itch.io

thank you so much for playing! i enjoyed your video a lot and i'm happy you had fun :]

the car speed was a bit tricky to balance, i didn't want their dialogue to get cut off, but once you're just driving around looking for things it can get tedious

thank you for playing and commenting, i wish you all the best!

thanks for giving it a go !

i'm bad at navigation as well, don't worry haha, it's tough to find the balance between evoking the feeling of being lost and actually making it unplayable, if you have any specific things you struggled with let me know so i know for my future works :]

if you picked up an animal with Kumira, she can't put it back down, she'd want to throw it into the lake instead, but i do realize now it looks like a bug to an outside player, my bad !

i'll leave a short description of where to go to get the ending if you ever feel like revisiting, but thank you so much for your time and the kind comments !

---

after turning off the alarm, when you visit at least 3 other locations, you will pick up a radio and when you get back into the car it will pick up a signal of the final location when you're close enough

there's two paths to reach the location:

1. starting from the area with the piano, drive up north following the fence, they will pick up the signal pretty quickly and comment on it, then just continue going straight until the signal is loud enough for them to leave (there will be a gate in the fence)
2. starting from the area with the painting in the forest, follow the road where the dinosaur's head is pointing, when you reach a shopping cart with a balloon, take a right turn and drive straight under the bridge, the road will slowly disappear, but just keep going straight through the tree clearing (you can use the radar to pick up the location and just drive towards it at this point) until you reach that same gate in the fence

thank you so much !

yeah, that's intentional, i like leaving my works open to interpretation, but i'll elaborate below what my starting point for making this game was, but again, i encourage people to have their own readings

---

you're having a conversation with another person, but there's a metaphorical "ghost" that keeps misconstruing what is being said on both sides

when you pick a dialogue option, that is your intention, however the "ghost" speaks over you and what you see written is what the other person understood you saying instead

then they speak, but the "ghost" interrupts again, and only shows you what you misinterpreted the original words as, you never actually get to know what the original meaning was

so the blank bubble in the end is once again speaking over you, which you can interpret however you want, your words getting stuck in your throat and nothing coming out, saying what you picked but being misheard once again, deciding not to speak after all, etc, whatever you feel is right for your reading 

glad to hear !

did you play the web version or downloaded? i wasn't able to replicate the issue, so it might be a web thing

no problem, let me know if you need any more tips, thanks for giving it a shot !

thanks for playing !
after you turn off the alarm, you're free to drive around and explore points of interest you find
they will be marked on the detector device with a circle and will pulsate when you're near it so you can exit the car (with F) and explore the area

see where that takes you and what you discover :]

thank you for such detailed feedback !

this is definitely meant to be a slower game focused more on how the characters are experiencing the situation rather than them unraveling a bigger plot, so it's tricky to find balance for such a varied audience, but i would love to hear if you have an idea why it took you that long to get attached to them

i wanted the dialogue to slowly give information to piece together what their situation is rather than explaining immediately, but maybe this could've been done better, it's hard to get a read on your own story when you've been staring at the same words for so long haha

hm, the only place that becomes available for stopping after you pick up an item is the gate that leads to the lighthouse, i didn't give unique dialogue depending on where you're trying to get out, but the reason for that would be that they tried a gate in the beginning and didn't know the code so they would have the same issue here (which maybe i should've been more explicit about), and then they have incentive to check it out because of the radio signal leading them there. i was thinking the detector would be enough of an indicator where you can get out and what's just a landmark, but i see how it could be confusing

the bugs are odd ! i anticipated all those things happening, made systems to prevent them, and tested a lot to try and break them, but it all ended up working fine for me, i'll take a deeper look, feel free to give any more details if you remember. i did make the save system as a preventive measure in case i missed bugs so i'm at least glad that worked out

the text speed affects how long it stays on screen after all the letters are shown, the letters themselves are indeed tied to framerate, because my very weak pc was skipping most of the dialogue when it was tied to actual time. there's probably a better way to make sure it shows fully regardless of framerate, but i wasn't having issues with it, was the typing too slow for you or?

honestly i've spend so long working on the car and reworking it that at some point i had to call it good enough and move on haha, maybe i come back to it when i have more experience. for the object areas, i tried being pretty liberal with ones that don't require an animation, but ones that do looked too weird if i made the area wider, hard thing to balance without reworking how the animations are played

super glad you got to see kumira playing the piano, that's probably my favorite bit :]

really appreciate you wanting to play through the entire thing twice and leave a detailed comment ! i worked on this game a long time and learned a lot during it (as well as other playtesters and this review), and i love watching people play my games to see how their brains work so i can adjust the experience. unfortunately i simply don't know enough people to cover all possible playstyles and had to call it done at some point to move onto other projects, definitely will take your points into account when i work on other things, thanks again !

that makes sense yeah, it just took me a bit to get used to haha :]

no problem ! i'm not sure if the sliding thing is usually added because i don't play a lot of games like that, but for me it felt unnatural that the movement is momentum based, i wasn't expecting it since i am controlling a walking humanoid, especially when it's snappy in all other sections
it feels like a mechanic you use with intent and people plan around that in mind, maybe it was your intent, i don't know that, it just felt out of place for me when i played, but i got used to it after a while

you clearly have your own defined style and know what kind of vibe you're going for with the story and everything, so props for that

the platforming section felt janky to me because of the sliding, and a lot of colliders felt weird throughout the entire thing, but the amount of saving made it easy to retry

nice work, good luck on your future things !

i've been playing the english windows version, but at this point the same dialogue keeps repeating and i can't seem to progress:

not sure if this is where the demo ends or not, but in any case, i enjoyed the art and mood a lot ! nice work :]

i like the mood of this ! it's a perfect length, it feels like we just get a peek into this one slice of someone's entire life, not knowing what happened before or after, kind of a surreal feeling that i enjoy

nice work !

looking forward to it !

haha thank you, the theme will sneak up on you like that :]

thank you so much !
yeah, the interactions are here more to invoke a feeling for a somewhat linear experience, not as an actual gameplay mechanic, but noted for future projects !

conveys what it set out to do, nice work !

love the color choice on this, really sells the mood
simple idea, but i like the execution ! had fun playing it and looking at the wonderful art, nice work !

having this open in a separate window is like the polar opposite of those subway surfer videos on top of other videos
10/10 would paint the room a different color and watch it dry again

that's really charming i like it ! simple, but there's clearly a lot of love and thought put into it

nice work !

oh the graphics of this are splendid, nice work !

frog is so sad !!!! i hope you get where you want to be buddy,,,,

perfect game to me, or well, more of an interactive experience, which is my favorite type of game and mostly what i make myself
it's exactly what it needs to be and i love it, wonderful job, best of luck on your future works !

this is a very interesting concept with the graphics reflecting the physical ability, you clearly have a very defined style, props for that !

i love the style and presentation of this, nice work !

thanks for playing !

thank you ! o heck yea, goosebumps is the perfect reaction 

i loved this a lot, the style and mood are off the charts

some of the things are hard to see, but it's hard to balance that with the whole theme being disorienting, i still had fun and was glad there's a hint section so i could see the game to the end !

really nice work, good luck on your future stuff !

surprisingly not the first fish head dysphoria related game i played, but you know what, extremely correct

this is such a cute little thing, clearly a lot of love went into it, very charming !

oof as soon as i saw the sprite change as she was getting gifts, i had a feeling i knew where this is going really good presentation and storytelling, i love that the dialogue changes for wanting to go back and dying, really good details

there's clearly a lot of passion and thought put into this, wish you all the best !

that was really fun and polished, i only wish there were sounds, but otherwise a perfect charming and funny game, nice work :]

that was really fun and polished, i only wish there were sounds, but otherwise a perfect charming and funny game, nice work :]

oof as soon as i saw the sprite change as she was getting gifts, i had a feeling i knew where this is going
really good presentation and storytelling, i love that the dialogue changes for wanting to go back and dying, really good details

there's clearly a lot of passion and thought put into this, wish you all the best !

playing this with my own kitty in my lap whom i love oh so much <3
i like the writing in this, and the atmosphere between school and home has great contrast, nice work :]

i like the idea of this and that most things are diegetic, but it is really buggy and the sounds keep overlapping so it's a bit hard to get into it properly

nice work regardless :]

oh how wonderfully silly :]
great art, and sounds, nice work !

love the formatting of this, great art as well, nice work !

oh this is adorable, i love the whole idea and mood, very charming
the visuals and sounds are wonderful as well, i feel like the difficulty was very well balanced

nice work :]

my first three catches were rare, the game loves me <3
love the colors and sound in this, nice work :]