itch.io

Check out the lyric video for Pupula Duplex's song from the game, Clockwise!

We all LOVE Beans sooooo much, you have no idea!

Thanks for the kind words, and for including us on your spotlight!

We're planning on releasing Sunny Side Up! on Steam on June 1st, and the Steam version will include all the planned features, so please look forward to that!

~Val, Co-Creative Director, Writer

Thank you for the kind words! I remember seeing your name in the chat a bunch on Rob's stream, and I'm glad you came and played Sunny Side Up! yourself!

We're looking at a June 1st release on Steam, so look forward to that!

~Val, Co-Creative Director, Writer

It's been resolved.  Thank you for catching this!

Thanks for the feedback! While we're not planning a sequel currently, it's not out of the question for the future. You might like Palinurus, one of our oldest games, that is also on Steam.

As for the technical details, thank you for pointing this out to us! The newer versions of Ren'Py no longer support old Windows builds, and we'll make sure to update our pages ASAP.

Thank you again,

Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress CEO

You're absolutely right, Vignette is a Kinetic Visual Novel. It serves as a prequel story to one of our current projects - Avitus (working title). Keeping it kinetic allowed us to have a definite backstory for Rory without too much narrative debt leading into the main project.

I'm glad that you enjoyed it despite it being kinetic! We appreciate the feedback, it all helps us make our next games better.

~Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress CEO

Sorry for the late response!

I'll make sure we watch this video! I appreciate the work people like you put into playing our games, you have no idea.

~Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress CEO

Sorry for the late response!

It'll take a long time, but our current flagship game, and long-term project, is in the same universe as this game. Technically, Vignette is a prequel.

~Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress CEO

You're good to go on youtube and Twitch as long as you credit us! Definitely link your video to us when it's done, we love watching that type of content.

~Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress CEO

Thanks so much for playing! Palinurus was our first work, and we're super proud of it.  We do still occasionally make improvements to the game, so I'll keep an eye out.

I'd consider this more "science fantasy" than straight science fiction, and we completed this game in a couple of weeks, so PLENTY of liberties were had for the sake of the story. I hope you'll forgive us!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

We definitely try to bring back contributors, and it's always lovely to work with voice actors! Thank you again for playing our games, it's wholesome to see your comments!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Thank you so much for playing our game! Palinurus is one of our oldest ones but is possibly the most important of our initial releases. It's amazing to see it get love after all of these years!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

It's been years since I've played this game, but I'm not at all surprised there's a bit about a child eating pennies. The game is super fun, thanks for playing it!

~Wolf, Watercress CEO/Studio Director

Heard you loud and clear, I'll shoot this over to the programming department immediately!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director/CEO

Thank you for playing :)

Our Discord link is: https://discord.gg/watercress

Sorry for the late response!

Thank you so much! It's awesome to see people still playing our game from way back in 2015.  We appreciate the kind words, always :)

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Sure thing :)

We wanted to keep the ending relatively open, so the only difference in ending should be whether or not the voicemail plays after the credits. We're currently bugfixing for this, as it currently doesn't do this.

The ending is pretty abrupt, and that was mostly a stylistic choice on our end. It was pretty risky, but we wanted to tell a story that wasn't in the standard storytelling format, so it doesn't exactly have an end you would expect from most games. We definitely went for the idea of experiencing the real world, where things often don't wrap up cleanly and nicely. Sometimes, shitty stuff just happens, and people are left to pick up the pieces - or not.

Thanks for playing the game, I hope it was enjoyable even if the ending wasn't what you expected!

Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress Studio Director/CEO

If I'm remembering correctly, there isn't a brain damage ending for Alex. There are two other endings for the MC halfway through the game, however.

Sorry for the late response! We'll look into making one when we remaster the game, considering how many endings there are :)

~Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress Studio Director/CEO

We're going to be remastering the whole game and uploading it to Steam sometime in the near future. When we do that, we'll make sure to create a route outline for anyone that wants to get all of the different endings. I can't say for certain if there's a 'brain damage' ending, considering many of the endings are up to interpretation. Generally speaking, choices that are bad for the family and the MC will lead to the bad ends - there are three bad ends in the first half of the game, and some bad ends at the end of the game. If I'm recalling correctly, there are 13 or so end scenes, with the very end of the game having a combination of different scenes depending on choices made (which is why there are so many end scenes). The best and the worst endings do have their own scenes that aren't made up of other scenes. If I find the time to get that outline to the public early, I'll let ya know!

~Tristan "Wolf" Barber, Watercress Studio Director/CEO

That's one of the early ends, there's still another half of the game out there. You can do it! I wrote that end myself, I hope we handled it well enough. Thanks for playing!

~Tristan 'Wolf' Barber, Watercress Studio Director

https://watercress.itch.io/ah-my-roommate-is-a-succubus-hellbent-on-world-conque...

Here you go!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

For the sake of transparency:

User was banned from our comments section for this post and other posts like this. I'm sorry to anyone who was negatively impacted by their comments.

Wolf,  Watercress Studio Director

Simply put, we don't need to make puppet accounts to gather positive reviews to gain interest in our games or to 'build a portfolio'. We already have hundreds of positive reviews on our Steam games alone, and the reviews on itch.io speak for themselves. We're a studio that prides ourselves on our undying commitment to ethical development - both in community building and in how we treat our members. Puppet accounts serve no purpose to us, and would actively damage our own goals - both to our average member and to the community at large.

If anything, the first thought shouldn't be 'the devs are making false reviews', the first thought should be 'maybe this person is new to the EVN community, or they are a dev's friend that wanted to congratulate them on a successful release', or something like that. I don't know the person who reviewed us, and while I deeply appreciate the words they've given us, I don't believe there's any Machiavellian plans going on in the background here.

Something like that would only serve to hurt us. We've been around for four years with seven game releases, multiple talks on game development and ethics, and are an incorporated company - we don't need to prop ourselves up with false reviews. Our dedication speaks for itself here.

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

So, after asking around, we don't remember who put in the semicolon. Here's an explanation of the title by the concept creator though!

"My original title had been "If in your dreams the flood," in homage to "If on a winter's night a traveler," this novel by an Italian guy named Italo Calvino. With the imagery of a flood having been taken as inspiration from "Ophelia," the Lumineers song. It beats me what the semicolon is supposed to represent actually." ~Electro

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

I'm going to have to ask you to stop harassing our fans, please. We don't make puppet accounts - we're too busy for something like that, even if we wanted to. I really do appreciate the feedback you've given us and others in the EVN community, but your rhetoric here is offensive to the community at large. Just because someone is trans doesn't mean they are fake - while where you live it might be less common, trans people aren't uncommon here in the west. You'd be hard pressed to find a college student who doesn't know a trans person here!

Also, the EVN community is a very  LGBT positive community, which naturally attracts a lot more trans people (as it's a place they can be more free of abuse). So, believe me, you will see plenty more trans people around these parts - and Watercress, roughly 30 people strong, is about 50% LGBT, with more than one trans person working for us. You'll see a lot of that in the EVN community :)

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Yeah, we definitely didn't have a lot of time to work on the GUI and the meta interactions, which did detract from what we were trying to do. It was rough making all three games in a month, but that's no excuse - we've learned from this and will definitely be on top of it next time! We never really prioritized GUI in the past, but now we know that we really should :)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm very happy that people have enjoyed this game despite the relative lack of polish, and I promise we'll revisit it to make it less buggy and easier on the eyes visually. 

I'm glad you got the title ;D I spent a while finding a good one. I think the meta narrative (the story inbetween the games) will be more clear with a touch up and with the release of the game that character stars in - Avitus. This Anthology was (not so) secretly tied into our flagship release, which I'll have to reintroduce to our fans sometime soon.

Again, thanks for playing - it means the world to us!

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director (and Cautionary Tale Project Director, Let Go. Game Director)

I've contacted the writer who decided upon that title, and I'll see if he can respond to you directly :)

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

We appreciate the feedback!

For Let Go., we didn't want to explore why the boyfriend must die. The focus is on the two characters and how they interact with each other, rather than the world around them. We feel that any focus on the 'why' of the situation would detract from what we felt was most important: the two characters. It seems artificial because it kind of is - it's a situation there to explore the characters, rather than for the characters to look at or solve. More of a character study than a game about a world. 

For If in Your Dreams; the Flood,  it's similar to Let Go. Background isn't as important because the feeling of impending dread is so common, that we don't have to establish a why behind it. Another case of 'characters and their interactions trump the need for background information'. 

For Beyond Yesterday's Grasp, we didn't insert a trans character - he's just trans, just like the MC of Let Go. is a straight African American male, and the MC of Flood is a young white girl. BYG isn't telling the story specifically of a trans character who experiences what they experience, it's about a character who just so happens to be trans. 

I hope that helps you understand our perspective, and we'll be sure to take your comments into consideration in our future projects! This game was made in a single month, and there are obvious flaws that we'll be addressing in the future (a lot comes from the lack of time). Thanks again!

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director.

Thank you! We appreciate it :D

Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Thank you so much for the support! We had  donations on by accident, and turned them off because it was a volunteer project. We donated the $101 we got from it to charity. Thanks for donating, it's extremely helpful to us. I'm glad you liked the game too!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Thank you so much! It definitely hit close to home for a lot of us, and is a story I personally really wanted to tell. Thanks for playing it!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Thank you for playing it! We had a blast making it oh so long ago. 

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

We'll be updating it in the future... eventually. It's on our list, but it's not our priority. We'll be polishing all of our old games in time. Sorry for any issues you'll find in these game jam releases!

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Maybe your firewall/security settings are stopping it? Check running it as administrator. We're going to be getting to updating this game in the future, but it's not our top priority as of right now :)

~Wolf, Watercress Studio Director

Hi, Zelan, thank you for the bug report.  These are known issues, however our programming director is indisposed and has no internet. We'll be able to squash these bugs by the end of the month, hopefully.  Sorry about that.

Lovely game. Amazing art, great dialogue, all around just wow.

I love the aesthetic, and the atmosphere is ridiculously great. It pulls you right in.

Thanks for creating this piece of art.

Thank you so much for your support! Glad to hear you enjoyed it :D

~Wolf, Studio Director