Love all the art and design! The retro vibes are strong here. I think the stress system is a bit overtuned and hard to track, its a great idea but it could be simplified for usability. I particularly like the 8-bit headers you made, perfect for your theme! Awesome work!

Everything I say here is just things that strike me as I read over the piece. Thanks for taking the time to make this game and good job on getting it completed in time.

Non-voting thoughts:

I'd change 'Live through your crimes' to 'Revisit your crimes'. Just a personal choice though.

Stress bonus' sometimes color just the word stress, but other times the bonus number as well. Probably should get that consistent.

I probably missed it somewhere, so you might want to include a note in the item section on if they disappear after leaving the nightmare. I assume they do.

Inspiration:

Without even needing to open the games, I can see the clear influences of two immediately.

Usability:

The hook page offers a lot of value on setting the expectations right away.

Muscular men succeeding in an attack could be an issue if some of the PCs are buff. The more they succeed, the worse it is for him!

I assume you picked the font for it's somewhat pixelated feel, but I find it a little hard on my eyes personally.

Given the 'mental' nature of this, I would love to see the stress become health. Instead of going up, it goes down so that it's a super easy leap for players to grasp exactly what's happening. Every 'stress factor' is doing damage to his mental health. This would eliminate tracking extra information but still treat things very differently from the standard. As a bonus, it means strong intelligence/wisdom sorts of characters would have the higher health in this setting if you wanted to play with that mechanic some.

This could make healing a tricky thing since you aren't healing physical health though too! If not, there needs to be an easy way to track what is happening. Maybe a little printable card for Quintus with a little stress bar or something.

I don't know how much I would ever use things from this outside of the adventure itself. That's an unfortunate thing because there's some interesting stuff here. I somewhat wish I had a player version of the spell used by the Ikari listed. Obviously a high level spell, but could be fun to take away from this!

Vibes:

Holy crap that cover. Maybe I don't get NES vibes, but I sure get a feel for the wild insanity I am in for from the moment I open the document. I was a little surprised to see the map before even seeing the inspiration, but it also gave an idea of the madness ahead.

Both in the visual way this reads like old NES stuff and the overall wild feel of the game, vibes are strong in this.

Good job on this one!

Cool idea! I love the idea of having the adventure in a dream world or a nightmare world rather.  The map is very cool and the stress dynamic is creative!

This is brilliant stuff. The pixel art is excellent and really brings that 8-bit vibe. 

The adventure itself is really cool too,I love that the patron is pretty complex and there's a lot of moral decisions for the party to make about who to help here. Like the whole stress mechanic stuff too, really innovative!

CORPSE TALK LIVE DAY 1 Reviews

Since I didn't have time to enter this year, I can't do a traditional vote, but I can comment and take the time to go over some of the popular favorites and my own. Hope this helps as you go back for edits cause you have something really fun here.

Day 1 reviews can be found here time-stamped 

YOUTUBE https://youtube.com/live/Hakl4kgs6kg

Inspiration 4
Usability 3
Vibes 4

Stay F@#ckin Rotten! Keep designing!
EFP

What a fun trippy adventure. I think the magic items and the ninja brothers especially capture the gonzo spirit within tight design constraints that I love so much in 8-bit games.