Quite a small fun demo, I had fun trying to piece my way around the map and getting lost trying to recall which directions I have or havent tried. It is quite challenging and given the amount of time it takes to get back to an area you were in previous to see if another attempt works or doesn't, I can see why that may cause some frustration. But watching the small interactions/cutscenes was a nice reward. And the art was quite pleasant, a very cool pixel art style. Im curious to see where this goes further. ~

For how simple this demo is, the premise is quite evocative, how it takes this party of four adventurers and separates them, then shows us how their interactions change when two characters find themselves alone together instead of with the larger group. Almost as if the forest itself has the effect of revealing the secrets they keep hidden from each other.

Really looking forward to seeing how this game develops in future updates!

Really charming game and a fun idea, very thankful you included a mini map. I would have loved to see more of everything but for what you were able to get done it's good. Hope you develop it further.

I really enjoyed the scenes I was able to get to but the music loop restarting every time I got lost and moved back to the start, paired with remembering the exits I tried being frustrating made me quit my second playthrough. I can easily see this being a fun mechanic of memorizing which path goes where, though.

I think the spritework is really nice and I really like the concept, I'm looking forward to it if you decide to continue working on it!

I see what you're going for here.  The cutscenes are obviously the main point of this demo, and I guess a randomized maze is a pretty sensible way to show them off, because it forces there to be some space inbetween cutscenes, and induces that panicked feeling of not knowing where your companions are.  I appreciate the automapping, but since it doesn't track which exits you've tried and which you haven't, you can easily miss part of the map unless you follow a strict left-hand or right-hand rule.  Having to follow a rule combined with the identical scenery in every room makes it feel more like a chore than exploration.

Anyway, not bad for a proof-of-concept.

The pixel art is cute. But you still need to work on your walk cycles, they seem a bit choppy. The music and the snow storm special effect create a really good atmosphere.

The character writing isn't bad either. Even though the game drops me pretty in-media-res without explaining anything about who the characters are and what their relationship is, it manages to give a pretty good picture of the character dynamic over the course of the short narrative.

The mechanic of putting the player back all the way to the beginning when they pick a wrong exit is indeed a huge waster of the player's time. It could be fixed by simply putting the player back to the room they came from.

Not sure why everyone acts as if having sex in a game that does not involve the player-character, or "NTR", is such a taboo subject for some people. In worlds where all the characters are horny, it's just natural that the PC isn't the only one they want to bang. Observing romance and sex among NPCs can be just as hot as having the self-insert protagonist be involved themselves.

The game's visuals and sound are nice, and there's a good hook to a potential story as well.

I had a few gripes with it, mainly that it was hard to navigate through the map. I'm not sure if every area looking the same is part of the story but sometimes one can find themselves swept back top the start unexpectedly if not paying attention to the map, which is easy to not look at when one has to navigate around the igloo without diagonal movement. There was also a lot of trial and error to find which paths swept me back, and maybe it's my not so stellar memory but I had to make myself a little paper map crossing off the paths that led to the start again. There was also a lot of tobias and player getting swept away together which led to the story not progressing for a while.

Other than that, the UI looks nice, character sprites and protraits are pretty, and I greatly appreciate that there is a submission with themes of NTR, something I was too afraid to do for my entry and thus am all too happy to experience through the entries of those who managd to use it as a theme!

I am so incredibly happy to see another developer submitting an NTR themed game! This has not happened in the 5 years I've been participating in Strawberry Jams! There have been a few NTR-adjacent submissions over the years, but nothing explicitly focused on that theme.

The demo does a good job of showing the core mechanics and tone of the story. I like how the split party mechanic is implemented, though I would like a bit more control over it at times since my pairs ended up getting separated the same way too many times. There is a bit too much backtracking, I suggest always putting the missing characters in an area that isn't too far away but hasn't been explored yet which will incentivize exploration. You can also give a direction clue on the map to suggest where players should start searching. The map should indicate places where you got swept away by a snowstorm so that players won't have to rely too much on our poor memory. There is a visual bug where the map can be generated in a way that it runs off of the screen.

The music track fits the atmosphere, and the sprites are pleasant. Seeing the party visually following the player always feels good to me in RPG games. I like how the weather changes in each area, it's a flavorful little detail. The dialogue is fairly brief, but I got a good sense of each character. Self-insert protagonists in NTR games are common, so having him be renamable is a perfectly valid choice, but I think he should have a default name that isn't "Player". The menus don't do much yet, but I always liked them in NTR games as a way to tease a bit about what's happening with your companions.

I hope that you continue working on this project. You've definitely got me interested in seeing more!