Great design and I can see a lot of love was put into Yue and Ming :)
I went into this expecting a simple visual novel so I was positively surprised to find a full murder mystery case solving mechanic! The tutorial was presented clearly and slowly enough for me to understand but I uh... forgot about the arrow keys during the second statement. An options menu would be great to reiterate controls for players to familiarise themselves within their own time. The music is excellent as well, fitting each scene! But I'd also love a volume mixer in an options menu because the game was louder than any of my other pc media :')
There's some minor details I'd like to see, such as the sparkle could disappear or change when having interacted with something, but you do solve this by the character telling you if you've explored all of the area, which is incredibly convenient. I did accidentally interact with an object/person multiple times because I pressed one Z too many, which then had me going through all the dialog again - having a dialog change for a quick note about the item/comment from the person instead would make it easier. But I'm sure it's something you would've added if you were given more time because I swear a couple conversations did have a secondary interaction option already.
In the third trial, there is no reaction to any of the items presented for the case - so I wasn't able to move forward, but I can kind of piece things together from the context given. I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I missed something but I did try every item and statement across 3 attempts.
Overall very creative story and take on the theme, touching upon Ming's generosity and generosity burnout even (hey-ho it's what we tried focussing on) while also making it a lot more engaging with the mystery to solve, instead of it simply being a "giving" game.
I do hope you're intending on developing the game further! If you'd like another artist to help, feel free to hit me up because I'm currently very much into the wuxia/xianxia genre again, which does have similar themes to Fatal Flower :)
Viewing post in fatal flower jam comments
thank you so so so much !! i am so happy that you liked it omg ... and thank you for playing so much of the story, it means a lot to us !! :,,D
thanks for all the feedback and suggestions too, that all sounds great ! and yes music was probably very loud but i only asked like the team and my sister's opinion on it LOL so def would do more like . random qa and opinion testing in the future . tutorial and options menu for sound sounds like a great idea, id totally add it in the future whenever i have time . we def wanted to get more UI in to make things like . how you have to use the arrow keys to switch between characters more clear too lmao T_T
this was the first time ive solo programmed a game of this length before, and three weeks wasn't a lot (even though it was super fun hehe), so i didnt get to a lot of extra features i wanted to do :O ! like definitely agree with the sparkle disappear and dialogue change for second time talking to someone . thank you for noticing that some interactions did have secondary dialogue too omg !! its in the game as a feature, but we didnt get to the writing aspect of it so those lines are just repeated LMAO . def if we had more time/update in the future, those would all be target areas.
and thank you for bug report ! :O im curious about that now , thats never happened to me + playtesters in testing. im not sure if you saw the guide (it was highkey buried in very long game summary page lol) but the right answer shouldve been the combination listed there. i may ask you for more details on that though if thats okay , i just want to make sure the trial works lolol !
we really hope to add more on to the game for sure !! def wanna go back and add in all the missing art/refine dialogue/fix bugs when we all get the chance to . and thank you so much for the offer , that sounds super awesome !! do you mind if i ask for your discord or some other messaging thing so maybe we can talk about more details for it :DD it makes me so happy that you asked though ahh (and i was/still am totally also into an anime based on ancient China when we were coming up with ideas for the jam lol)
also again , your team's game was so beautiful , i really enjoyed playing it and it had amazing art and an awesome concept , wishing you all mega good luck you totally got this !!
aah you're so sweet!
I can see that you've been intending a lot more, happened to us too :') Also I suppose I might've not had the correct trust level for the item but I swear I also used it first time so I'm a bit confused. Would need to sit down for another playthrough (after Develop tomorrow).
I'll DM you my details, would love to know more! - nvm DMs don't exist, you can find me under luciusrat on disc, my pfp is a shocked nikki rn :x