This jam entry stands out a lot with the implementation of the puzzles. There were some twists and turns in the story as I perceived it as the memory fragments went on, and it was done in a way that I didn’t feel was cheap. I’d thought from the opening that the sleeping pills were on purpose, and that Gabe had died from suicide. I was right on the death part (sort of), but it turned out that he took a normal amount of sleeping pills, which presented another question of “but then how/why did he die?” The picture of them at the hospital was after the accident, but it’s not the one Gabe recovered from his physical injuries at, which is the more obvious conclusion to arrive at. But it never said that that was the case.
When I got through to the end, I thought I was supposed to have divined the wolf’s name from some hint in the text, and then was glad when “life/my wolf” worked to choose that option. I like that there are a bunch of things that work there, including Atma as a kind of “third option”, even if it doesn’t end up producing an ending.
The two obvious endings weren’t wholly satisfactory, and after going through some jam comments, I found out that the wolf’s name was the way to get to the secret ending. I also had some questions about the plot that were left unanswered.
So I went back to look at the memories to find some hints that may have been there. But it wasn’t easy to look at the memories, because I needed to do all the mazes again. I hadn’t saved on all the memories because it hadn’t occurred to me that I would need to if I wanted to view them again without doing the entire game again. But I had my hand-drawn maps out in front of me, so I did. I found that by squinting hard enough at the glitchy text, I was able to see what was hidden there. Except for the wolf’s name. I spent a lot of time looking at the wolf’s name trying to see what it was supposed to say, since the other glitchy text works when you do that, but I wasn’t getting a name (I was getting a headache), so I stopped.
I pieced together the story from all the memories on a second run, and it was satisfying for me to put the plot together. Gabe’s mom really going through it after her friend died made more sense in the context of Dorian’s death. I thought that he and the wolf were at a gay bar, and that was what they were talking about that was glitched out, but it turned out that it was about being in rehab. It was nice to glean additional meaning from a repeat reading. Doing the puzzles all over again was not as nice.
While I had pieced together most of the plot that’s explained in the third ending (the big thing I didn’t get was Dorian’s motivation, which doesn’t show up much elsewhere in the game), I hadn’t gotten closer to the wolf’s name. I thought I was getting taunted when the glitch text letter came up because it wasn’t a consistent letter. I had written down several that it was switching between. I later found in the game’s code that it was supposed to be an M.
I had also thought that the highlighted N in one of the maze’s was an instruction to investigate the panel in the centre of the room. I must have messed up the order the first time, because it didn’t work, then I thought to investigate the panel at that point in the sequence and it did work, so it wasn’t on my radar as much when it came to being a name clue (I found this out from the jam comments). I didn’t find any of the other letters (including the glitchy M), and at that point was tired of looking.
The third ending, when I got to it by opening up the game files and looking for the wolf’s name as Fuze did, let me see the rest of the CGs, but mostly told me things I had already pieced together. I think it’s much easier to piece together the plot than the name. I was expecting more emotion out of that ending, for Gabe and the wolf to have more of a sweet reunion (especially since the other endings don’t have that), but it was mostly recounting the events of the plot.
I spent a lot of time on the puzzles and the maze. Way more of my time was spent on puzzle than text, and while I didn’t find the puzzles generally unpleasant (I felt some challenge and accomplishment, and skipped nothing on my initial playthrough), I was more there for the story than the puzzle.
About the puzzles. The controls were hard to get used to. The maze kind of reminded me of Etrian Odyssey, but in the ones that I played, you could rotate your camera without moving between tiles (I think), and I was having a hard time understanding what it did when you pressed the back arrow. I found the room numbering unhelpful (I initially missed the numbering because I had picked the option to not have them, and then found that I couldn’t scroll back. I then restarted the game.), and opted to not use that feature. All of the maze corridors looking the same also added difficulty, though I expect this was due to the game jam time contraint. It’s still a feat of programming that you were able to code this all.
I don’t have a problem with sliding puzzles. I know some of the tricks to solving them. It’s just that there was a lot of sliding going on, and the blocks slid too slowly for my liking, particularly on the main menu. I think that one’s probably a programming thing to do with the size of the puzzle pieces. (I’d also like to say that I did that puzzle first thing on opening the game and was frustrated when I wasn’t able to view the secrets, and when I had to do it again after finishing the game, and when I wanted to look back at the secrets when I was looking for name clues.). The CGs are nice. They were also done well regarding the ability to put them together as a puzzle. I can only think of two tiles in the bar CG’s background lights where it’s ambiguous as to what could go where.
The music is calming for the puzzles and mazes, which I think is good because it helps people not feel too frustrated as they’re going through them. I was pleasantly surprised when the music changed after I had advanced a maze. My two gripes are that the calm sliding puzzle music doesn’t always fit the urgency/seriousness of the scene around it (the maze music becomes more intense when you approach the end) and that the piano music for the wolf’s ghostly appearances is not the most suited to the short length of time these appearances are. It’s a very sentimental track, and hearing it come on for only a few lines before we’re back to the maze (and so frequently) makes me feel like the game is trying too hard to make me feel something instead of letting the text carry the emotion.
I liked Gabe as a player character. His sass towards Atma and the general situation he finds himself in is entertaining, and his “solve the puzzle for me!” lines are funny and can lighten the mood for players who are feeling down about the tile puzzles. His sprite in the corner is cute and expressive.
The wolf and Gabe’s family are… fine? They serve their purpose in the plot. I would’ve liked to have seen more scenes where Gabe and his wolf are getting along better, since a big part of the third ending is that they’re happy because they’re together again, but so much of the memories are negative ones.
I think Dorian could use some more fleshing out. It was hard for me to understand the particular loopholes he was taking advantage of, and how he had turned from someone who fought for justice in life to what amounts to the main villain in the story. His motivation to try to save people is there, but the memory-erasing is such a huge step towards evil that I’m still left scratching my head about it. He protested for civil rights during his life, but then in death he spends his time blackmailing people/taking advantage of strange and exploitable systems to enforce his will on his friends? I can believe the whole maze afterlife thing, but Dorian’s exploitation of the system (and the system being so exploitable) is a harder thing to buy.