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It's so good. I'm so angry that it's good. God. He's so cute and so hot. If you're not gonna give me more Karrus, I'm gonna have to take more with my own two hands. Hhhh.

You? Are an absolute powerhouse, and deserve all the respect—and rest—in the world. I'm so excited for this finale, you do *not* even know.

That said, and maybe this is preemptive, but I say this with compassion:

When you finish this saga—because it's been such a massive part of your life for a long time and you've been working unbelievably hard on it—you might feel a heavy listlessness afterwards, or a sense of "emptiness". Like you've done it all, but now what? But this is not the end for you, nor your well of creativity. Make sure you give yourself the time you need to relish in reflecting on your remarkable journey, indulge yourself in the little things that give you joy, and cherish your downtime with yourself and others.

We love you, carrot! You are so goddamn amazing!!

This is absolutely a must-read for fans of precious, slow-burn, queer men's romance! A genuinely well-crafted, well-directed, and well-researched visual novel. It's just the right amount of yearning, sweetness, and poetic angst, with a fun sense of humor in not just the words, but the scene direction too! It's so endearing, I can't stop gushing, I want to pamper Hugo lol, and I'm so excited to see where this story goes! More people should play and share it; the team and this project have come a long way since the 2020 demo and it was worth the wait!

It's okay, no need to be sorry! I'm very glad to help, and thank you so much for the compliments and encouragement!

Hello! Thank you for reading our visual novel! I'm sorry to hear that you can't access the epilogue Google Doc. I can convert it into a PDF and upload the file on Itch with the rest of the game, so that you and others in need of alternative access can be able to download it and read it on your local device! I can do this and make an announcement in the next couple of days when it is up; if you Follow my account, you will receive the notification in your Feed, or in a notification email by Itch if you have that setting enabled on your Itch account.

Please be careful about posting your email address out in public spaces like this; I suggest you edit your comment to remove it out of concern for your safety and privacy. I am not responsible for anyone who contacts your email claiming to act on behalf of me or my work, as I only answer Itch comments here and make solutions public on the platform. Thank you for understanding, and thank you for bringing your concern to me so that I can try to help!

You don't know how happy your reaction has made me, like 🥲 I'm so glad you played through, read the afterstory, and shared how the whole experience has touched you! Thank you so, so much! I hope for you The Corpse Lieutenant will be even more gripping!

I'm sorry these solutions weren't right for you. But in asking, you've drawn my attention to the fact that I may need to make a note on the game page about minimum system requirements and installation instructions. Maybe it's a graphics driver issue at its heart, but I'm unsure. MSR may make that more clear to you if you would need to—and can—update.

My only other suggestion for now is... have a friend stream it with you, lol. I know it's not the same as having personal, private access to it anytime, but for a free game, it's a nice experience to share with someone else too, I hope!

Wishing you the best, and thank you for bringing your concern to me.

Thank you, kindly!

I'm sorry you're having trouble. Can you tell me what your desktop operating system is? Without knowing anything, my usual suggestions are:

- Delete all game files and then reinstall them from our game page, in the event your files were somehow corrupted upon execution.
- If you are getting a warning pop-up from your system that mentions a "virus" or "potentially unwanted software", Ren'Py games can sometimes trigger this, so try right-clicking the game application and running as an administrator.
- If neither of the above work or are applicable, downloading/launching the game instead through the Itch app (https://itch.io/app), which executes files in its virtual sandbox tends to solve this problem every time I encounter this with other games.

I hope these help! For the foreseeable future, we will not have the desktop browser version of the game. Ren'Py web builds have been in an experimental beta for several years now, and screen modes and responsiveness in the updated game created errors that we are not capable of fixing at this time. So for now, in the interest of quality, we are only offering the desktop app builds. When Ren'Py improves their web build, or should we find a safe and alternate solution, we may see about revisiting the desktop browser option. Very sorry for the inconvenience!

This was super cute and fun! Ugh, I love how endearing and supportive everyone is! Hope you make more charming stories to come!

Thank you so, so much for your very kind words. And what great timing! Yes, both the revamp and the prequel are being worked on, and a major announcement is coming soon this month!

Albeit slowly, I am always working on the Corpse Chronicles series (what I've decided to call This Life Escapes Me and The Corpse Lieutenant collectively), and publicly share summaries of what the team has done in free, monthly devlog posts on my Patreon. Check it out whenever you have the chance! I post and pin my devlog tweets on my casual Twitter should you follow me, and due to production ramping up, this month onwards I will start posting separate Patreon devlogs for just the Corpse Chronicles versus my other game collaborations and clients.

I hope this info has assuaged any fears! Being such a tiny team, game development can take a very long time for many factors, but be assured that we love this story so much, we want more for us and you!

Oooh, I appreciate it so much! I'm glad my performance was able to do justice for this gem of a story!

I am absolutely delighted that you enjoyed this work! And thank you for the compliment; I'm proud that I could show some different colors in my performance!

Interesting post-mortem! I will say that you honestly do not need to have experience with any of the skills you felt you lacked—the point of a jam is to gain said experience in a small and manageable way. If you took the time to prepare yourself by reading up on beginner-friendly material and asking questions to people in those fields, you've already done plenty in lieu of personal experience! Also remember that it is a team effort, so the people you bring on board to handle those aspects are bringing their specialized skills and understanding. Anything you communicate in your creative vision as director, they have a duty to assess as viable and work with you on solutions or alternatives that are achievable given the resources and timeframe you all have.

I also would argue hard that your characters do have a place in "the market". Your consumers are real people, as are you. You are not the only person out their with your experiences or interests. Making such content accessible draws those people in who are looking to see such representation, and can even be an exciting surprise to people who took a chance and realized they didn't know such rep could exist. Can it be everyone's cup of tea? No. But I imagine you create to be authentically you, and that quality is magnetic to the people who would appreciate that and will support you for more.

All the best to you and your next endeavor, Jenny!

I wish I could romance Boss, too. 😉 Now that voice acting is added, feel free to revisit her and the others any time.

Thanks for playing!

This is a positive review, but I HAVE to say: This vn is honestly not for the faint of heart. I think it's kind of hilarious because the comments so far barely suggest this and I was sorely underprepared to read some content to the extent it was described in front of my friends. I had to pause several times during the nonfiction review bit of the game to not overflow with tears and genuinely break apart. It can feel like you are experiencing trauma after trauma and your only recourse is to keep going or turn away. The additional warning updates were added after my read, lol.

That said, I'm grateful for the experience. There's a deeply haunting kind of introspection from the characters in a way I would not have expected, mainly because everyone's characterization is as regular people, so you do not see it coming. But it touches on beautiful things in the attempt to reconcile these deeper problems. Teddie's hit way too close to home for me in several ways, so I can't properly praise it (though it deserves praise), but Orion's story had such a revelation during the [SPOILER START///] Alcoholics Anonymous in which they pretended to be an alcoholic and made their troubled girlfriend's stories their own [///SPOILER END] that I honestly can't get over it (in a great way). It's brilliant. (Does leafo not have spoiler tags yet? Jesus.)

I'm grateful that Luella's story was told, and that I didn't find it as intense (a much-needed break) but it was incredibly relatable.

Anyway, for a little critique, the writing at times feels rough and could do with some polish and flow, maybe some tone adjustments here and there from Nate and Luella or a little more clarity. At times it felt like Luella's reactions were disproportionate against specifically Nate up until he said what was for me anyway a mildly-infuriating line (the "crazy" bit, which anyone who says this gets what's coming to them) and  approached. I couldn't tell if the intention was that Luella is meant to be this disproportionate considering her infatuation addiction is also an extreme, so anything shy of that is grounds for aggressive monologue? If Nate was more outwardly a cocky dumpster and the boys were more heckling, I'd get it more.

Ultimately for a one-month jam game, this was wonderful. I will not be revisiting this any time soon, lmao, but these stories are now with me. Also I love loving petty crime.

Yo yo yo. We've got my, Tasty's, and Katy's performance and streams of a few games from the competition (Stillwater, Candy Scabs, and Spooky Gourmet). Here's the Twitch Highlight VOD for your viewing pleasure. It's a little over 3 hours so feel free to judge from the beginning up to the qualifying max amount of time: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190726821

Ah, nice. Thanks for the verification and your perspective! Sorry I couldn't say so sooner. This went from a question to an idea, and I hope soon a new feature!

Unsure if your privileges or knowledge extends to this as a moderator here (maybe you do slick backend web development elsewhere), but do you figure implementing these features would not be difficult? Or is that a question better answered by Leafo or whomever has intimate info on this site's infrastructure? I get that this question could be loaded.

I've yet to need this myself but as far as I've heard from peers who upload to Itch, they can't find a user option for blocking or banning an account from following their own, only from leaving a comment on a page (or hiding those comments from themselves—whichever is the actual mechanic).

Please correct me if I'm wrong on the existence of this feature. But the option to do so I think would put some folks at ease, knowing either that their content is hidden/inaccessible to harassing accounts, minimizing the amount of individual page moderation a creator has to do against a harassing account, and worry none for a notification that a creator has been followed and re-followed by a harassing account.

I would really appreciate an administrator's input on this feature's functionality and implementation—again if it turns out it doesn't exist. If it does, anyone please share how to do so! It's very much appreciated.

Tasty and I streamed for nearly 5 hours, but judges need only watch, of course, the permissible time frame for judging. That basically includes the first two of three games we streamed (Therapy with Dr. Albert Krueger, fishy, and What Grows in the Night).

We take on the roles of two awful creatures who are very blatant about why we suddenly care about human visual novel developers. Language warning. Hope you liked it.

Shh! That's called "refining", and if the final product ends up being as great at this, that's still skill through and through!

I love the worldbuilding in this and I want to explore it further. Jiqiren herself is a very competent, albeit gruff character, but honorably so given her background. The story cuts abruptly, but that means I'll need to wait for the next installment to learn more about her and her superior, the General.

One touch that I really appreciate is how the sprites feel like they exist in the space of the background. A color wash and subtle shading really go a long way.

I'm excited to see what you produce next!

This is the kind of story that had me sit and argue aloud with my own narration. Imagine that, where I read a thought that's meant to be my own, question it, and then in clicking to the next line, its as if my inner dialogue just continued in the story. It's a special kind of madness that plays out for laughs. Existential ones, at times. And at others, it may come off as just plain nonsense for lack of information, but you just have to accept it in playing this bizarre--at times relatable!--character. This, coupled with the scratchy crosshatch of the binary art, felt like a harried trip into a mind that likes to get ahead of itself. I really did enjoy this experience, and I'll love to see it expanded and refined. 

With a handful of fantasy and fable entries to the jam, the concepts and choice of diction presented in this have a much more "hard" sci-fi slant to it, which honestly intrigues me how possibilities and limits are explored within known physics. That said, it's not really the focus as it adds mainly to the worldbuilding. I love the characterizations of Connie and Dolores, one a no-bullshit brain with bad habit, the other an almost impossibly charismatic rallier of dissidents. Understanding this was made in a time frame just shy of two weeks, I'm excited by this story of civil unrest and revolution, and I would love to further explore Connie's ties to engineering the ship, the former disaster, and the context of Dolores' greater role before the downfall.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for crop tops and cutesy romance beats. The tunes and story have so much high-flying energy, and there's that distinct silliness that seems so signature of OHI's stories. You get to appreciate the quieter moments in this short, and there's a point of tension that did get me a little flustered (in a good way!), but overall, it definitely accomplishes what it set out to do: be a lighthearted treat.

The dynamic between these two goofballs is great and I will never not like Kotachi's dense yet harmless antics. Poor Ophi, but we all know he secretly loves it, in that "Oh God, help me" way.

Also if you don't turn those penguin plushies into a real merch opportunity, I'm going to CRY

This is a story about neglect and reclamation, told through the diaries of a young girl as she grows up into something beautiful, perhaps in a pitiable way. Beyond the story itself, I can and will gush about just how heavily the art weighed on me. It's the thought put behind the handwriting. I saw this child grow up through the style of it, from the waxy, blocky crayon scrawl, to the clunky gradeschool cursive, to the tamer graphite script. I look at that and I can see my youngest niece and nephew in it all, growing up from preschool and fast approaching middle. I remember when they wrote letters backwards. I remember when the schools mandated cursive lessons for a year. I remember myself in middle school having so much to say with a bigger vocab to say it and never enough room on the page. This and other small gems like the exploration of media and the refinement of her art is so damn touching.

I see myself revisiting this one for the journey.

This story exposed me to a Chinese fable that I wasn't at all familiar with, but that's part of my love for this. I'm always thankful of media that expose me to traditional stories of another real-world culture and makes it its own; it's often a celebration of a heritage only the creator can bring alive so uniquely. In this re-imagining, I found myself drawing new conclusions every time I learned a new piece of information about this mysterious heroine, working out how the device of the fable relates to this love story. This work provoked a gasp out of me more than once, I'm proud to admit, and it caught me by surprise a few times. It was a real rollercoaster for me, and just when I thought I'd be left with a tragedy, or something bittersweet, I get one final surprise. With such cleanly minimal art and scripting, the narrative really shines and I am genuinely impressed.

The story and production in this are absolutely fantastic. Continuing from where "The Sixth Prison" left off, I have a serious investment in the worldbuilding. I'm very eager to explore this bleak, isolated sci-fi environment and the sinister machinations that unfold just out of frame. For what was made in so short a time, it's such a satisfying build up, the characters felt palpable, and the sound cues were unnervingly immersive. I really want to see where this goes and I'm secretly upset that I have to wait, LOL

Very impressed with the design choices and some key scene direction in this story! In foregoing (most) color for a binary art style, focus on select animated patterns and disorienting transitions made me feel as disturbed and invaded as the main character, Callida. By the end of this story, my cogs were turning as to what role we play as the viewer sifting through Callida's memories. I have my guesses considering how the themes unfurl, but there's plenty of room for interpretation, which makes for great talking points among readers!

Also, Spero's dancing is hella cute. Really enjoyed this one.

Absolutely taken by the writing in this. Touched on existential thoughts of place and purpose which personally hit close to home. So many beautifully-crafted lines where I had to pause and acknowledge aloud my surprise and their weight. Don't let the innocuous character art fool you; it will lull you into a false sense of security before the story sweeps you away. The characterization of the two heroines definitely had me taking sides at one point—which means I was invested!—but I'm very satisfied with the resolution. 

Will surely be revisiting this and keeping an eye on future submissions by this team.