That was a cute story, and everything seems well-polished. Well, the music made me check if my headphones were properly connected, but I get that it’s meant to sound like an old analog recording. I do like the music and think it’s cozy, it just got me thinking something was wrong because the noise reminded me of the hardware problem that had led to my own entry for this jam having to lack audio.
I can tell that the sprite and background have different artstyles (the sprite having a more anime look to it and the background looking like a filtered photograph; but since the foreground is supposed to be what we’re looking at it’s actually nice that the background is a bit blurry). But the lighting makes them fit together nicely. The particles help make it feel like an attic and even make it feel more cozy. The UI and logo also work really well together.
In the browser version, the sprite gets pixelated some of the times it changes expressions, but I guess there isn’t really much you could do about that (well, replacing just small overlays rather than the whole sprite might help, and/or you could try displaying the overlays before they’re needed but make them invisible such as by hiding them behind the main sprite where they wouldn’t be visible, then moving them to the be in front when you actually want the player to see them) but yeah, it’s not really that distracting.
What I liked most: The UI with the namebox being a bookmark.
What I’d suggest changing if you make a post-jam version: Make the transparency of the particles depend on their position on screen so that they’re least transparent when close to the window but barely visible when next to the right edge of the screen. (Yeah, that’s a bit of a random suggestion, but I thought I should write a suggestion for each VN that I write feedback for from this jam, and this was the first thing I thought of when trying to come up with things that could be improved.)
The browser critique about the pixelated sprites actually reminded me that I never updated the progressive downloads file ^^; So I'm especially grateful for that-- hopefully it's more seamless now! And the particle suggestion is interesting!! I'm not quite sure how to do that in Ren'Py right now, but I'll definitely look into it if I ever revisit this.
I was also personally worried about whether or not the GUI looked good enough, so those comments also mean a lot to me :) I hoped you enjoyed your time in the attic! Thank you again!
Comments
That was a cute story, and everything seems well-polished. Well, the music made me check if my headphones were properly connected, but I get that it’s meant to sound like an old analog recording. I do like the music and think it’s cozy, it just got me thinking something was wrong because the noise reminded me of the hardware problem that had led to my own entry for this jam having to lack audio.
I can tell that the sprite and background have different artstyles (the sprite having a more anime look to it and the background looking like a filtered photograph; but since the foreground is supposed to be what we’re looking at it’s actually nice that the background is a bit blurry). But the lighting makes them fit together nicely. The particles help make it feel like an attic and even make it feel more cozy. The UI and logo also work really well together.
In the browser version, the sprite gets pixelated some of the times it changes expressions, but I guess there isn’t really much you could do about that (well, replacing just small overlays rather than the whole sprite might help, and/or you could try displaying the overlays before they’re needed but make them invisible such as by hiding them behind the main sprite where they wouldn’t be visible, then moving them to the be in front when you actually want the player to see them) but yeah, it’s not really that distracting.
What I liked most: The UI with the namebox being a bookmark.
What I’d suggest changing if you make a post-jam version: Make the transparency of the particles depend on their position on screen so that they’re least transparent when close to the window but barely visible when next to the right edge of the screen. (Yeah, that’s a bit of a random suggestion, but I thought I should write a suggestion for each VN that I write feedback for from this jam, and this was the first thing I thought of when trying to come up with things that could be improved.)
Thanks for playing, and the lengthy review!!
The browser critique about the pixelated sprites actually reminded me that I never updated the progressive downloads file ^^; So I'm especially grateful for that-- hopefully it's more seamless now! And the particle suggestion is interesting!! I'm not quite sure how to do that in Ren'Py right now, but I'll definitely look into it if I ever revisit this.
I was also personally worried about whether or not the GUI looked good enough, so those comments also mean a lot to me :) I hoped you enjoyed your time in the attic! Thank you again!