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Witch of the Endless Winter's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Stealth | #38 | 2.392 | 2.632 |
| Narrative | #39 | 2.344 | 2.579 |
| Sound | #52 | 2.296 | 2.526 |
| Aesthetic | #53 | 2.822 | 3.105 |
| Horny | #57 | 2.153 | 2.368 |
| Kink | #59 | 2.153 | 2.368 |
| Harmony | #60 | 2.344 | 2.579 |
| Overall | #61 | 2.272 | 2.500 |
| Ambition | #61 | 2.248 | 2.474 |
| Play | #67 | 1.866 | 2.053 |
| Novelty | #68 | 2.105 | 2.316 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
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. ~
Thanks for playing! I'm working on improvements to the minimap and exploring to make it less repetitive and punishing, which should make the core loop of "explore > wrong way > find the others" take less time.
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!
Thanks for the feedback! The environment does feel like a forest doesn't it, especially because there aren't other room types in the demo. It wasn't completely intentional, but a forest doesn't sound too bad for the setting, so I could keep that theme when designing new rooms.
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.
Thank you! I can't take full credit for the minimap since it's based off of a dungeon generation tutorial I followed, but then edited so that it reveals rooms and passages one at a time.
Tutorial or not you still thought to include it and edited it to be your own. I still say well done.
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!
Thanks for playing! That's interesting to hear feedback about the music stopping. The intention behind that was to really highlight to the player that you went the wrong way, but maybe because it happens so often right now, it gives that frustrating feeling instead. I hope with the changes I'm planning for exploring, it becomes less of a hassle.
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.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I wanted to have the cutscenes in the demo to at least show off the characters and the separation mechanic, and also to have some kind of cutscene setup in place so that they're easy to add later in development. The exploring is lacking a lot right now, and I definitely want to add more room variety with objectives, and also the suggestion of marking exits.
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.
Thanks for the feedback! I had a feeling the walk animations were rough, since art isn't my strongest skill, so I do want to improve them and get better with more practice.
With the new suggestions for the "wrong exit" mechanic, I'm thinking carefully about what would best fit the game's progression while still fitting the narrative of separating the player from their companions. I think part of the reason it feels time wasteful is the lack of events in-between while searching, which I planned on having more of.
There are some nuances in what makes NTR feel taboo for some people. The game as it is doesn't do a very good job of establishing the relationship between the player and the characters, so the events lean more towards voyeurism than NTR. But if there was a prologue cutscene that did do that, for example, showing the player character and Fiona in a relationship - which I'm not sure yet if I'll add - then now there's an expectation that in the future, this relationship can fall apart or drastically change, and that's one way some people get that taboo feeling.
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!
Thanks for the feedback! For the rooms looking the same, I planned on making a proper procedurally generated "dungeon" with different rooms, and adding puzzles that need specific characters to progress, like for example, using Thea's fire magic to melt away a snow pile blocking an exit. The igloos were also meant to be something the player had to build, but I couldn't code that in time for the jam. I also agree that there's too much backtracking in the game as it is.
I see now the issue with the Tobias + player pairing when going the wrong way. It's random right now, which characters go missing, but maybe I should change the probabilities for that, or even add conditions for who stays with the player based on some story flags.
There's definitely some feelings of caution there when dealing with NTR themes. It's not for everyone, but I felt the desire to take part in the jam and make a game to explore it and share, so I'm happy to see others who have similar interests.
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!
Thanks so much for the feedback! Having NTR themes is something I've been wanting to do myself after seeing how rare they are in the jams.
I was worried about the backtracking being an issue in the demo. I wanted to limit the location of your missing party members to explored rooms, like you suggested, but I found some bugs with the save data that I couldn't fix in time, so I scrapped that feature for the submission. Marking wrong exits is a good idea too! I'll add that for the next update.
I was planning to have the weather changes affect the game too, like forcing the player to rest if the snowstorm is too strong, but coding a day-night cycle was too much for the time left for the jam.
I should have come up with a default name, good point there. I'm still debating how much of a self-insert the player should be and how much dialogue the player gets.
If you like that the hero represents the player, than having no dialogue is perfectly fine. Outspoken protagonists are a stylistic choice, but a default name is very good to have.
For picking rooms I meant unexplored ones that are close to the explored sections. This removes the need to backtrack since you know that the place they'll appear will be somewhere new. It also moves the game along a bit more so that players aren't just "farming scenes" by walking into snow all the time. I've always tried my best to link scene progression to game progression in my own projects so as not to incentivize that sort of play style.
Weather changes sound neat, I'm excited to see more of this game as it continue to grow!