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A jam submission

Goodbye is not an Option!View game page

Halloween Night. Your father is dead. The board is on the table. Say goodbye.
Submitted by StorytellerMeeka — 17 hours, 2 minutes before the deadline
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Goodbye is not an Option!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme Fidelity & Creativity#183.4553.455
AI Direction & Adaptability#233.0003.000
Production Velocity#232.7272.727
Overall Enjoyment#272.3642.364

Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

The Biggest Challenge
Challenge: AI makes things quickly, but it does not know what the game is about. The generated art, the synthetic voice and the code each failed in ways I had to catch myself: keyed images with half-dissolved edges, a voice effect that made every clip sound the same, and a pumpkin animation that ran one beat behind the text. Every fix was my decision.

Breakthrough: deciding that nothing generative runs while you play. The game is a deterministic state machine with no runtime LLM and no API. The AI built the tools and assets; I wrote every line of dialogue and designed every rule. That kept the voice of the game mine and made it testable. I also overruled an AI suggestion: it wanted the voice synced to the planchette, and I chose to keep four channels deliberately out of step, because the gap is where the unease comes from.

AI Tools Used
Nano Banana (board and pumpkin art, cover art), CapCut TTS (the Father's voice, 118 clips recorded and named by me), Claude (code, build scripts, and machine translation drafts into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German, Spanish and French).

Areas Where AI Was Used
Images: board, seven pumpkin faces, cover. “cover art (Nano Banana, title added by me and Claude)”. Sound: the Father's voice (synthesised speech); ambient sound is live Web Audio code. Code: engine, board, input, build and translation scripts. Translation: six languages, machine-made and labelled as such. Writing: the dialogue, the roles, the techniques and the design are mine. A few lines (some refusal lines, one break line, some stage notes) began as Claude drafts, and I'm rewriting them in my own voice. Nothing generative runs at play time. The full who-made-what table is in my Dev Log.

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Comments

Host

The rutabaga on the title screen really drew me into the game's world. I really like that 💕

This concept is wonderful. It makes you feel like you're controlling the game, all while pulling you into the predetermined ending. It's a very powerful piece of work.

The sound and graphics are also meticulously crafted, making it a game that lets you fully immerse yourself in its world.
I also thought it was wonderful that it supports multiple languages.

Oh, and I was so blown away by everything else that I forgot to mention this earlier, but the way the Ouija board moves is fantastic, too.

It was a truly memorable gaming experience. 🙂

Submitted

Good idea, and one that should really hit home.

The experience felt tightly scripted to me, and if that’s the design, I think picking from offered replies would work better than typing freely - writing my own words kept making me test whether the game cared what I said, and it mostly doesn’t. A set of choices would carry the same weight without that doubt. (The reaction to my typo was a lovely detail, though.)

Nice work on the atmosphere.

Developer

Thank you, this is the most useful comment I could have hoped for. That doubt you describe, "does it care what I said?", is exactly what the game is about, and the answer is no. There's no AI answering in the background. It's a fixed script, and the script is a textbook of manipulation techniques used by narcissistic parents. You can't win: it's rigged from the first line, because that's how living with a narcissist works. Choices would have made it feel fair. I wanted it to feel like talking to someone who isn't listening. But you're right that players can't tell "rigged on purpose" from "broken", and that's on me for not signposting it. Glad the typo reaction landed. Thank you for playing.

Submitted

The atmosphere is really great, and it's impressive that it supports seven languages!

It seems like there's a game element to it, but I couldn't quite figure out how to progress even after continuing the conversation.

It might be helpful to have a bit more guidance.

Developer(+1)

コメントありがとうございます!7言語を気に入っていただけて嬉しいです。進み方が分からなかったのは、私の案内不足です。実はこのゲームに「勝つ」方法はありません。裏でAIが応答しているわけではなく、すべて私が書いた台本で、相手はあなたを最初から勝たせない作りになっています。会話を続けても何も進まない、と感じたなら、それがまさに意図した体験です。その合図を入れなかったのは私のミスでした。

(English: thank you, no way to win, no AI in the background, fully scripted, the "nothing progresses" feeling is intended, and the missing signal wasn't a mistake.)

Submitted

Very well-made! The concept and delivery is great.

Developer

Thank you, that means a lot! One thing worth knowing if you replay it: there's no AI behind the replies, it's all scripted, and you can't win. The game is rigged from the start on purpose.

Submitted(+1)

很棒的氛围感

Developer

谢谢!补充说明一下:游戏背后没有AI在回应,一切都是我写好的剧本。这个游戏是赢不了的,从一开始就被操控了,这是有意为之。

Submitted

Simple, its an great idea to talk with an AI in real time.

Its a nice experience to talk with an AI in real time!, the voice generator in real time is amazing, and its cool to talk with your "father", but i think sometimes the AI loses the context of the think i said (maybe prompt?), but its still so cool the experience of talk, 

If in the future you can add microphone input (to literally talk with your "father"), it would be so so cool!

I'm sorry if my English is bad, I natively speak Spanish.

Developer(+1)

¡Muchas gracias, y tu inglés está perfecto! Una aclaración que explica lo que notaste: no hay ninguna IA respondiendo. Todo es un guion escrito por mí, y las voces son clips pregenerados, no en tiempo real. Cuando "pierde el contexto" de lo que dijiste, es porque el padre no te escucha. Ignorarte es una de sus técnicas. Además, no se puede ganar: está amañado desde el principio, como pasa con un progenitor narcisista. Gracias por jugarlo.