I don't get it, it's a free 6-hour adventure game with years worth of custom made art panels, original soundtrack, multiple endings, endearing narrative, creative puzzles, and compelling characters. That... makes no sense... Thank you? I buy games 10 times worse than this, just putting it out there.
What is the catch? Well, it's made in Ren'Py (generally a VN centric engine), which makes it kinda sluggish and not very intuitive control wise for a point & click adventure, although funny enough it is kinda neat to be able to scroll the game backwards. So it plays like a point&click game, but still limited by its visual novel sequencing, if that makes sense. If you can ignore that, the game manages to go from unassuming chill experience to one of the most amazing psychological games I ever played, interesting characters, weird story twists, so many great ending panels.
To be fair! Even though it's mechanically inferior to an AGS game, I am actually amazed you made an adventure game this long in Ren'Py, I have seen a few devs attempt doing so, and it was much, much worse. So you kinda did an amazing job with inferior tools, so I guess it's more like a complement, but the end result is still maybe not ideal. Frankly I think the mechanical slog of this game probably undermines your capabilities, this is clearly an amazing game and the more I played it, the more I fell in love with it.
Like you made all of that custom art for nearly every part of the game, the journal, the mechanical puzzles, the hints, the books, all the visual changes, like all of this is a mark of a fantastic adventure game, it's just that, the interactions can be a little odd, as well as leapfrogging over the item limit. Also, this is not a game where you want to skip dialogue, trust me, the more you try to brute force the game, the more it will punish you, hints are in the text.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) When the dev said it took years to make, I believe it, like maybe it made a bad first impression with how simple the animation was, but man, it had an absurd amount of custom art panels, so many cool character specific moments, everything feels handcrafted, even simple UI and page elements, just fantastic visual experience, much more elaborative than you might think
(+) The variety of puzzles was up there with some of the better adventure games, and you also don't shy away from making like custom interactive puzzles, not just making item to item interactions, but also having those narrative based riddles, sometimes foreshadowing them hours in advance. All kinds of puzzles where you change the scenery or interact with the game in unique ways.
(+) I didn't think too much of the narrative and the characters for the first few hours, the interactions were cute and all, but by the end, yeahh, &&&&& amazing story, and a free game, what the %%%%, so ***** good. Digital Applause all day from me, I don't even believe what I played.
(+) Nice achievement support, several endings (most of them are meant to be abrupt though)
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
- maybe make the turn page corners darker, I missed them for like an hour, also in adventure games, it's a good idea to change the color of your pointer when you hover over something
- Ren'Py, it's just not great for making traditional adventure games. You still did a great job using it, better than any developer that I have seen, but it's still Ren'Py, it's not an adventure game engine. So a lot of the issues that I do have with the game, are mostly the nature of what you using, not really your fault to be honest.
- the most notable complaint is not having an easily accessible inventory, you have to do 2+1 click to select 1 item at a time, and use it on the item. Not sure if you could make it, but I have seen some games do like a scroll option for items in the inventory, maybe would help a bit.
- I felt the last horror section was very, very punishing with trial and error, you basically forced me save scam it, it's not hard once you know what you doing, but until then, just pure pain
- the marble puzzle with 4 circles, it does not follow the 1>1>1>1 logic anymore, it follow the other 2 logic hints that you listed, so that threw me off, because the hint mentioned the season progression
- the hints sometimes felt a bit odd with the wording, like you help a lot sometimes, and then you like, now just find the next puzzle at random..... mokay
- obviously some specific crashes, we talked in the hub about those, probably some other things I already forgot
[b] Overall Thoughts: 8/10 [/b]
Even using this visual novel engine, by the second half it was one of the most amazing games that I played in the medium (except well, the engine mechanics), feels like it took you years to draw all of it? So many cool art panels, so many interesting character moments and tone changes in the narrative, really just great experience. The puzzles were a bit challenging, actually made me think outside the box many times, very creative logic overall. It's just a very thematically driven game, everything had care and love put into it.
It might feel a bit basic at first, stay with it, the game is an experience. I think it was amazing. I did not expect it from a free game in a million years, it does not even make sense. Got ost to support your work, hope you get some love.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
