Really beautiful! Excellent music and lovely art. I'm not really a visual novel person but it was actually quite nice to sit back after playing a bunch of games and just enjoy this one with a *warm* cup of tea. Nice work!
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Team members
Just me, plus licensed and credited assets
Software used
Game engine is Godot 4.7.2, music written in and rendered from Musescore with free MuseSound libraries, final audio assets prepared in Audacity
Use of the limitation
This is basically a VN, the narrator is taking a train ride to somewhere warmer. I worked a lot on the colors to evoke physical sensations of warm and cold. There's also a metaphorical interpretation of inner warmth.
Cookies eaten
4 sea salt Grande Gallete cookies. Uncounted quantity of pita crackers
Comments
A short, well-crafted narrative game where it's immediately clear where the developer's main efforts went. It may not have the most engaging gameplay or impressive graphics, but I don't think those are the right criteria to judge this game by. The story, cutscenes, music, and some programming were the main focus, and in those areas, the game does an excellent job.
I have to give special recognition to the cutscenes and their direction. Without exaggeration, this is the only game in the jam that I'd put in first place specifically for its cutscenes.
Here are a few things I'd like to point out:
- There's no way to adjust the volume, so I had to turn my system volume all the way down. Of course, I understand that the developer probably noticed this too but had to prioritize more important things. Still, in future projects, I'd love to see at least a master volume slider somewhere in the game.
- Once you start playing, you can't pause the game or return to the main menu. I'd have liked a bit more control over the experience in that regard.
- The game could benefit from some additional gameplay elements to make the experience more engaging. Even simple gameplay sections between cutscenes, or more varied types of cutscenes, could add a lot of interest. However, this is more of a personal observation. I'm not particularly fond of visual novels, and given the three-day jam timeframe, I doubt this would have been feasible for the developer anyway. So take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
Overall, I had an incredibly pleasant experience playing this game. As a fellow developer, I can appreciate the challenges involved in creating the parallax backgrounds, rain effects, and triggers for the autumn tree scene where the foliage burns away. Finding suitable assets, developing the story, and figuring out how to present it all must have been quite a challenge as well.
And you handled it wonderfully! Great job! ❤️
Submitted
Cold AutumnI really appreciate this detailed feedback! These game jams have been so, so valuable as learning opportunities.
I've started a utility library of reusable QoL features, and audio settings are a high priority. I learned its importance when playing an incremental game where I wanted to still hear SFX but turn off / adjust the music volume. Given the simple UI of this game, I'm considering that maybe a master volume slider could go into a collapsible control in the corner, and maybe individual audio bus volume available behind a pause menu.
Your praise for the cutscenes means a lot! Thank you. It was not my original plan for the game, but as I built the cutscene system, I discovered a pattern that gave me a LOT of control over scripted events, with highly expressive, concise, maintainable code. I think I might focus on cutscenes for a while, maybe release a plugin if it can be generalized enough. If you've seen Godot State Charts, that's a model I have in mind, where, yes, you could write your own state machine system, but it provides an opinionated but flexible way to get you working on your game and not writing boilerplate.
Admittedly, I'm not big on VN's myself, but it seems like this game been well-received by others with similar reservations about VN's. I featured a couple of my favorite things in video games: environmental scale and motion, which is maybe absent from VN's in general.
There are some genre conventions that I should implement, that would start to address your QoL wishlist, like pausing, saving progress, return to title, etc. I should roll this into the utility library.
Interactivity is an interesting design question. In my research into VN's, there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus, which is not to say that a game should try to be everything to everyone. Right now I'm considering the idea of optional interactivity, maybe sometimes just fun graphical "toys" in a scene. An example might be, drawing inspiriation from a game like Okami, when you click/touch the night sky it draws a shooting star.
Thank you again for the constructive feedback!
I remember seeing the intro on Discord and it amazes me fr.
This VN game also very emotional especially carried by the music and train ambient.
Nice game overall, kudos!
Submitted
The Ronin & The AmberUsually I have a lot to say about most games I play. Not so much this time; it's short, sweet, to the point, polished where it needs to be, and gives the warm fuzzies inside. Well done!!
Submitted
Cozy CovenI am normally not a fan of visual novels in game jams as they are usually too long and uninteresting. The constant motion and short poetic dialogue made this an amazing visual novels and one of the only ones I finished. Great job scoping the game well and for the beautiful music and visuals :)
Submitted
FrostbiteTo be honest, I massively overscoped, and on Sunday switched genre to VN to salvage the work I did already. Absolute Hail Mary. But I'm really happy that you vibed with it.
I have similar reservations about VN's, but recently I watched a video comparing VN's and cutscenes, and the core loop of a VN (click-to-advance) is surprisingly engaging. I think if you took the best of both ideas, it could make a pretty enjoyable experience.
Great art and music, it would have been cool to have some sort of interaction within the game (Like controlling the character in the last section) but that's just me. Good job!
Submitted
Autumn Rush
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