itch.io

I appreciate the feedback! Yeah it's 3d because it wasn't originally meant to be a visual novel, but I hope that the experience ended up being coherent and emotionally resonant.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you like the writing, considering how rushed it was in the end. We pivoted to a really narrative-heavy game in the last 48h, so it was an ordeal to outline, draft and edit all of it at such short notice.

Hey there, pointy-hat-Morgan-buddies! Great job on your game, I really enjoyed it. The art is absolutely beautiful, I love both the pixel art and the portraits. Really damn pretty.

I have a piece of feedback too! It took me a while to figure out what I was meant to do at the start, especially since I tried interacting with the bed immediately and it didn't work so I just assumed it wasn't interactable. Probably a browser/itch.io bug, web is always a bit more finicky, but maybe the game would benefit from having indicators for what can be interacted with? This is pretty minor though, it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game.

Also, after a while, the music just suddenly stops for me and doesn't come back until I go through a door. I'm not sure if it's related to your audio implementation, but maybe it's not, I'm definitely not counting it against the game, those things happen. It could be related to me alt+tabbing to write notes about the game.

I thought the narrative was nice, and I feel like it would have been even better to have a few small hints of it interspersed between the puzzles, maybe a couple of lines showing her thoughts? But I really liked it as it is too.

Great job on the game! One of my favourites, for sure.

That's a really pretty little experience. The way the character affects the environment was a really nice touch, it looks and feels great, good job!

I do feel like something is missing, though. I understand that the focus was the environment and the vibe, and that you may not even want to add any real gmaeplay, but I feel like the game could have benefitted from a narrative. It wouldn't even have to be done through text, it could be entirely environmental, look at how Journey did it, it told a story without a single word of dialogue. I assume it was a major inspiration for you--and if it wasn't, then wow, you really should check it out!

Also, the music was just so nice and fitting. Good job on finishing it all in time, that already is a feat!

You've done an amazing job with the game, especially in such a short amount of time! The other comments are right, it really does feel pretty polished.

I have a small piece of feedback that I hope you will find useful! It's not major, just small things I noticed. I think it would be helpful if the camera moved up to the relevant area when you were entering a new zone, so that you can see where you're going and so you can see and anticipate enemies. Similarly, since the runes in the first boss room were on the far northern wall, it actually took me quite a bit to figure out what you were supposed to do, and I was going off entirely from the sounds the buttons made, thinking that was the only indication.

I really like how it had an element of genuine challenge to it and took a few tries to understand and beat.

Thanks for your feedback! I'm sure you'll be able to draw like that if you put in the time to practice.

I can see why you're getting Runescape vibes from the style, I didn't even think about that similarity.

Can you try waiting for a while after clicking "play"? It worked for one person.

Yeah, we transitioned to more of a visual novel format as the deadline neared due to huge issues with programmers getting sick. I can understand why it felt like a bug the way it was presented, though. I'm sorry that you got an experience that felt like something went wrong. I hope you enjoyed it anyway, if you actually read it, which you may not have since it appeared like it bugged out). I was hoping that it would be a coherent narrative-focused experience, even if it lacked any real gameplay.

Thanks for the feedback. It's interesting to know that people might think it's a bug. I wonder what we could even do about that now, since we can't edit the uploaded files.

That makes perfect sense. To be honest, it's been so long since I've seen the prequels that I completely forgot the the setup of his arc. And I didn't even know you could do actual spoilers, awesome. Thanks for letting me know!

I love hearing people's opinions, both the praise and especially the criticism. So if you're looking for a game to check out, here's ours!

https://itch.io/jam/hg-gj/rate/3923680

It's a narrative-focused game about a sorceress at a magic academy, and her attempts to beat the trial of "Sage's Folly" so that she can advance to the next year of her studies.

Thank you for testing it on all browsers, that's wonderful of you! That's really useful information.

I'm really glad you like the story! As you saw in the other comment, it was a ridiculously short-notice rush job. So much so that, there was actually supposed to be an earth element too, but I ended up cutting it just so I could actually get a couple of hours of sleep before work. Check out the reply I just wrote to someone else, if you want the full story. Really bad luck.

Yeah, I have experience with Ren'Py. I was making my own visual novel out of a WIP novel I had. Then I decided to work on a different novel before getting too far. Morgan really suits me, it seems. If you meant that we could switch to Ren'py after the game jam, we actually have a pretty well developed idea for this game's gameplay, and they're even half-coded, so I think it'd be more fun to try to finish that, if my team is up for it. I sure am.

You can put "SPOILERS" and then talk about what you liked about the story, if you'd like! I actually am surprised that you're calling it Star Wars-ie, but after thinking about it for a bit, I completely understand what you mean. It's definitely got elements of balance, "turning to the dark side", in a way, stuff like that. I guess that might be why you chose that descriptor. That makes sense, I have loved Star Wars since I was a kid.

Thanks for the comment!

Wow! That's very high praise, especially considering your game might actually be my favourite as well. Thank you for the praise and for the feedback in general!

I absolutely love our music and art too. It was really fun to write the script and go through the folder of Morgan reaction images, constantly picking which ones to use. It really was like writing a visual novel, but I haven't had art for a visual novel yet, so it was really fun to get to do it.

Yeah, Morien is pretty cool. I tried my best to write him as someone who is clearly neurotypical and clearly doesn't understand her struggles, but he just ends up figuring out a possible solution (accountability buddies) through sheer determination to help.

And that's definitely a fair gripe. I had her save the cat with the water elemental, so if my emotional manipulation worked (what? that's literally what writing is!), then you may have become more invested in her by the time she started talking with the water elemental.

Here's a little bit of trivia regarding that gripe. We had absolutely massive issues with programming. Both of our programmers got incredibly sick, which actually meant that we only had about 6-7 days of time for programming in total, and that was from a programmer who joined 20+ days into the jam and needed to be brought up to speed, and he ended up starting from scratch anyway. So in the end, we only realised we *absolutely* were not going to finish about 48 hours before the deadline, at which point I took it upon myself to try to fill that gap with writing. So I ended up outlining, writing and editing all that (except the conversation with Morien, that was going to be in the game anyway) a ridiculously short notice, crunching 7-9 hours a day on top of my day job. I only finished 3 hours before the deadline (and incidentally, 3 hours before I had to get up for work, lol). Your gripe is very true but it's the sort of structural issue I notice after a couple of more thorough editing passes. This whole thing is just a 2nd draft, which is kinda nuts because I actually don't consider it a disaster, I feel like it's actually serviceable at least.

Thanks for commenting, hope you liked the story of our emotional rollercoaster!

Yeah, I'd love to! Just reply to my message or contact me in some other way, and I'll happily test it out.

It'd be awesome if your team wanted to check our game out as well! You guys put a lot of effort into the narrative of your game so you might like how story-focused ours is.

Do you have access to Firefox? If you do, could you try using that?

I have a few questions if you don't mind! Can you let me know what version of Brave you're using? Do other Unity games from the jam work properly for you?

Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you for giving it another try, I'm glad it ended up working on Firefox! I wonder what the issue is.

Yeah, Kaleb's music is just incredible, every time he posted a new piece, the team was blown away. When I messaged him about joining us in August, I felt silly for even asking, like he was sorely overqualified for us, even if most of us did have a decent amount of experience. But I feel like even though things didn't go exactly as planned (did anything even go as planned?), the music ended up actually working really well.

I'm glad you felt like there was a lot of interesting stuff going on! I was worried that, without being carried by the gameplay stuff like moving around and interacting with things (let alone more complex things like combat), the writing would feel anemic and not particularly good, especially considering it was a massive crunch job, made in the last 48 hours of the jam. I love that you said it was like a conversation with the wind. One of the name ideas I had for the game was "Windborn" but upon googling it, I realised there was already a game with that name.

I absolutely love the dialogue and the voice acting, it's so full of fun and whimsy. But one thing I noticed is that I can just spam-click to destroy everything without really thinking about the mechanics. In fact, I finished the game without really understanding how it it works. I know that's kind of my fault, but I hope it's a useful bit of feedback!

Oh and the art is amazing and fits really well with the rest of the game.

Overall, that was a really funny little experience. Thanks for submitting!

I really couldn't figure out how the game worked. But I love weird little experimental pieces. And that audio was just hilarious. Oh yeah, and I'm really glad to hear you're taking up coding, good luck on your journey!

Cool little game, thanks for submitting!

I think the music is really fitting, it works really well with the art. It really creates an interesting atmosphere, and the game overall reminds me of old games I used to play. Nice vibes!

One thing I didn't really like is the mechanic of having to pick up or drop items. I feel like it would have been a lot more fun if you were able to shoot/heal at all times, and dropping the items to move between rooms doesn't.

That time-limited room was quite challenging. Also, that red thing that spawns when you attack, why does it look so mesmerising?

I also ran into a few small performance hitches, but stuff like that is hard to control in a web game, I think. It could very well be itch's fault!

And good job finishing a game, it's always a difficult undertaking.

Cool little game, thanks for submitting!

I think the music is really fitting, it works really well with the art. It really creates an interesting atmosphere, and the game overall reminds me of old games I used to play. Nice vibes!

One thing I didn't really like is the mechanic of having to pick up or drop items. I feel like it would have been a lot more fun if you were able to shoot/heal at all times, and dropping the items to move between rooms doesn't.

That time-limited room was quite challenging. Also, that red thing that spawns when you attack, why does it look so mesmerising?

I also ran into a few small performance hitches, but stuff like that is hard to control in a web game, I think. It could very well be itch's fault!

And good job finishing a game, it's always a difficult undertaking.

What a wonderfully absurd game. The art style is just incredible, the shaders (I think) make it feel amazing, and I really like the worldbuilding. Everything about this game is incredibly unique.

I have to admit that the fishing mechanic didn't hold my attention for too long, but I think this would be perfect for people who get lost fishing in video games for hours at a time.

What time I spent with it was great and felt like stepping into a strange, trippy alien world. I'm really glad I got this in my queue!

Also, fun fact, I spent like 2 minutes at the start trying to figure out why my grappling hook wasn't pulling me up, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why there was a "rotate fish" control. "That's not a fish ,that's a grappling hook! What?". Why am I like this?

Oh hey! You're the team that volunteered in that stream, aren't you? That's awesome, great to see the finished version.

I can't get over how cute the art is. Every ability icon was so well thought of and adorable.

The first thing I noticed when starting the game is that you are just tossed into it. That's not such a bad thing--if anything, I kind of like it, lengthy tutorials tend not to be too interesting. But I have to say that the systems are not necessarily self-evident, and I think some people could get confused. I don't think the game is worse for it, but I was just hoping you would find that bit of feedback useful!

I've by now finished the game, and I loved it. I filled out your survey and I hope it helps a lot! This honestly is just straight up a solid game, I could see this being sold on Steam.

I really loved stacking up buffs and then making powerful Pomodoro chains.

I'm glad you showed up in my queue, and it's nice to see how the game developed since the lecture.

I haven't gotten to play your game yet, I'm going through the queue, and I'll definitely get to yours eventually! But I can't help but notice that your Morgan and our Morgan would probably get along very well! They'd probably form an adventuring party.

Awww, thank you! I'm really glad it made you feel something, that is really the most important thing of all for me. And obviously I can't make promises on behalf of my team, but if it was my decision, you would see what the game would look like with 3D art. I hope we'll end up finishing it. That's why I advocated to add Prologue to the title - because it is my hope that there will be more to come.

I did my best to write Morien as someone who is clearly neurotypical and who does not at all understand the struggles Morgan is facing, but through his loyalty, he manages to help her out anyway, even if it's in an imperfect way.

And yeah, the music is incredible, isn't it? I can't believe it's actually our music, tailor-made for our game by an actual music producer! Kaleb is amazing.

Honestly, I often high myself to standards that are unreasonably high, but even I can't help but agree. I feel like this will keep me feeling great for months.

Thank you very much! It is, isn't it? I love Morgan, Sleepens' designs are really amazing. Did you like the way she was written? Did you think it suited her design?

And that's a very useful bit of info, thank you for letting us know. After I'm done with work, and with chugging some coffee and energy drinks, I'll try my best to play and rate every game in the jam. If you've submitted one, then I'll get to yours too eventually!

That's really odd. Tiny Owl said that it had issues on Chrome, but not on Firefox. If you're interested, and you have Firefox, you could try that? Very odd issue. Thank you for trying it though!

I'm elated to hear that you found the story interesting! It would be incredibly helpful if you told me what you liked about it, and what your favourite moments were.

As for your desire for choices, I can understand that. The thing is, though... it was not meant to be a visual novel at all, as you might be able to tell by the fact that it's got a 3D environment that you're dropped into, which isn't actually utilised.

Our programmers had a streak of terrible luck and were stricken by illness for the vast majority of the game jam. Marmaduke even had to drop out to rest and recover. By the time we found someone who could take over, we only really had a few days left. It was only then that we made the decision to switch to a narrative-heavy game, and by the time we did, I only had 48 hours to outline, draft and edit the whole script (which was meant to be much leaner originally, as you might imagine).

The fact that we actually had a coherent experience for the players by the end of it is a genuine miracle. 

(That's not an admonishment of your feedback, not at all! I just thought you might find it interesting to know how the game came to be this way.)

I couldn't work until the deadline because I had work in the morning, but I... almost did end up working until the deadline anyway. That's why I'm sitting here at work, with under 3 hours of sleep. But the thrill of having finished a full script for what is basically a small visual novel in less than 48 hours is making it all worth it.