes for the television really helped to immerse me as this, barely getting by fast food worker, indulging on the little they've got. I need that mug. My partner has a similar one, it says "Another day closer to death," on one side, and " make it a great f-cking day" on the other. The music was just superb and the writing had me chuckling. Read as well this was a first game and developed solo!! Just impressive. Well done.

This was a nice, comfy, and romantic VN about monsters driving race cars. I only played up to Chapter 4, but I enjoyed the VN for its efforts in artwork and storyline. I was interested in Dhradi but I ended up romancing Kar instead, and I'm glad, because his character development is very sweet. While I cannot speak for the whole game, the pacing is enjoyable and the interactions Flint has with the crew are wholesome. Well done!

Hi! I'm anxiously waiting to play this game! I hope a build will soon become available to check out!

Ohmygosh scullie, we're honored you not only took the time to play TSUL but to make an account so you could leave us with your wonderful review! 😭💙 Thank you so so so much, it means a whole lot to our development team!

We are still actively pushing some updates, slowly but surely we hope to add CGs we wanted to create and perhaps some more voiced lines, who knows! Only time will tell.

Thank you again, and Happy Spooktober! 💙

Thank you so much again MissKatonik, we had so much fun catching your livestream and we're happy you loved the lovecraftian lovers! ^-^ <3

Featherboy, thank you so so SO much for taking the time to explore all of what Cape Lockehurst has to offer! Your comment personally made me emotional and very, very happy. I know I can speak on behalf of our whole team for Molli's incredible work in bringing our story to life, but our whole team really gave it their all during the month of September to make TSUL the best that it can be. We're so grateful for your very kind review, and it is extremely heartwarming for all of us to hear. Thank you. Cheers, and Happy Spooktober!

I'm here after playing along with MisterShins and wanted to leave a review on the ending we all achieved on stream! It was absolutely charming, the right amount of unease and whimsy, and goodness Mrs. Potts, she's just so... beautiful. Beautiful.

The art style and animations were really nice too. Everything just came together for this really fun cooking game, that is totally ordinary! Hehe.

I love Paddy! There's nothing Paddy can't do!

Drone Garden Studios, thank you so much for playing TSUL and leaving us with your kind review, it really means so much to our dev team! And we're with ya. GARRETTTTTT 🐐💙💙💙

Have not finished yet, I'm as far as two stars. Going to pick it up in a few hours and then edit my review- Just reeeally wanted to get my thoughts down first before it slipped away. 

This was on my queue for a while, and while I've only played about 20 VNs so far- This is by far one of my favorites of this jam. 

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Absolutely not what I was expecting. I settled in to my office chair, getting ready to play the super adorable looking bird delivery game. I was enamored by the coziness and embrace by Narrator Louis. Charmed by the warmth, cute feathery friends, and whimsical environment art. Whoohoo! Got my first star!

Then...the hospital.

And then. And then the video. 

... Then... Then I got my second star... and started to... nervously pick up details...

...And then... the second video...

The final line spoken before the start of the third day... I paused and started to recollect all the information given to me in just those 45 minutes I had played thus far. Then, I saw it was past midnight for me. So, I'm here now.

Edit: I'm just very pleasantly disturbed. Wow.  Just, well done. I don't want to say much else, I really want others to play to the end.

I'm beyond intrigued. I love... I love that false sense of security. I love the blend of these mediums. I love the attention to details.

Some technical notes- It's been mentioned by others, but I wish the audio for the voices during the video segments were much louder and/or had captions for accessibility. If a sense of ambiguity is still needed they could be partially obscured captions but I do feel I missed some key details in those recordings. 

I wasn't able to access my notepad or map during Day 1 or 2, and wondered if that was intentional or not. 

Huge kudos to the whole team for an amazingly polished, ambitious, and spooktacular game.