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Chandler Guzman

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A member registered Mar 12, 2025 · View creator page →

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was very excited to see this was a VN and ren'py game as i'm a big fan of ren'py and VNs (as you might be able to tell from my profile)! you did great with the UI customization and game aesthetic, the main menu screen is really well-done. one minor issue with the menu, though, is that the "continue" button grayed out (first time player) blends too much with the television screen. the opening text with warnings not only informs the player of what's to come, but also sets an eerie scene. the atmospheric music is great, i'm a big fan of the haunting melody of the main menu theme. 

one minor adjustment i think would help with the flow of the game is having there be fade-ins from black screens to new screens, from one scene to another, and when sprites appear on the screen. the transitions as they are right now are jarring as from one frame to the next new things will appear on your screen.  overall though, the art direction is wonderful and i love the filters you applied over the game. it's a unique art style that makes the sprites especially look delightfully creepy. alice's eyes-open frowning sprite is actually terrifying; the uncanny valley is real with that one.

i do wish there was a "return to main menu" button in the options, as i wanted to restart the game and ended up closing the application altogether. this is a really minor issue though, and since this is a game jam project it's not that big of a deal.  one minor critique that, again, is due to the limited time one has with a game jam, is the fact that the game is mostly silent (in terms of music) after the main menu. there is more music later into the game, but most of the game is silent and i feel like one more track would make it feel better. i also would've loved there to be a creaky door opening sound effect whenever the protagonist opens the door.

these minor additions would contribute greatly to the atmosphere of the game and i would love to see these things added if you continue developing the game! the current sound effects are great though, i love you coding in a pause for some sound effects to finish playing before you can progress (the first phone one is a little long though). i'll have to figure out how to integrate that into my ren'py games!

speaking of audio, the emergency alerts were brilliantly made, awesome job! i was incredibly unsettled since i generally find those emergency broadcasts to be pretty scary. i'm ashamed to say i had to click out for a bit both times and hover over the game so i could still see... the last ones had me so stressed i considered quitting the game LOL. i will say, i do wish the last one had subtitles because i couldn't understand what the thing was saying (especially since i had to lower my volume after the loud music crescendo).

another tiny detail: near the start, alice's sprites don't align to the screen's center or seem to have matching aspect ratios, so when she changes expressions you can see the sprite visibly shift. this seemingly gets resolved later on, so i thought i'd point it out in case you didn't notice it. it's something that i personally struggled with a bit too when developing my ren'py games. the final text stating the game was over also bled a bit into the main menu. 

there's also no save option. this is a little difficult to navigate since there are a few different decisions i wanted to experiment with to see the outcomes. you'd have to play through the entire game several times and reach those decision branches to experiment with the different outcomes. this is a bit frustrating paired with the unskippable emergency alert segments. not gonna lie, i don't think i could survive another playthrough of the game so i just let my first run be. 

you really nailed the horror with this game, though. huge props to you. there were several times where i was incredibly unsettled to the point where my OCD was getting triggered--don't feel bad about that though, i love it when horror content affects me like this. the emergency broadcasts were scary, but so was alice cowering in the corner with the music going silent; absolutely horrific moment. i love the paranoia and symptoms the protagonist slowly develops as the situation unfolds, making you question whether he's developing the disease or just being affected by the entity. masterful writing!

i like the way you integrated the theme into your game! the concept is very interesting, i would love to see it explored further if you choose to continue developing this game or an iteration of it in the future.

despite the very short development time and your schedule difficulties, this is a pretty decent prototype. i have a few critiques, but it's nothing that more development time (which you unfortunately didn't have) wouldn't have fixed.

the controls are pretty unclear since there is no tutorial, prompt, or controls screen, and that paired with the zoomed-in version of the first stage makes it difficult to navigate at first. i didn't think i was moving at first because i wasn't able to see the edges of the stage. i was able to pick up after a few attempts that F is the button to interact with objects, but this was based on my previous knowledge of games with a similar control scheme. 

another minor design issue is that the "merge" button is unclear in its functionality and the inventory does not have any indicator of which item was stored in which slot and which slot is currently occupied. 

the puzzle itself also is not intuitive. i wasn't quite sure what the brown wall object was meant to be and the red item was unclear as well, so i didn't know what the goal of the puzzle was or what i was meant to do with the inventory. overall though, the pixel art was pretty well done and i really liked the design of the key. 

in the end, i wasn't able to solve the puzzle. i tried several different combinations of the inventory but it didn't really do much except loop me back to the start. as i said, this prototype is still decent for the short time you had and i feel with more development time it can be fleshed out more and these small issues can be fixed! you both did a great job, congrats on completing your first game jam :)