I don't regret time spent on playing the game, but I wouldn't really call this "story". More like experience about friendship, acute anxiety and grief. It builds up drama, reaches point "hero's darkest hour", but then completely skips part about how the hero of the story overcame their darkest hour, making it a non-story in my eyes. If I wanted to turn it into a story with minimal efforts, then I would just replace the happy ending on Lucy commiting a suicide. It would be a tragic story, but a story.
Hi again!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I completely understand what you're saying in regards to skipping a chunk of what could feel like the most important part of the story.
My thought process was, however, that where we cut to after the "darkest hour"— Lucy meeting with friends- is not the end-goal - is not her being finished with the mental healing, but is still very much during the process of learning to live with her anxiety and "overcoming her darkest hour". Which is also what I attempted to highlight with the ending. That anxiety doesn't disappear when you've done all the correct things, but rather, that you learn to adapt and get to know your fears better so the struggle fills less in your life, thus allowing you to enjoy it more.
So, to some extent, I very much agree that this is sort of a "non-story". It's about the process. Not the beginning and the end, since I personally feel like anxiety is more equivocal than that.
But these are my thoughts and certainly not me trying to diminish your feelings about the story. I will take your comment into consideration for future stories, as I do believe you make a valid point. If I were to make the story longer in the future, I will certainly attempt to show more of Lucy's process to overcome these hard-hitting struggles, as this is an important part of the story.
Also, ending the game with the main-character dying would certainly make it more of a traditional story but would very much go against the message I attempted to convey.
Regardless, thanks for playing the game and for the comment. I hope it was okay that I shared my thoughts as well. It was simply to explain my decisions, regardless of if they were bad or good :)