Gameplay: 2 - A few small puzzles that aren't particularly memorable but not obtrusive, is what I want to say, but I did run into the not capitalizing issue on the first puzzle. Not that it made things take much longer, but I could imagine some getting stuck on it for awhile.

Sound: 3 - Appropriate moody, ambient soundtrack. The game notably has VA, and quite a lot of it, but the volume wasn't mixed to match the rest of the game's volume, so it was pretty hard to hear a lot of it. I wouldn't say the game needed the VA but as amateur VA goes, it wasn't offensive,.

Graphics: 2 - The visuals are unobtrusive and the maps look fine. Nothing really stands out but it's not like it's bad, either.

Story: 2 - There's a lot that could be said about the story here, some of which I'm sure has already been stated by others, but I will say this might be the only game where Harold was depicted as actively intelligent human being and not a dumbass or a jerk(or Jesus or a lynx, I guess), so good job going against the grain, hah.

 While I understand the premise to be scholar Harold falling in love with a supernatural being and wanting to continue working in her memory, I can't help but feel the verbose dialogue and rampant use of adjectives and thesaurus words detrimental to the overall experience. Since everything was written this way, it made all the text sort of blur together in my head - one historical text to the next all felt like they were written by the same mysterious pretentious guy - but even the characters do this, so yeah.

The end result is that it's hard to parse the specifics of what happened or even what the deal was with Harold's sort-of-but-maybe-not-im-not-sure-if-he's-cheating wife, even if I personally feel I have a good idea on what was trying to be expressed. I feel like the story would be significantly improved with dialogue that was more to the point and peppering the flowery stuff in some of the ancient texts or an arrogant character or something.

Comedy: 2 - There's none, but it isn't trying to have any, so I'll leave this here.

Overall: 2 - I resonant somewhat with the idea of this story; I feel like it could be more relatable if the dialogue was toned down and differentiated. The first puzzle should probably not care about capitalization to avoid people getting stumped on it.

Nice short story  with simple puzzles to solve. I did enjoy reading about the story and wrapped up nicely at the end. The voice acting was a nice touch, but their volume could be balanced a little better. Nice job!

Three things I liked about this game:

1. Simple gameplay
2. Making the clues and items look like real objects is a cool attention to detail
3. Voice acting is always a nice extra detail

Three things I didn't like about the game:

1. The exposition is so wordy that it's hard to understand what the point of the message is.
2. The BGM and voice acting is very quiet compared to the sound effects, so I either have to choose to go deaf from the menu interactions or miss out on the audio experience.
3. There isn't much to this game. Like, the plot just seems to happen without much buildup, and there aren't any unique gameplay mechanics to make up for it.

I like puzzles. I didn't like the puzzles here, they felt too obvious (and the word input one took too long because it didn't consider capitalization). Sadly the puzzles were the only gameplay here.

The only tip I have is, if you're going to write that eloquently, you need a stronger editing pass to catch typos and inconsistencies (e.g. Laurence being called Laurene often), otherwise the dev just reads as pretentious (which I have no further reason to think is the case).

goes in expecting an RPG Maker game

gets an ARG with barely audible voiceover

what the bleep

First off, I genuinely thought capitalization mattered on that first puzzle.

Second off…that was the strangest cosmology I’ve ever read about.

I'll be honest. Wasn't a huge fan of this one. The verbose puzzle solving you do is interesting but some of the solutions makes me want to go up the wall. The way people talk is uh.. something. I'll give them that. Music is non-existent and I literally cannot hear what the archives are saying and a bunch of the words are talking purple prose that made me feel no emotional resonance whatsoever.

Aesthetically it works but I felt so disoriented with the way the events work. Contrary to opinion, I'm not laughing at this and the way people talk leaves me more baffled than amused.

Heyo! I'm running through each entry as we prepare for the voting period! This one is very interesting, so I'll leave my thoughts for you here!

Overall: 3 - There's a lot to unpack here, but the highlight of this entry is definitely the comically esoteric way that everyone talks. The prose is so over the top that it's amusing, but ultimately that seems to be the point, since the actual mysteries to solve here have nothing to do with the content of the text but rather the secrets hidden within. I think the way that gameplay is executed works well enough, although I have some complaints on the execution at times.

Gameplay: 3 - The core loop of this title is exploring masses of text and uncovering their secrets. I think for what it is doing, this is done mostly well enough, with relatively clear hints in each body of text that is fun to seek out but not too obscure as to be frustrating. The most difficult one for me to figure out was the gravestone near the end, which the water-bound creature alluded to but did do in a hard to understand manner at first. The game does largely consist of just walking around and reading, but I think it does this premise well enough.

Story: 3 - I almost gave this a four, I thought the writing was really amusing and well executed in the sort of fancy-pants scholar tone everyone talks in. However, this dialogue becomes really fluffy fast, and occasionally it trips over itself with an occasional grammatical error that makes the whole thing feel inauthentic. However, when breaking down the actual crux of the story, the plot, it is mostly weak in execution due to the majority of the plot being delivered in these long bodies of text that feel unrelated to the story until the reveal at the end, where it all comes together in a mostly predictable manner. It's not terrible, but it felt a little shallow.

Music: 3 - There's not a ton to write home about on this one. The music worked well enough, and I think I'd have to give a bit of extra points for going through the trouble of reading out all this text (although the rough mic quality prevents me from boosting that score to a 4). It was cool to see KV credited under the music as well, I had no idea he did music!

Graphics: 2 - This largely uses bog-standard RTP, and the mapping is mostly just executing on the bare minimum. Nothing about it is especially bad but it all comes together as the weakest link in this entry, with seemingly little effort put into that aspect.

Comedy: 3 - A 3 might seem like a weird choice given that the title has no overt jokes, but the way the writing is so flowery and pretentious made me laugh on multiple occasions as I made it through the entry. The whole time I kept chuckling to myself like "Yeah this is exactly how scholars write their nonsense papers" hahaha. That prose was definitely the highlight of this entry.

Overall Playtime: Roughly 20 Minutes

Good work on this! It was an enjoyable experience and a solid entry!