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A d8 down on your luck's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #913 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Creativity | #2225 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Artwork | #5027 | 2.950 | 2.950 |
| Enjoyment | #6392 | 2.550 | 2.550 |
| Audio | #9586 | 1.450 | 1.450 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The title screen counts down from d8 (date) all the way to 0. The main character counts himself down to cope with severe panic he is feeling. The choices are timed where the timer literally counts down. Each time you speak you lose one available letter. You have to find three cracks in the narrative and for each one you find it counts down by 1 until you reach the goal. (I might have gone alittle overboard on the theme)
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
All credits can be found in game in the menu. so see in game description for full credits.
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Red Semele
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Comments
That's a creative mechanic, losing and forgoing letters, which may lock you out of options, adds in an extra layer of puzzle and strategy. I am curious how this story will expand in the future.
Thank you very much! Most of the main characters growth is already gone through since this was supposed to be a small little self sustained story. I do however have some ideas for a few more endings and mostly extra dialogue exploring Finn's psyche more to flesh him out even more. This is not my main project so between that and other responsibilites I'll have to find some time to implement those.
i liked your game, the mechanic was really creative, and how silence is an option is also cool, maybe a meter that tells you how many interactions you can afford to stay silent in will let the player strategize about when to use them, and maybe you can add some “landmine” interactions where staying silent in those will instantly end the date.
anyway i really enjoyed the game but couldn’t finish it because it was brutally difficult, an easy mode where there are some checkpoints across the date where you restore the letters could solve it.
Thank you for playing! It can indeed be a little hard to tell sometimes how your date might react, maybe that's why Finn never made it to a second date all his life? ;p Either way, as a little help, you can always scroll your mouse wheel up or press the "back" button at the bottom of the screen, that can take you back to previous dialogue so if you accidentally mess up it's like it never happened. Hope that helps!
The meter for silences would be tricky since sometimes silence is more negative than others, but I think in a future update I'd definetly would need to make it clearer from the dialogue itself what has which effects. Also right now silence is not really coded in the way you can only afford X silences. Some silences are indeed "landmines" that will make her leave.
Oh also, the parts you need to progress to see the ending are kept upon each loop (this is uhh maybe not as clear.)Generally, if you see a different way your date can leave than left to right and you get a familiar voice to comment on it, you're doing good. You need 3 unique triggers of these (it will count down clearly on the screen) to reach the ending.
Hi. I liked your game. Losing letters is a very interesting mechanic. I needed to pay attention and not choosing letters randomly because the date kept leaving me alone. It was a great idea how you implemented the theme (I mean the count down loop). It was like time travelling. The only issue I had was that I didn't hear any music or sounds. Good job. Very interesting.
Heya, glad to hear that!
As for music or sounds, most of the time and polish went into the dialogue/the mechanics so there wasn't much time left for those. I do have access to a library of music but honestly found most of it too over the top for my taste. Maybe in a future version? ;p
I would definetly like a sound for the cracking of glass, clicking of buttons etc, music is a bigger uncertainty.
Very creative idea!
Unfortunatelly, I'm stuck! I pulled out a pen a paper for this one (more like windows notepad lol but bare with me). I thought it was very clever to have q appear on the first sentence, as this is the once I picked. I than was use the letter x, q, z, but when I say we have to have a date to break the curse, the girl run away from me... It like real life all over again!
I read in the comments that you should stay silent some times, but then she say that if I don't have anything to say, she's going...I tried to help page in game as well, and probably missing something, but a walkthrough will be very nice, as I do want to see where this is going
In terms of the mechanics, I felt the sentences you can say are very long, and scanning for letter for later is daunting. I don't mind jotting down letters, but it could be nice if when she says "hi!", you can respond with "hi", "hello", "hey" and than you know you must keep the h, and you remember when a rate letter such as X is really needed (I think the name of the player characters starts with x, maybe you must say your name at some point). If I was on this situation I would speak on short words or sentences - this could be a cool dialog challenge and puzzle!
I liked the writing, art style and the idea, and will come for this one with a walkthrough!
Heya, first off thanks for playing the game!
As for the mechanics, there are a few sentences that have shorter variants if you don't have the required letters. Originally this was going to be a bigger mechanic but due to time limitations there are only about 2(?). When I work on this more between my free time and my main project I'd like to add more alternative replies. As for scanning the letters, thanks to another comment I came up with the idea of remembering what text you saw during your previous attempts where it'd show you which sentences become unavailable due to your choices.
Xzola (the date)'s name actually does come into play for a very small section when you talk about her work.
As for a walkthrough, if you'd like I could give one that is more detailed but for starters, when getting the choice to laugh or tell her about the witch, both will scare her off. You indeed were right to be silent there but then Xzola says it's okay to open up to her if you did not find the joke funny. You can trust her on this and just talk like normal. From there on out you get a few more options here and there during which you might want to stay silent. You'll know when you have struck gold if you can talk to her about three topics, her work, her hobbies and another topic I won't mention. From there on out it's quite likely that through some experimentation you will find another fate for your date. Witness that three (unique) times (you will know based on the dialogue you get right after it happens) and you'll meet an old friend, at around that point you can encounter the ending. (You need to have had a specific conversation with Xzola for the ending to be accessible, but don't fret, there are two ways to reach that point and you can retry as much as you need.) Also, if you reach a point you do not like and you don't want to have to wait until you loop back around, try scrolling with the middle mouse button or clicking "back". It's a standard function of renpy that allows you to go back to a previous state.
Hope that helps! Feel free to ask more questions if you'd like
Ah the scrolling changes everything! I was able to make much more progress now.
I think the silence option is implied to be the bad one, maybe if it was just "stay silent" and the timer would auto select it that would be clearer
It's very challenging to progress as picking a letter might bite you in the butt later. It was probably very hard to design this one!
Glad it helps! As someone who uses renpy a lot I kind of thought it was well known but I have to stop assuming people know the arbitrary tools I use, I'll probably mention it on the game's page aswell to help out others who might get stuck!
Silence is neither good nor bad, a bit like most things in life. Especially since the main character themselves struggles with silence it might be percieved as a more negative option. It is hinted at (a tiny bit) in the description when it mentions you'll need patience but to a lot of people letting the timer run out might feel a bit counterintuitive at points. In a way, that's also what the protagonist is feeling, that they "have to keep talking".
The hardest part for developing this was mostly making sure each path is accessible (although letting the timer run out can fix a lot of softlocks as a happy little coicidence.) and adding dialogue for when the timer runs out since it got very spaghetti-coded very fast. But those are problems for future me.
I thought I have to choose some letters to form a meaningful sentence with missing letter to get to the ending lol. Until I read the comments I was able to pick dialogue and then keep silence for the next turn.
Oh sorry for the confusion, the letters are mostly a way to gatekeep/guide you to the points required to see the ending. It's a weird balancing mix. You know you have seen the ending when the old lady shows up once more for more than a sentence. Although I'm glad the comments were of use! If anything, I'm just suprised to see so many of them, I did not think so many folks would like this game.
I really love this game. I'm not a graphic novel player but I really enjoy the letter mechanics. I couldn't figure out how to process after I said something like "I can only pass with a successful date", she kept walking away from me :(
Thank you very much! I am so glad a lot of peopme seem to like the letter mechanics!
The way to progress might be a bit... counter intuitive. There is one alternate way your date leaves, by being pulled into a crack you created.
If you haven't seen one of them the key might be being silent every now and then (gor example, after asking about the succesful date, try staying silent) These "cracks" persist through the loops so you just need 3 unique ones. Good luck!
Cool concept of removing the character, and I like the ending.
It's actually not an easy game. It needs focus to complete.
I commented the game directly so I think I don't need to add much here. Keep it up!
Very cool idea. Adds a bit of strategy to a basic vn game. Would be nice if players had more dialogue options or if there was more agency for the player to know what dialogues to expect before they pick which letters to remove.
Oh wow thank you very much! Was honestly not expecting much comments, let alone this soon. I'd like to expand the game a bit in my free time while not working on my main game and extra dialogue options were the first thing that came to mind for me aswell, so that might be to your liking!
I agree that right now it is a little hard to anticipate what letters to prioritize on or not depending on the route you take, although I'm not exactly sure what form that'd take. Maybe the player remembering the options they have seen if they have done a certain path atleast once?
Food for thought anyway, for which I am very thankful.
Edit: Also there were a few bugs still present that made it harder/potentially impossible to reach the ending, now that should be fixed.