This game's atmosphere is incredibly reminiscent of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale - one of those dark, unpolished, terrifying tales. After completing it, you get the impression of having touched something ancient, dark, and hopeless. The monochrome style, dominated by a bright, unsettling red accent, creates the feeling of a dynamic, ancient engraving coming to life. This visual austerity masterfully builds the atmosphere!
The text is concise, leaving a sense of mystery and things left unsaid, as if something is always being withheld from you.
The atmosphere of this insular cult, lost somewhere in the darkness, is perfectly conveyed. The cult has its own language, rituals, greetings, and customs, which effectively immerses the player in the narrative. And just like in any cult, the protagonist doesn't seem to fully grasp what is happening - or at least, that's the impression I got. It's unclear whether we have cursed the village or saved it, locked it in a repeating cycle of sacrifice, or maintained the balance of nature.
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Maypole by the Sea's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Category: Cinematography | #41 | 4.231 | 4.231 |
| Story | #45 | 4.346 | 4.346 |
| Category: Voice Acting | #56 | 3.154 | 3.154 |
| Visuals | #59 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Overall | #59 | 4.269 | 4.269 |
| Category: Music | #80 | 3.846 | 3.846 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Content Warnings
Animated Blood, Blood and Gore, Violent
Log Line
A village shrouded in constant darkness, yearning for flesh. A maypole on the shore, awaiting its reward.
Team Credits & Cast
cabycat - Art, Story, Sound Design, QuailLynx - Story, Ritesh - Programming, Porcimus Maximus - Music
Was your submission created with Visual Novel Machinery?
Comments
Absolutely gorgeous!! Moody, philosophical, and incredibly beautiful. Reminds me of the best literary representations of pagan worship and belief systems: screaming with a sense of difference and alternate morality, compelling and unknowable in a way that feels both alarming and tactile. Engrossing, fun, and a challenging playthrough: absolutely hate the lack of options when it comes to saving, but by gum, it's also a choice I fully respect at the same time. Every path has a consequence, after all. ✨
Thank you for trying the game out, the game does open with quite a difficult choice and there's a chance the player might miss out on 80% of the content but it's part of making VN fun. Death and choices have consequenses.
The reason for no saving is because we were just trying out our new solution in Unity for making VN and sorts so it is missing some features that Renpy has, and jam is a perfect place to test it out. If we have time in the future we would definitely update the tools and features so you can save.
I played your game. It's enchanting and terrifying! It perfectly creates the atmosphere of a dark and gloomy surreal tale about hunter and hunted.
I want to especially praise the sound. The sound is simply stunning. It's reminiscent of early Japanese sound novels, where the player (reader) relied more on the sound than the image.
By the way, the image is also beyond praise. I really like your style; everything is done in black and red tones, but more black, which makes the red less jarring and more organic (and adds to the gloom).
I was sad to kill the deer, but that's just my opinion. I understand that this is artistic intent.
I noticed a few oddities. For example, sometimes the sounds would cut out and then restart (in the scene where the deer notices us). Perhaps this is a bug.
Even after finishing the game (I chose to starve the village), I found myself back at the main menu, but I couldn't restart the game—the button was grayed out.
Thanks for game! Now that I've looked at the screenshots, I see I haven't even seen half the game. I think I'll come back soon and play it to the real ending. It was a truly interesting experience. I have a lot to learn from you!
This was so cool, I absolutely adored the vibe of it! It felt very pagan-y, very much like something out of folklore, and a large contributor to that was the fantastic art style! In particular I really liked the constant mentions of the three gods, as well as the mentions of the deer not having its organs all be in the right places; they made it feel quite eldritch.
If you team continues to update this, I hope that you add more settings to the game - being able to control the speed of the text would have been nice, as would be the ability to view a log of the last few lines we've read. I also ran into an issue where the sound wasn't playing, and I only realised that it even had sound when I refreshed the page after I beat it. (Sorry, I think that I left the tab while it was still loading and that affected it somehow!)
Giving us the option to only talk to three of them each day while offering four overall helped to make the choices feel more meaningful, and I really liked getting to know each of the people that I spoke to - I can see that a lot of thought was put into them and they all felt well fleshed-out. I had a very good time with this; great job making it!
Thank you for trying the game, we've put a lot of effort into world building in order to keep things coherent with each other.
On the technical side, we have a custom solution for VN in Unity (which uses graph node) so there are still some functions that we are still missing (like going back, save, etc). This game is partially part of us trying it out as well, so we are building the solution along with the game at the same time.
The sound issue is pretty new, maybe it's a Unity thing (?), thank you for notifying us since we don't want people to miss the sounds since we did put a lot of effort into it. We'll probably put up a warning and try to investigate.
Blessing of the Three and The Pale Moon upon thee!
This looks so stylish and moody! I really loved that there was an interactive map. And wow such a hard decisions to make! The music fit perfectly!
The ending really made me feel things. I choose Sage because she volunteered but oh man, probably Thyme would be best for the greater good because she is most at risk at dying anyway. No right choices here. You see I was genuinely invested in the story!
Everyone did a great job. Thank you for making this game!
Thank you for trying out our game, we are definitely trying other games right now as well as patching the game, though time is limited right now for us.
I myself did watch the playthrough, the game does allow you to choice to spare the creature, though with consequences if you follow through with your choices.
Very unsettling atmosphere and the art was very good :) Great job!
Very cool. The art is great, and the atmosphere is grim and mysterious. Also...
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Absolutely stunning art! The color scheme is so haunting, and the CRT effect really brings it over the top - the whole thing almost feels like an old tapestry. The story is also written beautifully, with a really great poetic quality that aligns beautifully with the music and eerie vibes. Wonderful worldbuilding too - absolutely captures your attention and leaves you intrigued, and I'm glad you all updated following submission. Absolutely tremendous work, from the whole team!!!
I love how the eeriness eats at you when you play the game. The music and the red really bind it together for me. Thanks for the game!
I really dug this! Cool aesthetic, just enough worldbuilding to really pop, great stuff! I'm going to have Scarborough Fair stuck in my head forever now, but there are worse fates.
A well crafted game with a very cool aesthetic and poetic story! I did notice a typo here and there, and when you click the CRT button it does advance the textbox as well so I missed a few lines and couldn't go back to read.
Story and art is super good! And thanks to the guidance of the Pale Moon I managed to reach the ending and got all their true names! ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ
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