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Possessor: Soul Ajar's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Halloweeny? | #27 | 4.364 | 4.364 |
| Fun | #60 | 4.091 | 4.091 |
| Overall | #62 | 3.745 | 3.745 |
| Scariness... | #63 | 3.636 | 3.636 |
| Candy!! | #76 | 3.273 | 3.273 |
| Monsterous! | #100 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Log Line
A reverse horror game, where the spirit of a dead woman must convince a couple of teens that she is their friend, before the night is done.
Content Warnings
Some flashing lights, ego death, references to death
Team Members
Makorie
Verndusk
Kaelhazard
Cosmic_heartz
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Comments
Writing: An interesting story, and the choices are fun too, maybe some more than others (I haven’t tried all combinations, sorry about that).
Theme: A ghost trying to attach himself/herself/themself/itself to a new body and to the soul that was already in that body? I think that’s spooky and cool.
Audio: There seems to be several pieces of music, and they’re consistent with each other. And they fit the mood and setting of the story.
Sound effects? I ended up taking off the headphones at some point so I’m not sure I heard all of them, but I did hear the knock. I think there could have been more though. Like footsteps when people walk into and out of rooms, and maybe a scream near the start (although the scream would maybe count as VA, but if it’s just the scream and none of the speech I’d probably still consider it an SFX).
Art: The backgrounds seem pretty, but a bit hard to see when the characters are covering most of them. And the characters match the style of the background, and they even have expressions… and if you let Ben and Nancy go to the attic, you’ll briefly see Ben and Ben return.
The font fits the story without being hard to read, and I love that animated text background. And I like that it gets a bit darker when it’s just narration, although I imagine it could make the narration slightly harder to read for people whose eyes don’t see so well.
Fun: I had some fun playing with the choices although rewinding was a bit difficult. (Well, at least I could save and load, but there’s no option to go to the main menu without finishing the story.)
Most VNs I’ve played let me advance the text by pressing enter or by clicking on the text or background. A clickable “→” button (possibly stylized in various ways, such as an arrow-shaped leaf, a jack-o-lantern or whatever fits the VN) is less common but I’ve seen some of those too. But this one seems to only advance when I press space. It does have a history button and a save button, so I guess it’s still better than some Unity VNs I’ve seen, but I’d still suggest adding the ability to advance text by clicking or pressing enter, maybe an auto-advance (each string staying on screen for N seconds plus some amount that depends on the length of the text, I’d say 1 second plus 0.6 seconds per character might work), and maybe a back button too. (Back buttons can be tricky to implement though.)
What I liked most: The art and characters.
What I’d suggest changing: Probably add the ability to advance the text with the mouse or the enter key and add an option to return to the main menu from within the options menu.
Nice to see the use of Ink for VN.
I liked the concept and the look of the characters. Most music fit the mood, but some not so much.
I think there is too much text compared to the actual plot. 25% less would have been better also because relative few scenes
Good story! I love the background art, I really had fun reading it. Although it was a bit annoying to have to switch from the space bar to the mouse when a choice had to be made, can you set the text to advance with a click? It's not that it was a big problem, it's just a bit annoying, I liked your VN anyway.
Super fun idea for a story, a reverse possession story! I liked how many choices there were; I was constantly thinking carefully about what I should say to play along. But it could use more polish--the character art in particular. I did think the backgrounds were good, though. There were also some errors; after I dropped and broke the phone, it gave me the "keep trying" option and still allowed me to take a picture.
Thanks! I'm going to guess that this happened when Ben came over. I think I fixed it now! I do love Ink, but it can be hard testing everything! Thanks for the feedback, we found ourselves with less time near the end due to someone having to put their irl life first, which is totally fair!
Hey! This was a really great story. I absolutely loved it. I noticed an issue during the 2nd "split up" section. I sent the 2 off by themselves again and when I finished investigating the makeup item, I went through the the sigil text again and then the "someone needs to make the tincture" text again. But then it caught back up to the third part.
Okay, took some digging, but it turns out I told the game to go to the "By yourself" scene, but not to the correct part of that scene! I'll try to fix that now, thanks for the feedback and the bug report!
Nice work! I apparently got sucked into figuring out the phone, which seems like a realistic end for an old person trying to deal with technology. Great job on the Godot-Ink integration, too.
Haha, oh no! Was that a glitch? Did you get to the phone by yourself, or when trying to take a photo of Ben? It's so hard to quickly test a game like this to see if it gets an error like that 😅
It felt like it could be a glitch, but as I say it also felt like it might be intentional. I had the phone by myself, got to the face ID, and seemed to get stuck in a loop with that (touch the face, touch the arrow, touch the face …). After a few laps through the loop, I got “The End.”
Fixed this now (I forgot to check if you actually open the phone!) but I'm glad you still enjoyed it!
I think the phone might still have a bug. I did the passcode, birthday, unlocked... then it skipped straight to the 2 coming back. I'm assuming I was supposed to actually see something on the phone?
Nice story! But I still think that Ben is pain in the @!ss?! xD