itch.io

Thank you for this: it's nice to know that my thoughts were taken quite kindly. =) It also sounds like you'd already thought through pretty much everything that I noticed quite carefully, and as is often the case, it's simply a matter of (limited) time.

Well wishes for your bright future and welcome back!

I used GodotPCKExplorer (GitHub). :) I couldn't work with the format, though (.sample rather than .wav/.ogg), so I wasn't able to listen to any of them—though I found a way of converting the .ctex files into PNGs. I only spent a short while on it; I didn't go too deep.

Thank you for your blessing, though...! 😁

For what it's worth, I imagine that a fair number of people (myself included) might be interested in guitar- and piano-only versions which might be easier to interpret and learn: it's beautiful music. (^:

I've just been poking around in the game files, and it's a shame to see that there are variants of the music pieces which are unused and unreleased, such as the day theme without piano—I'd love to hear those! Might they be in a state fit for sharing/uploading?

My eyes lit up when I saw this release. Your games touched me deeply when I first played them and I still cry multiple times whenever I play Home. I loved The Alchemist, too—the 'reveal' got me sobbing too. The character art on this remake is fantastic: these look and feel just like the characters I remember—which isn't an experience I've had before.

Some thoughts, which I'll try to keep constructive where negatively critical, with an appreciation that not all of them might be actionability-wise worthwhile, and trying to avoid spoilers (I'm not sure what the Itch etiquette is):

• I found the left-aligned (as compared to centred) introduction text quite distracting, and 'wrong'-feeling, especially with the slight indent(?) of the first line.
• The cApiTaLiSaTiOn on 'Drunken Sailor' amused me. :P
• The fades are a bit intense in number, especially at the start; yet, some times it's jarring without them (like when Lia and Izara are first introduced). They could certainly stand to be quicker in some cases, if possible.
• I'm not sure that the faded, zoomed-in character portraits over the text box do much when the characters are 'in shot': I found them a little distracting too. The coloured names combined with the character facial animations (when present, which they mostly are) seem to do quite a good job.
• A couple of the pieces (2x2, O-shape) 'fought' me a fair bit in the block placement mechanism. I think that they'd benefit from their 'centres' shifting a little, if possible.
• Spontaneous, asynchronous blinking!! :D
• I loved the updated evening/conversation music, with the ambient synths(?) and dreamy piano. The guitar also feels more like the original than the original! Amazing!
• On day 3, I think that Rook would be more naturally placed on the left with Ashe during the evening conversation with Lia: he's mostly talking to the latter.
• Clarent is a good man! xD
• I get the sense that Ashe should be smiling for the line "In fact, I think a celebration is in order." on day 7.
• The final shot is beautiful, but I find it really steals the punch from the scene to not have the portrait transition to tears in tandem with the text. One more frame to provide that transition, and the first possibly placed slightly later in the text, could make a big difference to how that scene 'hits'. The outro sequence also felt quite abrupt: might that transition (to the plain text) better be a fade-out?

Feel free to ignore all that. More than anything, I'm happy to see that you're still around and working on projects like this. Thank you for existing! =)

Hey! Really love this tool, just wish that it had some of that future functionality that would make it more usable. If you ever decide that you don't feel like continuing development on it in future, would it be too bold of me to ask if you'd be willing to share the source? I'd be keen to do so myself, and it would actually be great to learn from too. If so—or even if I could just help—lemme know how I could get in contact (^:

In either case, awesome work. Really nice interface.