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Won on my second try. The only ones I could work out confidently just from the silhouettes were the snails and the birds (they're just mirror images).  For the rest, it was an interesting mixture of guesswork and memorization. A pretty good minigame.

Simple but perfectly murderous rage-inducing fun. 5/5 for gameplay from me.

Can't tell whether selecting different tarot readings has any effect, so it feels like the gameplay is just a race. Which is fine, just unsure whether there's something more going on underneath. The visual style is cool and I have no regrets about performing a Satanic ritual.

I know you're aware of the bug with the bird and the warning sign from previous comments, I just want to add that it is still playable and possible to work out how to avoid the bird after a few failures (maybe just a couple if you're astute enough). If anything I think it actually makes for a slightly better game, as it involves solving a little puzzle and requires some amount of strategic thinking. It's just that in the current presentation, it looks like a bug rather than a feature.

Anyway, good game and good concept. I like turtles.

Very fun concept, and decent execution considering the time you had to make it. I felt the breeding mechanic could have been designed to involve a more considered choice rather than a rushed one, but it was fun even so.

Are you okay?

Good concept and fitting ambience. The gameplay was okay, though I felt it became less engaging after the second level (I stopped feeling the need to use my brain). I liked your interpretation of the jam's theme, which is more original than the more literal interpretation that I think most of us went for.

Congratulations on your first game jam! Although there isn't much actual gameplay (apart from the emoji thing), this was a very sweet entry and the different elements were put together well. I liked it very much.

Fantastic concept and execution. If I had to choose a faction based just on the music, I'd go with the shamans.

I liked the way the two pathway diverge in style and then partially come back together for a showdown in the Destruction section, e.g. with the vocals in the Royalty Destruction track. At least, that's how I interpreted it. It was very well done.

Reminds me of certain RTS and other strategy games where by default you play as one faction and then get to play as the faction that was previously your enemy. But that might just be because I went straight for the Youtube link, and there was only one of those so I didn't really exercise my right to choose which to listen to first!

I'd agree with some of the comments below that some of the dissonances don't sound right. But some of them do sound right (I mean they sound wrong, by definition, but they sound wrong in the right way). So...I'm just going to exercise my rights as a totally unprofessional amateur and say they cancel each other out.

But seriously, overall it was pretty great. I particularly enjoyed the groove you built up from around the 3:30 mark. I liked the juxtaposition of the flute and the spacey synth sounds. 

In terms of composition and listenability, this has been one of my favourites in this jam. It's crazy that you apparently cobbled this together in 4 hours, but maybe the time pressure actually helped in some way. It certainly wasn't overcomposed. It was just right. 

Great work with the narration!

In terms of the music itself, I thought you excelled with some of the transitions, particularly in the way the Pastoral theme swelled into the Consummation. That part, and the remainder of the Consummation, could well have been sampled from Edward Elgar's newly rediscovered Pomp and Circumstance No. 7. Really well executed.

Brilliant concept. The choice of a turt-er-tortoise, of all wild animals whose viewpoint you could use, at first seemed like a purely quirky one, but I think I can see the logic behind it. Tortoises are famously long-lived. If there's any land animal that has survived an entire human civilization, bearing witness to the full futility of the theft that those humans committed against it when they took away its home...of course it's gonna be a tortoise. 

With the exception of they fall, most of the actual music composition was minimalistic to a degree that I usually find hard to engage with. But I can't deny that this sounds like how a lost and baffled tortoise's mind probably would sound like. I especially felt a faint but looming sense of menace and anxiety in they took our houses. Pretty well done, I thought.

Very cool. Strange and almost disconcerting, but in a good way. The first song was my favourite. I liked the creative use of lines from Shelley's Ozymandias (not sure whether the other songs' lyrics are original or also drawn from elsewhere?). As the listener it's always nice to feel clever after getting a reference! And the dissonant, inhuman sounds following "these words appear" say it all in that they "say" nothing...in some ways it means more than the original poem. Or at least it means something "the same but different". It was good. Nice work!

Very cool! The high notes at the beginning (and the end) made me think of the Disco Elysium main menu theme, and they had the same quality of being a premonition (and then a memory) of an apocalyptic event, or of a world that is simply indifferent to the fate of humanity.

I'd agree that the mixing could have been better in places (particularly in the Consummation section, I think). On the whole it didn't detract from the enjoyability or the fascination of the music, though.

I found the Destruction section the most interesting. I felt you took a different approach to most in the Destruction part, and it works really well. But my overall favourite part was the Savage State. I liked the simplicity of it and the sense of pathos and anticipation in that slow build-up. Nice work!

Fantastic sound, throughout. I could detect a few different styles and possible (cinematic?) influences, but you weaved them together coherently and made the whole thing flow very well.

All of these tracks are great, but I especially liked both the first and the last. The first one, "just because", and the last one for its wistful air that fits the backstory you came up with. I can imagine Timuth's story being the frame narrative for the whole, marking both the beginning and the end, with each of the previous characters' stories being recalled by him as he visits the ruins of the Empire. 

I really liked the third song, personally. Nothing wrong with a bit of lalala - or maybe it's a falalalan? - to a ye olde times tune, and it fits the setting of a lively old city full of people going about their business in a low-key-merry sort of way. It was my personal favourite of the four. But all the songs fit their paintings very well, and they were all nice to listen to.

These ones grew on me while I was listening to them. Although I found Peaceful Life and A Busy Town! the most enjoyable (they're so jaunty!), I liked Desolation a lot as well. I actually think keeping it simple with just a piano was a good choice for that theme, and provides a nice contrast to the "fuller" sounds of the previous pieces. Like in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata or Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1, sometimes a solo piano provides all the melancholy you need, and adding any more layers could actually detract from that feeling.

You nailed that ancient world flavour, without constraining yourself too slavishly to the sounds and tropes associated with it. I enjoyed it very much :)

You got the overall rhythm and the arpeggiations of a gen 1/2 Pokemon encounter theme down pretty well. I felt the melody could have been stronger and more clearly distinguished from those other elements. Overall I liked it :)

There was some sort of auditory sorcery going on in the last minute that made my head feel like it was pulsing and a whole flock of pigeons might burst out of my ears, but in a way that would be too awesome as well as immediately fatal to complain about. I don't know what that was about ("something something harmonics something something"), but it was pretty great.

Thank you! I'll have a go at doing a more full-on flamenco piece sometime ;)

Thank you! I'll look into that bug, it should be an easy fix.

Hi! I found the art style in this game (including the UI) kind of adorable. Which served, by way of juxtaposition, to highlight the high stakes of the scenario and the sad ending (not sure whether there's a 'happy' ending', but in any case I got a sad one). I like this type of narrative technique, it hits harder.

The story reminded me a bit of 'Life of Pi'. Being lost at sea and using a colourful fantasy to get through the trauma and isolation. 

I liked the characters, particularly Will. He felt very 'Dad' to me, at least the way I chose to play him and with the dialogue options I selected. Sort of muddling through and putting on a brave face for his child, despite not really knowing what to do.

In terms of gameplay I might have liked a bit more feedback about what's actually happening when I row or fish. Will I actually starve and die if I don't fish, or is it a red herring (profuse apologies for the pun)? On the other hand, not knowing what I was doing also put me in Will's shoes, so maybe I'm also glad there wasn't *too much* feedback.

Thank you for your detailed and encouraging feedback!

I feel the repeated comments about repetitiveness are ironically everything that I deserve, so I don't mind them too much XD It's tricky, because some repetition is an essential part of many if not most kinds of games (including this one), but of course too much can make a game frustrating to play. And evidently different players have different thresholds in that regard, too. It helps me to get different points of view on this and to become more aware of specific aspects of the issue, so thank you for providing yours.

I haven't watched Ergo Proxy, but it looks good. I like the art style from what I've seen.

Thank you, and well done on getting to the Strange Havens! 

If it interests you, the different flags actually originated as a hasty placeholder/reminder-to-self for a faction system, as I had the (very vague) idea for one while I was in the flow of writing one of the events. I can't remember whether it was the pirates or the merchants - I went and added the randomly generated flags to the other as well to make it consistent. But as you could see, I never went any further with the faction idea.

In any case, one way or another, the pirates and merchants are something I'd like to improve in future. I'll keep your suggestions in mind :)

Hello! I saw on the Discord that you had to simplify the battle system to make it past the finish line. Not to worry, I happen to know that JRPG-style battle systems can be hard to build (especially if you're doing it from scratch), so I think you did well to get as far as you did on that front. Now you've got a base you can add to to make it more awesome.

What I liked most in this game were the set pieces. Like at the beginning when we're in the wagon racing forward and we get ambushed by the fire arrow. I liked the action and sense of movement you created with old-school graphics. 

The music was suitably bombastic for a battle scene, but I'm hoping it won't continue relentlessly after the battle and follow the player home in future versions of this game!

Overall, good game. Keep up the great work!

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it :)

I think병풍 is Korean?  I often feel very inspired by the traditional art and aesthetic sensibilities of East Asian countries, like Korea, Japan and China, so that's a really lovely compliment.

Just the 'Maybe Next Time' ending this time around.

I can see the Mass Effect similarity, now I think of it.

The art is great. The setting is horrifying. The music is appropriately oppressive. I thought the characters were well-written, they all had their own voices and personalities, none felt generic.

I did quickly find myself yearning for a clear game-mechanical dilemma when I approved rations. It meant that I only approved rations, because unless I can see the water disappearing before my own eyes (even if it's just a number representation), or if I don't have a supervisor breathing down my neck scolding me for being too soft, I just don't feel any reason to choose the harsh-but-necessary option.

But I'm guessing that lack of feedback is due to running out of time. I am curious to see how this game might develop in future!

Very weird, in a good way. Nice twist on the psychological-horror-set-in-a-lighthouse trope. I also found it darkly humorous, not laugh-out-loud funny but it did have me grinning like a madman while I stumbled around with my axe seeking ever more sinister offerings for the lighthouse. Very appropriate and not at all expected.

On a technical note, this actually ran better and faster in my browser than from the downloaded version. Pretty strange for it to be that way around, but the browser version worked fine enough. There was just a bit of lag when I chopped the door down and went into the shed with the oil barrels.

I liked the writing, the character images, and I thought the overall concept was strange in a good way (i.e. original). The Star Wars style opening was cool. Also, I liked the way you wrote the guide in the style of a corporate manual to new employees.

I'm guessing that that what we've seen is only the first act. I can see a larger story-game developing from this, maybe with more choices (and consequences).

I would like to begin by expressing the emotions I felt while playing through a sequence of old-fashioned emoticons:

:)

:O

:D

:O

D:

:O

:D

:)

In particular, the visual polish of this game just blew me out of the water, considering the short time frame it was made in.

The music was terrific.

Some of the translations were noticeably...well, translated from another language (French?). But this is a minor quibble. The writing was great overall.

In terms of the premise it is probably my favourite of the games I've played so far in this jam. It makes me think of Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' or Satoshi Kon's 'Paprika', but it's still its own original take on that type of story. It would be interesting to see where it would go if it were bigger.

The gameplay loop also reminded me of a game called 'Heaven's Vault', where you alternate between sailing on a sort of surreal water current and exploring the worlds it connects to. 

I liked the social and political commentary. Not *too* on the nose, but very clearly referring to certain major issues in our own time (and perhaps most of human history).

I liked the atmosphere and the environment you made. Gradually climbing up the spiral staircase of the lighthouse, knowing that something sinister and eldritch is going on, definitely created a building sense of dread and suspense.

The journal entries were well written, and the illustrations were especially beautiful.

Unfortunately, I struggled to enjoy it properly because my humble laptop just wasn't up to the task of running it smoothly. And it crashed with a fatal error message when I picked up an item; I never got as far as lighting the beacon.

Overall, it seems fantastic, but I'm basing that less on my actual experience and more by extrapolating the good points and imagining how it runs on a better computer.

Thank you for your honest feedback! 

I understand what you're saying about the repeating interactions and the grind. I'm quite ambivalent about the event system myself, I spent a lot of time trying to get it right. Adding new events quickly became more complicated as each event threw the existing system out of balance, meaning I had to tweak it and test it again each time. Overall this side of the development process turned out more challenging than I anticipated.

Thank you! And congratulations on reaching the Strange Havens!

There are multiple strategies that should usually work, but all the ones I know of involve fish and near-death experiences.

I should note that I used Godot's Dialogic plugin, which provides a nice dialogue system, including things like the glossary and typewriter sound effect by default. So I can't take credit for building that.

Thanks again, and may the blessings of the sea gods be with you!

Thank you!

It sounds like you're closer to winning than you think. 

Don't trust!

I loved the colourful artwork and the music :) I'm still listening to it as I write this. Also the character designs are full of charm. Is that an axolotl running the cafe?! 

I guess there's meant to be a lot more to do besides the fishing boat and shop, so I'm interested to find out how those other locations will work.