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The game immediately stood out to me because of its handdrawn art style, which strongly reminded me of children’s books from the early 2000s. However, this style is occasionally broken by textures that don’t quite fit in, especially noticeable with some NPCs. Despite that, there is still a consistent artistic direction that carries through most of the game.

That said, I’m personally a big fan of Egyptian architecture, so I found it a bit disappointing that the outdoor areas were filled with rather simple and plain grey blocks. Even considering the two week development time, this felt somewhat lacking.

On the positive side, I found the case/story itself more interesting than many other submissions. A lot of the other projects cover stories you’ve heard before in some form, but this one was completely new to me, which made it much more engaging. It even motivated me to do some additional research on my own.

Overall, the game has a clear artistic vision and an interesting narrative foundation, even if there are some inconsistencies and missed opportunities in the visual execution.

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Thank you so much for your detailed review — I really appreciate the time you took to write it.

Honestly, my initial plan was to build the game in 3D, but it quickly became very difficult to create consistent designs across all locations and keep them accurate to the same time period and same country. Because of that, I had to switch to a 2D approach.

With AI tools not allowed, I ended up drawing everything by hand — which, as you noticed, is not my strongest skill. I used pencil sketches, and it took me around three days just to create the main scenes (police station, Raya and Sakina’s house, and the jewelry shop). After that, I ran into another issue: scanning the drawings didn’t preserve the look I wanted, so I spent an extra day trying to improve one screen in Photoshop.

Eventually, I switched to taking photos of the drawings with my phone to better capture the colors. In total, that process cost me around six days of development time, and the final result reflects both my limitations in drawing and the compromises of photographing the artwork — which definitely affected the overall visual quality of the game.

As for the story, I completely agree with you — it’s a very rich and intense case, and I originally hoped to make the experience more interactive and engaging, but time constraints made that difficult.

Thank you again for your feedback — I really appreciate it. It also gave me the chance to explain what happened during development and why the game turned out the way it did.