First of all, you've picked an incredibly topical subject that worries me too and was able to reflect it with literally skill and heart. Kudos for that! I especially liked how you centered your story on the potensai and made him a real character, with his own temper and disposition. Again, caring for a house plant is a very familiar theme to me and to many others, and it served as a great contrast to the isolation, fear of death, and paranoia.
Second, although I liked how you treated the whole self-isolation theme, I must say that my experience of it was diametrically opposite of yours: being relieved of the tedious need to work in the office I felt much better and has spent my last six months literally thriving and spending all my free time on socializing with loved ones, reading, making art, self-educating and generally enjoying myself. In that sense, I would even say that I had recognized myself in the twig of your story :)
Third, I liked how you used CSS formatting to make your text more lively and interactive. I especially liked the simulation of your friends typing messages and fricking diagonal paragraphs! With that said, I felt like these effects sometimes lacked consistency. Some emotional moments of the story (potensai pot breaking, it fading from cold and heat) would have been much stronger if they were visualized through the expressive text and page formatting you've done before.
Overall I liked the game very much! Keep making great stories!
Some heavy stuff. You building a bridge from the art side of the river to games, right? I Really appreciate that. Writing is awesome, effects are great (what are you using?). Mechanically you don't take any risks.. I'd like to see an attempt to interweave interactivity in such storytelling. I didn't see it done in a justified sort of way ever, but we must fail several hundreds more times before we get it.
Comments
Thank you for the story!
First of all, you've picked an incredibly topical subject that worries me too and was able to reflect it with literally skill and heart. Kudos for that! I especially liked how you centered your story on the potensai and made him a real character, with his own temper and disposition. Again, caring for a house plant is a very familiar theme to me and to many others, and it served as a great contrast to the isolation, fear of death, and paranoia.
Second, although I liked how you treated the whole self-isolation theme, I must say that my experience of it was diametrically opposite of yours: being relieved of the tedious need to work in the office I felt much better and has spent my last six months literally thriving and spending all my free time on socializing with loved ones, reading, making art, self-educating and generally enjoying myself. In that sense, I would even say that I had recognized myself in the twig of your story :)
Third, I liked how you used CSS formatting to make your text more lively and interactive. I especially liked the simulation of your friends typing messages and fricking diagonal paragraphs! With that said, I felt like these effects sometimes lacked consistency. Some emotional moments of the story (potensai pot breaking, it fading from cold and heat) would have been much stronger if they were visualized through the expressive text and page formatting you've done before.
Overall I liked the game very much! Keep making great stories!
Some heavy stuff. You building a bridge from the art side of the river to games, right? I Really appreciate that. Writing is awesome, effects are great (what are you using?). Mechanically you don't take any risks.. I'd like to see an attempt to interweave interactivity in such storytelling. I didn't see it done in a justified sort of way ever, but we must fail several hundreds more times before we get it.