"The game kind of just ends on a weird note. I was expecting a fight or something, but it just ended there. Definitely felt like there could have been a "To be continued..." or "What do you image her fate to be?" sort of line at least."

In fact, in the Russian version, after the screen is darkened, the credits should was began, but for some reason in the English version, it immediately throws it into the main menu.
But yes, this is the end of the game. The fact is that the Forged Page is the background of Eltira. Eltira will appear in my main game as a minor character, which is under development.

Initially, I planned to make the battle closer to the end (partly for this reason, the Eltira's archery skill was mentioned). But I had to abandon this idea because of lack of time.

And it's a bad idea to include only one battle in an one hour-long game. I believe that there should be at least 3 battles. A preparatory easy battle, an average one for "mastering the gameplay", and the final one.
And if I immediately throw a difficult, final battle at the player , it will confuse the player, in my opinion.

But one way or another, I consider the story finished, especially if we perceive this game as the speech of Eltira's story for the mysterious interlocutor in the tavern.

About a bump:
Yes, initially I just didn't pay attention to it.
I decided not to bother with this moment and just assumed that Eltira was walking with her eyes closed for a while :)

As for the mother... Well, I deliberately made her such a character. Even considering the fact that someone drove her crazy, this does not justify her. In my opinion.

Thank you for the review and stream!

Thank you so much for your first impressions!
Indeed, there is not much direct gameplay in my game, so I deleted my post, considering that it would be quite boring for such a video format :)
The reason is that I wanted to show the story in the first place.
Initially, I was going to add more gameplay, but there is a 1-hour limit to the GameJam. Therefore, the plot remained a priority for me.
But if suddenly later there is a desire to finish playing not on the record, then just about 20 minutes after the start of the game, a more intense plot begins :)

P.S. And yes, about the slow movements of the characters in some moments - it seemed to me that this was the optimal speed of a simple step movement. Especially during cutscenes. If everyone moved like a Flash, it would go against the overall dynamics of the game.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!

"it played more like a visual novel"
An interesting observation. This correlates well with the fact that Eltira likes to read books :)

I will definitely fix the problem with the text in the English version of the game, after GameJam :)

Thank you for your feedback!

Yes, I really tried to create an atmosphere and paid special attention to the visual part (given my little experience and generally problems with imagination regarding level design). But here's a game of hide and seek... This seems to be the weakest point of my game :D

In fact, the main reason why I came up with these "hide-and-seek" at all is the desire to somehow let the players play themself. Because in my game there are a lot of cutscenes and dialogues when the player can't do anything. But since this is primarily a game, there should also be some kind of gameplay.

Initially, I had the idea of making a snowball game, but it would be more difficult to implement, and the development time is obviously limited.

Maybe someday, after the GameJam, I will redo this moment :) Especially if I continue to receive negative reviews about this moment of the game...)

In any case, I'm glad that you like the game as a whole so far! I hope the rest of the game will not disappoint you.

I'm sorry that I didn't manage to involve you in the atmosphere of the game.

I will answer about several points:

About the local currency. I just made it clear whether 100 Tes is a lot or a little according to the speech of a merchant who calls prices for a number of goods. I can't say that I carried out complex calculations, but still during development I thought about this aspect, and it is expressed in:

1. Examples of prices from the words of a merchant.

2. Rimas's words about how much they manage to earn in a week.

Given the fact that they are children, and how hard it would be for everyone.

I didn't think that someone would pay attention to this aspect in a negative way, but since this question has been raised, I tried to give an answer to it :)

"Then I play hide and seek with 2 people I dont know. There is no reason to care. Why do we even play this hide and seek?"

From the point of view of what is happening in history, this moment is also explained. If you consider this point from the point of view of logic, they say "Why do strangers play hide-and-seek with each other", then in my opinion the answer is simple. These are children, not adults. I'm afraid I didn't quite understand the negative point here.

If you mean the very fact that gameplay is a boring moment, then here I can only parry by the fact that the hide-and-seek themselves last no more than 1-2 minutes, given that fact it's easier to find twins. Everything that happens after winning the game is an approach to one of the key events of the plot.

Talking to a woman is probably not the best solution objectively, but I tried to give the player a sense that the residents of the city are not just extras of NPCs, but people with their own characters and history. Although I can understand that not everyone is interested in the "inner world" of an statists.

"Some spelling errors like Quee instead of queen. "

Yes, this is my mistake. I was translating the game into English the night before the deadline, so I didn't have time to carefully check the translation.

"Found an alley, leads to nothing. Why include this?"

What allye, at what stage of the game? There is one small dead end in the western part of the city, before the timeskip, if we are talking about it. I did not put much meaning into its existence, except that there are also many places in reality that do not interest us in the context of the situation. That is, why can't such an alley exist?

From the point of view of the structure of the city, I also do not see any special problems with it. And as you can see, the city does not end in the western part of the map, so it is assumed that there are other streets and buildings behind it. If I made the city too small, surrounded by walls and fences, it wouldn't benefit the sense of the scale of the city

"Why do the guards yell at me?"

I'm afraid there is even more misunderstood question here... What moment are you talking about? The moment before the timeskip? If so, there are two reasons:

1. It was discovered that the heroine had left for the castle, and her search began.

2. The death of the king further increases the need to return Elthira to the castle.

"This is nothing about roleplaying."

Well, I don't position my game as a full-fledged RPG :)

The heroine has a completely prescribed character, and in those cases when some choice of actions is given, it is included in the framework of the character of the heroine.

In any case, thank you for trying to play my game, I made some conclusions from what you said for myself.