Thanks for the reply!

Good to know about the categories and as far as the limitations of the engine for the gallery, I have no idea but hopefully one day it will be possible to implement, I realize a lot of the art is AI generated but is still very nice.

For the issue with having to wait for an image, this was really only a problem on insane difficulty having only 3 seconds. I am playing on the Windows version and I've got some pretty solid hardware including an intell 9700k, Nvidia 3080 to (both liquid cooled), and 32 GB DDR4 RAM. 

The note about being completely out of time when the picture was finally presented was a slight exaggeration but there were definitely cases where I was left with ~1 second when the picture showed up and I had to make a determination.  I don't know if there is a way to only start the timer once you've confirmed that the image is displayed or not, but that would be a possible solution. 

On the topic of the categories for reporting, I'm not sure if "violence" is implemented fully or not, I did a normal and an insane playthrough (both with the same ending, I assume was the good ending?) and I only ever saw 2-3 images combined that could have possible been violence but there was no mention of that in the tutorial or any dialogue about it through my playing. 

A last bug that I encountered was when I chose to skip the tutorial. I was able to click the "clock in" option before the dialogue finished and then a few seconds later, the caption to click the tutorial repeatedly flashed on the screen.

For real though, keep up the good work. I've honestly been eyeing Artifact for a little while and may pull the trigger on it after seeing the work you've done here and your response to community feedback. 

I've fallen on some hard times lately, and your comment in its good grace has lifted my spirits, so before I answer any questions I just want to thank you immensely for your kind words. 

I wouldn't necessarily say Phocal isn't my favorite, or that I even have a favorite. I love Artifact but it has grown so much beyond its original scope that it's very difficult to develop. Phocal, comparatively, is so much simpler that it feels like a breath of fresh air.

Community feedback is extremely valuable, and I want to offer support on everything for as long as I can to the best of my ability, even if the community remains small. I remember in the beginning someone accused Artifact of being vaporware and so I'm just trying to be as active as I can to show people that I'm not here to just dump and run.

I'm glad you saw a lot of improvement in the update! I feel you on the AI art, believe it or not. I was worried about general sentiments toward my first game to use AI art as the actual assets and not just placeholders. This game would not even exist if I had to hire an artist to draw over 700 works, as part of the reason I wanted to do it was because my other games which do have hired artists are also limited in how quickly they can develop. I wanted the vast number of images to both reduce the possibility of  running into duplicate images in the same shift, and to give more value and replayability. On top of that, I hired a few models to take various pictures for me that I could then use to train the AI, so the images aren't created using just any old model out there that anyone can find and make their own.

Normally, on the first night, you have to listen to the ~1 minute phone call before you can clock in. I figured this may get tiresome on replays, so the Skip Tutorial option makes it so that entire first part of the call gets skipped.

The number in the gallery is not the image number, but actually how many of the total images have been unlocked! I should probably find a way to make that more apparent. 

Sometimes having to click twice is not just you. I don't think this engine was really made for complex timed events. In the initial testing, it sometimes took 3-4 tries to get a click to register. Using some CSS tricks and whatnot, I was able to mend this for the most part, getting it down to 1 click for the grand majority of time, though like you said sometimes an extra click is needed-- which is another reason why the timer counts at just a little slower than an actual second. At this moment I'm unsure how or if it can be improved any further, but I will continue looking into it.

In order to implement an image gallery that persists between playthroughs, I had to make some changes to how the game saves progress. It seems I may have missed accounting for a certain scenario, as it sounds like experiencing that type of game over may effectively restart the game and save over the progress. I'm sorry for the issue, it is a huge problem and I'm grateful that you have brought it to my attention. This is the type of bug I'd usually push out a fix for on the spot but unfortunately I am far away from my computer for the next few days.

I tried to make the game in such a way that the wrong answer doesn't impact the player as much as hesitation does, so I'm hoping that saves some other players from the same headache while I'm away. 

I am not French, but for some reason "Fin" just matches the vibe of the game better to me. 

As for how I came up with the idea, let me first say it was born out of necessity. The economy is crazy right now, and I wanted to make a small game that could help supplement some lost income and help with growing development costs of my other games.  This meant spending $0 money (which failed, because ultimately I still hired voice actors). My first goal was just trying to justify the use of so many AI images in the game without it feeling hollow. With the limitations of AI art (or at least the method by which I generate it, because I know there are a lot of different ways to generate ai art these days), it's difficult to get the exact image I want. But in the context of an image moderator, theoretically any image I could generate could be usable (though in reality I still trashed 10x more images than had made it into the game). On top of that, the setting of doing mindless repetitive work at an office in the wee hours of the morning as an overworked and underpaid drone was something I used to experience daily and I always wanted to make a horror setting out of it. 

It was indeed a personal challenge, although I guess technically it was inspired by the very concept of game jams. I would love to do a game jam some day but I'm not sure I could manage it just yet. Sure it was mostly coded in the one week, but to get it to the point where it is now it was closer to 4-6 weeks to actually finish it. 

The voices are real! The actresses are credited in the end credits. Katherine and Jean were incredible to work with and did a spectacular job. I would love to work with them again in the future.

Lastly, I am a solo developer. For my other games, I do have artists that make the assets and music. As far as coding, testing, Marketing, Support, Etc etc it's just me. I'd love to have a team, but my budgets are stretched paper thin as it is and I don't feel right asking for free help. On rare occasions some amazing people will volunteer to help out, though, so I'm grateful for that.

Thank you again for your comment! I'd absolutely love to see your YouTube video if you make one.

Hey! Yes, this is normal. 

There may be a few images that cause confusion, and for many of these images the game will accept multiple rejection reasons before the 3rd night where it's officially defined. When reviewing the answers, though, it will only show 1 of these reasons. A lot of the clothed CDC images should still look sexual in some form or fashion, although a few may not-- it's not exactly perfect, but those images are very limited for those first two nights and is just another part of the reason why the game is more lenient on the answers themselves as opposed to the time it takes to answer.