Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

This is quite the wordy visual novel, containing a great deal of lore in its writing. Nothing wrong with that, of course, as I'm the sort of person who loves getting into lore. I'll note that in my playthrough, I got up to the point where the "attack" on the city was ended and our hero had home and had just woken up.

As a visual novel, it's hard to really give good feedback as the primary aspect of any visual novel is its story. Unless it's designed as a very short experience, something that can be done in no more than an hour, then it's hard to judge the story. As such, I usually focus on the writing in front of me; trying to find typos, point out sentences that seem odd and looking for inconsistencies in what's told. I have several here which I'm going to cover in the order I wrote them. I'll likely start with quotes from the story for a lot of these to highlight what was in it, followed by what should be corrected and why.

First, what gender is the main character? When I was choosing how the main character was to look, I assumed it was a girl. However, then the player is taken past a portrait of what I assumed was to be of their parents and them as a child given how they refer to it as "simpler times." This portrait claims the child is a boy. Then it's stated later on that the player character is a girl. So what's up with the whole portrait?

"... handing back the torn pieces back to a stunned clergyman." Having the word "back" in this sentence twice is redundant. I'd recommend removing the first use of it. so it reads "... handing the torn pieces back to a stunned clergyman."

"... then the people of the city would be encountering some serious wild magic. Spirits are unpredictable and wild." This is basically the same as above, with the description of "wild" being redundant. I'd recommend removing the wild descriptor from the last part.

While I can't identify the exact line for this, I did remember that the player character described it as being afternoon while they were making their way to the temple. However, later on Uncle implies it's still morning given he wanted to do some pre-lunch shopping.

"Before you can fully realize what's going on, you stop feeling his warmth on my wrist." The use of the term "my" is wrong here. I assume it's supposed to be "your wrist."

My next note is going to be a bit different. It had to do with your choice of a curse word to include. I'm going to outright say this: don't use that word. The presentation of the story and world feels so disconnected from the real world, which is a good thing. It's easy for someone to get immersed into this world. Throwing in such a real world curse just breaks that immersion. If you want the character to curse, I'd say make up your own words for this rather.

When conversing with the spirit known as Liaison, the game labels it as "Spirit." I think it would be better to label is as "Liaison" after it requests to be called that.

"Three clergy member surround the machine, surrounded by a small group of curious spirits." So this isn't redundant, but I'm just never a fan of seeing larger words used repeatedly in a single sentence. In this case, it's the word surround. I think it'd be good to change one use to something else. Maybe change the second use to be the term "encircled" ?

I also noticed that the last line of dialogue between the player character and Liaison isn't labelled. This line starts with "The recent activity will make the journey back difficult."

"They do mean no harm." While I get what's trying to be said, this sentence just doesn't make sense. It should just be "They mean no harm."

"We will try out his hypothesis of yours." This one is just a typo, where the T from "this" is missing.

"the events that happened on the spirit world." Another typo, "on" should be "in."

"You have done well, and for both your and your family's efforts I humbly thank you." When I first read this sentence, something about it felt weird to me. Technically the sentence is correct, but I think it could be done in a way that makes it feel less weird. Perhaps something like "You have done well, and I humbly thank you for the efforts of both you and your family."

That's where my notes end. I hope this helps!

Hello! Tonic here. Thank you for sharing your game! Fantasy/Mystery with a focus on lore/story-richness is my absolute favorite, so I really enjoyed this! 🔮✨ The general vibe of magical mystery + arcane industry was a delight.

The overall narrative was very compelling, with the spirit world being so misunderstood and exploited by the descendants of Lor. It was really awesome how you sent the player over to the spirit world to see and hear how different it is in person. I also really liked being able to speak directly to the spiritual residents who are a collective of all those in the city who have come before, driven wild by the living's miscalibration of the crystals.

Lira being the "last hope" in a line of more empathetic folks (like her dad, and then Hiram) was a nice touch as well, very whole-world-against-me high stakes feeling, though I felt bad Lira lost both of her relatives in the unfortunate political/magical chaos. It was touching to see the moments when her loved ones protected her and shielded her from the other side.

The archbishop was a good expression of the sort of hyper-polite and charismatic personality that gains a foothold where they shouldn't, particularly in governing/religious associations, and causes so much damage in these sorts of closed-door power struggles. I was hoping the crystal would just zap him to cinders, ahaha;;

Also, the music was incredible!! I'm not sure if you all made it yourselves, but if not, the tracks you selected were absolutely perfect. I really loved that you changed it so often, for all of the different areas and moments. It makes a huge difference, and really elevates the air of the scenes.

The art and color schemes were also really pleasant, and at times, ethereal. Seeing Hiram's design, as well as the Lor tragedy statue with the crystal jutting out at the top + reaching hands from the earth, really made me want to investigate this game. I loved both of those designs and their colors.

A few feedback notes:

-There was a lack of music for the main menu, unless it just wasn't playing? I think adding an ambient track here as well would be great to establish the mood!

-The settings menu was very sleek and clear, but the style doesn't really match the rest of the game, I feel. If you could bring cohesion to the style, like making it match the gilded frame for the dialogue/prose, for example, I think that would make a good impression!

-The music doesn't properly fade out + into each track when the music changes. There are abrupt stops and starts that are somewhat distracting.

-The scene shift from the beginning, with Mother, to in your room alone, years later, was a bit unclear. I didn't know that it was supposed to be the same person/child at first.

-I figured it out by fiddling, but in the beginning, I was very unsure of what to do to solve the crystal alignment click-puzzles. But I really liked that you included those elements! I also liked the choose-your-own-details for Lira at the beginning. And the hover tooltips for glossary terms were great.

Overall, super nice job! Thanks again for sharing! 💖

The story started out a little slow to hook me but Im curious to see where it's going. Some choices seemed a bit unimportant to me (like height and eye color) while in other situations I would have liked to have more interaction/agency. Overall nice little read, I liked the music/atmosphere and colors used. 

I recorded my reaction here: sorry for all the outside noise of my family doing stuff in the background.