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Dawn of the Damned - (a Darling Duality universe backstory)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Scariness... | #19 | 4.314 | 4.314 |
| Overall | #23 | 4.160 | 4.160 |
| Halloweeny? | #26 | 4.371 | 4.371 |
| Monsterous! | #33 | 4.314 | 4.314 |
| Fun | #37 | 4.343 | 4.343 |
| Candy!! | #55 | 3.457 | 3.457 |
Ranked from 35 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Log Line
I'll etch your name upon my heart, so you'll always be my lover. And if we're ever torn apart, I'll restore you with another.
Content Warnings
The game contains the following content warnings:
Blood, Injury Detail, Threatening Behaviour, Bad Language, Cannibalism, Medication & Medical Equipment (scalpels, syringes)
I don't know if I need to go into more detail than that or not. The blood is cartoon blood since the art style is anime-like. The injury detail is in one or two CGs and isn't particularly graphic. The threatening behaviour is literal threats made (both written and verbal since the game has voice acting), the same goes for the bad language. The cannibalism is both referenced and also visually displayed through a mixture of CG art, voice acting, and sound effects. The medication and scalpels/syringes are also quite brief, but both are referenced in text and visually.
I wouldn't say that the game is particularly gory or graphic despite the above, but then that's just my personal opinion based on the fact that I'm a big horror fan, so I've seen much worse, haha.
Team Members
Writer/Creator/OST Composer - Melancholy Marionette
melancholy-marionette.itch.io/
CG Art - Tsukihowl & JamilSlut (TrashMomAru)
tsukihowl.carrd.co/ - twitter.com/JamilSlut
Additional CG Art (Line Art) - LazyCrocodile
lazycrocodile.itch.io/
Additional CG Art (Colour) - sophrossynes
sophrossynes.itch.io/
Morgenröte Voice Actor - JJWalker
twitter.com/JordanCallan8
Dämmerung Voice Actor - Jerron Bacat
www.jerronbacat.com/
Schrat Voice Actor - Lauren Kong
laurenkong.carrd.co/
Aurora Voice Actor - Beck
twitter.com/HoodedBeck
That covers all the team and cast members. I'm not sure if you also need to know about other assets used. I used quite a lot of different free and purchased assets as well. All purchased assets came from either DLsite, BOOTH, or Humble Bundles. I edited pretty much all of the free and purchased assets that I used in one way or another, whether it was art in GIMP, or audio in Audacity.
I'll put a list just in case I suppose!
Sprite art was by sasAIchi - edited by me.
Schrat sprite was by Yukino Nanami's Atelier, also edited.
Mansion backgrounds are by Background material shop, edited by me.
Additional backgrounds by Minikle, some of which are edited by me.
UI design is by me, Melancholy Marionette, created using art elements by Yukino Nanami's Atelier, otohimenohanagasa, Mori no oku no kakurezatto, and Eclair Apple Tea, all edited by me.
SFX was mainly from freesfx.co.uk most of which was edited by me, along with additional SFX that I edited from Sidearm Studios and pigmyon studio.
UI SFX are from GameDev Market Sellers Epicstockmedia and TomWinandySFX.
Voice FX are by Melancholy Marionette, created using a mixture of Audacity and FLstudio.
And I composed the original soundtrack using a mixture of loops and samples from Humble Bundle music producer asset packs (which mainly come from Producer Loops I think) and also free ones from looperman.com
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Comments
I just finished this game and I absolutely love it!
Before I start, I would like to say congrats to you and everyone else who worked on this because you guys did an amazing job. I still cannot believe that this was made in less than a month, fantastic work guys!! I saw somewhere that you said this game is actually related to your other game, Darling Duality. My question is how deeply are these two games related? I am really curious about what else there is to know about Morgan and Dämme but I will be playing your other games regardless. Also, what was your inspiration for this game? I look forward to your future releases and I will be supporting you from here on out!!
sorry if this doesn't make sense, I have a hard time writing things sometimes :D
Woo! So glad you enjoyed playing it ^-^
Yup, we worked our butts off to get it done x3 probably a little too hard, but I know we weren't the only ones pushing ourselves for the jam, haha. Seems to be the curse of Spooktober cos a lot of teams have put insane amounts of time and effort into their projects :3 I just hope everyone is taking some sorta well-deserved break now and being kind to themselves!
Basically, this was just my attempt at creating a kind of backstory/origin story for a couple of characters who don't yet exist in Darling Duality x3 So if you were to play Darling Duality right now, there would be no mention of them in there whatsoever. I hope to add them both as love interests at some point in the future though! I hope to make it so that you don't have to have played this to understand what's going on with them once they're in Darling Duality, nor would you need to play Darling Duality to get what's going on here. It's supposed to be more just one of those kinds of things that adds a little extra to the experience of both I guess :3
What I will say is that when they eventually become part of the Darling Duality world, everything that takes place in Dawn of the Damned will have happened long ago. So in Darling Duality, we'll be seeing what happened to them in the future.
As for inspiration, I guess it was a lot of things x3
For starters, I felt guilty about taking part in Spooktober Jam because I knew it would mean putting Darling Duality on hold for even longer when it's already long overdue an update >.< So one of the ways I attempted to justify taking part in the jam was to tell myself that if I could somehow make something that could eventually be connected to Darling Duality in some way, it would ease my guilt!
Some of the characters I hope to add to Darling Duality in the future have really rough little outlines, and others were nothing more than vague ideas I'd written down in a single sentence as something to come back to later. Morgen and Damme were just a couple of those 1 sentence ideas, haha. All I had written was that at some point, I wanted to have a pair of characters in Darling Duality who could use the nicknames, the Melancholy Mannequin and the Damned Dollmaker. I have a few of these nicknames noted down to hopefully prompt me into writing them into characters in the future! And these two were probably my favourite prompts.
I don't know if it counts as a trope or not, but I kinda have a thing for like dollmaker x doll relationships xD and also general twisted circus-type stuff x3 Anyone who happens to have played my first ever game will probably realise that from a couple of the characters in there, haha.
Add into the mix that I had recently been listening to a lot of Rammstein as I got to see them live back in the summer earlier this year + started learning German as a result, and little fragments of inspiration began to form! One of the songs that inspired me a little bit was Rammstein's Heirate Mich (yup, that's why I named the CGs after the song xD). I still don't fully understand what's going on in the song even after reading translations (one of the main reasons I wanted to learn German, so that I can actually attempt to grasp stuff myself rather than relying on what others have translated!) but the imagery it gave me was pretty vivid!
I tend to get a lot of inspiration from music of all sorts, whether it has lyrics or is purely instrumental. I don't know what it is about certain tracks, but I can often see entire stories unfolding in my mind just by listening to a piece of music x3 The hard part is actually pulling those stories out of my head >.<
Then there was the creepy mansion background pack that I acquired in a sale. I believe it's called something like Horror Western-Style Backgrounds. But when I named the folder on my PC, I called it Torture Mansion xD Just because of all the strange images in there, haha. Seeing all that stuff gave me so many ideas, and was the basis of Schrat's spell/curse/poem. So I was trying to write a story that tied in with a lot of the image elements from that background pack.
As soon as I had the poem sorted, it was much easier for everything else to just kinda fall into place! I knew I wanted to go for something in the style of a twisted fairytale, so that helped too.
KIND OF SPOILERS BELOW
My biggest concern was it possibly turning out too much like an otome game. Because as much as I love the otome genre, I didn't want it to be the sort of love story where the player is supposed to fall for Damme. Sure, it's still a love story, but it's supposed to be a dark and twisted one that falls into the category of horror or dark fantasy more than anything else x3 I wanted it to be Morgen and Damme's story, with the player standing by as a witness/
unfortunate victim, depending on the ending that you get xDI wanted to save the option to actually get loved up with the characters for Darling Duality! :3Heck, I was initially even hoping to have a version with male Morgen and female Damme so that players could choose. Even to have GxG and BxB options. But it became apparent really early on in the jam that there just wasn't going to be time to implement that >.< I might still do it for Darling Duality, but at the same time, I kind of like the idea of them staying as they are in Dawn of the Damned and players in Darling Duality having to deal with them as a unit.
Sorry for rambling a bit off track there anyhow x3 Thanks so much for playing and taking the time to comment! If you do end up playing my other games, I hope you enjoy them, and I also hope that you get to have a happy Halloween! :3
Hi! Just finished unlocking everything!
I enjoyed the story, although I find some little things to be a little... weak? (Sorry, my main language isn't English and it's a bit hard to express exactly what I think). I feel that the character's relationship before all this curse should be developed a bit more. I feel that Dämme was desperate, he needed support and help, but I couldn't feel that Morgen loved him while they were friends (it was a bit intentional? Because his second wish was for her to accept his proposal even if she wasn't ever truly in love with him) or that she was really all he has left. Ok, he lost his family to a fire indirectly caused by his wish, but why there was only Morgen left? He didn't really have any other things or people to care for? Why? It felt like there was a good friendship and connection, but I felt it a bit forced somehow. Sorry if I'm missing something or if I may have forgotten some lines.
The next is more a suggestion than an opinion, but it would be nice for the last scene to have an alternative besides the one related to the names. One in which Mor/Auro would be genuinely in love/manipulated and where she agreed to the process to her to gain a new body instead of her being mad and tired and all.
After all of this, I wanted to say I really loved the OST and the use of transitions, audio, text, and various elements along the gameplay! It helped a lot with the spooky vibe and helped tone the story.
The voice acting was really nice too! Specially Dämme's actor made really nice work in some lines!
Keep up the hard work!
Hey hey! No worries, I can understand what you're saying just fine and your English is great :3
Sadly, because this was made for a 1 month game jam (and I was trying to make 2 games in 1 month instead of just 1) I only had about 4-5 days to actually write most of the story xD So yeah, there are a lot of things that could have used more detail or been covered. In fact, there's A LOT of backstory + lore + extra stuff that was swimming around in my head but never actually made it into the game because of time restrictions. I knew that if I actually wanted to finish both games for the jam's deadline, I would have to make sure that I didn't go crazy with the writing x3
I wanted the main focus to be the mystery of it all and document Damme's descent into madness, and also wanted it to come across like a twisted fairytale-type story, so that's why I wound up deciding to only show glimpses of the character's relationship pre-curse as flashbacks. Also, I plan to expand their overall story at some point in my main project, Darling Duality :3
Glad you loved the OST ^-^ I had soooo much fun making it :D And yeah, it was such a privilege to get to work with such amazing voice actors on the project :3
Thanks so much for taking the time to play through it all and for stopping by to leave a comment as well <3
I guess I better put the rest under...
SPOILERS
You're absolutely right that it was intentional regarding Morgen not seeming to love Damme as much as he loved her :D I wanted players to wonder if she even ever loved him at all, or if they were just friends and Damme's love was unrequited. I didn't want to show it specifically one way or another because I would prefer that players make up their own minds on how truly in love either of them were, hehe.
And as for Damme having nothing else, I mean, I don't really have anything else myself, haha. I have my family and I have 1 friend that I actually get to see in person. So if I lost my family, she would be the only person I had left >.< Of course, I have all my online friends too :3 But the flashbacks of Damme and Morgen were set during a time when there was no internet. By the time we are in the 'present' day where you're playing as MC instead of playing as Morgen, time has moved on quite a lot. I didn't explain this very well in the game >.< and with Morgen and Damme technically being immortal, I didn't want to specify the number of years that had passed either, it just would've been a long, long time x3
But yeah, while it wasn't explained during the flashbacks, Damme would've been the type to keep to himself. He was very close to his family, and Morgen was his one childhood friend. Everything he was doing in his life was to either help out his family or what his family wanted him to do. So for him, Morgen was a bit like having a sanctuary away from home. Someone who he could confide in that wasn't family. I guess she seemed so perfect to him because that was all he knew. Maybe if he'd met other girls, he wouldn't have fallen so hard for Morgen x3 But his family and Morgen were his everything. Without them, he would be nothing. Just lost and alone.
Again, the reason why there only ended up being a few different endings was mainly because of time restrictions >.< However, I also purposefully didn't implement a couple of the ideas I had because I decided that I want to save them to be part of their story whenever they eventually end up in Darling Duality x3 I also largely hope to make their tale one of revenge once it's expanded upon. So I sort of needed her to hate him in the end for the purposes of where I want to take their story next. That's not set in stone though, and I do agree and think it would be nice to also have an ending where things are less bitter :3
Well, I am not going to bed anytime soon.
This game is legitimately horrifying. Well done!
The production value of this game is absolutely Insane. From the professional level writing to the memorable voice acting of everyone involved to the absolutely beautiful aesthetics and great use of music and sound, this was a real treat.
As a German, I kind of feel conflicted about the random German in this game. I guess we do sound creepy to non-natives. Though props for using some legitimately nice words like "Morgenröte".
I really love how you took your characters very seriously and how you committed to showing the descend into madness that Dämmerung experienced . I especially loved the "old couple" dynamic at the end between Morgenröte and Dämmerung.
Thank your for making this game. I will make sure to check out your other games!
Oh dear x3 haha. Well, I'm so glad you think so :3 Like I said in response to another comment, it's really hard for me to tell if something I've made is actually scary/creepy/disturbing or not cos I consume so much horror stuff I'm just unphased by it all at this point xD So it's really helpful to hear different people's opinions :D
That means a lot that you think the production value is good ^-^ I sure as heck couldn't have done it without such an awesome team :3
I'm from the UK and don't think German sounds creepy at all x3 but then I am a Rammstein fan, haha. Actually, it was seeing them here again this summer just gone that inspired me to finally start learning German! I memorised all their lyrics in the past so I could sing along, and for the most part, I knew the rough meanings of songs from looking up translations online, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to be able to hear the words and actually know myself what they meant :3
I'm a beginner still though, so I can only apologise if I got anything badly wrong in there! I wanted to include more German voice lines, but A: I have absolutely zero confidence in my writing in English, let alone another language xD so I was concerned about my ability to get things grammatically correct (or sentence structure, for that matter!) and B: I figured it would probably be almost impossible to find native German-speaking voice actors for the jam, haha.
I did put a note on the casting call warning people that there was gonna be a few German lines in the game, but that it wasn't necessary to know the language to audition for the roles. It would have been extremely awesome to have found folks who were because then they could've helped me make sure things were correct as well, but yeah, I figured that would be too difficult when working with deadlines, so I didn't wanna make it a requirement, haha. I felt so bad for the voice actors because it's not like I was able to help that much by speaking the lines for them with the correct pronunciation. I had to resort to telling them to listen to the robotic Google voice on Google translate >.<
But yeah, the more I've learned about the language, the more beautiful I think it sounds ^-^ I started watching German Netflix shows with subtitles on for extra practice, haha.
One of the reasons the characters wound up with the names they did is because I wanted to call them something like Dawn and Dusk, but not use the English words. So I started looking up those words in different languages, and I really liked what the internet was telling me the German words were :3 And I thought it was even cooler how it was saying that Dämmerung is twilight/can be used for dawn or dusk, and how you can specify by putting Morgendämmerung or Abenddämmerung! I basically just fell in love with those words, so I was like, right, this is perfect! But then I thought to myself, it seems a bit silly to give them German names but then not have any other German in the game, and since I'm learning the language at the moment, it just seemed right to try and get a few voiced lines in there at least. I was gonna have em in the text too, but I realised, if I do that, anyone who plays that doesn't read German is not gonna have a clue wtf the characters are saying x3
I should also point out that I've only been using Duolingo to learn so far, which I realise isn't the best resource >.< It's just it's free, so it's at least accessible to folks like me who can't afford proper lessons x3 My favourite sentence that it asked me to translate so far is this:
"Mein Hund ist arbeitslos und hat nur ein Auge."
Because just wtf xD Why is it telling me this?! Haha.
Anyways, rambling, sorry x3
Hehe, I'm glad they gave you those old couple vibes towards the end :D That was what I was going for, but I wasn't quite sure if it came across that way. They sure as heck don't have the healthiest of relationships x3
Thanks so much for taking the time to play it and leave such a lovely comment <3 Hoping to see more of Bookbound! And also, I still haven't stopped messing around with Stable Diffusion since reading your page x3 Any time I have a random couple of minutes to kill and my phone in my hand, that's where I've ended up xD entirely your fault :P
I just want to add a few things real quick, especially now that I know you are learning German (how cool!).
You might be pleased to know that you actually managed to teach a native speaker some German.
When I played your game, my first instinct was to dismiss the Waldleute as some bad translation because I had never heard the word in that context before. After some googling I found out it is an actual thing with lots of lore attached to it. (I probably would use the term Waldgeister because Waldleute is a bit ambiguous; they could be just normal people living in the woods, but it is still correct.
Also, no need to apologize for anything. It is me who needs to apologize if I sounded dismissive about your use of German in this game. It's actually pretty cool that you are learning it.
All the German in the game was actually understandable. Just a bit foreign sounding but that is fine. I could imagine the characters are German immigrants that now live in an English speaking country and have acquired an accent. I think even the grammar was fine as far as I remember.
Oh, and if you ever need help with German, maybe for your next VN project, please feel free to reach out to me. I would be glad to help.
Oh, wow, that's interesting then, haha. Yeah, it was mainly Google that I used to try and find something somewhat authentic I could use when it came to adding a magical being to the game. While I wanted the creature to be of my own creation, I still wanted it to have ties somehow to actual mythology/folk tales of German origin :3 So I did a little digging and came across a lot of really cool stuff :D The Waldleute just seemed like the best sort of fit for the kind of creature I was trying to portray! Waldgeister certainly sounds cooler though! I wish I'd thought of changing it to something like that x3
And phew, well, that's good to know, haha. I was really quite anxious about accidentally butchering the language >.< Frustratingly, I had to take a break from learning during September because there just wasn't time to squeeze it in alongside working on Spooktober! And now that October has hit, I'm really busy with other spooky stuff, but I hope to get back to it once everything calms down and we get into November/December :3
That's so kind of you to offer! I do hope to add the main characters from this to one of my main projects at some point, and it would be wonderful if I could manage to include a little more German in their lines :D plus I guess it's good practice! So yeah, I really appreciate that, thank you :3
This is such a great game! I especially like the sprites, plot, the writing style and the video editing. I see that some of the assets used creative commons and since there are different artists, hence a lack of overall cohesiveness in the graphics. BUT! It is amazing how you're able to tie them all together to form a great horror-romance visual novel in such a short time. I really had fun playing and finishing this. I love Schrat's voice acting ;D <3
Thanks so much for playing and for your kind words <3 It means a lot that you say you like the writing style since it's something I've never had much confidence in.
And also, those video scenes were such a pain in the butt xD Basically, none of them are actually video files. They're all just made to look like videos, but they're actually all a bunch of commands in the code. All because when I first put a video background on the title screen of one of my older games, some players said that it didn't play. They just got a blank screen >.< And blank screen = they couldn't proceed with the game T_T That was with mp4, so I tried changing it to an ogv file instead, which fixed the problem for some players and broke it for others who had previously had no issues with the mp4 version! >.< Ever since then, I've tried to just use commands to create fake videos because I figure there's less chance of that causing issues for people, haha. But yeah, it's a massive pain in the bum x3
Yeah, we had 4 different artists on the team for this :3 And I edited a hell of a lot of backgrounds from a big pack that I got on sale from DLsite. I just didn't want anyone on the team overworking themselves on my behalf because I remember during the jam last year, the artists were still up at like 4am same as me, and I felt really bad >.< I know everyone tends to work their butts off during Spooktober, haha, but I just feel like if I'm gonna be on teams and drag people into my madness, they shouldn't end up suffering for it x3 I'm fine with forcing myself to stay up each night and get very little sleep, but I don't want others doing it if it can be avoided :3 So I just thought it would be nice if we could manage to split the work up evenly between multiple artists so that hopefully, no one would overwork or injure themselves by the end of the jam x3
I think with the sheer number of backgrounds I wanted to use to try and tell the story, even if I had teamed up with a dedicated background artist, they probably would've slapped me through the digital aether if I asked for that many backgrounds in 1 month xD
I still need to download your game on my proper PC so I can try and get past the bit I got stuck on with my stupid potato laptop! I need to see the end ^-^
Great game.
The character arts are really pretty! I love purple hair, so I find Damme to be great appearance-wise. Morgen is very cute. The voice acting is good, especially Schrat. I'm not really a fan of the dialogue textbox since hard to read the name. On the technical side, the voice acting kept on playing even if I was already on another screen and it was loading screen. It's okay, just bothers me a little. The story is interesting and well-written.
I enjoy it very much!
Yeah, I adore purple hair too x3 hehe.
I know what you mean about the dialogue text boxes. Morgen's is the only one where you can really see the name properly since she has the butterfly on hers to help make it clearer. I tried to fix it for the others by adding a semi-transparent box behind their names, which helped a bit compared to having nothing at all behind them, but yeah, it didn't really work because they're still hard to see properly :( haha.
And yeah, sadly, the VA still playing when you click through the text or use skip text mode is something I have had a problem with ever since I started using Naninovel and I have no idea how to fix it >.< In the settings, it will stop playing a voice line when another voice line begins so that nothing overlaps at least, so it's only really a problem when there is no voice line coming up soon after, like if it goes to a loading screen as you mentioned.
It bothers me too, haha. The problem is, there is a setting to make VA stop playing when a text line has finished printing, and that would work perfectly for stopping all the VA properly if not for the fact that I like to make the sprite's facial expressions change in the middle of text printing as well as at the start or end of lines. Because making those mid-sentence expression changes breaks the function for stopping VA >.< It's because it sees the insertion of an expression change within the code as a line of text ending.
So for example, if it went something like:
“I'm starting to speak a sentence now, [change facial expression from calm to shouting] but I'm getting angrier as I speak.”
The game would start playing the VA right up to the printed comma, and as soon as it hits the command to change the expression, the VA would stop, and it wouldn't resume playing the rest of the line afterwards :(
So it's like I have to choose between whether I want the VA to stop perfectly every time or whether to keep mid-sentence expression changes for sprites >.<
I really like having more sprite expression changes, so I generally stick with that since the VA continuing to play problem only really occurs if a player is skipping lines anyways. And I'm the sort of player who either puts voiced VNs on auto mode or waits for the full line to finish playing before clicking to advance the text, so I only find it to be a bigger issue while skipping text on additional playthroughs trying to get different endings and stuff, haha. Similarly, changing the speed of the text being printed can also screw some things up.
I wish I knew how to make it work better, but sadly, I don't T_T haha.
Anyways, sorry for rambling x3 I just thought I'd try to explain why it's like that, haha.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play through it and leave such a lovely comment ^-^
A wonderful adult fairy tale of obsession and greed. The graphics are wonderful, the music is quite suited, the voice acting is quite good for something likely done in less than a day, the writing is so good, and the interactive bits are a nice touch. I also appreciate the nice touch of character expressions changing based on the dialogue.
That makes me super happy that you chose to describe it that way because I was trying to go for a twisted fairytale sorta thing with this one :3
Means a lot that you approve of the writing since it's something I never have much confidence in. My dad keeps telling me I need to give myself more credit, haha. That I put myself down about it way too much >.< I just don't know how the heck people manage to grow self-belief x3 Sometimes I feel like I might be finally starting to gain some, but then one thing or another will happen that makes me question everything again. I'm just glad I've finally started to feel proud of the stuff I've been making in recent years rather than a little ashamed like I was when I started out. That's a form of progress I guess, haha.
Thanks so much for playing and for your kind words :3
as someone who has already play most of your games, i must say that you never disappoint, i just wanted to say that i really really love your games, they are maked with a passion that only a few people have and the talend to create such stories is shown in every game that you make, your games are awesome, you are awesome, so please keep making them and never give up, you are a relly good dev!! one that make the games unique and memorable, with characters that feel alive and special and that i hold dear with all my heart, keep at the good work!! you are fantastic and awesome creating stories, thank you, thank you so much!! (im so so sorry for my bad english, its not my mother language, so im really sorry )
That's so kind of you to say <3 I always worry when I release new stuff that it might be disappointing to anyone who happens to have played my previous games x3 It's one of those weird things I struggle with, haha. Always doubting myself >.<
With my stupid depression, it's really easy to forget sometimes that I have such sweet and wonderful people supporting me :3 so I will try my best to always come here and look at the lovely comments like yours when I'm feeling low to remind me that the voice in my head telling me I suck is just a stupid voice and it doesn't mean anything x3 What really matters is listening to what caring people like you have said ^-^
So yeah, thank you for everything. I really appreciate it <3 And please don't apologise for your English :3 I think it's great! Heck, I have known people who are native English speakers who don't type it as well as you have :D
SO STYLISH. You put so much work into the look-and-feel of this, right down to the custom cursor, and it really shows. The art direction does such a great job of communicating the atmosphere--those close-ups of the plates of food make the simple act of eating feel so ominous. Good-looking art, really nice voice acting, and above all, that story--creepy, twisted, and absolutely unafraid to Go There. It repeatedly hit what I thought was the peak of the horror and then turned around and took it up another level. The whole thing evokes the very best horror anime.
(Sorry this got so long x3 I wrote it up in a doc and now that I've pasted it, I see that it's a giant wall of text xD)
Thank you so much <3 That means a lot! Definitely wouldn't have been possible without all the incredible artists on the team because I can't draw to save my life x3
It's funny you should mention the cursor because I was a little concerned about the shape, haha. I've used custom cursors in Unity before once or twice, but they've always been arrow-shaped still. This was the first time I attempted to try one and use the feature to change the hotspot on it. Cos when I dropped it in there, it didn't work well at all on the default settings! I feel like it's still not 100% accurate >.< but it was the best I could get it to go. Also, the team that made Red String Theory totally have me beat in the beautiful butterfly cursor department :P Theirs is just so darn pretty :3
I'm glad the food close-ups had an impact :D They're from a background pack, but when I first saw them, I thought, these are interesting! Cos you don't tend to get stuff like that very often in asset packs. Weirdly, everything came in bmp file format and the wrong size for the way I wanted to make the game, but I spent ages editing almost all of the backgrounds, haha. I was trying to get a kinda slightly ominous and old-timey feel for everything inside the mansion, and then a more soft and dreamy feel for the flashback stuff.
And that makes me unbelievably happy to hear your comments on the story! My mental health has never been great, so I spend a lot of time doubting and second-guessing myself on pretty much everything I do >.< It makes it extremely difficult to know whether I've managed to write something half-decent or just splurge out some nonsense, haha. In terms of horror factor as well, I struggle to know what other people might actually find scary/spooky/creepy/disturbing because I consume so much of the genre that nothing really shocks me anymore xD I'm well and truly desensitised. I've become the sort of person who goes to scare attractions in October, and while everyone else is walking through leaping and screaming at every jump scare, I'm generally gasping in awe at the set design and grinning like an idiot when actors deliver lines perfectly into my ear, just admiring the whole performance, loving every second, but not being even remotely scared x3
So yeah, it's nice to know that it actually works as a horror piece! Because if no one told me that, I would be forever wondering if it even hit the mark, haha.
It means a hell of a lot everything you've said, so thank you so much for taking the time to play through it and leave such lovely feedback ^-^
I'm excited to check out your project when I get a chance to play more of the jam games! As soon as I saw the screenshots on the jam page, I thought, oh man, this reminds me of my love affair with choose your own adventure books <3 I read so many of those when I was younger, and naturally, when I discovered VNs were a thing, that was a very happy moment of my life, haha.
I'm trying my best to play everyone's games throughout the month, but because there are so many and it's difficult to actually choose, I've largely been leaving it down to itch to decide my play order cos I've been using the 'random' filter x3 I might have to be cheeky and abandon it for a bit though because I did also make a separate (huge) list of all the ones that excited me upon first looks, and The Wolf of Derevnya is on there!
This was exceptional. I have no idea how you managed all of this in a month, but I am impressed and delighted (and mildly grossed out, but in a good way! I love how dark things got.)
I am also very excited to see more of them in Darling Duality.
I can tell you exactly how... an absolutely awesome team, very little sleep, and Spooktober being one of my autistic special interests xD I completely obsess over both the game making and post deadline playing of games for this jam, haha. I know it's not particularly healthy, but it does make me happy consistently for a couple of months of the year, so it's a nice break from depression getting on top of me really :3
I still can't determine if the sheer number of hours I put into this jam with my obsession is a good thing or a bad thing though x3 It kinda seems like being on the autistic spectrum is a detriment for most aspects of life >.< But I'm pretty sure it's also what gives me my insane levels of concentration, dedication, and ability to focus singlemindedly on a task that I'm extremely passionate about, haha.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it anyways ^-^ Cos the team worked our butts off to get it finished in time and I pretty much poured my soul into it x3 Thanks so much for playing and leaving such a lovely comment <3
I find pouring myself into passions and reaching for joy when possible to be even more important these days. And it is always so wonderful to hear that the people making art and games enjoy what they're doing. You and the rest of the team working no this really outdid yourselves.
I'm always excited to see what you come up with-- your games invariably twist into beautiful, uncomfortable, surprising experiences and this has been one of my favorites. I hope you can catch up on some rest before diving into your next project. (And that this helps stave off depression for at least a while longer <3).
Yeah, absolutely :3 You've gotta grab those moments when you can!
Aww, I'm glad you think so ^-^ I was a little worried about not being able to find a team this time as August was coming to a close. I was afraid that perhaps I'd left it too late >.< but everyone who reached out to team up with me in the end saved the day! I owe them all a hell of a lot for deciding to join me in my madness and believing in me to get it all finished in time :3 It makes such a huge difference being part of a team for stuff like this compared to working alone. And it's extremely exciting to see everyone's hard work gradually coming together as the jam progresses and the deadline looms, haha.
Maybe I'm just being overly emotional, but it really feels like something special when you get the privilege of working within a team of such wonderful people to make something together ^-^
And aww, you're gonna make me cry at this rate x3 You're so sweet! Honestly, every time I even think about making a new game, I have to fight myself on it every step of the way cos of that stupid little anxiety voice in my head saying, don't bother, you can't do it, it'll be crap >.<" and then I just try to ignore it, remember all the kind and lovely things people have said to me in the past, and do my best while telling myself that it's okay if it doesn't turn out quite like I'd hoped!
This is probably gonna sound a bit weird, but last year when I finished and released Limbo Line, I was so, so proud of it, haha. The whole team was incredible, and I just felt like I'd really achieved something with that project :3 It's not often that I feel so genuinely proud of something I've done cos usually I'm beating myself up about one thing or another not being good enough xD With that though, I was content. And then a month or so later, depression came back to bite me in the ass after I'd had such a wonderful September and October >.< I started feeling like I would never be able to make anything that lived up to Limbo Line in my eyes. Like I'd used up all I had on it. And so while I was still really proud of the project, I was also terrified that I would never be content with anything else I made :( I suppose maybe that's part of burnout, but it felt so much worse than that, and it stayed with me right up until I was in this team for this year's Spooktober Jam!
I think having a team again to believe in what I was trying to do gave me enough of a boost to push past those stupid feelings of despair and just throw myself back into doing something I love :3 And then reading a comment like yours honestly means so much to me. I know it probably sounds ridiculous, and that I shouldn't need validation from others in order to believe in something myself, but hearing you say what you've said, and that you'd put it as one of your favourites of the stuff I've done really does give that evil depression monster a boot up the butt, haha.
I am definitely proud of what we managed to achieve as a team for this year's jam, equally as proud as I was of the Limbo Line team :3 But I still had my doubts about whether I'd truly done a decent job myself. Having the team's encouragement though and reading your comments (and those of others who have been kind enough to type up some positive feedback), I feel like I can be a little kinder to myself. So thank you :3 (and sorry for rambling like an overly emotional silly sausage x3)
I certainly plan to take a mini break to recover and play some of the other awesome games in this jam <3
A super impressive game, particularly to pull off in a month given the amount of voice acting!! The mythos of your story was really intriguing (though I won't say any spoilers here!), and interesting to unravel as we began to look through more and more of the memories in the mansion. I give a lot of credit to your writing ability for balancing all of those threads and flashbacks, and for the attention to detail with the various notebooks and their narrative. The voice fx and visual fx in certain sequences were also really well done in terms of tying everything together - congrats all a job well done!
Thanks so much for your kind words :3
Admittedly, I did begin to regret the number of lines of dialogue I wound up writing, especially for Dämme, haha. One night, my dad was wishing me goodnight, and he asked how things were going + told me I should get more sleep, haha. I said to him, I think it's gonna be another 5am bedtime tonight because I want to finish getting all these voice lines cut and edited if I can. He just sighed, then laughed, and said "Well, you did this to yourself." xD
And you have no idea how much it means to me that you think positively of the writing! I was so, so anxious that maybe it was just a sorta messy splurge of ideas that didn't come together all that coherently >.< haha. Things always make sense to me in my head, but I struggle with knowing whether or not they make sense to anyone else once I spill it all out into a game. That combined with me having very little confidence in anything that I do = a lot of worrying whenever I release stuff.
I honestly enjoy the sleepless nights of pushing myself during jams that mean a lot to me because when I'm working away on something like that, it helps so much with my mental health just to be able to escape from reality for a whole month and bury myself in a project. Though, I realise the way I work during jams isn't particularly healthy! To get such lovely feedback makes it all seem even more worth it though, so thank you again :3 I sure as heck couldn't have done it without such a wonderful team!