itch.io

hey, thank you for playing!

you need the script.rpy file, indeed! it's actual code. but part of the 'extra' bits of the story are hidden in the comment lines in-between actual code!

it starts with a line "# oh, hi!"

you're welcome!

(in terms of technical improvements - it really, really needs some kind of a 'skip' button, I had to manually click through everything again just to make an alternative final choice... and it didn't allow me to at least speed up the text so that was kind of... mildly annoying. I assume it's because you did everything in plain Unity, so no hard feelings but please do consider it!)

oh my god it was beautiful I really loved all the art (and especially Sweetie and her scene!! such a cool perspective drawing); the painterly artstyle is amazing and fits the fairytale vibe a lot (and final Eva's sprite gave me chills, so cool) it's just so pretty from the first page to the last ohhhh

the music fits perfectly, very fairytale-like

the story is short and sweet, although feels a little bit rushed - I wish there were just a little bit more hints about Eva's identity and Henry's amnesia / source of discontent in life 

overall, a nice little nugget of a game, as a lover of fairytale-like games, I'm really glad I gave it a shot 

Eh, fair, I should probably do the same. Have a good jam!

Sure, no one is disputing that. I myself also don't live in any of the English-speaking countries. 

I was talking to the other person in this conversation that they're being too harsh on you because you're clearly new here and don't know much about the VNdev community. However, they're objectively right - even though you replaced the monster's image, it's still clearly the same game with the same premise and mostly the same text, which is forbidden under the jam's rules. 

No one is personally attacking you. But you should listen to people and try to make something new from scratch. 

oh my god it's clearly a child doing this (who's clearly not fluent in English), cut them some slack

oh gosh thank you for such a long and thoughful review! i'm really glad the story impressed you so much 

about the thumbnail: 

you meet the writer 'outside of the game' like they really are (modern setting and facing away from you) but in-game, you hear their story about themself so they also appear more... fictionalized, with metaphorical quills et all

thank you so much! we've run through eight different versions of the UI so it's very important for us hehe

aha well yes, it does feature a character from optimal conditions for a sacrifice so... it's kinda a crossover, huh? 

i mean, you are the hero is both a gift for the author of sacrifice, and, at the same time, a counterargument

so anyway, thanks for the playing! glad you enjoyed it 

Hi! The web version doesn't work on mobile, sorry about that! You need to open it through desktop browser. 

Sure, take your time, and thanks for the reply! 
(if it helps you contextualize, the "additional" words don't really matter much to the story, there are just a few metaphors I had to get rid of but they really don't alter neither the events nor the message of the game, they just... sound nice :D)

Hi! Can I add the “Director’s cut” separately? (I plan to release some “extra content” for a donation, kind of a small “art book” accompanying the game, so can I add to the same archive a version of the game with the uncut-more-than-1000-words-script? the free to play “main” version will of course comply with the rules)

hi! first of all - thank you for playing! 

regarding your criticism - you are completely right, it does come out pretty preachy; the concept I intended was that it should've been... for the lack of a better word, a straightforward metaphor, that the epigraph (Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty) and the names of characters (Justine is from Latin iustis -  justice, Clemence is from Old French merci -- mercy) hint that the player shouldn't treat the characters as human beings - they're personifications of concepts and should've (in my mind) been treated as such. 

(on names - Fidelia is also from Latin fides - faith, as the history of jurisprudence was connected to religion and sacred texts a lot, and the scene with her symbolises separation of law from religion; and Mark and Pax stand for war and peace, as laws are very much connected to all sorts of armed conflicts).

however, my delivery was far from perfect, so here's that.   

Hey! Thanks for playing and for noticing :D You're right, Mary is indeed Wollstonecraft, and I meant Edmund Burke. By Peter I meant Kropotkin, tho! 

thank you for playing!

really cute, really adorable, quack quack 

I loved all the duck puns (Quachilles might be my favorite) and the dynamic between the characters is very fluffy and fun

thanks it healed my heart after how bad lore olympus was god i hate lore olympus

thank you for playing!

thank you for playing! i can't believe it either...

god these puzzles were hard

not in a "hard to understand way", in a "patience is key" way? tbh if i were to suggest anything it would be adding a visible timer to the puzzles to play off the narrative tension of being forced to solve a hard and all no-rush puzzle while being short on time

the second and third puzzles were better than the first tho!! the first one was a bit frustrating because the horizontal lines clearly align but the vertical lines - you have to either know how wide exactly the columns are or test pieces at random to match the edges

anyway, that's all about puzzles

i really liked the limited color-scheme, makes the game very stylish, and the artstyle is working very well with the writing

tbh not a big fan of Lovecraft the airconditioning dude myself; but the writing is solid, and the beginning, intrigue and tension were written really well - the whole street, the personality of the protagonist, the mystery set-up, seamless and pleasant read 

however, near the end i felt like some parts were left unexplored...? i felt like i'd like to know more about how Albert's parents were involved in the mystery, who are those who oppose the cult, and more tension and time in unsolving the motives of the mysterious cult itself

and officer jaeger - i half-expected him to turn out to be a member of the cult, especially because the cultists said they were working with the police, so him appearing again would've been really great, i think! 

"the outerworld" BG was amazing and beautiful, and the imagemaps really fun and effective way to learn about our MC and his backstory

all and all, it was a wonderful and stylish game, just wish i had more of it and more answers to the questions posed! 

ah sorry, the vending machine isn't giving away any lamb plushies... it likes them, so it wants to hoard all of them for itself!

anyway, the High-Spirited Girl has been fixed in the new patch, as well as some other sounds, thanks for pointing out! and now there's also a walkthrough if you'd ever want to get all other endings

thank you for playing and for such a long and thoughtful review! 

hi! thanks for playing! i uploaded a walkthrough in the devlog, you can see how to get all the achivements there 

thanks for playing! a game of league a day keeps the exam anxiety away :D

thank you! I can't say my universities times were pointless... but yeah, at some point i've learned how to mass-produce theses like subway sandwiches... 

it might be sloppy and half of the references lettuce is falling apart but hey... it's a sandwich! edible and passable :D

Wiser words have never been spoken.

- NotAGhostwritingServiceCEO

(thanks for playing!)

thanks! same ;)

it was a really fun puzzle game! simple but effective design, and i love when 'tutorial' text has some personality in it 

a small suggestion as an anti-frustration mechanics: it would've been really nice if color-changing pluses would've actually colored in the color they recolor the player's control to: when there are a bunch of them in the same place, it's frustrating to remember which one would color your cursor in which way. i also don't think it "eases up" the game as you still need to solve the puzzle but it removes a lot of frustrating replays where you have the idea on how to solve the puzzle but you forget which one of the six plus signs in a single row recolors your cursor in which color

p.s. also, for some reason WASD worked perfectly for me, but arrows worked only right and left, not top and bottom ones. 

overall, great job! 

I saw some people doing it and thought I might join as well. Drop me a link and I'll play your game and leave a comment there! 

(P.S. I have no mouse atm so I can only play touchpad-friendly or WASD-only games) 

And my game is: https://mlkrn.itch.io/pink

ah, thanks for the comment! 

...it's fairly flawed in some aspects because the whole engine was new to me and i kinda tried to make it work in 72 hours so, duly noted!

P.S. regarding orwell... well, let me phrase it.. carefully enough. while i myself don't live in a CERTAIN COUNTRY, and 1984 is NOT OFFICIALLY BANNED in that specific country, i also have living relatives in said country, and some people got in trouble for publicly reading 1984 or leaving copies of it in public places. so, the heavy reference in itself is a commentary on today but a foreign reader won't probably notice that, so let's say it was a shallow attempt of mine to replace real-life places and events with borrowed from 1984 for reasons of not getting too deep into the propaganda hole myself.

Excuse my mad paint skills (nothing of it is assets to be used in the final game, it's a screenshot of my previous game and... my bachelor thesis) 

But I think you can get the idea? 

On the right, there is a "MS Word" I'm talking about - I plan to take a screenshot of actual Word and process the image, and the left part is NVL textbox as a part of default RenPy mode. 

It will be a part of the game, but it will make up the majority of the game, so to say. 

And I plan to hide parts of the in-MS-Word lorem ipsum text with code-generated white rectangles, to reveal it later. Also, the "interface" of the "fictional MS Word" will be custom and actual part of the GUI, so it will have WORDS LEFT field and TIME LEFT field to interact with the player and let them know how much "action points" they have left. 

Hope that makes sense! 

https://imgur.com/GTR5f25

I am thinking of using NVL mode, so the screen will be split in two: on the left side, there will be in-game text and buttons, and on the right there will be the "MS Word"-ish kind of program, which will then reveal some parts (hidden with code-made white square) of the "text" written based on the choices of the player.

ah but thank you! if you feel it's underrated, recommend it to your friends, make them play it, and share the word *wink wink nudge nudge* hehe! 

but seriously, thanks! glad you enjoyed your time.

Would a "MS Word"-ish kind of interface be considered a part of GUI or a background? (i.e. the player chooses some buttons, and a fictional MS Word on the screen reveals some bits of flavor text (lorem ipsum, not relevant to the plot). 

oh my, the devil playing the game with the devil! thank you for playing, your unholiness, we mere mortals are very glad you had fun!

thank you!

oh well, oh well. sadly, I don't know much about anarchist theories and their stances on the justice system - we've always been taught law is inseparatable from governments, and anarchy is against any order, especially state order, so it always seemed to me that legal doctrine as it is now has no place in it. and well, without legal doctrine there would be no yurisprudence - the whole game is about it, kinda :D

anyways, I am glad you found the game's content interesting! thank you for playing.

hey! thank you for playing; glad you empathized with the narrative so much! 

[spoiler]

about kindness and roasting… maybe, if you haven’t already, you could check out the game file script.rpy and find some answers there! the easiest way to do this would be to download ren’py and open script.rpy with the ren’py editor, atom. 

(they’re not good answers, though!)

ah, thank you! I'm glad to know fellow content creators find it relatable or something! 

(and frankly, I just giggle when I think I just stole an academic literary theory thingie and made it into a character, and somehow, it worked :D) 

ah, thank you for such a long review! to be honest, it's the best comment I could've dreamed of getting for yurisprudence - because I wrote it as a love letter to my intlaw degree (and out of oh so love/hate feelings towards Ace Attorney) and if it made you think we are a bunch of mostly decent people - that means, it worked :D 

Thank you for your attention and for playing!

We have a full script, all the music and most of the art done — however, as for now we’re just a little bit stuck with implementing a shooting mini-game. But we will definitely finish the project, so keep an eye on it — the Nightbringers are not the ones to quit a contract mid-air!

hi, thank you for playing!

on name changes: it is basically a one prolonged reference to philosophy in general. Because it's implied that the player is an amnesiac god of sorts,  name options are based on famous philosophers for their main pursuit was to observe life and existing reality, but they were also capable of writing their own fictional pieces. The name changes also were there to give the player an unsettling vibe from the very beginning of the game to add suspense and hint that the coffeeshop is not just a coffeeshop, it's a place outside reality the player is visiting inbetween their lives.