As a gay Chinese woman born in a territory colonized by the British after the Opium Wars, who grew up with verses of the Ballad of Mulan at the tip of my tongue-
Thank you.
This is a fantastically designed, beautifully told story. Upon reading your post-mortem, I see how much work you put into making the game flow, and it really did. As I read, time passed like nothing at all, and the changing of text in the same sentence such as from "every family has a son" to "every family has a disappointment" was particularly powerful. The emphasis on bound versus unbound feet, the dreams of Peking Opera, the use of Chinese zodiac signs for stat distribution all hit somewhere deep and at home in me that I never realized I wanted.
One thing I noticed was the way that stat increases were marked by the blessings of planets such as Mars and Venus. At first, I was a little bemused by the fact that despite being such a culturally Chinese game, you used the Roman, western astronomical names of the planets instead of Chinese astronomical terms. But at the same time, this little design choice, whether intentional or not, conveyed the sense of the times, with Chinese and Western sensibilities clashing in combat, and the encroachment of the British.
There's lots I could say about this game, but most of all that I long for more of it. It is merit to your design that 7000 words felt so, so short that I found myself repeating the chapter over and over again trying to wring out every last bit of text that I could, and it is a compliment when I say that it still wasn't enough. I wish you all the best in the project in the future, and I hope you get the support and finances to be able to finish it.
This was super cute and super enjoyable! I really like how strongly everyone was characterized and how those traits carried over and were reemphasized in every new situation! (Any pairing with Nerium in was bound to be full of laughs lol) Each scenario was short, but each carved out very comical and fun dynamics between the different characters, well done! :) I hope to see more from you guys, including a production of Karma's Spoon-Based Musicals.
