itch.io

Aww nice, glad you enjoyed it so much! :D

I actually stuck with this one to the end and definitely don't regret it.

Congrats and great to hear haha

It's a fundamentally different type of game but you might be interested in trying NULL, which serves as a companion game to Messages: https://jusiv.itch.io/null

Belated but there are 2 types of endings, with one of them having a few text variations. But if you've seen 2 different types then you've seen what's important!

v1.1 was my final submission for the jam, but v2.0 has been updated with further refinements from IRL playtesting!

That Voice table is inspired but also oh no

Aww thank you for the kind words! Great to hear you enjoyed it that much!

Ah yep, I just went through and caught similar issues on A Very Warm Fire, NULL, and A Dream's Command. They should all be fixed now!

Thanks for the ideas, but I think I've got a fix in now!

Ah dang, I'll have to update it. Was an attempt to make it harder to put it on other sites but clearly something broke at some point. Thanks for the heads-up!

You know you're progressing in the forest if things keep changing as you proceed. 

Hey, thanks so much for the video and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Honestly that was a very clean run haha normally people get a lot more hasty :P

Oh dang, that's so nice to hear! Love that y'all appreciate it, I'm def still quite happy with it too <3

Haha hell yeah, glad you got so much out of it! :D

Hey! It's worth noting that there's 2 versions of the game with different control schemes. On the Mobile-Friendly version it's Z to jump and on the other it's the Up arrow.

That chart you'd posted is not included on the itch.io page or directly in the game because puzzling out the code from environmental clues is one of the big puzzles in the game.

In the interest of not spoiling it for other players, I've removed the comment.

Haha dang, nice! I don't know if I've even tried doing that

There aren't really secret areas per se, there's a certain type of object hidden in every area (always the same thing) and a certain NPC encounter in every area.
Also in The Open, there's something you can miss if you lose sight of the area you arrive.

Everything you need is in that room. There's something that responds to you, and something it relates to.

You are correct! There's a certain item you'll need to find before beating the boss.

Hey, thanks for the kind words!
Unfortunately FUZ is basically at the absolute size and content limit for a PICO-8 cartridge so it's not really possible to expand as-is.

Hey, thanks for playing and for the video! Glad you enjoyed it :)

Hey, thanks so much for playing and for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much :D

Looks like you've hit the fabled Puzzle Wall - That cube bit isn't reachable by just jumping, there's a puzzle you have to solve in that room. It does give you everything you need to reach it though.

Haha thanks for playing & the video! Glad you enjoyed it!

Such are the perils of having to support 2 control schemes as separate executables across several platforms + a bonus soundtrack download :P

Hey, thanks for playing and for the video! Glad you enjoyed it!
If you're looking for other games like it from me, I will say I consider Spirit Solstice kind of the middle point between Winterwood and NULL.

Why thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! :D

Yeah there's some design elements of NULL that I'd definitely consider handling differently now :P
Glad you enjoyed it!

Well that works I guess :P
But yes it is by number of resets, not time taken. I feel like that's a more accurate measure of how much someone is actually struggling with the puzzle.

Hmmm... interesting. That's not really what the hints say so clearly there's a conveyance failure there, but you're not the only one that's been struggling!

I just pushed an update with a revised hint system for that area that gives more, smaller hints more often and lets you repeat them at any time in the area from the pause menu.

Let me know if it helps!

Are you referring to the looping forest area? If you stumble around enough in that area you should receive hints, did you get to that point?

Thanks for playing! I've just pushed a patch that hopefully should, among other things, reduce the jankiness you describe by letting you aim the lantern regardless of whether you can move.

Why thank you! It's funny how effective even low-fi stuff can be

Yes, every area has one!

However, that one is unfortunately possible to accidentally lock yourself out of reaching. In retrospect this game could have used a "Reset Area" feature, although that's the only place it would really matter.

Tip: Don't lose sight of the rails until you've found it.

Aww thank you so much! I'm glad you had such a great time with it!

Aww, thank you so much!

PICO-8 is pretty friendly to learn but that might be a bit of a jarring leap directly from Game Builder Garage, especially since it would have a very different workflow as far as I can tell. Since Scratch is free and easy to access I figure you might as well try tinkering with it. Around your age I believe I was mostly using GameMaker, which was a great way to learn since it had both drag-and-drop and written coding options.

If you're really interested in PICO-8 specifically, I've heard good things about the LazyDevsAcademy tutorials. You could maybe look at those to get more of a sense of what it's like to work with. On the PICO-8 forums (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7#sub=2) you can also view the full code of any cart by clicking the little "Code" button on the lower edge of the player window if you want to look at how folks did things.

Nope, there's no G in their haiku. I believe the word you're mistranslating is "name".

I mean
There's more than 1 puzzle so that's not very useful

Great to hear, and thanks for playing! :D