Hey, thanks for the comment!  We talked a lot about how the apartment is obviously way too big, but hoped players would generally get the sense that it's only big for the sake of the player, and you can kind of pretend it's the right size in-universe.  Maybe kind of cope, but at least it's a classic thing like you said.  I've never heard of "Phil Alone", I'll definitely have to check it out, thanks for recommending.  I think GangsRobin and cryingonvhs crushed it with the art, and I have to give credit that GangsRobin was the one who figured out the camerawork for the bathroom and kitchen, one of my favorite details and I'm so glad you appreciated it.  Thanks again!

Hey there, thanks so much for your depth of analysis and diligent exploration of our game!  I think we were all hoping that the average player might notice half of the little things and loop changes we put in, so it was incredibly rewarding to see you take the time to discover and discuss just about everything.  We hope to revisit and expand this game in the future, and your experience reinforces some ideas we were already thinking about (i.e. Making more things interactable, especially given that text in the beginning telling you to interact with everything.  It's pretty disappointing the kitchen only had the fridge to "talk" to, and watching you try to interact with the stove and countertops even if they weren't interactable before made me think "that's exactly what I'd be doing").  As a little aside, I'm so happy you liked the camerawork when you go into the bathroom and kitchen, GangsRobin figured that out early on and it's still one of my favorite things in the game.

Although there were a few details of the story that I felt could have been clearer (yes, there is implied to be a third character "he"), our intention was for major story elements to be left unclear and obscure.  Considering the length of the jam and that this was our first project together, we figured a more open-ended story would serve us well.  To our pleasant surprise, we had never even considered lots of the interpretations you made, especially the idea that the main character was cheating on his friend with the roommate.  Summarily, any conclusion you arrived at might as well be considered canon; it was so fun for us to watch your VOD together and see the scenarios you pieced together from what was written.  I'm particularly grateful for how much interest you showed in the subtle things that might only ever show up in a given loop; it's a great feeling to watch someone get a kick out of a line you don't expect most people to read.  

You definitely shouldn't doubt yourself on questioning the meaning of a given line, or what the mirror world might mean, or anything else.  It's kind of painfully obvious, but the disappearance of his reflection evoking a lack of self-reflection seemed appropriate.  To be honest, I intended the "you feel dirty" line in the bathroom as a stupid little joke no deeper than "it's kind of funny to feel dirty looking at the bath", but I love the implication of guilt much more.  The "I think I brushed too hard" line was meant to imply that although the character believes he only dreamed about getting ready the first time, he really just brushed his teeth twice, so his gums hurt a little.  Even so, reading this as a hint that there's some feeling of filth he can't shake is really compelling in how subtle it is, and it's not like it couldn't mean both at once.  On the other hand, I remember early on you interacted with the stuffed bear and said something along the lines of "I think this Teddy belonged to a deceased relative", and I got so giddy because even with the intention of open-endedness, my personal thoughts are that the bear belonged to his younger brother who died a number of years ago.  Whether because of or in spite of our writing, I appreciate how seriously you took our little story.

Before this gets too much longer, I just want to give a genuine thank you to how professionally and caringly you carried out your role of judge for our game.  I know you and the other judges need to have a level of engagement and attention when reviewing submissions, but we really didn't expect to be given access to a VOD with such amazing feedback and criticism.  I just really appreciate the thoroughness you had in looking at our submission, and I truly value the thoughts you shared as a player.  We went into this jam with the goal of getting experience, and when we submitted my stance was that even if not a single person looks at our game, it's been an extremely rewarding experience for me and I'm proud of what we made.  That being said, it's incredible being able to read through comments of people who actually played a game I worked on, and it made my week to watch through your VOD and see someone playing through and giving opinions about it in real time.  So, one more time, thank you so much!

Thank you for the kind words! I think you got our intentions with the vibe just right.

Yeah, the apartment is a little big and empty. part of that was because of time and not having enough to implement more furniture into the levels. The way we constructed the game, and change in furniture would need to be manually adjusted across all "loops" in the game. We also thought it'd be better if the apartment was a little unrealistically big so that there wasn't a sense of claustrophobia and so we'd have more room to implement puzzles.

Hey, thanks for the feedback!  Just wanted to say I really appreciate that you took the time to interact so much with the apartment across loops, it feels really validating that you had a positive experience from a lot of little things adding up, that’s exactly what I was hoping for.

We actually talked about the “setting up your apartment” box puzzle not too long after submitting, concerned that we should have made the “drop off” areas for where you put the boxes bigger.  It would be pretty frustrating if you missed the drop off point by a tile because you didn’t memorize the exact placement, and then thought you were doing something wrong.  Drawing from what you said about the apartment feeling a little empty, if we had populated it with more things to interact with, or if it had simply been smaller, you’d probably have a better frame of reference for where things should go once they’re removed.  There’s probably just a better, different way of implementing that whole idea in general, definitely something I want to revisit in the future.

Thanks so much again for taking the time to play and comment, it means a lot!

Hey there, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, and so glad you enjoyed!  Whatever you got out of the "story" might as well be canon, we had a lot of general ideas but did out best to keep it from being anything clearly set in stone.  Again, thanks so much for the comment, it makes me beyond happy to hear you had a good time playing.  :,)

Thank you for the comment. I'm especially glad it got you thinking. That really was the goal at the end of the day, to make a narrative that you can question and interpret multiple ways. We really appreciate the feedback, it makes the jam worth doing. Hopefully we will be bale to make more games even better later down the line. Thank you.