itch.io

Wow, wow, wow!! Such a cool game, such a cool story. There are lots of things that I've probably missed, but I felt a lot from what I was able to understand. I really cried on that last day. I felt that the protagonist had a very valuable life, but full of regrets. 

Vo-Mit is an interesting character. You did a  great job drawing her to be so cute and so threatening. I'm very curious about what she's doing. Is everyone else fiction to her? So interesting! 

Thank you for reminding us all to live with our regrets and live as hard as we can.

I'm excited to see what else you've made and what you'll do next.

FANTASTIC WORK! Each route's writing is super engaging.

I'm not quite sure who to create the final sprite designs to, were they drawn by Foil? Everyone's visions collided very nicely to make some fantastic character designs. Seeing Gabrielle's gloves immediately placed the games time period.

Awesome work on the sound design as well. The beginning riff of Marshall's theme sounds really familiar and it scratches an itch inside... Just generally pleasant and "of the time," maybe? 

I haven't gotten into The real classic Japanese visual novels yet, but the game's art perfectly gives of the "vibe" of them I have in my head. Especially my subconscious association to the more recent subversive stories like You and Me and Her and Doki Doki Literature Club

The UI works so wonderfully. The day/night counter is so charming. It immediately gives the feel that this is going to be a 7 hr long dating sim where you have to juggle gift giving and mini-game segments. And of course, that damn 2nd half UI shift made my stomach drop.

All four routes, the second half I got unintentionally matched the character I tried to score the most points with, so I thought, "interesting, all the girls I pursue think I was trying to obtain the other one, is this a theme about projection and insecurity?" 

So it was surprising to read in the postmortem that the actual functionality is that the second half matches who you have less points with, which makes a lot of sense

Thank you for the experience!

Really charming! I love the environments and each setting kept me on my toes. The original motel snooze already had charming art, but this is a huge step up!

 The story is a bit confusing in the end, but open ended stories do suit this genre. I'm still not clear on whether the dream worlds are Jamie invading the other guests dreams, or if it's more of a shared space. Also interesting that most of the sweet dreams are earned through doing kind deeds to others (except for the poor grillin' dreamer), but still have negative results. Again, a bad ending suits a yume nikki inspired story, so it fits.

This game is awesome and both the writing and art were so good. Thank you both for creating something so cool..!

The character art is so good, and I love the backgrounds too. With the filter it's a little hard to tell, are the backgrounds 3d modeled or drawn? The warehouse looks especially good.

The fight scenes are really well written, each injury feels so painful to read!!

Lev is such a bad and good person that I love her and love to hate her. The way she enforces her will on this freshly-born slave is pretty hard to watch, but it's what makes the story interesting. She's both polite about it and attentive to Nikko's comfort when it suits her, while all of it is in service of her own selfish interests.

I was rooting for Nikko to leave and find her own purpose in life, but the ending was fitting. Maybe they'll make their own form of happiness together, or maybe the bad days will outweigh the good

Thanks so much for the recommendation! I hadn't heard the term blaxploitation before and it's a really interesting genre and piece of history. Thank you again for all your insights ^.^

Awesome game. I love the UI and how it allows for the pretty cgs to stay up while showing Orion's unique sprites. 

The relationship between a sentient sword and the one who carries it will always be a cool story to tell. I love the reveal of Selene's whole deal, such a cool character. I wound up liking Sphene a lot too, she's so committed to her belief in her need to be consumed, to her own detriment. It's interesting how much cannibalism comes up in Yuri games in particular. Girls and their oral fixations

Deeply unpleasant vn, but I couldn't put it down. It's sad getting to know a lot about the girls before they're inevitably killed by us. Nikki and Maria are both really good at being sympathetic characters, and even though Denver is grossed out by Gina I found her to be a decently understandable awkward horny teen. All the girls are too trusting of Denver (especially gina please gina I know you're desperately horny but please have more self preservation) but since it's a way to move the plot along I don't really see it as personal character flaws 

I know Charity didn't supply a bolt gun or any other semi-humane way of going for the brain efficiently since she doesn't care are being merciful, but I kept yelling at Denver to at least cut their large arteries while they're still unconscious so they'd hopefully bleed out before waking up. Clearly preserving the "freshness" of the blood in their limbs doesn't matter since we don't even get any details on how the body parts are being preserved....

Denver seemed to grow to like killing more over time, but simultaneously hated them screaming and fighting back, so you'd think after the first time she would have been more efficient. Well, she's meant to be sloppy and deeply flawed, and it make the murders even more impossible to stomach as ignorable or tolerable, so it makes a good lasting impression  

What's better than pink danganronpa blood? SPARKLEY pink blood ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

I feel like there's some sort of theme that could be made out of how we're introduced to Charity verbally picking apart these girls' bodies and personalities, and it's easy to grow numb to it as classic maladjusted teenager stuff that Charity would, hopefully, grow out of in time (although she'll be forever responsible for the damage she caused). And then during the murder scenes, she makes Denver literally pick them apart, and Denver even gets in on the complaining with how hard it is to cut into certain areas and scoffing at their involuntary reactions. Some kind of objectification parallel....

thanks for making something!

The bonus scene is based on hidden affection points, you can follow the ending guide if you don't want to use trial and error

Adapting renpy games to android is a huge pain unfortunately :( I think I've seen a couple people pull it off but I have no clue how they got it running

Really interesting zine, thank you for making it. I think we share a lot of the same media niches, so I can recognize a lot of the media you're talking about. I can understand to the frustration with finding characters that are central and active participants in the plot and ALSO black in these genres. Thank you for making art that you care about, and I hope you're able to find community in the indie creative communities

The rest of this is white yapping so feel free to stop reading here

While it's kinda straightforward to look up "fantasy books by black authors" and get a wide-ish pool to choose from (although they're mostly north american in mainstream book lists), it's a lot harder to find manga inspired, 2000s scene inspired (mostly thinking of hazbin and panty stocking here but idk the right term for that), and jrpgs that are made by black people and thus depict a black person's life accurately. You're filling a needed niche by being yourself and making what you like making

I've seen criticism of making a character with an anime face and not adding lip lines or a wider nose because it's lazy and doesn't look black, so it's interesting to see the perspective of someone that prefers it that way. I guess anime faces don't look much like any one person to begin with, so why start trying to be detailed with one single race?

Thanks for introducing me to a few more rpgmaker games to check out, and for making cool stuff. I just noticed you have a dress-up game and it's definitely going to consume my life for a few hours

Another awesome visual novel! The story has some really interesting layers. Nina's a really cool protagonist, and PB has some interesting layers to his motivations. The environment design to the rooms is really pretty! 

I especially love the vibes of the dance floor, and the refrigerator room. I really fell into the puzzle game atmosphere once I saw the weird machines in there :3 The lounge of course is perfect too. Potentially the highest plushie count in any of your games yet!

Like all puzzle game settings, it does become funny to imagine the workers going about their day with the security measure in place... why have a blood scanner to your own office that, instead of sorting which people are allowed in, lets ANYONE in as long as they know their blood type? But again, this is a non-issue because it's fun gameplay

I really like that the noisrev world has a unique blood type system. They seem to primarily be named after different shades of red, but "lady" throws me for a loop XD Maybe it's short for the name of a red plant like rasp and toma?

[I'm chattering a bit about the plot below here while trying not to spoiler anything too important. Hopefully the page break will come into effect anyway]

The returning cast is all really good, especially Maggie and Mary, whose designs are so cute. All of your outfit designs are awesome, but Mary's cute hat really makes me happy.

It's interesting seeing both of their less kind character traits come out in the game compared to games where they are protagonists, considering theyre friends with PB and know what he's up to. 

Their own games do leave room for them to be less than morally perfect. They both wind up brushing paths and befriending people with less than stellar reputations for violence, although they aren't active participants themselves. It makes sense that the world has a way of wearing down their morals, and hey. Snitching to the police is never as cool as having a murderer bestie!

Something I noticed is that in the cycle continues ending, the woman PB meets has the fish fin/gills that are often short-hand representations for mermaids... and sirens. Could it be that PB is a magnet for maneaters? Or he's intentionally seeking them out? Well, the other two victims listed are a "horse" and a "beta fish"... there are some mythical predatory horses, but I don't know about beta fish. It may just be that I'm reading too much into it.

....after taking a long break, I just realized I was adding my final score with the heart score BEFORE multiplication every time, even though I wrote both down. Moral of the story, take a break I suppose. Thanks for your help!

Oh awesome! I'll be sure to buy it when I can! Thank you ^.^

Thanks so much for giving everybody advice down here evolescent :3 

Have you noticed if there multiple versions of the board? I don't see any circle marks at all and adding the darts stuck into the board as if they might be the circles doesn't work. 

I can't tell if I made a wrong choice earlier in my play through so the board is different than it should be, or if I'm not thinking flexibly enough

Really fantastic job! Each ending is really satisfying in its own way, while giving that feeling of, isn't there something else we should be doing? I'm happy I got to meet these characters and happy I got to grieve them, too.

You did a fantastic job with the soundtrack! Thanks for making it extra sad :3!

Wow wow wow! Such a mysterious world... I'm excited to see more!

Fantastic opening! You make use of framing really excellently. It makes the slapstick really engaging, and I can only imagine how it could be used to bolster the horror elements.... exciting stuff!

Thanks so much! Some the Haley choices would've taken a long time to get right

I have such an itch for games that just let you wander abandoned, gloomy places. This vn is perfect for that. Really good industrial atmosphere (duh since it's a space ship XD) and reading the journal entries and logs is a very sad but interesting experience. 

It was really cool to learn after the fact that each room was written by someone else. The protagonist is examining each room with a forensic, archival goal, hoping to learn more context about the wreck. And the project itself is going to become a time capsule for the personal tastes of each writer, what they wanted to convey with their characters and what their idea of tragedy would be.

This model is adorable! Winged serpents are super neat

I know devs are worried about being too hand-holdy but in this situation I could have really used a tutorial. All I can do is walk around and enter the house and till the soil with the hoe. I appreciate that you participated in this game jam though. It's hard to make things and there's probably technical errors that are preventing me from getting further in the gameplay. I hope your future projects are fun and furfilling!

A fun exercise in dramatic irony :3 what a great project!

I'm too emo rn to make a coherent comment on how well done this game is, but fantastic job to the whole team on thiS

Felt like the sister was the obvious choice at first and then got floored by the best friend route. It's so hard knowing a full day w one means so many things are left unexplored with the other. Thaaaat's life!!!

Boyfriend route made me cry quite a lot which is very impressive

There were no acorns that day.....

I had a lot of fun with this one. The protagonist is cute and a relatable, being a collector. I appreciate when "common" animals like flys can get appreciated for their cuteness potential.

Thank you for sharing your work with us. It gets me inspired to work in rpgmaker some more. 

Super fun game! I love the puzzles and the collage art.  I was surprised it was made in 2003, very glad it's been remastered because I might never have found it otherwise. 

also the ocean view start screen art after completing the game is so beautiful and haunting. big props for such good art

A really good story! I enjoyed the art work, the cute walk sprites that gave everyone personality, and the sound design.

my only nitpick is that when june comes off unexpectedly dense in the cabana scene with her and mccoy. if my friend started chugging water in the middle of the night and lashing out I think most people would conclude that a medical problem is happening. Obviously she still couldn't have done much to help him in that situation, but I'm surprised that the thought never crossed her mind. 

Other than that she's a solid character with interesting chemistry with her friends, and her reaction to the terrible situation she's in is compelling. she's even super brave when she pulled that man back on the beach, despite all her friends ignoring it.

It took me a bit to piece together that the reason everyone started compulsively eating iron was so that they would sink better 0.0 really cool!

Oh, that makes sense, thank you. I can imagine it being a cool easter egg to find in the files. I'm happy I got to read it, since it enriches the ending a lot. My computer had an update or two in between initially downloading the game, which could be why the script didn't execute as intended. 

I guess I am a few years late to the party here haha! I've had downloaded for a while and finally got around to reading. I had a wonderful time! Thank you so much for sharing your stories. I'm very curious to read more of your work :3

Really tense and beautiful story! I enjoy the different card readings. The fact that they all lead to the protagonist resonating badly with them probably says a lot about how strong her guilt and attraction is. 

I get the same run-time error at the line "in the end, the one who killed her wasn't....(spoilers)" on each route, which I don't think is intentional, but it actually comes at the perfect moment. The note.text displayed inside the error seems like an aside from the rest of the narration that's meant to be obscured, so... Maybe it's ludonarrative genius :3

To double-check, is the story meant to end with "it was me" or is there meant to be more that's getting cut off?

This demo is great so far! I really like all the marble designs. I hope there's more "marble world building" in the full game, like they narration mention humans as things that exist elsewhere, and the fact that the Lillies are all from the same home country. Is a manufacture style sort of like an ethnic group? How are baby marbles made? Clarke gets seen by others as young and feminine and mentions it might have to do with the clearness of their glass. All very curious....

All the characters are great too. I like how Clarke's backstory is sprinkled into relevant scenes. Their relationship with Lilco is quite interesting!

I really like this!! The sassy wizard is great and exploring the house and the shop is really fun. I like the way the dialogue boxes are structured, although it took a little getting used to

Probably about ten years or so now, I tried to make a game in powerpoint. It wound up too big and kept crashing the program. You did a great job keeping it small enough that that's not an issue, and even had room for animations!

I really like your choice of pictures and the object head people you made! They're quite delightful!

Ms. Lucy and Arthur's perspectives on what makes a good life are pretty solid, and Lucy's in particular made me tear up a little, hehe.  Both neighbors are interesting characters and feel like pretty great people to spend the end of times hanging with

I think my current interpretation of the TV is that it represents Echo (and a lot of people)'s fears about what the end of the world will feel like. The fire and neighbor on neighbor slaughter are very "revelation" and I think I've heard of religions having floods in their final days too. Ragnarök seems to end with everything underwater...

So she holes up in the mysterious room, which continues to feed her more terrible predictions. 

Meanwhile the gentle end, and beautiful lights, are something a bit more hopeful. Even though it's still the end, it's nice and you can be with your friends to see it. The fact that it's always the same, unlike the TV, seems to suggest that the narrative sees it as the "real" end of the world.  Maybe? I dunno

I do feel like the protagonist was primed by the neighbors to expect the end of the world to be nice, so maybe that has something to do with how they consistently see it was pretty and nice. Still, when Echo finally ("touches grass"haha) sees it herself outside the room, she seems to also confirm that it's similarly pleasant. Unless there's something in the air that's making them BOTH hallucinate pleasant things, and the TV was right all along!!!!

It's probably a mistake to try to find an "objective reality" in a weirdcore game anyway, ehehehe

I think the time loop function makes the message of the story more unclear. The protagonist all four endings says that they're going to keep repeating this infinitely. Maybe this represents how we're always not sure what day will be out last day, but the world keeps going regardless? Or maybe there's no metaphor to apply backwards to real life, and I should just enjoy this strange world where the end of the world happens forever and ever.

Thanks for this semi-spooky game to enjoy on Halloween!

true, that's also very possible. It would mean that Forcas is wrong in the test failed ending, but if he's only basing it on the protagonist's behavior then he would have no way of knowing

Wonderful game! I feel bad for all the background characters who didn't make it haha

Very very amused and wincing sympathetically at the fact that the game was built in the afternoon of the last day! It must have been a rush to finally submit it!

I quite like being a cyber skull. Thank you!

I'm hooked!! I love the characters and I'm a sucker for retellings of the phantom of the opera. Thank you for this demo

The art design and the design of the church is fantastic. I love the protagonist's big braids. The design of the puzzles was a little clunky, but I still enjoyed them!

(Spoiler talk below)

It's interesting to me that when you "fail the test", forcas seems to be addressing the wife's consciousness, and vice versa, when you "pass" the test, forcas seems to be speaking to the angel. If I'm understanding the story correctly, the wife tragically only gets to take control on the story path that leads to her mind being erased. She had a good heart after all, too good to survive... This is really cool!

Just realized you made an updated version too, wow! I'm looking forward to playing it. I also regret saying that it's not easy to parce facial expressions on the old art, because it actually is. Especially since there's very good body language.