itch.io

Hi! I'm new here! I don't know if this is the way to start this, it's my first attempt at using this platform so its all an experiment really. 

The Little Girl Who Rode the Lion is an interactive short story in the style of traditional folk/fairytales. It's about a displaced lion and a lost little girl, empathy, mending and breaking. 

If you have a second to give it a read, it'll mean the world.  I'd be lying if I said it was a heart-warmer but I really hope it leaves something with you. Just a little smudge. You'll be leaving one on me just by taking a peek. 

https://corncobular.itch.io/the-little-girl-who-rode-the-lion

I love the dynamic between the narrator and the player, and the way you've built conflict between them directly into the game. I also really like how the "oh we'll start the game just as soon as you follow these instructions" idea is kind of in line with that psychology experiment where you get a bunch of people in a room, tell them the experiment will begin in ten minutes, come in ten minutes later and tell them the same thing, and then repeat that (the waiting for the experiment to start being the actual experiment all along.)

I think the scroll bars are turned off so the longer text gets cut off and there's no way to see the options underneath (the Monopoly page and the apology for example) which is a little disappointing because this is SO brilliant. I think you could break the party up into smaller moments, and use them to show some of the patterns in the different characters that Autumn brings up in the text a little more under the radar. It might be interesting to see the characters spread out and the narrator kinda going from room to room interacting with people and catching snippets of conversations that might tie back into the fight, either directly or just as deeper context, once everyone is back in the same place. 

I think this game is really elegantly done, and is very successful at building up the repetition of day-to-day cycles. I think you could play around a little more with building up tension with each repetition? Its a very ~chill~ game even in the parts that are meant to feel frustratingly repetitive, which isn't a bad thing considering how positive the message of the game is, but I think it would add an element of realism and a little bit of emotional texture to the game if you added like one more possible outcome where the player/narrator has more of an explosive reaction before either quitting or picking back up the sketchbook. I genuinely really enjoyed this.