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A jam submission

AENIGMAView game page

The War on Silicon Life
Submitted by Neuromance (@NeuromanceIII) — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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AENIGMA's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

played for about 30 minutes I liked the lore of humans being beaten by their own creations and the scifi setting I liked that the character names were color coded, the art style and the character design and the music and sfx.

I would like if there was an option to move the text to the top of the screen, also during flashbacks and memories I think it would be a good idea to add some kind of filter to make it more clear.

This is super cool though it looks like you put a lot of work into it, I never played a game like this before its like in-between a manga and a movie. 

sorry it took so long to leave feedback ive been busy as hell

Developer

Thank you so much for playing it!

Submitted(+1)

I stuck around for the subtle off white colouring and romance and reached the end.

Not usually my type of game especially without any choices. Will there be choices in the future?

The whole carbon and silicon and main character thing was confusing to me but I think I understood enough.

Cool fonts, 3D renders, wireframes, colour palettes. Pretty grim concepts and nice mental images of things like mutated bones, I enjoyed those. Would love to see the contrast between romance and terror continued.

Developer
Will there be choices in the future?

No, there won't.

Thanks for playing! Stay tuned for more horrors!

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

Characters look really good.

That thing where you tint the sprite with colors works in shadowy environments, but at the start where they're presumably in a well lit building, the orange tint looks bad. Makes characters look too dark.

37:40, 45:07, 46:36 Text gets added, but it disappears between additions. Looks like an error

21:08 aliasing looks bad

I like reading it. I thought I'd quit somewhere in the middle, but I ended up reading the whole thing.
Here's what I remember from the story (may be in wrong order):

  1. There are carbons and silicons (who are not robots). Carbons built silicons to be slaves, but they rebelled and carbons are losing.
  2. MC is on some secret mission to do something. He encounters Anastasia by pure chance while looking for uranium in the area. MC starts thinking about the past.
  3. He remembers his friends, especially Anastasia who was taken away by the state to train her/experiment on her.
  4. MC and his friends build some secret base, because they plan to run away, while vaguely alluding that he and his friends are neither carbons or silcons.
  5. Some military ladies talk about creating hi-iq carbons from genes of smartest people (that's our guys).
  6. The carbon g-man says they'll make peace with silicons by giving mc and his buddies to silicons as part of the deal.
  7. We get flashback within a flashback to the past when MC was a kid and g-man gave him the disk with stolen tech and info on Napoleon.
  8. We're switching to seeing life of Napoelon and his 2 daughters who are also science experiments at creating germanium life forms.
  9. We're back to kid MC who swears to become life long anti-silicon racist. Also tech for creating germanium life forms was on that disk, and his dad uses it to create him and Anastasia (it seems I've gotten something wrong here)
  10. MC, dad and Anastasia get on the ship with silicon spy. Dad dies while trying to do something with help of Anastasia (not sure what he was trying to do)
  11. We see Anastasia get taken away by the g-man after the funeral.
  12. We jump back to the level 1 flash back, of MC explaining to his friends they need to run away because they're [title drop].
  13. The end of the demo.
Developer

Thanks for sharing your playthrough!

Text disappears during expression change. I can't change that.

I do need to fix some of the early visuals.

MC is on some secret mission to do something. He encounters Anastasia by pure chance while looking for uranium in the area. MC starts thinking about the past.

This part is a little wrong. It's made easy with the color scenes being all in the past and the black-and-white scenes being all in the future. So you're constantly switching back and forth.

Some military ladies talk about creating hi-iq carbons from genes of smartest people (that's our guys).

Actually this part is unrelated to them but it will be explained later on.

We're back to kid MC who swears to become life long anti-silicon racist. Also tech for creating germanium life forms was on that disk, and his dad uses it to create him and Anastasia (it seems I've gotten something wrong here)

kek. You got it right here though.

Thanks for playing it till the end!

Submitted(+1)

It has the comfortable writing style of one of my japanese anime light novels, and the setting is really interesting.

Some lines I noticed: 

"She shoves a fork down the table before I can extend my arm." during the scene where girl orders the entire restaurant. Not wrong, but I don't know if you meant to write that.

"What's the heck that supposed to mean." Sometime after that.

"That is a foolish foolish decision." Around when human officer man is explaining his perfect plan. Also not necessarily wrong but I don't know if you intended it, could use a comma or _underline_ or slightly different second word to imply cadence.

"Anastasia plays with her teddy bear by flying it high in the air." Sounds like her bear is an RC plane.

I think it does a good job of introducing its cast with impact and initial presence so you understand their role in the story, but just at the start I found the jumping around was enough to confuse me for a moment. I just kept reading and it was ultimately fine, but maybe you could add something like the main character's hand visible for a moment when it switches to his immediate perspective; I think there was even an asset of him holding up a gun in the foreground you could use, just a bit more at the start to help the reader link his text to the character. Or not, it's not a significant thing, it's par for the medium.

The scenes with the main heroine succeed in creating an emotional connection, and the way the setting is presented creates intrigue and connects well with the character moments for how it leads a developing understanding of the circumstances these characters live in, but just toward the end I was starting to feel like the technical explanations and flashbacks were building up to a sense the story wasn't moving fast enough. I think that after the aforementioned investment, the reader wants to see the next step in what's happened to these characters, their relationship, and how the setting will affect them. Maybe you were just getting to that, but generally I feel the writing is stronger in the first half of what I read, if only because it fits well in the story's overall structure, but in doing so like all words they incur a tax that must be paid back quickly. I wouldn't want you to get bogged down though, in realizing a thousand forms of rewrites as that would threaten to ruin the writing style. It might be better to go onward first and decide which parts are strongest, then try to make the parts between fit neatly.

Developer

Thank you for playing and sharing your thoughts. The demo(beginning of the game) is quite unrefined at the moment and I realize that I need to proofread and rewrite some of the dialogue. I also need to redo much of the visuals from part 1 since I'm not happy with them... That should somewhat make it easier to understand the jumping around but if not I'll try to do something about it. Big things happen right after the title drop(demo end). Sometimes the tax might be paid back at a later point in time. I finished writing the screenplay a long time ago and haven't changed it much since as I've been in pandemonium working on the visuals. One good rewrite should fix a lot of things. Thanks again for the much appreciated feedback.

Submitted(+1)

Game AENIGMA

First Impressions:

Massive file size, Jesus, in this storage economy? Intro credits are very nice. I don’t think unhabitable is a word, you probably meant uninhabitable. More spelling/grammar mistakes Silicon-based life was created, not “were created”. ESL is fine, in fact it may be a sign that I am about to play some kino shit. Art is very nice, and so is the music. You better not be mixing Roman gods with Greek gods. I haven’t checked, but if I hear that you did, I will find you. Gooooooood I haaaate reading :((((((. Great googily boobily, pink girl is well endowed! Was it the age of Silicons or Silicones? I think I’m gonna break my space-bar skipping all this dialogue. If I hear the art is AI, I will also find you. Hangar doors look a lot like star citizen’s. Is there gameplay at any point here?

Afterthoughts:

The action scenes were nice in the intro. I’m not a VN person, so I’m not one to give VN advice. I can only speak for myself, as a person who doesn’t play VNs, this was rough. I spent nearly twenty minutes pounding the spacebar waiting for the game to start. I’m not the target audience for sure. You need to convince people like me that you’re not like the other VNs, by hooking me in with gameplay within two minutes. If spamming the spacebar gave me carpel tunnel, I will find you.

What I liked:

Sound effects played on queue, music worked, visuals worked, art style worked. The menus work. I liked ig that the story was across multiple centuries

Things that didn’t work the way I thought they would:

I thought there was gonna be gameplay. Some screens were very sus, the cockpits looked like AI.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!

You better not be mixing Roman gods with Greek gods. I haven’t checked, but if I hear that you did, I will find you.

I'm not. Don't find me.

If I hear the art is AI, I will also find you.

It's not. Don't find me.

If spamming the spacebar gave me carpel tunnel, I will find you.

Too late. Don't find me.

Is there gameplay at any point here?

No...


Submitted(+1)

😠😠😠