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True, it's sad. But at least we've been there together.

Hearing that, I'm very glad to have made these games.

Time travel forward, my friend. One terrible day at a time towards a better future.

Godot

I have heard from others that they've experienced no issues with the Linux version. Low framerate has been a rare reported issue with all builds, though. I'm not sure what's causing it. Did it seem to get worse the longer the game was running?

Yes, only the areas that you've visited are drawn in the credit sequence.

Thoughtful meta, thank you!

I think the motivation behind writing little confirmation of whether the Queen will be able to resurrect or not after the game ends is because all the dialogue happens within the reign of the Dark Queen. Before it's over, before the status quo ceases to be, it's still bound to treat her capacity to change as an unknown.

You're absolutely right that the Queen's fate is left to the player; to their understanding of who or what she is and how metaphorical death is in this world, to their beliefs about change. It's a fair point that this uncertainty has potential to come off as a tad grim, perhaps moreso than I expected it would. Still, that freedom has resulted in a wide variety of interpretations, which has been fascinating for me and hopefully valuable for the players.

I feel you there. It's a story about change through the eyes of someone who cannot change; a story about hope from the point of someone who doesn't understand it. Importance highlighted through lack, if you will.

If it helps... I myself consider there to be meaning in the game ending the moment of the Queen's death. The game tells the story of the Dark Queen of Mortholme, but beyond its end the title is no more. I like to think that the person bound to that role is released from it.

Incredible. Look at her go

Yes. The capacity for change studied through the eyes of someone utterly incapable of it.

Thanks for the bug report, it's appreeciated! I'll look into the sticky hurt boxes. Do you mean that it's only the "stuck" hurt box that causes weird things to happen with the Hero health display, or does the latter happen in other situations too?

It's a linear game. There's one main ending, anything else is discouraged by the narrative.

I think I know what's happening there--the shift to second phase shift and the pacifist dialogue mess each other up. I'll fix that for the next patch, cheers!

One "canon" ending (with four different last words to end on), plus two alterate endings to cover for players who do unexpected things.

Super weird bug, I'll have to see if I can fix it. So this happened after killing the Hero during the dialogue that ends in "one more time"?

Oh and great writeup by the way! I enjoyed reading it

It's possible, yes. I wrote that alternate ending scenario to cover for the likelihood that someone will figure out a cheese strat, so that player ingenuity could be accounted for in a way that still supports the main story. It ended up being found almost immediately after launch--I've watched enough speedrunners to see that one coming.

Yes! It's a good one

It has been fixed now, so thank you again!

indeed

Thank you for the very thoughtful comment!

The way I headcanon it myself is that what the Queen and the Hero did get to have was a fully realised relationship, weird as it was and not meant to last. They saw each other for who they truly were and were irrevocably changed by their time together--for the better, one could argue (when death is viewed metaphorically). Not exactly a classical happy ending, or even one that shouldn't be mourned, but not entirely unkind either.

Oh no unfortunately you've encountered one of the currently known bugs I haven't been able to reproduce and fix myself. The Hero sometimes goes invulnerable after being hit once in phase 2, when they really should be killed. Thank you for making this video--now that I can see how it happens, it will help me fix it for the next update!

It is indeed a frustrating and rigged experience! Poor video game bosses.

Funnily enough the hit boxes do stay the exact same (unless you experienced a rare phase two invincible hero bug, which I've yet to figure out how to fix). The way it works is that the Hero is coded to dodge all attacks perfectly, but those dodge fuctions only have a random chance to run based on how many times the Hero has seen the attack and how far along the game is.

Ohh thanks good catch, I'll get that fixed!

Thank you for the kind words!

It is meant to work a linear story. That said, technically there are two additional "endings" written to account for player behaviour that breaks the linear path, either by refusing to fight the Hero or by figuring out some exploit to keep beating them forever.

The refusal to fight "ending" has been buggy in so many different ways I've had trouble catching them all--this seems like a new one. (It's not a fully fledged ending like the main story, but still t he game should eventually get to the end credits no matter what you do.) Sorry about that, but thanks for the report. I'll see if I can fix it for the future.

That's really cool! I've also been mulling over this game for many years--we must've been going at it concurrently. There were so many game design problems to solve that I thought the idea would never work in practice; but over time various solutions presented themselves so I had to do it :D

 It's great to hear you feel inspired. I'd love to see the games you'd make.

Thank you for the bug report! I thought I'd managed to fix this issue, but clearly not... I'll have to do more testing to figure out what's up with it

If it helps, this game's narrative isn't really about multiple endings. It's meant to work a linear story, with those two extra scenarios covering for player behaviour that steers away from that path. Still, I believe someone uploaded a youtube video of the tactic they figured out to beat the Hero. It's in the comments somewhere

Dang, I thought I'd set the Hero invulnerable for that because I knew someone would try to get sneaky! So many bugs in these alternate scenarios--I did not test them thoroughly enough. Thanks for the report, I'll add it to the fix list.

If I recall correctly it's controlled by a variable called mentioned_annoying that gets flagged if you complain about the fight :)

It wasn't my original plan, no, but once I've fixed all the bugs and if people are clamoring for it, perhaps!

You may have found a bug; the retreat and return loop should not be infinite. To figure out what's going wrong, what dialogue are you stuck on?

The hidden ending most unlikely to be found is a "Hero gives up, Queen wins" scenario written in case the player discovers some kind of a bug that lets them keep killing the Hero indefinitely.

Thank you for the bug report! I'll try to fix the issues. Not sure what the first one is about; do you mean it happens if you damage them once and then stop attacking for a while?

Ah yes the problem is that this game is old enough to have been created for 32 bit Macs. Nowadays Apple has made everything 64 bit only so old games don't work anymore unless the developer updates it. Sadly, updating Storyseeker would require me to remake it from scratch due to the original build files being broken. Sorry about that! I hope you can maybe find a PC to play it, sometime.

What a wonderful experience. I ended up with such lovely characters I filled nine whole pages with prose, illustrations and poems from my Poet.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! As for localisation, sorry, this game is so old that its original build file is broken beyond repair, so it's unfeasible for me to make a version that would support translations. Thank you for the offer, though.

I'm glad you enjoyed your time!

There's something about how a lot of (especially fantasy) games are built around getting to *do* stuff, to subject a world to our influence--it's so prevalent it's often an unquestioned player expectation--and I do enjoy that, what greater fantasy / wish fulfillment is there than getting to help people? But the feeling of being unable to find a way to make an impact, of being a creature too small to change our world as we please but perhaps big enough to at least understand it... That's also something we experience in our lives.

Trying to settle into that feeling and make peace with it can be at the same time frustrating, bittersweet, unfathomable, comforting... I think maybe that's why Storyseeker feels the way it does.

Also yes the music, Joel the composer is a gift from the heavens

It's done in Unity, although nowadays I'm making games in Godot!