I saw your illustrations on twitter a while ago, which made me really interested in checking this out, but I only sat down and got around to it today. This was such a fantastic experience. As others have mentioned, I definitely could feel some House in Fata Morgana influence (one of my favorite visual novels ever, so a very good thing) - especially with the sound design choices. The music is incredibly effective, and the music/sound design/visuals/UI are all so cohesive.
Really impressed by your work and I will definitely be following to check out future projects from you.
ArcanaXIX
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Wow, wow, WOW! This was incredible. Super long comment incoming because I have so much to say.
I found this game because, since I'm currently writing a narrative game featuring a werewolf, I wanted to see what other similar games are already out there. I wanted to see what themes I'm considering have already been explored, and how; I wanted to engage with and appreciate someone else's vision; and honestly I just absolutely love werewolves so I wanted to play a werewolf VN. So I just searched itch using "werewolf" and "visual novel" as filters. Nice tagging, because I found exactly what I was looking for.
This was SUCH an effective and compelling story. I was amazed by what you accomplished using relatively few assets - just enough portraits and expressions to make the characters feel alive and emotional, just enough backgrounds to set the tone, and limiting it to just black/white/red in terms of palette was SO EFFECTIVE. It made that climax title screen absolutely incredible.
I was taking notes the whole time about exactly what you did in this game that made it SO effective. Your writing evoked a lot of really clear sounds and images and sensations, I noted in particular how when describing Charlie's mom bring the car to a stop and turn it off, it was described in terms of sound: the roaring engine, and how at the turn of the key the sound quieted. It turned the scene from just a catalogue of "this happened" into something where I could hear and feel it, and I could sense Charlie's focus on specific sounds and actions by the way it is described. Just excellent writing all around.
[Vague spoilers below because I have more to say but honestly I recommend anyone just download and play the game now instead of reading the rest of this comment]
I adore stories about generational trauma and that do very interesting things with the werewolf puberty metaphor. This was just an excellent game all around. Really great work!
The updates from just the first version to 0.2 made SUCH a difference, I'm really excited to see how this game continues to evolve. I really love the card suit theming, it feels really unique, and it's always fun to learn the different playstyles that suit (hah) each one.
ALSO fun to try and figure out if you can minmax when your party members have the weirdest starting stats ever.
Clubs Crazyshot FTW
Thank you so much!! I'm so glad you liked it.
I'm working on a roadmap to get the full release of Episode 1 out on steam next summer. At the moment I have a tumblr set up to post long-form development updates, but I'm likely to add new forms of communication (I am considering a newsletter, but that's not final... nor set up yet).
You can bookmark this linktree and check back down the line for updates, I will add any and all relevant links here: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame
The tumblr is on there already if that's a platform you use. I will be making use of the devlog here on itch as well.
Thank you again for playing!