itch.io

Honestly as much I loved the opening ambience and how well this nails the feeling of being in a derelict server the leap to a full on narrative with a bundled-in arg felt like it defeated the entire atmosphere this had strived to develop, removing all the mystery and desolate wandering in favor of a plotline that -- while undeniably interesting and emotional at times -- didn't make sense with the initial premise of "playing on a bunch of servers people have moved away from," and, if anything, made the experience far more dissonant as a result, since it stopped being clear why the empty fps element even needed to exist in the first place if the main narrative could stand fine without it.

I guess to put it more simply, I don't see why this story needed the empty server aesthetic when it was barely about that beyond the opening and -- going off my own experience retooling narratives to better fit what I was trying to say with them -- could've been told more effectively without it, since the empty servers only served the purpose of being a barebones (and quickly superseded by the out-of-game arg elements) interface for players to access the rest of the story, rather than something that felt like it flowed and evolved with it. You could switch the setting out for any other multiplayer game and it wouldn't feel any different. That plus -- with how much the narrative is relegated to the arg by necessity -- it becomes way too barebones and loses the impact it could have if the game was wholly focused on it, since we get too few snippets to make it feel distinguished from any other horror media about loss and decay and too little to actually connect with the characters over.

I should note that I do respect the amount of work that was put into this a ton and, overall? I did love playing it. It just felt like the focus was too undecidedly split between the story about the couple and the open-ended atmosphere the game premised itself on, with the inability to dedicate itself to either one (a game only about the vacuity and mounting, inexplicable terror in an empty, borderline ephemeral setting vs. a game about a character's failure to move on from loss) for the strengths both of them carry to come through.

(sidenote I do think there's a way you could couple them together, since abandoned locations [however digital or physical] lend themselves perfectly to themes of loss, but it'd require a radically different approach to what the game currently offers)

Echoing everyone else, this is seriously phenomenal and it makes me horrified and alienated and awestruck in a way only NaissanceE has done for me before. I really do hope you resume developing this in the future because what's already here is breathtaking.

This is near unplayably laggy on chrome but some reason it works fine on edge? Idk
Regardless I ended up enjoying this a lot, although the first room after the maze had me stumped since it wasn't clear the yellow objects represented checkpoints and that doors could pretty much be hidden anywhere in the walls until I reached the next area (although that could just be me being stupid lol)

This is seriously one of the coolest games I've played on itchio (and I like the background track a lot -- it pretty much captures the perfect ambience for wandering a world in the process of forgetting itself)

Sorry for long this reply ended up being lmao

This is a really cool concept but boiling it down to a simple jumpscare is a rather underwhelming note to end it on, considering how much you could make the player paranoid about something being behind them without resorting for the most extreme option (the door opens and a monster enters) right off the bat [a greater focus on ambience would a long way for freaking the player out, espec. considering that all the scariest moments I've had in horror games *have* been from the ambience, and the times you lose track of whether a sound effect is simply coming from the game or if it's coming from real life]

that or taking the alternate approach and messing with the player's own reflections, the way staring at a mirror with little to no light gradually morphs your face into a form worse and worse the longer you stare (considering how much uncanny valley already plays into horror you could exploit this a ton by applying it to the player's own face)

Either way this is a super interesting experiment and -- if you ever feel like expanding it -- I'd love to see more of it

I realize this is a late response but is there anything after the secret level or is that all you're referring to? I beat the maze a second and third time but I didn't notice anything changing with either the gameplay or maze (aside from the red block)

i've had sex that feels like this

Everything I make is 100% sincere. Even if I have terminal shitpost syndrome

same