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Re: Genesis's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Community's Voice | #97 | 3.107 | 3.107 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Creative Vision / Rationale / How Did You Incorporate the Theme
Our visual novel explores the subtle yet bothersome gap that separates the two hands and the ongoing attempt at bridging it that is captured in a frame held in stasis in the game jam's theme image. In our work, we explore several different ways in which such a gap is bridged, each leading to a vastly different destination than the others. It is an allegorical narrative of the human condition and the several dilemmas that we as a collective being have faced and are facing throughout our existence, as we set on a journey to find purpose and meaning.
There are 4 unique endings in all, each of them exploring different kinds of "unions". (If you have trouble finding them, do note that sometimes in life, you need to "Reject" certain things to get something else.)
I'd like to leave the rest purposefully vague since we would love if you can experience that first hand without any spoilers! Let us know if you discover all the endings!
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Comments
A great and cohesive experience! I got the Singularity of Gears ending, whose art pieces and music I loved. The descriptions were also very well written and made me wander about how the world I was in looked and felt. It was very inspiring! At first, however, I thought the cards would have more impact on the story and work as a manageable resource used to resolve the various obstacles. Instead, they acted more like a button to choose the path ahead, only having any real impact once or twice. That was a bit of a letdown. Thankfully, this being a more narrative focused game, it didn't take much away from the experience, and is really only a nitpick. Nice job!
Oh I am so glad someone finally rejected the first temptation and found that ending! That particular one is a commentary on what a likely AI technocapitalistic dystopia could be like from the perspective of the collective consciousness of humanity. Really happy that you appreciated and enjoyed it!
As for the cards system, I too initially wanted to have something deeper, which would have been more similar to the gameplay mechanics and style of Cultist Simulator / Book of Hours involving managing card resources, merging cards into new ones and each of them interacting dynamically with one another; but sadly had to forgo that ambition in order to limit the scope and be able to deliver a fully playable experience within the time restraints. While we would probably not be overhauling the gameplay of this current project, and only add some QoL features and bug fixes in the post-jam game update, I definitely want to explore a similar concept in the future with a more refined gameplay loop and a more extensive and deeper story. Letās see what Fate has in store for me ha ha.
Thank you once again for playing our game and for your kind and motivating words! It really means a lot to the entire team. š
I want to like this. The music is stellar and the concept is interesting but the game keeps freezing on me on different points, the initial quote gets stuck in the center of the screen while I play, and the text is really small and hard to read (smaller than this text). So I just couldn't get too far into it. I see from the reviews that the game is playable and good. Maybe just not happy to live in a browser window in Chrome on a Mac.
Again, loved the music and the idea.
Sorry to hear about your experience. Were you playing with your browser window set to fullscreen? We wanted to add changing font size as an accessibility feature but ran short of time, so we couldnāt manage to implement it for the game jam version. Thus our recommendation of playing the game in fullscreen. Also were you on a laptop device with a smaller screen? Would really appreciate if you could let us know that.
Another thing is that Chrome often has energy saving mode on by default on new tabs, which can affect the performance of browser games, can you please make sure that isnāt the case? The initial quote however is supposed to stay on for a few seconds, itās made unskippable by design just to force the reader to slow down their pace and take in the atmosphere, but other places shouldnāt freeze like that unless there is some battery optimization going on some way. Would really appreciate a follow up if you can.
I'm including two screenshots. The same run on the same tab on the same computer. Just moving the window from the laptop screen (the one with the tiny text) to the desk monitor (the one with the not tiny text). The text rearranges itself when you move the window. This suggest the problem is in the dpi settings of the monitors. Nothing you can control on your end. That said, I work in Unity and it has some settings to make the text size determined in your choice of pixels, cm, points, screen size percentage, etc. Most of my games have little or no text so I haven't explored that to its fullest but I presume Godot will have something similar.
You can also see the intro text stuck in the screen. This happens when you hit space while it's displaying. Something I have read impatient people do but I wouldn't know anything about that XD.
Now that I have learned I can read your game in my other screen, I'll have another go at it. Yay.
Thank you so much for sharing those screenshots and your valuable insight! š Really appreciate it a lot! I remember another player reporting the opening quote being stuck but I couldnāt replicate it myself since I was only using my mouse. Now that we know itās due to pressing Space when it is visible, we can fix it. We will also look into ways to fix the text size and make it more responsive to different screen settings, or at the very least add accessibility options for the user to be able to control it themselves. So glad you decided to give our game another chance! Hope it provides you a meaningful experience. :)
Definitely worth another go. It is indeed a touching experience. Beautifully done. Once again, the music is brilliant and the concept is quite original and well used. Really solid work.
A different issue I had now that I could progress in the game was that as I accumulated more and more cards, I kept begin forced to widen the window to fit them all. It eventually opened a second row but by then the window was already so wide that the lines of text become too long and uncomfortable to read. Also, in the moments when the cards start disappearing, being on the second row meant that I couldn't see what cards were disappearing from the top row and that's an important part of the experience. My instinct is to suggest that you stack repeated cards but that would lessen the effect of their disappearance, I guess.
Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words! š Really glad you liked it this much, it means a lot to me and the team!
I totally agree with you about the implementation of the bottom deck being quite rough, we initially thought about making it similar to BOOK OF HOURS by Weather Factory but couldnāt figure out a good way to expand and collapse the deck like that within the jam deadline. I like your suggestion about stacking the same types of cards, and I think it could work really well in our case since we only have 10 card types in all, probably can make the topmost cards on a stack burn away first so the visual effect is preserved. Iām definitely excited to revisit the project with all the wonderful feedback and valuable critique we received, and work on making it a more polished and user-friendly experience.
What stroke me first was the music which was really good. Good job on that! I realized that it was heavily a narrative-choice cards game but at a certain point I was stuck on what to do and how to progress. If I would nitpick: I'd say that the narrative was overwhelming
Glad you liked the music! If you are stuck, itās very likely you either need to put some card from the bottom deck to the slot that appears in the narrative area, or you likely havenāt picked up a newly spawned card from the narrative area so the story cannot progress until you do so.
If you can tell me the exact point, I can help you out. We have extensively playtested the game so there should be no cases where the player can soft-lock themselves, so I am fairly certain it is one of the above two cases. That being said, thank you for playing our game!
Woot, this appeared in my queue! š
The tarot cards are a very cool mechanic, especially in how they sort of represent the ideals the player/protagonist is supposed to hold. Everything burning away and leaving behind only "Fear" was a chef's kiss moment š
The storytelling was very grand and flew a little over my head, but I could still understand the intended vibes thanks to the imagery, narration cadence, and music! Great work overall, considering the unfortunate circumstances you had with programming š
Thank you so much for playing our game! Glad you liked the card mechanic. Iām assuming you went through the first path like most folks, so thereās some more surprises with cards waiting in the others, since the first ending wasnāt the worst fate one could have. ;)
The storytelling is inspired by the narrative style of Alexis Kennedy and the narrative philosophy of Hidetaka Miyazaki, so if it felt a bit ambiguous, that was purposeful, since I intend the reader to piece together the whole story and make sense of whatās happening only after they finish all 4 routes, especially the true route. I would avoid spoiling any more than that for now though, but Iām really glad that the vibes went through. Thank you once again for your kind and encouraging words!
The audio and art are in perfect harmony. It feels like stepping into a sanctuary; the texture is absolutely cinematic. I read that you have bigger plans for the future, and Iām eagerly awaiting your next project!
Thank you so much! š I am really glad that the feeling got conveyed because we were aiming for an atmospheric and immersive feel, taking the reader along with us on an allegorical journey. So happy that you enjoyed the experience!
I do have a lot of plans for the future, but letās see if Fate favours me ha ha. I do this entirely as a hobby but itās my true passion, so while I cannot be sure when the next project comes, I am actively learning when I can and exploring new horizons. One of the things Iād love to work on is my conceptualization of what a (primarily) interactive fiction game would be like when the ārogueliteā philosophy is incorporated into the game design, with the entire world and narrative changing every time the player character ādiesā, based on the actions and decisions they made in their past runs. While I have the entire story and worldbuilding set in my head, the challenging part would be the implementation since thereās probably gonna be a lot of flags and states and branches and what not to handle. Letās see how the tapestry of the Wyrd unfoldsā¦ š¤
The music and visual are good!
We are really glad you liked them! Thank you so much for playing our game!
I really love how you integrated deck-building mechanics into a visual novel, with cards! It works surprisingly well, and I think I can imagine the potential here when it goes further!
Thank you so much for playing our game! Glad you liked the idea. Itās somewhat different than how I originally imagined it to be, since I intended to let the cards interact with each other and organically combine to either form new cards or destroy one other, letting the player experiment with them more and have it be a more sandbox kind of experience, though I quickly realized that it would have been too ambitious of an idea and not something we could execute within the game jamās period and still deliver a playable experience. Itās definitely something I want to explore in the future, either as a remake of this project or probably an entirely new one if fate lets me pursue this passion of mine. Really appreciate your kind and encouraging words!
Thx for replying! Way to go :)
THE MUSIC.....IT GAVE ME CHILLLLLLS. I love how it changes throughout the game to match the mood. The deckbuilding mechanics were a pleasant surprise. This in combination with the music and art style sort of made the game give Slay the Spire vibes (great vibes to have btw). It feels like there could be a ton of endings to explore with all the different ways you can use the cards, which is very exciting. The writing was extremely well done. It was a pleasure to read and made me even more curious to explore different endings. This game just really kept me engaged. Amazing work to everyone on the team!
Thank you SO MUCH! We are so happy you enjoyed the experience, and personally, it means a lot to me that you liked the writing. š I shall also convey your praises to the rest of the team!
I initially had a grander vision where you would have been able to combine cards like in Weather Factoryās games and have a more non-linear and interconnected branching for the story, many more routes and probably thrice the number of cards used currently. š But that was too much for us to handle within the game jamās duration so we had to scope down about 7-8 times during the development process ha ha. Though I would definitely love to work on this further and create a better and more polished version if everyone else in our team is interested to continue with this project in the future.
Thank you so much once again for playing our game since being able to connect with people through my stories is the entire reason driving me to pursue game development, even though I can only afford to do it as a hobby right now. Being able to make the player live inside my worlds and experience them firsthand feels so much more rewarding than just telling them a story through an interface of lines and letters. Maybe somedayā¦ one can hope, right?
Very nice game and music! I enjoyed the story and artworks.
Few recommendations to improve for further games
But overall great work from the team! :)
Thank you so much for playing our game, we are really glad you enjoyed it! And thank you for your constructive recommendations, we highly appreciate it, and I definitely agree with all of them.
I wish we had one more day to be able to polish the game, since we were scrambling with fixing bugs and card logic and export errors on the last day and had to sacrifice on the aesthetics to focus on a fully playable build (though itās not meant to be an excuse for the shortcomings). I would love to work with the rest of our team on a post-game-jam build incorporating features like a more polished and unified UI layout, adding some noise textures to deband the background gradient, fixing the resolution crunching of the cards (Emi did an impressive job with the cards but we were just not able to figure out proper scaling techniques to put them in game without distortion :( ), fixing audio bugs and extending the duration and transition of the loop segments, adding font scaling options, and a lot more! Thank you for all the support and encouragement!
The sounds is a bit of lagging on my side
Sorry to hear that, I believe it could be due to your browser running out of allocated RAM, would you mind trying out the downloadable version? Itās at the bottom of the page.
Background sound is amazing
Thank you! Iāll be sure to convey it to our musician!
Thank you so much! It means a lot that you played and enjoyed the music.
Very interesting.. The atmosphere is overwhelming!
Thank you so much, glad you liked it! We were going for an immersive and atmospheric experience, so I am really happy it went through that way.
The artwork is beautiful!! I loved the music as well. For some reason, it kinda reminded me of the game Pyre!! Very nicely done
Thank you so much for the kind and encouraging words! I will convey your praises to our artist and musician, and I am sure they will be delighted! We are really glad that you liked it!
aah thank u!!! im so glad u enjoyed the art!!!
the audio sounds really good! i have a lot of artifacts on my end web-side causing it to sound very buggy on the web so i had to swap to windows but no biggie!! would be nice polish to make dragging cards down automatic place them cause i thought i just softlocked myself because i couldnt take the card cause the bottom slot was full and the scroll hand't appeared yet but also i may be Slow cause i remembered i could just right click)) the burn effect is very coool -- I love how the story gets enhanced by some cards automatically burning away,, 10/10 peak I had a couple of bugs that made me have to restart once (mainly a quote that was stuck on screen), but omg i wanna know if there's multiple endings if i put different cards in!! I like the overall vibe,
Thank you so much for playing our game! We were a little short on the coding department as our first programmer had to leave midway, so we werenāt able to polish it as much as we would liked to have. Will definitely see to it if we can make an enhanced version after the jamās voting period ends. :D
The web version is a bit buggy especially if the browser is not fullscreen, so we need to look into better resizing methods for the UI. As for multiple endings, yes! There are 4 unique endings in all. Without spoiling too much, it has something to do with rejecting a certain card after putting it inside a slot (there should be two buttons showing side by side below it, but they are a bit too small for my liking, sorry we werenāt able to fix it in time. D: )
Would love to know if you manage to find the other endings and your thoughts on them. Thanks once again!
As dawn breaks against the frigid smoky sky outside my window, I look back upon a sleepless night well spent. Probably one of the happiest sleepless nights Iāve ever had. This was both the first time I ever participated in a game jam, and also my first time leading a team like this. And might I say, they have all been amazing!
I donāt have a lot to say at this moment, except that I am grateful, deeply grateful to my wonderful team who were only strangers a couple of weeks ago, but have become some of the best company I ever had. Thank you Emi, Kash, Wickidie and Monarch, for your incredible efforts without which this wouldnāt have been possible. And THANK YOU to thatgamecompany for organizing this jam which unraveled the strands of Fate that brought us all together. Thank you greatly for this opportunity!
As someone who dreamed of becoming a creative designer, inspired by the likes of Hidetaka Miyazaki and Yoko Taro, but have been forced to choose becoming a doctor due to the harsh reality of living in a third world country, this gamejam has allowed me to live that fleeting dream of mine, even if for just a couple of weeks. It was beautifulā¦
Sincerely,
Imouto