itch.io

I am both flattered and very apologetic ha! I loved watching this, it was so helpful and interesting--thank you for sharing it with me and recording it. Watching you sift through this weird little esoteric game and learn more each time you played was very cool, and exactly the experience I was hoping to create for players. You are so close to winning! It's a difficult game for sure--honestly, I think too difficult, because it's not really explicitly "logical". The introspection popups give you a gentle clue about the next correct word, but there's no real way to "deduce" the correct answer. I created it more as an interactive, atmospheric fiction experience that just happens to have a "good" ending as a bonus.

 My other games are also "spooky puzzlers", but have very clear hint systems, so even if you get stuck, the hints will kick in and basically tell you the right answer. With this game, because of the way it's designed--the conversations are dynamically generated--it's not as easy to give the player helpful pushes. The best I could do was add the EASIER mode (as you noted too) which highlights the right words for you, if you manage to uncover them. But you still have to uncover them yourself. You're looking for 4 correct words, and one of the words is the opening word "hope" (to get you started, it's kind of a freebie). I also updated the game again and added a replay button at the end so you don't have to refresh.

Finally, apologies that the game is a bit laggy for you! I shipped it to be as compatible as possible with as many desktop browsers as possible, but I definitely did not catch everything. Especially since this game is dynamically loading files and the lighting/fire is running on the CPU, the performance can be hit/miss. In the future, maybe I'll add an .exe that people can download too, thanks to your feedback.

Thank you again for your in-depth feedback and I am glad you enjoyed the game enough to keep trying!