To fellow possible players:
1. This is a pretty simple game, the lore isn't super deep, but it's a free short game that is really calming. It touches on topics of growing up most of all to me. I think that there's a lot of room for more story here, the concept is definitely appealing, and could be used to discuss further information. The dice mechanic was very cute and charming, it was a bit strategic, but ultimately wasn't super difficult, just added a bit more whimsy I feel.
2. The art is cute, it wasn't a life changing game, but it was genuinely worth the time, I just enjoyed the time spent. Definitely could do more, but this seems like a very sweet indie game that was made from the heart. I do think it's worth playing, and honestly, if you don't like it, I only spent 1.5 hours because I got the remaining achievements, it's shorter than that if you don't. One playthrough is at most 45 minutes, you can do a lot worse with your free time.
3. In 1.5 hours I also managed to get all the achievements if this matters to you.
To the developer:
I haven't checked how many games you've done, but I wanted to give you some of the feedback I had that might help with future games, should you make some!
1. I think with the current level of content and the art, I would be most willing to spend about $5 for this game in it's current state. I'd be willing to spend at most $10, but I do think I would have been disappointed if that had been the price. Obviously I'm super stoked I didn't have to spend anything, but I wanted you to have this feedback for future references if you do end up making more games (again, I need to check if you have).
2. The story was good, but I think a bit more clarity could have helped me. I think it seemed like there was either a mental health implication that made them use dice or they were mute. I wasn't sure which, both I think are great to touch on, but I think a bit more emphasis on which it was would have been helpful for me personally. The rest of the plot was great, it felt very good for a young person, I think it would be best for an elementary or middle school audience (I'm not sure if that was your goal of who'd play it, but I thought it might help to know this!)
3. The characters were very endearing actually! I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by how much I could see their personalities shine through despite the duration of the game. If I had to pick the best quality of this game, it would definitely be the characters and how well thought out they are. I think my favorite characters were Moss and Stone, they had a very sweet relationship. I enjoyed the bird having a slight accent, given they have traveled from a different region as another thing I enjoyed.
4. I do think that there were a lot of briefly touched on topics relating to mental health, none of them felt poorly represented, but in a longer game, I think having one be the main focus to emphasize on would be a good way to center the story. I think keeping the other topics is also a totally great idea. In this idea, I mostly mean perhaps the main topic could be grief and how that impacts the characters, but at the same time, as each character is different they may have their own ways of coping, say one is avoiding talking about it, another is using humor, this touches on other aspects of mental health, but keeps a strong central idea. (Again, this is just a recommendation if you ever make a longer game, I think for this one, it was fantastically well done.)
5. The last recommendation I'd like to offer is related to achievements, I've recently come to greatly enjoy searching for them and finding them all. With this game, my biggest wish was that the achievements were better spread out to drive me to play not just certain sections, but also to replay the whole game. To explain, I played through 1 time entirely, but I was missing a few achievements that did require me to go back through, namely Flower's Dilemma: Empathy, Flower's Dilemma: Creativity, Bird's New Home: Empathy, and Bird's New Home: Wisdom. I might have swapped those a little, but the important part is because I wanted these achievements I was incentivized to play at least two more times. However, because the only sections with these incentives were the days with Flower and Bird, I didn't feel like spending time to play the entire game again, which I do think I would have done if they also effected characters like Pond for example, or Rat. I noticed that little details did change depending on how you solved things, so I think if the achievements had been more spread out and didn't end on Bird, that I would have seen more of these changes. This isn't a complaint of course, I enjoyed it, achievements were reasonable, and I had a good time, but if in a future game, you want to promote doing multiple playthroughs, it would be important to space out achievements to cover the entire duration of the game. If that's not super important to you, then I think you're totally fine! Your achievements were logical, story based, and a couple required some thought, but didn't result in intense strain or annoyance.
I hope all of this can be of help! I am really glad that I decided to try this game and play it. (I will also be checking to see if there are more games that you've made haha!)
