Great background and character art, very stylistic and captures the gloomy, tired mood. I like the all the music, especially the more horrifying tracks, but I grew a little tired of the main theme towards the end of the game.  The cosmic horror aspects are well placed and delivered and always caught me a little off guard.

The stress/suspicion levels work surprisingly well in the context of the game. It felt rewarding and hectic piecing things together. The story is well paced and plenty intriguing, the design leaves you feeling like you're missing out on story elements, but in a well thought out and intentional way. I really like Lester and Bill as characters, and the scenes with Susannah got under my skin. The disjointed text sections do a good job at unsettling you.

The webgl ran a little buggy for me (firefox), text revealing was choppy, but the download worked fine. I found quite a handful of bugs, gonna msg you on discord with the markdowns. I think I managed to get through to the end but my boss didn't believe me that I completed the investigation. All in all this is a super cool submission with lots of style, definitely original and engrossing, thankfully renpy gives you some options to work around the bugs but I think by the end I had ignored too many and broke a handful of things.

Hmm strange, there is a final scene and credits after that, not sure what might have messed up.  Were you playing the windows version? Did you hear the music change?                          Just curious... The webGL build might have some memory issues.

Powerful design here, the audio sets the tone and atmosphere nicely throughout. The camera effects seemed a bit over the top at times. They suit their intended effect, but it felt like the constant headbob in particular let me get drained by all the effects at play. Not being able to close the notes after interacting with them almost feels like a feature disguised as a bug, not sure if that was your intention. The inescapable negative self talk until you run into more negative self talk, it adds to the anxious feelings you already had in play here.

Interesting beginning with lots of neat little nods to old school adventure games. I really liked the computer desktop with two folders on it lol Honestly, the AI voice almost sounds appropriate for the adventure humor vibes, but it seems like you yourself could do a better voiceover? Impressive you learned so much in two weeks and managed to set up the story. Best of luck continuing the game, you definitely are on to something here :)

Very intriguing story and characters with phenomenal voice acting. Bog gave me some serious Solid Snake vibes. I definitely think it would benefit from character subtitles, it would keep things clearer and at least provide some visual changes during the long discussions. As some others said some more interaction with the environment and a different 'map' design would be welcome additions.    Overall this is an impressive entry, there are some great storytelling and world building mechanics here that make great use of the assets.

Great atmosphere and writing. The choices and interactivity were all well done. The music tracks were great, but at times felt a little short. The image effects and small uses of color were nice visual touches that suited the storytelling.  Great entry overall, powerful and well-rounded stuff!

Very cool concept. It was fun deducing the culprit in each scenario. The way the notes unfolded the visual scenes was neat. Great voice acting & music as well, very appropriate for the vibes. The oppression of the country was felt quite strongly through subtle beats in the story, like the power of blue jeans. I liked how in the ending we were unable to change our suspect after the reveal, instead just blistered with the rough sound effect, powerful simple narrative design!

It felt like there were a few too many fonts in general. The font of the notes in the folder I found a little hard to read even at full screen. I supposed that's slightly appropriate for the files but overall it did just feel like there were one too many fonts present. Other than that, I have very little to critique. Great work! The clickable links in the credits was a nice touch :)

Fun little game, definitely taste the metal gear inspiration, as well as hints  hitman. Stealth sequences feel nice but enemies seeing 'through the walls' is a little frustrating. All in all this is a super cool little adventure with nice dashes of humor and an impressive amount of content and polish for the jam. It felt like the audio could have been a little more present outside of just background sounds, but all in all this was a lot of fun. Nice work!

Thank you :) Interactivity got de-prioritized further into the jam in favor of the storytelling and VOs. And Emily's forward/backward facing sprite was a fairly late addition  after realizing how out of place the left/right sprite looked for a lot of the camera shots, and in the process her hair color somehow became kinda ... grandma-ish.

Thanks for your kind words! Drugs are bad!

The art, audio, atmosphere, and story are all top notch here. The UI, menus, and functionality of everything is great and feels really professional. I really liked the ending graphic and it did feel like a fully fleshed out story.

I must admit I personally found these puzzles very counterintuitive. It felt harsh starting out in the dark, arguing for the flashlight. I immediately became stuck at the power supply, from not realizing the flashlight could be moved over to access the wires. It felt weird that whenever control switched to Scotty automatically, we always had to switch to Marla to accomplish anything. It felt weird to give the collection of assorted pills to the guy who went crazy. Most of these dots would have never connected for me on my own. I don't mean to be insulting or negative, just felt I should relay my experience with the game. I don't play a ton of point and clicks anymore though, so take my criticisms with a grain of salt.

That being said I did really enjoy the decryption puzzle and it felt good figuring that one out, along with the password. The gradual reveal of the story beats hit a good rhythm, and we got a good feel for who each character is through their dialog and place in the narrative. Despite all my complaints, this is an impressive piece of work for a two week jam and you all definitely have some serious skills!

This art is sincerely impressive, reminiscent of the discworld series and golden-era dos games. Each background has its own unique characteristics but they all feel very cohesive. The music that is present is terrific and well suited to the atmosphere, though the dialogs missing a background track do feel fairly empty from the lack of music outside of the atmospheric audio. Such an intriguing story and world you've created here and I'd be very interested to see where this story could go. Congrats on making something so impressive and getting featured!

What a nice family friendly adventure. Enjoyed the absurdism, wholesome interaction, and the 2 TB hard drive.

Hmm I'm confused but thoroughly intrigued. Is the ending just being a ghost in the same scenario? lol Puzzles felt fun figuring them out. It took me too long to find the second button in the courtyard and I initially thought I was supposed to grab a torch off the floor from the first room. I was a little unsure how to use the UI, thinking I had to click inventory items, when it was just a matter of having them in your inventory. This is a neat start to a system though and it would be really cool to see these ideas expanded on with some audio implemented.

Lovely character art and backgrounds. I really enjoyed the sprite change on mouse hover. The music was a delight to listen to as well. Also, shout out for including bold and brash in the library lol

A few tiny grammar/spelling mistakes here and there I caught: Your very obstinate (You're). Mathematician (missing the letter e). I usually wouldn't make a fuss but since the queen seems like a smarty pants it seemed worth pointing out :) Really intriguing concept altogether, I get the feeling Parsnip is gonna perhaps overstep his bounds a little? Best of luck continuing the project! Congratulations!

Cool classy western! I thoroughly enjoyed the art direction and the sound design. The 3d characters didn't feel out of place in the 2d world at all, so nice work! It would have been nice to hear some more background music tracks while playing, but the music that is here is great and fits the mood. The voice acting is well done, but it is a little too hard to differentiate the character voices from one another. FYI It seems we still have the gold in our inventory after being let into the cellar. Neat mixture of gameplay sequences and it was cool to see multiple approaches to handling the scenarios.

Very nostalgic and funny entry! Feels very inspired and I quite enjoyed all the inclusions of extra dialogs that were entirely unnecessary :) I really enjoyed hearing Otto blather on each time I came through the room. Every character had the right dash of twisted humor, as did all the puzzles. The voice acting was all perfectly executed and suited to each character. 

I had to watch a video to get a couple things figured out, mainly the ventriloquist puzzle and I didn't notice the iron was an interactable item. Maybe when using the ventriloquist book on the horse skull (which I tried many times) the player could be given some kind of hint about using the book on the bookshelf. Great entry overall, maybe the most polished and funniest I've played yet! 

Fun lil game! Quite enjoyed the humor and really liked all the puzzles. They felt fairly simple but rewarding, and it only took a little bit of experimenting to gradually piece together the right order and combinations of things. Atmosphere, music, art, and voice acting are all well suited to the story, characters, and environments. The ending was quite humorous and felt worth the time invested. Nice work!

Trevor seems kinda untrustworthy. Pretty hilarious premise and unexpected world I wasn't quite ready for. I'm all about the food/animal related characters though. The radio was also a really nice touch, makes you feel like can actually affect the world you're a part of.

It felt a little rude sending the player back the beginning for the silly endings, mainly because the initial puzzles seemed a bit too trial & error or time consuming, and being forced to repeat them felt unforgiving. I would have been thrilled if the game over sent me back to the beginning of station one instead of the very beginning. It seems you could stand to either lower your camera's clipping minimum, or make your character collider a touch bigger, to prevent the oddball camera clipping when you get to close to walls/environments.

It's quite charming altogether, the little quirks really make it enjoyable, even if it's quite rough around the edges. I got some serious N64 vibes interacting with all the goofball characters.

The art and audio combine to make an incredible atmosphere. I really like the backgrounds and the way the mouse scrolls the perspective. There are some really nice small graphical touches, like the rain landing on the top of the car. The voice acting is over the top impressive, though the audio levels are a little off between some of the characters. It almost feels a little out of place for the narrator to speak, just my personal opinion.

As some others have stated, the writing does feel very heavy-handed at times, both a good and bad thing lol The writing bleeds over between characters a bit, for example the street dweller and Ethan's letter feel like they are written in the same tone as the narrator, an almost indistinct style compared to each other.  Certain longer dialogs might feel a little less daunting if they were maybe broken up into smaller segments rather than delivered in paragraphs.

One small bug I noticed in the inside of the theater, the hotspot on the left legitimately says 'Hotspot2d' on mouse hover lol Some tooltips/descriptions in the inventory would be welcome. At times it almost seemed like the 'dual click' system was unnecessary, like you could have accomplished everything with just one mouse input.

Nice touch with the puzzle rambling at the car though, that was very funny ^_^ Some very funny moments throughout, I legitimately got scared and laughed when Alex yelled 'Ah shit' after discovering a hole in the pipes. All in all this has some incredible style and vibes, and very impressive amount of content for the duration of the jam. Best of luck continuing the project!

Impressive submission! Sets a nice dark tone through the writing and backstory. I really like the character art for Eva. At times the environments felt a little large to traverse for as much as we could interact with it, and they appeared a bit large compared to the character as well. It seemed a little cliche to give the doctor amnesia and not even tell us why or how, although maybe that was even your intention. One other small gripe is how nothing in the hospital gives us any context outside of the main character and experiment. It somehow makes the world feel more fabricated. I only complain this much because I really liked this submission though! Great work for your first game!

Very cool systems, interface, and graphics. I put some dark ambient music on that suited it well :) Exploring felt fun but I ended up needing the guide to find some things, mainly the book and the dagger. The hidden items felt a little deceiving but it's understandable why you wouldn't hold the player's hand through every single thing. Felt very well written, though I found myself longing for more character interaction and key words to explore. All in all, very neat submission! Felt original, engaging, and atmospheric.

Very cool submission! Inventive yet logical puzzles, great audio and voice acting, and the script felt very well written, although it felt a tad rushed on the second half. The use of the pupper felt rewarding and intuitive at the same time. 

At times it felt like the dialog lines were a little too close together, like a second or two of empty space between some lines might have made it feel more natural. I found myself paying too much attention to the lack of periods at the end of sentences and noticing all the other punctuation, something that slightly pulled my attention away from the experience, personally.

Overall, this is a very polished submission and it does feel like a complete experience, well written, thoughtful, and professional. Nice work!

Glad you caught those vibes, as both of those always impact my stories :] Max Payne was actually my main reference point for Billings, the sarcastic matter-of-factness haha thanks for playing and your kind words!

It's tough to use these as inspirations without just being derivative, so I'm glad you found it cohesive! And yes, all the talented voice actors really brought this to life. Also glad you enjoyed the OST :] It's funny trying to do Lynchian stuff because it kinda requires you to... not do Lynch stuff? Lol idk like trying to find some aspects of his work that haven't previously been explored, while still retaining the mood and atmosphere.

Ha no bias at all. Honest! Thanks for playing and I'm glad you liked it :]

You hit the inspirations right on the head :] and you're not missing much from the story. I ended up sacrificing a lot to get it across the finish line. Its doubtful this will get a substantial update but I'm debating a re-imagining focusing on some different characters. The ending credits song was finished just before submissions ended but I quite like it in its 'raw' state, although you're right the mix certainly could use some more attention. I guess I should increase the brightness as I've got a lot of comments about it. Thanks for playing and your kind words !

Thanks for playing and your comments! I'm glad it managed to hold your attention, and also glad someone is aware of the magic of raw sweet corn. Billings ended up being somewhat of a comic relief character even though he is fairly sinister and incredibly manipulative.

Thanks for your kind words!  Towards the second half of development, interactivity got put in the backseat in favor of the storytelling, atmosphere, and voice overs, so I'm glad it manage to have an impact on you.

OK you'll have to forgive my initial ignorance haha but it is a bit of lesson on how to teach dumb players like me. I really enjoy the sun spell puzzles and would love to see lots of these, but the puzzles at the shrine as others have said feel very trial and error-y. It was nice to return to the bar and speak to characters again. I would really like to see Bao involved heavily in the story as he seems like quite a knowledgeable character, and also because he's a talking kitty.

Ahh this went right over my head! I was clicking directly on each 'card' on the trees and didn't pay much attention to the circular area after using the spells.

Great humor and voice acting. I really enjoy the retro aesthetic, character designs, and simple animations. I laughed a lot, especially when I stole the speaker while the barista made my third 30 dollar coffee. Hot raw fish would make a great band name. The soundtrack is very enjoyable and having one for each gameplay portion made it feel very appropriate.

It felt a little too easy to get zombified, like maybe the trigger for it was a little too large. Also I probably wouldn't have found the love songs record without looking through the comments here. Noticed one typo "pearl of thunder" says "peal." The sushi kitchen area seems a little buggy going in and out of, sometimes it turns off and sometimes it doesn't. I desperately wanted the sidewalk in front of the music shop to be traversable. And as some others stated, it gets very laggy towards the end.

Overall this was supremely enjoyable front to back, and the ending credits song was a nice payoff. I didn't expect the band to rock so hard :] Nice touch using the voice actors names as band member names, as they all seemed like quirky musician names already haha Some dynamite humor and absurdism throughout, and a very appropriately placed stabbing as well. Great work Vance!

Very cool nostalgic entry! Put me right back in the 90s on the dos computer. It was fun trying out commands, and failing the majority of them. I had to watch a video to understand how to operate the boombox, other than that I had a blast and found it all quite intuitive. Some more background music/sfx would be welcome, but it's also part of the vibe to have very little audio.

Such polish and love went into this! I enjoy the occasional 4th wall breaking elements, like the former officer looking at the screen to tell us things. Fun little developer jokes smashed in throughout the game. The graphics are incredible and set such a nice tone for the mood. Puzzles are all very logical and charming. Anything with a kitty gets a +1 from me too. The humor is spot on throughout the game and the 'puzzle' for the final code also gets a big round of applause.

My only real complaint is some of the crucial interactive hotspots are very tiny. Other than that this is a very professional submission and clearly a lot of work and inspiration went into this. Great job!

That part I was able figure out, but I only had 3 available spells with 4  objects in scene to interact with.  Every time I used my 3rd spell it told me to try again, and there was seemingly no right order of execution that would allow me to proceed.

lol Funny little game, level design could use some more direction given to the player. I found it quite punishing jumping on my first cactus  because I assumed the whole world was safe, even spikey plants :| It would be interesting to see this with some enemy designs or some more narrative elements, even if they were just environmental or non-dialog based.

Thank you, I'm glad it all managed to come together :)

Thank you! I was blown away by each voice actor that volunteered, seriously talented folks that helped bring this project to life.

Very cool atmosphere, character/background art, and a fascinating balance of intrigue and humor. Such an impressive amount of content and features for a two week jam. It's honestly overwhelming how much you've got here.

Noticed a weird bug after the first interaction with Poe, where the conversation seemed to repeat after he went into the hotel. This actually seemed to soft-lock my game as the first selection I chose was the unexpected guest, then it had me choose the other two and I was unable to continue. Thankfully I had saved immediately before this.

I'm glad that George was at the trekcon, and that we told him that he should be writing. Doubtful that he's going home after this and going to actually write anything. Most of the interactions with writers were enjoyable, but a handful of them felt a little out of their character.

A lot of the puzzles made perfect sense, and a lot I would never have figured out without a walkthrough. I suppose this makes perfect sense by adventure game standards, but it did occasionally feel a touch 'padded,' like some of the interactions were a little uninvolved with the overall narrative. Some of the repeated dialogs between different authors added to this. I also felt maybe it could have used a few more background tracks considering how much time it takes to get through it all. But out of everything you've got here, those are about my only complaints and its understandable in a two week time span.

Seriously impressive piece of work here though, a lot of love obviously went into the designs here and you've got a talent for realizing your design visions. You might not win first but you're definitely gonna place above 1800th :)

Sure, here are a few of the lines that had me a little confused about their structure, meaning, and how I was supposed to interpret them:

-You enter the dark void of crumbling egg-shell.

-Your mic to brain malfunctioned for a while...

-A horse with a bouquet of shimmer blooms.

-When the sun comes nigh, they roll their shines there.

Specifically, the sentence structure seems a little off occasionally and it almost seemed like a few words added, changed, or rearranged might do the writing a lot of favors. I did really like the project altogether though, best of luck continuing development!