itch.io

Such an incredible entry! Short and strong, and with a really unique narrative style. The graphics are EXTREMELY cool and cute, and the reading of the voice acting makes the game feel somewhere between a poem and a conversation I would overhear in a school classroom. Great cinematography throughout, and one that does an impressive job at building intriguing over such a limited length. Biggest congrats to the whole team on what I think might be the absolute strongest game in your length-class this year.

Incredibly intriguing worldbuilding, and really strong writing to carry it through! The limited color scheme of the graphics also works incredibly well, especially for conveying a weird dark psychologically-tenuous apocalypse disco - great job! The character sprites in particular feel really dynamic and have such a strong sense of character - something which can be hard to pull off with so many masks in the designs! A really solid project all around - congrats to the whole team. 

Wow!!! Absolutely gorgeous visuals, with some really great touches throughout. I love all the radio details, and the care put into the design of the station itself (especially the oscilloscope, that felt so cool to use)! I'll absolutely need to keep exploring more endings, but the ones I've seen felt extremely intriguing - excellent dawning sense of cosmic horror, and good use of sprite variants to drive it home. Really well crafted game - congrats to the whole team!!

A super charming game, with writing that had a good spread of spooky moments, chuckles, and heartwarming scenes. The sprites, particularly for Yuna later on, were very cute throughout, and the relationships between the characters felt well-developed (I have a special fondness for Makoto and Hikaru's friendship). Great job, especially for being a solo project, and a very cool premise for the Remnant world that you've set up! Congrats!

Really great job!! The mythology is woven in nicely, and the cinematography of the first several scenes felt really strong and interesting - especially everything with the eyes. The character designs are incredibly cute, and in exploring their various paths they all felt nicely distinct and charming, with a fun mix of humor (I am soup!) and genuinely sweet moments that made the bad endings land in a very bittersweet way. I'll definitely be replaying once you add the fourth jar, and look forward to seeing more!! Huge congrats to the team.

Really great job!! The mythology is woven in nicely, and the cinematography of the first several scenes felt really strong and interesting - especially everything with the eyes. The character designs are incredibly cute, and in exploring their various paths they all felt nicely distinct and charming, with a fun mix of humor (I am soup!) and genuinely sweet moments that made the bad endings land in a very bittersweet way. I'll definitely be replaying once you add the fourth jar, and look forward to seeing more!! Huge congrats to the team.

Félicitations! I played both 1.0 and 1.5, and it's impressive to see how much has changed even in that short amount of time. Your art is strong, and the characters' premise so far is definitely engaging. It took me a little bit to realize there was an english-language setting (mais je sais un petit, petit peu de français, alors c'est bon!), and some of the text colors were a little hard to see, but the overall art direction is extremely cool and intriguing! I'll be looking forward to seeing further updates down the line. Well done!!

Such a strong entry!! A solid premise done well, with really great art throughout - particularly in regards to characters' expressions!! I love the use of the parallax layers for the CGs throughout, and think the reuse of a lot of those assets is done in a really clever way, which I always admire. Very nice use of the minimal color scheme too, and it works so well to have the greys and off-white rather than something harsher - it really sets a great mood, and gives the more saturated / bright color accents room to really pop. Plus I always love a chance to see concept art in end credits, that bit's great. Congrats to the team!

Wow!! You've really made use of an incredible array of inputs and interactions in this one, without it feeling like too much - seeing the way those those interactive elements were brought back into the story was incredibly satisfying, and impressive from the coding perspective (especially for a solo dev!!). The minimalism of the artwork worked incredibly well in your favor, and worked great to create a sense of bleary, 2am coding. There's some good Ooph moments in the story, and your use of the medium itself woven into the plot and cinematography really well done - you get tons of points in my book for incredible use of very limited assets. The running line numbers in particularly felt like a really great touch of polish, along with that one CG where we see a bit more of the dev's face illuminated... really really striking, especially after only seeing partial images until then. There's also a nice meta element to the game showing you submitted just an hour and 22 min before deadline (absolutely no judgement on that front to be clear - we were 12 min and buggy). Huge congrats!!!

You know, I feel like this game accomplished its unsettling vision to an absolute T. And I get to experience, for just a few short minutes, what its like to have a bathroom with framed photos of beans on the wall. So that's pretty incredible. Nicely done 🎉

Wow!!!! What an incredibly beautiful game, in both story and artwork. The sprites and color palettes have a delicate, daguerreotype feel to them that make the horror elements feel that much more ethereal and haunting, and the music direction pairs with them beautifully - while the UI and textbox is gorgeous, especially in moments where they interact with character sprites, I almost (though not quite) wish they were smaller so we could see more of that all (I appreciate the backgrounds download for that reason!). The progressing through branches (and particularly how they merge) is very cleverly written, and lends the story a very deliberate quality that makes it  land like a fable, where everything is destined to play out. Not to mention the wonderfully poetic writing, and the clear thorough research/knowledge of cajun folklore - I was delighted to see père malfait make an appearance. 

Wonderful job - huge congrats to the whole team!!

Nicely done! An impressive number of branches and paths, especially to have all fully voiced, and you did a good job of giving us a little taste of each character's story as they passed through. I was also quite a fan of the hard shadows in the art direction of the background, and of the Medium's design as a whole - definitely fit the whole trickster-devil aesthetic well, and tied in nicely to the circus themeing. I definitely feel like I have more to learn about the stories than I had a chance to see before shooing them inside the tent, so I may go back and explore some different dialogues too. Congrats to the team!

Excited to hear it - I'll absolutely be taking a look!!

Thank you so much!!! I'm so thrilled those themes were able to successfully come through. It means a whole bunch to hear, especially from you!

That's high praise of a comparison - thank you so much!!! I'll investigate the auto setting - there' an autospeed adjustment under settings, and I can try to fiddle with what the default values are set to there a bit. We still have a few bugs to clean up, and we'll add that to the list for sure!

Tysm!! Multiple lamps, actually - one for general lighting, one for directional sunlight, and then two colored ones outside of each window.

Kadie's jacket is one of my favorite parts of her character design :)

I'm so glad to hear it - it always means a lot to hear. The team really made something hard-hitting this year!

Thank you so much!!!! It truly means a ton - the background issue is a known bug we're working on, but thankfully it resolves itself whenever the next background change is triggered.... we'll hopefully iron that out soon!!

Thank you so much - I'm glad the story was able to resonate with you! 

The background issue is a known bug we're working on, but you'll be happy to know that it resolves itself whenever the background next changes, so if you do replay a section it shouldn't last too long.

Lovely game! I'm always a sucker for liminal trains, and translating that into a cyberpunk setting felt really original, and worked great! As RandomDodo commented earlier, the reused 3d set was incredibly clever and worked great - especially for a series of train carriages. The characters throughout were all intriguing, and I especially loved interacting with the band near the end . . . very touchingly written. The character art we got similarly felt strong, and I liked the ambiguity of the ending I got. All in all a very complete-feeling experience with a really cool aesthetic. Big congrats to the whole team!

Yes, I was! Maybe I'll download and try some other routes there, if it's a thing with the browser

Really great job!! Not a setting that see you a lot of games set in, and one that you clearly put time and effort into depicting, which paid off! The UI designs and title text design are cute nods to the era, and the costuming of the characters feels great. The relationships between the characters feels cute and realistic (particularly the siblings), and the writing flows naturally throughout. I got Ending 3, but am definitely invested in the characters to the point of planning to go back and try for a few more. It was a small touch, but I also also really appreciate the comedic labels for the chase sequence choices - that got a good chuckle out of me. Excited to see your planned additions whenever they get added! Congrats to the whole team 🎉

Very compelling premise, and with art direction that works well with the story! I was playing in-browser, and the way the frame of the game and UI interacted with the background of your itch game page made for a neat aspect of immersive experience - and the collage touches throughout leant themselves well to the story. I got Ending 3 a few times, and was enjoying the added info on the replays, though like one of the other commenters on the page itself I eventually hit an error message that I couldnt progress past (pic below). That aside, a really intriguing experience, and a very cool usage of sprites and posing for Dorian. Well done!!

Copying over my Jam comment for posterity....

Incredible entry!!! You did a wildly impressive job of setting up some really hard-hitting nostalgia, which tee'd me up and made the reveals that followed land with that much more force - you got me to physically tear up, on multiple of the paths. Toeing the line of nostalgia-grief is a really beautiful thing to explore, and one that you managed to do in a way that worked so well for your story. I also have to give so much praise for your art and interactive UI design, which tied into the overall vibe of the story incredibly while making extremely clever use of minimal assets (and the CRT effect toggle is really nice for you to have added as an addition!). I kept staring at how beautiful the background pixelart was, and that made its alterations in some of the endings feel especially well done. The unlocked files were all so sweet and built upon each other really beautifully, and I was pretty instantly compelled into tracking through all endings and unlocking kiki.zip - which was another incredible payoff. Hugely impressive as a solo dev too!!! Congrats!!!!!

Incredible entry!!! You did a wildly impressive job of setting up some really hard-hitting nostalgia, which tee'd me up and made the reveals that followed land with that much more force - you got me to physically tear up, on multiple of the paths. Toeing the line of nostalgia-grief is a really beautiful thing to explore, and one that you managed to do in a way that worked so well for your story. I also have to give so much praise for your art and interactive UI design, which tied into the overall vibe of the story incredibly while making extremely clever use of minimal assets (and the CRT effect toggle is really nice for you to have added as an addition!). I kept staring at how beautiful the background pixelart was, and that made its alterations in some of the endings feel especially well done. The unlocked files were all so sweet and built upon each other really beautifully, and I was pretty instantly compelled into tracking through all endings and unlocking kiki.zip - which was another incredible payoff. Hugely impressive as a solo dev too!!! Congrats!!!!!

So satisfying! The watercolor aesthetic works well to translate the feeling of hazy memories, and the use of drifting, unconventional text boxes throughout drives that even further home (also must have been fun to program!). I'm also impressed by the motion effects throughout, and the clever use of assets with Adi & Frankie's sprites.  The CG ending I got was also really touching, and I like the revealing layers of the story quite a bit - I'll have to try for some of the other endings too! Huge congrats to the whole team!!

Super neat use of renpy to get some funky cinematography, and impressive sidescroller mechanics! Definitely matches with the whole digital collage aspect of the artstyle to create a really unique, weird & surreal game experience that ties in well with the story (and absurd humor!). It lands, and is impressive for a solo dev too. Nicely done!

Super impressive scope of a game! The story is impressive, as are the ways in the mini-games add to the horror. Definitely intrigued by the larger world after getting just ending 2, and curious to try for some of the others. As a heads-up, the text history window acted a little oddly at times (locking up at one point during the second time leaving the room), but the amount of scenes and interactive elements your team has juggled in this one is truly remarkable!! I'm especially a big fan of the background design too, particularly during the house segments - the twisting purples and pinks really add to the surreal horror experience. Well done!

Super fun game!! Always happy to see a Butterfly Rocket game, and especially one with such cool character design (especially the portrait in the monitor files!). You've created a really great work of science-fiction, and a lovely exploration of belonging and being human. Lux makes for an incredibly compelling MC, and the rag-tag crew is one you can instantly root for. The voice acting was super impressive throughout as well, and furthered that feeling of a classic space cowboy adventure. Plus, incredibly fun to see another radio & space signals game floating around. Incredible job all around!!

A very sweet game, and a really masterful use of a short story!! I love the tenderness of the art, especially with the linework on Thomas. Incredible job!!

Whoops, the work start date should read Sept. 1 - apologies! 😬

Extremely funny game, and a well-made one to boot! Great use of the limited assets, and a good time during each of the endings I tried to get. Congrats to the team!!!

Awwww, thank you so much!!! It means a ton! 🐸💖

Very nice entry!! Your writing is as great as ever, and the music scoring was especially wonderfully - I loved the violin stings, that felt so cinematically done! These two make an excellent adventuring duo, and I love their expressions throughout. Grave bells are always such a fun motif to play with, and you did a great job. Congrats to the whole team!!

Wow! A really touching entry - I love the color (/grayscale) choices, and the sprites have a great 90s/00s cartoon feel that I really really love. The emotions feel really real and human, both the grieving and spirits, and the teenage social navigating, which is a tricky thing to pull off. Also I'm super impressed throughout by your cinematography - the camera angles, speech bubbles, and animated/moving shots are all super ambitious, and pay off well. I had a few loading issues in the browser version, but I think that's probably in part from the resolution/quality of all your assets needed to do that camera work (I ran into similar issues last year with my entry - ended up having to do a bunch of compression!). This is a wildly impressive first entry, and doubly so for being solo! Absolutely makes me intrigued to see more of the Unthreaded Memory world.... huge congrats!!! 🎃

(copied from my jam comment)

WOAH!! What an incredible entry - I absolutely love what you're doing with the artsyles throughout, and it blends so well with the music and plot... the kind of story you just want to bite. Probably one of the hands-down funniest games I've rated so far too - I love the hamster dearly, and all the characters feel really fun, fleshed-out, and well-designed. The amount of animations and CGs is also super impressive, especially given your team size... You've created an extremely great game, with an impressively tight story - it absolutely brings to mind Franken , and has such a great sense of style. 

Absolutely a delight. I hope life and death kiss. And hope that Osana's third time's the charm.

HUGE congrats to the whole team!!!

WOAH!! What an incredible entry - I absolutely love what you're doing with the artsyles throughout, and it blends so well with the music and plot... the kind of story you just want to bite. Probably one of the hands-down funniest games I've rated so far too - I love the hamster dearly, and all the characters feel really fun, fleshed-out, and well-designed. The amount of animations and CGs is also super impressive, especially given your team size... You've created an extremely great game, with an impressively tight story - it absolutely brings to mind Franken , and has such a great sense of style. 

Absolutely a delight. I hope life and death kiss. And hope that Osana's third time's the charm.

HUGE congrats to the whole team!!!

A deeply intense game, with extremely compelling writing. In-world, boy could those airlock protocols could definitely use some revising. A strong basic premise, executed well -I definitely felt compelled to get all 6 +1 endings, and was thoroughly impressed by the amount of writing, especially for a solo project. The minimal assets worked well, and if anything helped emphasize that sense of looming claustrophobia. Well done.

Really well done entry! I love the softness of your colors, and the colored linework (especially the more purple tones) work wonderfully and makes the more gruesome moments stand out even more viscerally as a result. Also well done on the horrifying descriptions of breakfast - that was extremely unpleasant, in a way that was incredibly impressive. I'm intrigued to see where the story will go from here - looking forward to future releases!

Congrats to the whole team!!

A well done twist, and very effective amount of horror for how short the game is. And super impressive for a first Ren'Py project - congrats on the submission!!