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Mondlicht Games1 year ago(+1)

Well, I am not going to bed anytime soon.

This game is legitimately horrifying. Well done!

The production value of this game is absolutely Insane. From the professional level writing to the memorable voice acting of everyone involved to the absolutely beautiful aesthetics and great use of music and sound, this was a real treat.

As a German, I kind of feel conflicted about the random German in this game. I guess we do sound creepy to non-natives. Though props for using some legitimately nice words like "Morgenröte".

I really love how you took your characters very seriously and how you committed to showing the descend into madness that Dämmerung experienced . I especially loved the "old couple" dynamic at the end between Morgenröte and Dämmerung. 

Thank your for making this game. I will make sure to check out your other games!

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melancholicmarionette@gmail.com1 year ago

Oh dear x3 haha. Well, I'm so glad you think so :3 Like I said in response to another comment, it's really hard for me to tell if something I've made is actually scary/creepy/disturbing or not cos I consume so much horror stuff I'm just unphased by it all at this point xD So it's really helpful to hear different people's opinions :D

That means a lot that you think the production value is good ^-^ I sure as heck couldn't have done it without such an awesome team :3

I'm from the UK and don't think German sounds creepy at all x3 but then I am a Rammstein fan, haha. Actually, it was seeing them here again this summer just gone that inspired me to finally start learning German! I memorised all their lyrics in the past so I could sing along, and for the most part, I knew the rough meanings of songs from looking up translations online, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to be able to hear the words and actually know myself what they meant :3

I'm a beginner still though, so I can only apologise if I got anything badly wrong in there! I wanted to include more German voice lines, but A: I have absolutely zero confidence in my writing in English, let alone another language xD so I was concerned about my ability to get things grammatically correct (or sentence structure, for that matter!) and B: I figured it would probably be almost impossible to find native German-speaking voice actors for the jam, haha.

I did put a note on the casting call warning people that there was gonna be a few German lines in the game, but that it wasn't necessary to know the language to audition for the roles. It would have been extremely awesome to have found folks who were because then they could've helped me make sure things were correct as well, but yeah, I figured that would be too difficult when working with deadlines, so I didn't wanna make it a requirement, haha. I felt so bad for the voice actors because it's not like I was able to help that much by speaking the lines for them with the correct pronunciation. I had to resort to telling them to listen to the robotic Google voice on Google translate >.<

But yeah, the more I've learned about the language, the more beautiful I think it sounds ^-^ I started watching German Netflix shows with subtitles on for extra practice, haha.

One of the reasons the characters wound up with the names they did is because I wanted to call them something like Dawn and Dusk, but not use the English words. So I started looking up those words in different languages, and I really liked what the internet was telling me the German words were :3 And I thought it was even cooler how it was saying that Dämmerung is twilight/can be used for dawn or dusk, and how you can specify by putting Morgendämmerung or Abenddämmerung! I basically just fell in love with those words, so I was like, right, this is perfect! But then I thought to myself, it seems a bit silly to give them German names but then not have any other German in the game, and since I'm learning the language at the moment, it just seemed right to try and get a few voiced lines in there at least. I was gonna have em in the text too, but I realised, if I do that, anyone who plays that doesn't read German is not gonna have a clue wtf the characters are saying x3

I should also point out that I've only been using Duolingo to learn so far, which I realise isn't the best resource >.< It's just it's free, so it's at least accessible to folks like me who can't afford proper lessons x3 My favourite sentence that it asked me to translate so far is this:
"Mein Hund ist arbeitslos und hat nur ein Auge."
 Because just wtf xD Why is it telling me this?! Haha.

Anyways, rambling, sorry x3

Hehe, I'm glad they gave you those old couple vibes towards the end :D That was what I was going for, but I wasn't quite sure if it came across that way. They sure as heck don't have the healthiest of relationships x3

Thanks so much for taking the time to play it and leave such a lovely comment <3 Hoping to see more of Bookbound! And also, I still haven't stopped messing around with Stable Diffusion since reading your page x3 Any time I have a random couple of minutes to kill and my phone in my hand, that's where I've ended up xD entirely your fault :P

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Mondlicht Games1 year ago(+1)

I just want to add a few things real quick, especially now that I know you are learning German (how cool!).

You might be pleased to know that you actually managed to teach a native speaker some German.

When I played your game, my first instinct was to dismiss the Waldleute as some bad translation because I had never heard the word in that context before. After some googling I found out it is an actual thing with lots of lore attached to it. (I probably would use the term Waldgeister because Waldleute is a bit ambiguous; they could be just normal people living in the woods, but it is still correct.

Also, no need to apologize for anything. It is me who needs to apologize if I sounded dismissive about your use of German in this game. It's actually pretty cool that you are learning it.

All the German in the game was actually understandable. Just a bit foreign sounding but that is fine. I could imagine the characters are German immigrants that now live in an English speaking country and have acquired an accent. I think even the grammar was fine as far as I remember.

Oh, and if you ever need help with German, maybe for your next VN project, please feel free to reach out to me. I would be glad to help.

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melancholicmarionette@gmail.com1 year ago

Oh, wow, that's interesting then, haha. Yeah, it was mainly Google that I used to try and find something somewhat authentic I could use when it came to adding a magical being to the game. While I wanted the creature to be of my own creation, I still wanted it to have ties somehow to actual mythology/folk tales of German origin :3 So I did a little digging and came across a lot of really cool stuff :D The Waldleute just seemed like the best sort of fit for the kind of creature I was trying to portray! Waldgeister certainly sounds cooler though! I wish I'd thought of changing it to something like that x3

And phew, well, that's good to know, haha. I was really quite anxious about accidentally butchering the language >.< Frustratingly, I had to take a break from learning during September because there just wasn't time to squeeze it in alongside working on Spooktober! And now that October has hit, I'm really busy with other spooky stuff, but I hope to get back to it once everything calms down and we get into November/December :3

That's so kind of you to offer! I do hope to add the main characters from this to one of my main projects at some point, and it would be wonderful if I could manage to include a little more German in their lines :D plus I guess it's good practice! So yeah, I really appreciate that, thank you :3  

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