itch.io

Really an incredible work. I think the finely tuned honesty really shines through. I realized I don’t think I’ve ever seen portables mentioned in any medium really, and had sort of forgotten the word since school. But it gives it all such a fine grained texture without getting bogged down in the contemporary details. I also really adored the [read more]’s, as someone who once posted some and read very many. The GUI was also so fun and freewheeling, and the SFX so charming--a magic bow tying the whole experience together.

(Going to say “you” from here on, but with the understanding that this is an ebicon joint with a number of cool people contributing, with ALTER was steering the ship.)

You write relationships between girls in a really specific and wonderful way (I felt this about BAE too, but it REALLY jumps out here for me). You can feel all the bumps and ridges and pockets when you see them interact with each other or process an event. And it all feels so honest. Sort of unexpectedly, after finishing I suddenly thought to myself I was really excited for a new friend to come visit my messy apartment after having spent the weekend cleaning for the upcoming visit, and weirdly regretted cleaning it so much (although not really, since most of it was for myself anyways). But suddenly I felt really content and eager in this almost happily childish sort of way to show how shitty my closet organization is to a new friend that’s wormed their way into my heart already. And I think that just sort of sprung out of being moved to love these girls so much, and seeing how complicated and messy but genuine their feelings were for each other. And the shape of them being something I really relate to, but rarely am able to connect to in other writing. Then with the ending, it was just a feeling that everything would be okay, and that me and Anise and everyone else would all continue, even if loved ones disappeared and no one knew how to behave. What a CRAAAZYYYY thing to pull off!!! This is the same trick that has me owning like five hardcopies of Banana Yoshimoto books.

Anyways, a great work that really touched me. Thanks for making and sharing, really looking forward to the next ebicon work.

LOVED THIS... VERY MUCH!!! what a really nice tapestry... i think the sort of maximalist design fits the game's atmosphere super well, as we sink into callie's world. and it was so finely tuned holy cow! i loved all the little details like being able to scroll in the phone, the sort of hover parallax effect with the bg, the loads of perfect and delicious expressions, callie tightening that yarn around her finger during the text convo w aila early on, the cursor changes... dude like i could go on forever. the cursor change was particularly ero in how it in a really small but effective way involved the player. i was also so gagged at the ending, so well timed... but all in a super compelling snapshot of a very cute girl stumbling very hard as she connects some dots. LOVE! also the playlist is genius (kai please put this on bandcamp...)

This was really incredible. First off—absolutely crazy work on every level here. The care to sprite placement + scripting, sound design, GUI, the beautiful sprites themselves, all of it was so breathtaking while pointing right back towards the emotional beats of the story. And what a story!! I’m really struck by how much care and love is here, for these two characters. Deirdre especially is so painfully specific, and through her you’ve evoked such a specific and rotten feeling. A wonderful experience that I’ll be thinking about for a while, thank you two for making + sharing!

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Every part of this is so perfect, there were a few moment I nearly cried because of how well it all fit together and what a powerful sum it was building towards. I took a million screenshots as to be able to more easily re-read my favorite segments. Echoing Amet here and saying you two come up with such beautiful new ways to tell stories. I was so moved by how tender and real every life felt, how it was held in the palm of their hands, and how the feeling moved through the girls in the privacy of their cabin. It felt like such an intimate and precious communion. Every detail so neatly served the central story—for example, the girls themselves felt on equal footing with the Merrymeeting dolls they played with in their humanity as pilot’s portraits render them so sweetly and doll-like, while neatly tucked inside the gorgeous embroidery. I genuinely started crying when I saw the reverend and how cutely Lucy held him to her chest, and I think part of that was because I was so surprised how wide the net was cast for who was “fit” for this sort of narrative device. The truly enlightened soul knows anyone can play with dolls and any story can be told through them…

I will be thinking about this visual novel for a long, long time and could probably write a very long essay on it. Going to go cry some more about it but will be sure to share more thoughts later on my inevitable replays. Thank you two for making and sharing!

thaank yoou!! amet really did an amazing job with the maze designs + art, they look so stunning and are also so relaxing to move through... happy you enjoyed!

pilot T_T thank you for organizing such a wonderful jam!!! it's been so fun to make something for it, and i'm happy you felt so touched by what we all put together <3 and i love  your doll, this is one of my favorite heads... 

thank you!! and yes we're all over the moon so many people are sharing their dolls, we really love seeing them (and with that finding out which items spoke the most to people)... <33

thank you so much for such kind and lovely words :,)  adding in the music really felt like the special glue to tie together the game, jemi did a wonderful job

thanks for playing!! we are in very very good company in this jam, pilot's really organized something incredible. i hope you enjoy the other entries :)

minaaa thanks for the wonderful thoughts :,) coquina is also a very cool type of sedimentary rock, built up of little clamshells that retain their shape to a really interesting degree. it's what you see in the start screen bg! amet did a beeeaautiful job with the maze designs, i'm happy you enjoyed them. thank you for playing <3

really so, so happy to hear this... thank you so much for playing and for leaving such a kind comment <3

wowww i adore this look!! and thank you for the lovely comment!

thank you so much for playing, so happy you enjoyed!!

your doll turned out so lovely... !! and thank you so much from the kind words, it means a lot coming from you :,) let's all go make dolls

WOOOWWWWWW......... this was incredible!! First, the visuals--all the sprites were so cute and I loved all their expressions, and I really adored the overall glitched out visual effects, from the sprite jitters to the filters on the background. It gave it such a nice digital texture that was 1) pretty to look at and 2) more comprehensively communicated Nikko's POV in a really nice way. The narrative was also really incredible. I loved how you all threaded the needle with organic and mechanical functions, and how Nikko and Lev's complicated dynamic took shape. My favorite line was "Wow, I was thinking it'd be more like the wiper fluid in my truck." Thanks for making + sharing!!

this looks super fun! sorry if i'm just missing something here, but it looks like there's no file uploaded?

i really really really adore this... i missed you'd uploaded this to itch somehow and it's really ingenious how you have it set up, the zoom panel is wonderful. my favorite line is "her joints pinched my skin"--pulling the narrator in and establishing a specific physical entanglement? connection? something wonderful. great work!!

WOWWW!!! "I don't care you how you enjoy. It's... nice to share this with someone else." "... I haven't been sharing." Can you hear me screaming? What an amazing exchange. On a technical level I really really adored the paneling and how kinetic all of it felt--such a fun read. Thanks for sharing!

lovely! i love how much the s-hook stands out in the photo.

This was wonderful!! I loved how tidy the narrative arc is, culminating in that mirror scene--"Reflected back at me was a seemingly perfect image of Hotaru where I should have been", the MC disappearing. I liked that it ended with the shower, returning to your body but washing something off, letting it slide off you and into the drain. The tidy confines of the story alongside the really wonderful graphic design + layout make the whole thing feel like a discreet memory packaged in plastic, vacuum sealed from 10+ years ago. 

Hi there! Curious if anyone's tried running Ayano's comment widget with Strawberry Starter, and if so how they managed to get it up and running. I'm new to the web world but my attempts at getting the code into the blog weren't successful, but I admit I'm operating from a very inexperienced perspective with all of this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated--I'd love to run comments but would prefer to stick to this system I've been using vs getting a secondary service! (But also wondering if this doesn't count as an "external comment service"... so maybe this isn't possible...)

(And to Kate: I really love Strawberry Starter, it's been so fun to poke around and learn more about fun parts of indie webdev!! Thanks so much for making and sharing!) 

EDIT, Jan 17: I figured it out with a little help from a friend! To anyone else wanting to do this: 

• Set up your comment widget files as you would normally on your site (I made a new one so I could tailor the css to match my blog better, and manage any comments easier). You do not need to host css or js files for the widget inside of strawberry starter files.
• Paste the c_widget div + script into _includes/comments.html, as Kate instructs
• Edit the script path to have "/../" at the start
• Good to go! (Just need to set up theme css to accommodate the new section)

This fix uses absolute + relative pathing notation because the strawberry starter engine is putting /blog/ (or whatever your subdirectory is) before your path, even if it's an absolute one. But the .. relative notation overrides it! I was also running into a problem where strawberry starter really didn't like me adding new files, but maybe I was just doing something wrong. In any case this fix works perfectly! You can see it in action here.

Just chiming in (maybe unhelpfully) that I got it up and running on my 2021 MacBook Pro which runs on Sonoma. I hope you were able to figure it out!

this was so tender and loving! i have been talking a lot with a friend about how one of our favorite parts of character driven stories is when an author can successfully navigate the dance people do--where there's SO MUCH each person doesn't know, in turn leading to so many misunderstandings and just like, emotionally compelling disclosures that completely change the direction of the scene. but how, when it's a well-tailored interaction, it's stacked with it being these two, very flesh-and-bone compelling characters, interacting with each other and bringing out something in each other that only they can bring out. so you get this interesting dance of withholding and prodding, poking and pulling, that is so expertly on display during some of their first encounters in front of the fireplace. i kept being emotionally hit over the head with the realization "oh, she's just as lost as gold is!", "oh, she's just as desperate as alfalfa is!", through so many tears... easily my favorite part of a very wonderful visual novel. (second only to some of the harder/more toxic lines earlier on ^^) looking forward to more of your work, tabbie!

what a crazy excellent game!!! so unbelievably well crafted in a way that made me really, really, really love visual novels, you use every tool so exactingly. i really admire when games use sound + music thoughtfully, and daaaaaaaaaamn. it's such a precise and enveloping feeling. my favorite was the sort of tick that happens when it's quiet in the car--i really love that you didn't shy away from "unpleasant" sounds. i am sort of speechless right now... thank you for making and sharing this!

this rocks

really wonderful, it took me awhile to finish but mostly because i kept needing to sit with the events and turn them over in my head, which was such a perfect and meditative experience. really wish i still lived by the coast so i could drive out there and just stare out at it after playing haha. so thoroughly charmed by both the girls and the story, but also the clear passion from each of the devs. already can't wait for your next work!

difficult and well-done, something that will stick with me for a long while

target audience found 🙏 (thank you)

yayyy that was the idea haha! so proud to have worked on this with such a great team. thanks for the love!!

٩(◕‿◕｡)۶

thank you so much!! it was so fun watching it all come together so nicely and cohesively, and some recent trips to the dentist did definitely refresh my mind of the exp... 

mission: success ٩(◕‿◕)۶ lol no for real i'm happy the vibe translated well for you!! vampires are great and i will always be wanting to write more vampire stories...

jareeeddd thank you so much!! amet is a genius for those mechanics... and i'm lucky to have such talented friends on music!! it was really fun watching it all come together. thanks again for the love! <3

huge fan of you and your shumps--love the care you put into the assets and the animations especially!!

was hilarious how bad i was at this game--i've never played vampire survivors or any of it's genre (i'm not sure if there's a word?) and hilariously assumed it was bump slash, and laughed out loud when i immediately died. spent awhile goofing around and having fun with it despite being absolutely abysmal at it lol which is honestly such a great experience--very lovely to feel like i can enjoy the game at any level, versus feeling like i need to "get good" to have any fun at all. wild this is your first game, and really looking forward to what else you create!!

this was so lovely... the start reminded me of how fish is made, which made me think about the complexity having faith in something, which then wound up being very relevant to the game--i kept worrying the friend the ghoul makes would turn out to not be a friend, and appreciated that as a player the only way to advance the game was to participate in the ghoul's optimism by going to find the human. well done!

your pixel art turned out BEEAAAUTIFULLYYYY the backgrounds and splash pages were especially gorgeous, and the animations were also so fun. and of course love the tamagotchi idea haha

when i booted this game up after reading the description, i'll have you know i genuinely exclaimed out loud "EXCUSE ME?!" this is so cool and impressive for a first game, huge congrats and also like thank you for joining all of us in the jam!! really excited to see what you continue to do, you have such a fun vision and your enjoyment in making it is so clear!

this was so fun and very challenging...