Your kind words mean so much to me!!! I was hoping you'd like this one. It was such a huge departure from what I normally do. I went into it with the intentional challenge of having as little writing as possible and I'm so relieved it's hitting true with people. Ahh so much I want to respond to, haha. All of the sounds were 100% made by me except for some of the horn sounds. I had so much fun doing all the music. It was such a trick haha but I really enjoy the process. I was loosely inspired by this game Flower? It's something I played on a friends ps4 YEARS ago when I was chilling and it really struck a chord with me haha. I wanted to capture that feeling of floating along and making nice sounds and not knowing why. And then I wanted a way to tell a story without words so I decided drawing pictures was the best way. No plug ins, I still don't know how to use them. Just common events and variables. It wasn't too tricky really! Always feel free to hmu on discord and I'll give you all the nerdy dev details haha. Including the script I used for the zoom effects! It was fun to figure that one out. Really glad you noticed all the details like the drowning music and such! It's so nice to have little things like be recognized, ya know??
The luck thing is so silly haha. I really struggled with the balance of words. I so desperately wanted as little words as possible and every bit of exposition and game mechanic explanation was added almost last minute and begrudgingly lol. So you are correct, they're not really explained haha. I was playing a lot of BG3 while I was working on it and at 2 am one day I was like "make em roll a d20! itll be fine, the luck points are like modifiers!". That's it haha. It's really also a little tricky way for me to make ppl feel like they have more control and something to go for that will help them. A sort of fallible life line, if you will.
I genuinely didn't know about the saltmarsh sparrow until I started writing either! I literally googled "animals affected by rising sea levels" and found them there haha. I love nature and critters - and birds! I raise chickens and "tiny floof" is the real irl way I describe baby birds. So that aspect of the game really hits close to home. I really wish our world wasn't so tainted by ... umm... ya know, us haha. humans. But all I can do is tell stories about it so that's what imma do!!
Always appreciate you Oxy, <3
wow, it does seem like a lot of things to be done by one person haha. but that shows real commitment to quality imo :>
i think the smaller amount of writing was a really good choice! really gave everything a very unique and lonely vibe. and having one part of the game a little unexplained is an acceptable trade off for that.
i'd love to chat with you about the coding!! and steal all your secrets >:D HAHAHA no but really, i'm honestly very interested in learning how to edit base scripts in rpg maker! would really help me do a ton of things i'd love to put in my games... if i find out how to actually edit scripts in MV because they made it ten times harder for no reason- (i'm sure there's a way to do it tho, i just need to find it haha)