A short found artifact mystery in a mermaid palace · By
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you finished already!? you are lowkey amazing I literally posted this a few hours ago!!! You may be the first person to have finished the game besides me hahahaa.
Anyway thats GREAT news, since it means there arent any game breaking bugs and folks can make it to the end. Thanks so much for playing!!!
٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´- 💖🌺
I finally finished it! It was a lot of brain gymnastic (in the best way possible) and I started to play it properly when I picked up my book and wrote clues. I love this game and when I have money I will absolutely donate to you because this game is the first game I have ever enjoyed in a long along while. Thank you! THANK YOU!
I just finished it! by unintentionally cheating lol hope i dont get banned /j. Loved the kiki and boba cameo, im curious, was there anything with the bubble ornaments like with the seahorses/starfish/jellyfish? they were rendered so nicely i was like i GOTTA be able to do smth with these.
Speaking of the art holy freakin moly the visuals in this are gorgeous, im really inspired by the combo of visual art, writing, programming and gamed design skills all in one sheesh!
The story was rlly good omg, I thought the sister got preggers by her sisters man for a sec i was like oh this is messy... that was mainly a misenterpretation of the "why is she wearing long dresses" thing lawl, then i thought she killed Roan for his blood to give herself human legs and go live on the surface, im glad the actual story was much less unhinged. insane that this was made in 2 months i cannot WAIIIIT for the video recap, This is an awesome reminder of what's possible even if you're just one person if you've got the drive, cutegamesclub is a wind in the sails for game developers everywhere <3!! or uhhh underwater current in the magically enhanced fins.
Finished it and oh my gosh I was left with such a bittersweet feeling - I got really into Sinny's story and everything happening to her sisters ;; even though I got stuck with some puzzles a few times (prolly bc my mind wasn't clear and just needed rest) I had a great time! It was so much fun to type in all these words in corel language! Amazing work on the art and animations! The whole game was so good (I yearn for more!)
I struggle with this style game (escape room, deduction) but was engaged enough to push through and get to the end.
I think you've got a great difficulty mixed throughout. I think the repeat puzzles (the storage each sister was using) was brilliant - repeating the sense of accomplishment and being rewarded with more story.
And they story has a wonderful balance of details and vagueness. I have such a clear image of what happened and at the same time, so many questions and I'm sure every person who finishes has their own idea as to what all happened.
I can't compliment the design an implementation enough. I hope you get to keep doing this for a long time.
Just finished, I thought the story and art were really cool! There truly isn't ever enough mermaid games ;)
SPOILERS BELOW
I'd like to know other people's thoughts and theories about why Sincorel was born different. Do you think it was purely by chance, or did some outside force cause her to have no magic? Was having a mermaid with this condition something that has happened before or was it unheard of?
And here's my theory about Ovry - it seems that Miss Milmora(Milvarian) stole an alchemy/magic book to give to him. Could he be the alchemist Sinny was corresponding with? And is he part of the Ovrian tribes? Since they used to have high tensions with Corel before getting conquered, and Milmora got in huge trouble for helping him. (And if you didn't notice, those letters sent to her from the imperial hall have a stamp on them that says "corel" in corellian language :D )
I LOVED this game! It reminded me of the Freddy Fish, Puttputt, and Pajama Sam point and click games I played as a kid. The puzzles felt just the right amount of difficult (even though I accidentally glitched through the wall into the end of the game so there are still a couple I want to solve). The art and music are beautiful, I am blown away by the numeral and alphabetical system you created, plus the corel words for different creatures. And the LORE! My god, I was so into the story I literally played for 4 hours because I wanted to know what I could find out next! Thank you so much for making this game, I will be telling all my friends about it.
If you ever want to expand this world and creating different areas with different story lines that the main character has to solve to graduate or something, I would ABSOLUTELY play every part.
Well done, what a wonderful gift to be able to enjoy your creation FOR FREE! You're such an icon!
Late to the party, but I really loved this. Super fun!
The Art is so flipping good and I was super invested in the story. Bel was my fav!
Needed help with the fish nameplate puzzle--I dunno if the hint letter said something like "she needs help pronouncing/sounding out all the names"
The puzzle itself was so cool with the nameplate sizes,etc.
I also needed help with the Pippo to pink kaska puzzle. But I couldn't get it to work. Based on the hint in the forum, I tried every number up to twenty in English and Corel near every pink kaska and got nothing lol. Maybe I'm still missing something. So I just tried all the vowels for letter 7 in the tower entrance.
Would have also loved a couple more visual type puzzles in the library to maybe reveal those documents more piecemeal.
The story is so so good! I was so touched and it painted such a big cool world.
Really treasured my time there.
I enjoyed it a lot. There were a few puzzles where I had to check the forum to see if others were stuck in the same spot, especially trying to find Ara's hiding spots. I thought it would be the starfish in the walls, and I went around the palace, trying all of them for a really long time, not paying attention to the hanging ornaments. I accidentally got the letter in the heart-shaped window by doing this and then thought her hiding spots were windows or heart-shaped things. But I got there in the end. Such an intriguing story and drama about the sisters; I enjoyed each breadcrumb we were given.
I was wondering about the broken statue outside the palace. It seems to say Lani Sincorel; I thought in the beginning our protagonist would turn out to be the long-lost 5th sister. But it also seems to say Sincorel, scratched out. Is our protagonist Sinny, who changed her name, started a new life in a different land as a merthropologist and came back to the palace she grew up in? But she looks a lot different than the portrait and seems to have forgotten all her own passwords 😂
The first scratched out word is supposed to be "Lady", implying that at one point, Sinny was not regarded as a princess. But she has a new statue built for her later.
The idea of Lani being the lost princess would have been a brilliant twist! Or perhaps, to make the timelines work better, a descendant. I wish I had been clever enough to think of that haha. But if the game ever gets some kind of sequel, that would be really fun to incorporate.
I thought it was Lani at first too! When I saw the other statue (and other references to Lady Sincorel) I realized it must say Lady. I didn't think it was literally our Lani though, since I assumed this took place a long time ago. But I wondered if Lani was named after an ancestor, and this would be how she discovers her own long lost royal lineage.
I LOVED THIS, im a big fan of mermaid content since I was a child, and the beautiful pixel art and the simple yet clever gameplay made me so nostalgic of how much I loved playing flash games when they were available. I did get a little stuck on some puzzles, but somehow I was able to find the answer on my own after I posted on the puzzle help thread.
I was also fascinated by the worldbuilding and lore, as Anni said, the statues outside the castle made me wonder for quite a while, and it was a great introduction to this universe. I hope Sinny got her happy ending and was able to live freely (still not sure what was different about her, was she born with legs? or was she incapable of practicing magic? a very intriguing character, and her letters in the tower really spoke to me, I didn´t consider her perspective on the fight with her sister, and it really helped humanize her, since most of the information we know about her is from someone else´s pov.
Beautiful game, beautiful art, beautiful story and beautiful sound design! I can´t believe this was produced on such a short period of time.
thanks for playing! Sinny's story was meant to be sort of an allegory about suffering under imposed narratives, and so I keep a lot of details about her purposefully vague. She is born with some kind of deformity in the tail, I leave exactly what that is up to the player's imagination but make it clear that no matter what it is, it's shameful. Maybe Sinny was capable of magic all along, but her family keeps her from tapping in to that power. I was interested in exploring how even though characters like Ara and Miss Milmora love Sinny and mean well for her, they are also still a part of the system that subjugates her.
What an fantastic game! Such adorable visuals mixed with such a bittersweet story :( The puzzles were all very good! They hit that balance between challenging and fun. Also, as small a part it may seem, moving around in this game feels pretty nice. I find puzzle games can sometimes be a bit janky when it comes to movement (simply isn't the priority), but it is really smooth here and just adds a skilful polish to the whole thing. And the art is STELLAR!!! So gorgeous, very nostalgic feel. Not to mention Lani is ADORABLE <3. The immediate feeling that something went terribly wrong just from the statues outside got me hooked right away! And the characters are so interesting and layered, especially considering we're only reading diary entries! I got attached to them all so quickly. Incredible work and I would LOVE to see more of this world!!!<3 <3 <3
The game is absolutely fantastic! I love this type of puzzle where you have to gather info and learn the mystery yourself to press forward. I love the artstyle - absolutely beautiful! The swirling borders of the garden, the chandelier in the library, the cutest beds!! I had a blast with finding tidbits of information about the mermaids that lived in this place.
What a fun game! Solving the puzzles was very fun, and I loved piecing the information together! I wish Sincorel could have found a way to escape without having to change herself or gain magic, but I would love to know what happens to her after she leaves. She really didn't have the proper support in her family - even Aracorel took it for granted that Sincorel's issues of facing horrible ableism and being shut away could wait. The general sinister/imperial feeling to the Empire of Corel and its relationship to its neighboring countries would be so interesting to learn more about.
I had such a good time with this game! I was really intrigued by the famiily drama and really liked the pace of it, I never felt like I got overwhelmed with information at any point. I really loved all the lore there was to discover and got really invested in the story. The interpersonal relationships between the princesses was also really fascinating to find out about. I completely understand why Sincorel decided to leave at the end.
The artwork was so gorgeous and I was absolutely immersed in this underwater world. I also really liked the typing mechanic, it was so satisfying whenever I typed the wright answer
The only thing I wished was a little bit different has to do with the design. My eyes aren't the best. I was really struggling seeing the starfish, I wish they could "pop" a bit more. I was also a bit confused because there were the smaller starfish that weren't hiding anything and the bigger starfish, so I thought they were just background decoration and didn't make the connection immediately. I also wish that the pink kaska was more pink, I read it as cream and kept looking for a kaska that was more pink. [Edit: Turns out, that was a bug! I am glad it has been fixed]. But these are really small details compared to how much I enjoyed the game overall.
When I was playing, my theory was that Sincorel ended up doing something blasphemous, creating a potion that tried to mimick the God Wizard and that this specific dynasty got wiped out because of that, and that's why in Lani's present time, nobody knew about the palace. I am glad that it didn't ended up being quite so dramatic, because I was really rooting for Sinny to get a happy ending. My heart broke for her whenever I was reading about how she was locked away and treated like this dirty family secret, and it made me think about how people with disabilites from "important" famliies have been treated historically.
Sidenote: Like others in this thread, I also assumed that Sinny was born with Human legs and had a reverse Little Mermaid situation going on, because I thought it would be a fun idea.
Other sidenote: I loved the implication that the merfolk procreate like seahorses and that it's the stewards that "make the babies for you". I l always love it when fantasy creatures aren't just humans with pointy ears, humans with fins, etc., but actually have their own biology going on.
