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Nightmare material, in the sense that it felt like a very realistic nightmare! I really liked the pacing. You packed a lot of distinct, escalating story beats into this short piece.

I really liked your use of first person, past tense narration; it was refreshing to see, and served the tone of the story well. Creepy and poetic!

Lol! 😂 Thank you so much!

Thank you so much!

Super impressive that you implemented this within the LPM time constraints, but even putting that aside the writing and game mechanics were great! (A walkthrough or in-game hinting system could be worthwhile for a post-comp release, but I understand if that was beyond the scope of what you could dedicate to LPM.) I second the comment that your core mechanic could be worthy of a longer game if you want to explore it further.

I've just finished all 3 of your entries, and I think this might be my favorite of the bunch (maybe that's just because I had to check the walkthrough once for the others 😅). I had a seamless experience with this, enjoyed the word puzzles, and the Adventuron interface. Impressive to have implemented these games within the time constraint, graphics aside!

I enjoyed the theme and setting, and the visuals (especially the use of historical photographs) really enhanced the storytelling and sense of atmosphere.

Clever use of the source material!

I like that you took a naturalistic, real-world approach with this story. The realism makes it all the more haunting!

(I may have encountered one very small bug — I wasn't able to visit Miranda's bedroom when clicking the choice; no text appeared and the option disappeared.)

I enjoyed the story, and this game stood out to me for its very interesting player character!

As someone who, through happenstance, has been in proximity to/seen harm done by many such executives (and specifically in the Hamptons, of all places), this one gave me a few chuckles!

The gameplay was thoroughly engaging, and the attention to detail was great! Very immersive world-building. I have a pretty low tolerance for body horror, but glad I pushed through for this 😆

Really charming and nicely put together! You had me at "game within a game themed around my chosen costume" 😂

Smart, charming writing and a fun concept. Loved seeing how the theatrical theme (and scripts) drove the game mechanics! Naturally I was spamming the "think" option and resorted to hints just a couple times to speed along the playthrough, but even without the hints it felt quite solvable (aided significantly by the handy highlights and symbols in the mini-map).

Thanks, Emery!

Thank you so much!

Thank you so much for playing, and for your kind feedback!

In this time loop game, the "approach" you take in each situation you encounter will affect both how the story unfolds and the hand of cards you have to play with. The game allows for the player to make intentional, strategic choices while dynamically expanding or narrowing their field of options (in sometimes surprising ways) in response to their actions. This constraint of having a limited number of cards for each "approach" was an interesting mechanic and seemed well-implemented. The story itself was fun and vividly written.

Once I got the gist of what was happening in the story, my actions were pretty focused on achieving the ending I wanted (even though I am pretty sure it was the "bad" ending 😅).  Perhaps this was just the result of my choices unintentionally leading to an inefficient pathway through the game, but reaching a conclusion took quite a bit longer than I expected. I would've appreciated it if I had been allowed to (or able to?) reach a conclusion in fewer loops, and/or if the content within each subsequent loop had been truncated in some way so that you can effectively fast-track through repeated material to the decision points. (Each loop contains a substantial amount of prose to click through, and several actions that need to be taken.)

Regardless, this game was well-written, well-made, and a really substantial accomplishment for a short jam!

This news editing simulator offers a striking marriage of form and content, with a retro interface aesthetic that is both refreshing in itself and supportive of the storytelling and game mechanics. This was also a pleasantly quick game, making it easy for me to replay and find three of the four endings by making different choices.

The 'topics' tooltips in the Action Reports offered guidance about how to win readers from different 'generations', and I selected some headlines based on what I learned there. That being said, it wasn't entirely clear to me what stakes there were (if any) in successfully appealing to each generation and how that would affect world events. The choice of which stories to print felt more like an experiment ("try this and see what happens") than a strategic decision, in my experience of playing the game; but then, perhaps that was the intent.

Overall, I thought the game design was really quite interesting. Nicely done!

(There were just a few spots where the nested tooltips were cut off, i.e. their content would not display, at least on my screen. If the developer would like to know more, I can share screenshots of each instance I came across in case that's useful for post-jam debugging.)

Thank you so much for this review! (If you didn't get to see the end of the story and would like to, you can always copy the solution at the bottom of the "Hints" page 😄)

Thanks for the review and feedback! This game is definitely a puzzle first and foremost, and a proof-of-concept of sorts for the game mechanic you described (something I've been thinking about for a future, larger-scale project). I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Building on a reference from literature was a clever way to put the player right into the narrative while keeping a project within reasonable scope for a short game jam. The inclusion of voice acting here is great, and definitely enhances the experience and atmosphere of the game.

I replayed a few times to see different content and endings, and with some experimentation I got to the "win state" for the game.

It wasn't 100% clear to me from the interface how the game mechanics were intended to work: i.e., what each of the stats were "for" and how my actions would affect them. Perhaps the UI isn't displaying as intended, so I'm providing a screenshot here in case it's helpful to the developers (I'm playing on a Mac laptop in Google Chrome). The Focus, Resolve, and Influence labels in the lower left don't appear to correspond to any numbers for stats. I was shown numbers for Focus and Resolve (but not Influence) inside the main text of the story itself. I also did get locked on one screen (the shown below) and had to restart. I believe this showed soon after choosing an option related to the potion.

Relatable content for this nonbinary player! The kind of story that might be told more conventionally in the form of a first-person, autobiographical essay, is instead offered here as an interactive exercise in empathy. The author has used the affordances of the IF medium — second-person narration, choice-based interactivity — to immerse the player inside a very specific set of experiences with gender. I particularly appreciated that each moment or vignette is unapologetic in its emotional nuance, allowing for seemingly "little" moments to carry the kind of weight that they actually hold in one's own life story. In this way, I think this game totally avoids sensationalizing the subject matter. It felt naturalistic and authentic.

This felt polished and well put-together. The writing was streamlined but evocative. The interface was nicely styled and communicated tone and atmosphere, although I did miss a few quality-of-life features (timed text animations are neat, but I'd prefer to skip past them when replaying; and would have also liked to see a "restart" button, especially at the end). I replayed three times to try to reach all the endings, taking care to make different choices each time. Each ending I achieved seemed quite similar (a slightly different circumstance but with more or less with the same outlook for survival, or lack thereof?). Based on the game's description, I was hoping for more divergent outcomes for the PC. But perhaps I overlooked a key choice that would have led me down a different path. Regardless, a well-written short game.

I enjoyed how the story unfolded, and how the PC's circumstances evolved, as I progressed towards the last third or so of the game. And I didn't run into any serious errors or soft locks. I did find the writing difficult to follow at times: because of the way the dialogue is written (using line breaks with dashes instead of the conventional closed quotes with dialogue tags), it was often ambiguous which character was speaking. Additionally, I would have appreciated more description and context for each of the NPCs from the start so that I could understand their roles within the setting and their relationship to the PC. Overall, a fun concept with potential for further development.

Thanks so much for the feedback! So glad you enjoyed the game ☺️