itch.io

such a great visual novel. all of the little flourishes done in regards to the visual presentation immediately had me charmed. it seems simplistic at first but it feels so Purposefully Done at every point. the writing is also great. the first half had already gripped me by being, well, incredibly relatable, but the ways in which the delusional side of things slowly crept up on me has kept me thinking about this story on and off since i played it. great job

this is a very charming little VN! the meticulous ways in which the characters' smallest of quirks are described really resonated with me & endeared me to them. the sudden contemplative tone paired with the flashback scene really pulled me in, too-- i genuinely wasn't expecting that. I'm excited to see what the future holds for Rictus and Icasia :)

thanks for playing <3

I'm glad all the endings feel satisfying to you. I didn't want to correlate "best ending" with "true ending" in this game, so I tried to make them all exhibit different facets of the same core idea. Especially since I know most players will probably only go for one or two of them. Thank you for playing!

No length requirements! Make your story as long or as short as you think it needs to be 

thank you! I'm glad you had a good time with it. The fourth ending is intentionally pretty tricky/out of the way, but I recently made a guide page that has a few hints at the very bottom if you'd like to try and find it: https://starbage.neocities.org/HalOPE/guide

thank you for playing!

hi, thank you so much for such an in-depth comment! Stuff like this truly makes my day. A lot of the stuff in the game is intentionally up to interpretation, I don't like implying there's a "wrong" way to read things, but I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. 

Community’s gift was something that kind of just came together, actually. The scissors as an item came before the siblings existed as characters (I was in the middle of developing Chapter 2 when I had come up with them as the main "reveal", and I think it shows a little bit). I came to really enjoy the scissors as a symbolism of "cutting free" though, and began to lean into it a lot. It's why Mother has such a strong web/thread association to her (as well as the white Interlude areas). That is to say, I didn’t originally put as much thought into it as it might seem. It was kind of a happy accident. i really love this reading of it though.

As for Regret, the compass pointing away from Mother's confrontation is intentional :-) if I remember correctly, the earlier versions of the game didn't have this, so it was partially added as a hint for one of the endings. But I also wanted it to be a way for some of Regret's desires to shine through. They care for Hope even if they're kind of spiteful about it at times, and I thought having that show through the compass would be a fun detail. I'm really pleased someone made that connection!

Thanks again for playing!

thanks for playing :-)

yea go ahead! 

thank you so much, im glad you enjoyed your time with it <3

oh wow, that's really flattering!!! Thank you so much

I'm glad you are enjoying so far ^^ I put some guidance below, but you're free to ignore if you'd rather figure it out for yourself.

After visiting the ghost house, there's another location you need to go to, to find the other ghost NPC... said location isn't accessible from the start of the chapter though, you have to open it up.

(And, for a more direct answer):

You have to open the red doors directly right of Lorena's house. If I remember correctly it goes something like this

North of the church, interact with the bug and get the drawing, show that drawing to the human artist, take his watering can, give it to the invisible girl who stands next to where the frog was. you can use the item you get from her to open the red doors and progress further.

thanks for playing & taking the time to record :-)!

the front and back of each character is just two different sprites I placed next to each other. You can see the gap between them if you look closely!

That is extremely flattering.. thank you so much for playing <3

thank you sooo much <3 I’m glad all of my games were able to catch your eye!! It means a lot to me genuinely 

really cool little experience; despite how short it was the heart put into it shines through very much. i loved the clayish art direction and the music a whole lot :-)

thank you for playing <3 I appreciate the kind words 

OH MY GOSH!!!! I love love love how you incorporated so many little details of the game into the piece, the composition is so lovely T_T 💕💕it really feels like you captured every key moment! I love it, thank you so much!! 

Thank you for the kind words as well, I'm happy you were able to be inspired by something I made!

thank you for the kind words! Im happy you enjoyed your time with it 

thanks for playing! I’m glad you enjoyed it.

(spoilers below)

 I don’t know that Regret was inspired by anything in particular…? Maybe there were some characters I was charmed by at the time that I can’t remember now. I think I just really like characters who are a bit mean at first but secretly have a lot of love in their heart. Since family relations are a key theme in the game, their complicated feelings were kind of inspired by some personal experiences as well. The original iteration of them was much nicer but then I decided that was boring, lol

thank you so much!

Really cute concept and execution :3 I especially love the poem at the end!

I really enjoyed this game! I was able to find the six main tapes (along with some of the secret ones) and see Ending 1. Something about the lowpoly aesthetics and inherent mystery of the dream world really gripped me. This is a game I am going to ponder the symbolism of for a while. May even poke around again to get the other endings at some point.

I think my only big issue was that after I got the ending, the game asked me if I wanted to reset my progress. I pressed no, but it shut down and my progress was gone anyway ^_^" other than that, everything was very cool and solid. Good job!

thanks for playing! :D

thank you for leaving such a thoughtful comment!! I appreciate it very much :-) I hope you have fun getting the other endings as well

Hi. For the three normal endings, they should all be accessible from the final save bench of the game. If you've already found two by going upwards, try going a different direction instead :-)

The fourth ending has some specific requirements you needed to have met before reaching Chapter 5. I've yet to make an official guide on this, but some players have found them already and posted walkthroughs of it!

oh wow that is incredibly high praise!!! thank you so much for playing & leaving your thoughts 💜:,D

thank you for playing!! I’m glad you had a good time with it ^^

thank you for playing!! :-)

thank you so much for your kind words! I’m happy it resonated with you :-)

ooh my gosh AMAZING!!! It totally made my day to see this, thank you soooo much T_T and thanks for playing too! I’m happy you enjoyed it 💖💖 

The two main questlines of the area "converge" at the red door. There is a second requirement you must meet for something to appear there. Since I don’t know what point of progress you are at to get that second requirement I will go over all the steps to get it

-visit the church and interact with the book, you should meet a character who gives you glasses 

- give the glasses to the old woman and then get the basket from her

-use the basket on the dark green patch of grass to catch the frog, get the lure

- give the lure to the fisherwoman to make her move out of the way 

-go to the new area that opens up and speak to someone you find there

Thank you so much! That said I’d appreciate keeping images of major spoilers below the "view rest" cut for comments if possible ^^

wow i can't believe i broke something so simple. a new build should be up now, you can just drag your save file from the old game folder to the new one. so sorry about that!

short and very sweet. i enjoyed it a lot.

thank you :-)

a really neat little game with a surprisingly beautiful message behind it. I still haven't done EVERYTHING (or even close to everything, it seems) despite having played for ~6 hours, which just goes to show the level of love this had put into it. it's really heartwarming to see. also, all the characters are just so cute. great job! :-)

thank YOU for playing! I’m touched it left enough of an impact on you to make you want to leave a comment :,)