Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!
So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.
So... omg... it's Zeiva. It's been so long since I've seen your name. While I've not logged into the account in a very long time, I'm certain I followed you back when I used deviantART. Getting to play a game you made and give feedback on it is certainly an interesting twist for me.
I have a variety of notes over small things I noticed while playing, but there's also one very huge narrative issue I have with the story presented. I'm going to cover the smaller stuff first, starting with saying that you absolutely need to get this off Flash. Mayshing told me that it was something you were working on but also said I should still mention it, perhaps to help stress how important it is to get away from it. Getting it off Flash is the most important thing to happen for this game (besides dealing with the huge narrative issue I'll be covering later). I also would like to see it that the player can access settings and such from the starting screen rather than having to wait until they're in the game to change audio stuff or to use the top bar menu stuff for visual settings.
Another thing that needs to be fixed is what happens when you use any button that sends the player to an external webpage, and that's that they open the page in Microsoft Edge by default. I'll say that this could just be an issue with Flash itself, in which case this just highlights the need to get away from Flash. If it's not, though, then it's important that this be changed to work off of the player's default browser as people can have reasons for trying to avoid Microsoft Edge.
My next few notes all relate to just general writing stuff. Mayshing informed me you don't have a proofreader, so hopefully having this will help a bit. I'm going to quote the lines I read that had errors in the writing, then explain the error and how to fix it.
"Inside the envelope are a letter, an air ticket and a bizarre card."
- This line was delivered in a flashback, thus it should be in past tense rather than present tense. The tense is defined in the word "are." Instead, this word should be either "was" or "were." Either should work.
"Lose it or you might die."
- There are other lines like this, but this was the one I was looking at at the time I wrote the note down. I assume what people are trying to say about the H card is "If you lose this card, you could end up dying in Hitaki." In that situation, there are two ways to fix it. Either it should be "Lost it and you might die" or "Keep it or you might die." Again, either should work.
"I'd better off do something else."
- So admittedly, I wasn't too sure what this sentence was trying to say (and my memory is so bad that I can't recall the full context for when it showed up... >_>). I'm assuming it's supposed to be saying that the speaker is better off doing something else besides whatever it was they were doing. As such, this would read better as "I'm better off doing something else" or as "I'd be better off doing something else."
My last two notes are both in regards to the chess board puzzle the player is given. The shorter of these is that the hint button should indicate that there are multiple hints available and what hint the player is asking for. There also should be a way for the player to look at each hint again (for memory poor folks like myself). The longer of these is that the player should be told what the objective of the puzzle is before they hit the button to make a guess. As a player, I'm not going to attempt to make a guess at a puzzle when I don't even know what the objective of the puzzle even is. As such, the vast majority if not all players will just keep hitting the hint button to try and figure out what they're supposed to be doing and end up having the game solve it for them. This makes the experience completely unsatisfying. It can be even more frustrating when the player realizes the idea was they needed to guess a word, as the hints provided actually make a LOT of sense for guessing the word. All it takes is one line where the player is told they're trying to figure out a word. I'm even going to perform a test after my stream to prove that this information needs to be given upfront.
Ok, now it's time for the big problem I have in the narrative; Takaya's ability to see his own death and the "rules" surrounding it. There's one massive plot hole in all of this: how did Takaya figure out the "rules" the first time it happened? As far as I'm concerned, Takaya should have died that first time. Let me explain... Takaya was 8 years old when the incident that gave him this power occurred. Now we don't know how many times he's seen this, nor do we know how old he was the very first time it happened. However, let's logically look at how that scenario would've looked...
Takaya: "Naoko! Look at this picture!"
Naoko: "... it's just a normal picture."
Takaya: "No, it's not! It's a picture of me and it shows me dead!"
Naoko: "... no it doesn't. It's a picture of -whatever thing Takaya was trying to take a picture of-"
Takaya: "IT'S A PICTURE OF MY CORPSE! -Proceeds to describe the picture in detail-"
In this scenario, there's only one conclusion for Naoko to make: that Takaya is hallucinating. She would have no reason at this point to assume anything else. Takaya also wouldn't know at this time that this scene will happen in seven days nor that he could avert it. As such, seven days would pass and then Takaya would die. End of story. Now sure, Takaya is a smart kid. However, I would doubt that he - or anyone - would be able to figure out what's going on and avert the first time. The idea of this ability only works if Takaya is able to figure out how it works, and he can only figure it out by it happening multiple times.
Now I'll admit, I'm trying to think up ideas for providing a plausible narrative explanation for how Takaya figures it all out. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to focus on this solely right now. As such, I'm going to come back to this when I do have the time. For now, I hope what's here helps you.