Ah, you made One Last Week, which was the final game I read (during the active rating phase) from maywolf 2025. I went back to read what I said about it because I remember enjoying it a lot and rating it pretty high but it would be really bad if I was like "oh I enjoyed that a lot" and then found out I didn't. Luckily my memory holds up, but while I've been leaving ratings on all the novembucks I've read, I want to make up for my meager comment on that one here 😤
Okay so I'll admit right out of the gate, I'm biased. My deer is a they/he nb twig type of trans, but we've both got trans musk deer. We've both got unexplained magical realism. I'm also just biased because happenstantial similarities aside, you made a really hot trans guy, and let us know in several different ways that were both explicit but graceful. I'm really impressed by how well you juggled all four of the opening problems together. First Date and Social Anxiety and Speed Running Drama and Time Travel like damn Saul, usually we try to just pick one or two struggles. But they all cohere together really well!
To be fully honest, I kinda clocked that the score wouldn't mean much, so I did not worry about maxing it out, in fact before I went back to try and get the other endings, I didn't use the reset mechanic at all (which I appreciated the extra dialogue about) but I think it pretty clear from the get go represents how Saul thinks he's doing over how he's actually doing, which works really well as a direct visual representation of his social anxiety. Man who is desperately trying not to catastrophize from the consequences of his own actions: saying something weird in a conversation, in front of a hot guy.
I'm not usually one for "gameplay" because I think it's something that often gets shoehorned in, in a way that's usually detrimental, especially if you're trying to force renpy to do tricks it really wasn't meant for. However, it works well here because this is just a diagetic way to include as a function I feel like a lot of players do anyway. I'm certainly the kind of person who makes saves at important choices. It's even better since it's introduced as this sort of... I'm not sure how to phrase it, but this temptation that ultimately kind of sucks. It's not useful for speedrunning, it's not useful for anything useful, and when someone else finds out about it, it introduces this extremely suspicious and kinda terrifying aspect to the person you've been opening up to.
Which is really where the best of the game is at. Most of this game is really about the strange kind of song and dance we do when meeting someone for the first time. When you resonate with someone you've just met, how much do you open up? What kind of jokes are you "allowed" to make? How do you gauge someone else's level of Freak without giving up just how much of a weirdo you secretly are yourself? Especially if the things you're passionate about might be embarrassing or frowned upon? Watching these two interact with each other, especially with Alan's gorgeous sprites (the art in the game is phenomenal, and the retro aesthetic remains consistent and beautiful throughout the experience) and the reveal they have this shared, niche compassion... followed by the mortifying reveal of how they might already know each other, is so good, and folds all the rest of the parts neatly into itself.
Yes, I'm biased because of the species choice, yes I'm biased because every time someone makes a cool, hot, multifaceted trans character who is also seen as desirable my life extends by a few years at least, and yes, I'm biased because oogh I love men. But High Score Hyrax really is one of the standout entries of this jam, no notes, A for effort and for execution, can't wait to see what you make next!