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Congratulations on submitting to the jam! I'm very impressed that one person managed to put (very nearly) all of this together within the time limit of the jam. 

I actually played this game once, left it for a couple of weeks, and came back to revisit it. On the second playthrough, I noticed a lot of connections between the clues that I'd missed the first time. I think the connections might have been easier to make if it were possible to distinguish a little more between the painting styles of each separate artist, but I understand that's a big ask with one person handling all of the artwork for the game!

There were a couple of deductions that I didn't feel like I could make with 100% certainty, but overall the narrative was well-reasoned. I enjoyed the music, and the ability to switch between rooms without losing progress made everything much easier to parse. I particuarly liked the variety of objects and media available in room 3. As someone who specialises in fine art, I'd love to know more about the roots of the Surradist movement and why they were so invested in the particular idiosyncratic practices we see in the demo. I think the concept is great, and I look forward to the full version! 

Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad to hear that the frigid environment came across well, and I agree that Marios did a fantastic job with the 3D!

There was unfortunately a lot that had to be cut from the story and/or reworked last-minute due to deadline pressures. If you wouldn't mind, may I ask what route you took through the game and whether you encountered any of the puzzles? There should've been a way to make deductions based on concrete information, but a lot of it needed to be signposted more clearly and crucial elements were very easy to miss - this is something we intend to improve on for the next iteration of the game.

Hi again - I've just watched your playthrough of the game. Thank you so much for streaming (and your "time to take a break" song is incredibly catchy!) Seeing your reactions and thought processes on screen was incredibly helpful for me in terms of figuring out where we could improve the game. I've converted my next comments to rot13.

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Thank you so much again for playing the game, and for leaving your feedback!

Short and sweet! This was a fun little deduction puzzle, and I enjoyed the "retro corporate" feel of the graphic design. I didn't feel at any point that I was getting bored or had too little to go on. The cheerful visual effect on solving a set of three was a nice touch, too. Congrats on the jam submission!

I particularly enjoyed the stripped-back visual style, and it was easy enough to get to grips with which surgical instrument to use where. The use of the candle to make a discovery was ingenious, and I did like the fact that once I knew what was there, I didn't have to go back with the candle to reveal it every time.

That being said, I struggled with the order of the injuries. Eventually I managed to figure out three in the first set, but while trying to figure out the fourth, the results screen would often only show two of the three I had already verified as correct. With this happening, it felt impossible even to brute force the first stage to progress to the next part.

I felt like I had no information to work with, which was a real shame as I wanted to get into the story and figure out what had actually happened to Ifu. For instance, it didn't really make sense to me that a plane crash severe enough to cause broken ribs wouldn't also result in broken bones elsewhere; I didn't feel I could safely make that assumption. A more minor annoyance was that I couldn't save my progress and had to return to the very beginning of the loop each time I guessed incorrectly (and it was guessing, because I didn't have enough to go on to make any well-reasoned deductions). Perhaps the later two sections didn't suffer from the same problem, but I sadly wasn't able to reach them and find out.

The reason I'm leaving this comment is that I genuinely feel invested in the story and would love to be able to play through it properly. If you do end up reworking the game at all, I'd be very interested to play it again! Congratulations on submitting to the jam!

First of all, congratulations on the submission! The narrative style reminded me of a choose-your-own-adventure book, which I enjoyed.

I think there's a tension between the depth of the worldbuilding and the encouragement to visit as few links as possible. There's a lot of detail and a huge number of people with potential reasons for involvement in the murder, which  was great in terms of enriching the story but also meant it was quite difficult to keep track of the facts (e.g. who owned what company) without moving to a new page so that I could read more and gradually accustom myself to the setting. It's also very easy to miss the fact that the player is penalised for each link they visit.

What I think you could potentially do is start the player off with a certain time limit. Then, perhaps each link could take a certain amount of time to investigate, so that clicking links is more like spending a resource than being docked points. You'd also have the opportunity for consequences if the player visits too many links and runs out of time.

Overall, I think there's a lot of potential in the setting. The tech-dystopian, Blade Runner-esque vibe was clear without being too overwhelming. I'm left wanting to know more about this world - for instance, how was a corporation able to get away with cloning humans despite the fact that so many people object to it? What's up with the Cybersquads, and could they be turned against the player as a consequence of getting on the wrong side of someone? The final line of the intro does a great job of setting up the player character as someone generally apathetic to all this as long as they're able to get enough work to stay afloat, and I thought that was a good narrative choice since you've given the player a clear objective. However, all these factions you've set up give you ample opportunity to have things go sideways for a protagonist who keeps poking their nose where it's not wanted...

If you do ever revisit/redevelop the game, I'd be interested in seeing the results!

I liked the fact that it wasn't immediately obvious which words were clickable (and therefore it didn't feel as if all the puzzle pieces were being handed to me directly), but I did get a little stuck on the "something you're overlooking" section and ended up having to brute-force it. Personally, I think you might be able to get around that by framing the question a little differently rather than altering the visibility of the words. I feel that if you did make the words too visible, it might lock you out of writing a puzzle where the player really has to think laterally about which word(s) they want to pick up - but that might not be necessary, depending where you plan to take the story. As you say, it's a delicate balance.

Overall, I agree with the other commenters that this works well as a proof of concept. I'd be keen to revisit this game when you've had a chance to work on it some more!

Thank you so much for the feedback!  Given more time, we definitely would've had a wider suite of clues (and potential red herrings) related to the case, but there was a lot we had to cut from the narrative in the interests of meeting the deadline. It's good to know that the signalling of the potential issues on the rules page coould be clearer, as well. We'll be sure to incorporate that into the next version of the game. Glad to head you liked the note - that was one of my favourite puzzle elements to write!