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You know, that was actually my original idea and I implemented it, and as soon as we tried it it felt more like the worst of both worlds - not enough friction to cause you to start to learn words like you do if you have to take a step to look them up (in no-replace mode), but without the benefit of visible progress simplifying what you need to keep in mind (when fully replacing).

Just sharing where we are on it. It’s possible we could circle back on this so I appreciate the thoughts!

If you're still wondering this, the fact that it likes to attack mascet might help, and if you're wondering about those, the fact that their tails look like seelot might help.

Or to answer directly: a nyscet is a cat!

I can do you mouse-over to show the original word, how's that?

Thanks! About confirmation, my hunch is even if dedicated players could make it through without confirmation, it would end up being less fun without that feeling of validation as you go.

Larger and not free version is indeed coming soon! 😁 I've shared a few details on Discord, and the Steam page will be up very soon. I'm asking folks to sign up for the Jamwitch Games mailing list or follow on Itch so you'll be notified of the updates.

Thank you for being hyped! I would recommend waiting. The expanded Steam version has some of the same story and characters as in the jam version, but we've reworked them a lot to fit in with the larger story, so the two versions of the game contradict each other in parts. Some parts are spoilers and others are totally different. 

Of course we're happy to have people play both, but from my point of view, we're making the expanded version the best version of the game we can, so I want people to wait and enjoy that!

Glad you enjoyed it! You made me curious to refresh my memory so I just looked back at our conversation before the jam. Alongside other ideas, we had been talking about narrative deduction + family tree + an element of discovering new words and culture, though at first it was going to be aliens with a completely non-human culture. Then we were discussing a complex royal family with lots of drama. But the specific nature of Trevosa and their relation to the solaam, which if you haven't clocked yet you can find a hint in the final letter from Ludir, was a new idea from Marcus once the jam started! Hint: A map might indeed give too much away, because it might look very familiar in a top-down view...

We’re not planning to make a downloadable version of the free jam game. But I think that if you use the Itch app, it downloads web games like Trevosa, so you can try that.

Makes sense! The game is incredibly polished and tight for a jam game so that didn’t even cross my mind and I was sure it was a cunning misdirect that was successfully stumping me, haha.

And thanks! It’s very exciting to be part of a community building on different ideas in the world of narrative deduction!

Lovely game! The UI and entire scenario is pitch perfect, and I really enjoyed getting to know the characters and putting together what was going on. Really touching!

I really enjoyed the search experience - I'd say searching felt less deliberate than Her Story and more just about trying stuff until I got everything, but on the flip side it flowed really well and I could just focus on putting together who was who and what was going on. I thought the flow of searching for something, seeing a snippet, collecting the log, and then it's marked as new until you read the whole thing was excellent! Seeing a snippet but then still having it marked as new let me move between trying out search terms and closely reading the logs without getting lost. (The only thing I was missing was a back and forward button to jump through recently read logs.)

Answering security questions was a great way to set up the game! They were satisfying to solve, though I admit I got confused by dumb_moth's. (I can see there's a hint that "he" for the cat is just a typo, but it still seems like two different stories for what happened to the cat, did she disappear outside or die of old age?) I had such a good time just reading all the logs, it made me wish for more hint options for the security questions (like one to reveal specifically which answer was wrong) so I didn't end the game feeling stuck. But totally worth it for the touching final emails!

Anyway, sorry to go on, just thought I'd share my thoughts. I'm really glad I heard of this game on Bushmonkey's discord and I'll be spreading the word!

That’s the plan! I shared a screenshot here, more details really soon: https://bsky.app/profile/celia-14.bsky.social/post/3mw6rkmp3tk27

Thanks for playing!

Temig’s mom isn’t pictured on the tree. We can assume she’s Yoret by his surname.

For solaam, you might want to read the Final Note again for the biggest clue to what the solaam, theevei, and nyscet are.

No… but I will note that’s an optional feature we’re planning for the expanded version on Steam! (Join our mailing list for updates.)

It’s one big family tree and one final question about the heir to the throne. But we’re adding two new families in with their own culture and stories, so the tree has different sections, I think you could say.

Thanks, but we’re not taking translations for the jam version at this point in time.

Great news for you, as we recently shared in this devlog​, we’re working on an expanded version of the game as we speak!

Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it and that it was inspirational.

About cutscenes, check out this video about how this genre of game (which I call narrative deduction) creates a better integration of story and gameplay than adding cutscenes to separate gameplay. Really interesting game design thoughts!

No, we just have the web version on itch, although if you get the itch app, you can download web games in it.

(I don’t think this is what you were asking but we are making an expanded Steam version! More here.)

It’ll be exclusive to Steam and cost money. The current version will stay up as is on Itch.

You can find it by searching the name of the Stalwart’s beelain.

Thank you and thanks for the thoughts! This is the first time I’ve heard of the music not working, hmm - are you sure you didn’t mute the browser tab or anything? Can you hear sound from other games on Itch?

100%, we’re asking the player to rules lawyer and then these areas are unclear. In the expanded version it’s a very different puzzle since we’ve reshuffled stuff, and we’ll make sure there aren’t any question marks.

Thank you for asking about this, it helped clarify for me what we need to clarify in the Steam version! 😁

Thank you!

That’s the plan - we just have a text field in the lexicon, you can put whatever notes you want there.

But in the time since writing this devlog, I changed my mind on the hover. Now if you click a word, that opens it in the lexicon. It’s just a click, so it’s not hard to do, but it feels more like doing a lookup in your notes like a good scholar rather than having them handed to you in a tooltip.

That’s my current thought anyway. In the next week or two I’ll share a preview of the updated UI in a new devlog.

I love these ideas, thank you! It would be fun to expand the game some day… 🙂

Thanks! I must mention that we are making an expanded version with all new characters, words, and cultures. 🙂 Join our mailing list or discord for news on that!

Thank you! Good thoughts.

Totally agree on 1, that’s been one of our top priorities to redesign for the expanded Steam version. Now there’s a single search field that shows both the up-to-three new results and filters what you already have.

That’s right! Glad you enjoyed! 🙂

Thanks, glad you enjoyed!

It would be technically possible to randomize the words and names, but I think you’d start to recognize the storylines pretty quickly, so I don’t think it would be that effective.

We are however writing all new story and puzzles for the expanded version of Trevosa! I’m asking people who want more to join our mailing list or discord for news. 🙂

I love the letter, thanks for engaging with the game! I’m glad you liked it.

Thanks for the details! This should be fixed now.

I just pushed a fix to catch problems saving progress to localStorage and proceed anyway. Now, affected browser will skip saving progress, but still be able to play.

What browser are you in? I know Safari is often touchy about doing stuff from within an iframe.

Thank you so much for the support! 💜

Is this when you’re planning to choose a different hint option and misclick on that? Just curious to understand the situation, but I can put that on the list to add, definitely.

No, that would just not lock in since it’s incorrect.

It’s plain old HTML/Javascript, which I always use for jam games because it’s so quick to get started and works great for a UI-focused game.

Thank you for commenting, that’s a great point! It will be better to have the option there so players can play the way that works for them. I appreciate the perspective!

(Not late at all btw, we’re working through these things on the expanded version now and always appreciate feedback and thoughts!)

This video is a delight, thanks for sharing! 😄

This is excellent! I love working out people’s identities and relationships to fill in the family tree in what I’ve seen of Funeral for the Sun, so getting to experience that in a very tight and creepy package here was fantastic. It was engaging and dramatic to discover everything that’s going on, and then I went back over everything to slowly put the pieces together, and then it was really satisfying to finally understand what happened and what to make of certain characters. Creepy and fascinating!

The only thing I ran into was even when I thought I had everything complete, the end didn’t trigger. But after I restarted and reloaded the save it worked.

such a thing would also carry the unfortunate implication of the “foreigner from a dominant position” dictating the future of a sovereign people.

Right! Before I say a bunch more, we need to just write it and see how it shakes out, but I don’t think I would want the player imposing a dissolution of the traditions, I would want that to be something that emerges from the characters themselves - more of a note of change at the end than a full plot.

I hope that my comment hasn’t made you concerned that others think less positively of your games than they seem to do.

Oh, not at all, like I said it was really refreshing! It always feels wonderful to hear what people like (and thank you for your nice comments as well), but I’m well aware there’s potential to improve, so hearing where we’re not hitting the mark is really useful. If you hadn’t enjoyed the game you wouldn’t have played all the way through and given it enough thought to look at these questions, so don’t worry, I completely appreciate it and I’m not concerned at all.

At the risk of sounding pushy, feel free to join our Jamwitch discord - we have some dedicated channels for gamedev and there’s a lot of other folks there working on projects in both the narrative deduction and language game area, who are sharing their progress and getting playtests and so on. Would love to have you, but no pressure. Thanks again for your thoughtfulness!

Yep, the current prototype adds a word to the lexicon if you search for it, even if you haven’t seen it in a document yet.

That’s why I said one-to-one! Sevol and leevoth are our existing examples where there’s not a single word English translation, and olesata is a cultural word where what it entails is clear to the speakers but not immediately to the player. We want to add more like those.

You’ll be interested or perhaps frustrated to hear the seed of the idea for Trevosa was an alien family tree where you’d be mapping out very different family structures, relationships, and cultural practices than humans’. (The focus was always going to be on understanding the culture, not on any complex linguistic puzzles.) I love scifi like Ann Leckie’s and Arkady Martine’s where you’re asked to figure out the culture from context clues and how it informs the characters and story. When it came time to put that idea to the test in the 72 hours of the jam, though, we had to scope it to lean on more familiar fantasy tropes and structures, for both our own ability to come up with the story and to make it more approachable for players. (I haven’t given up on the alien idea for the future, though!)

It’s been clear to me that we missed some opportunities to have more interesting and less English-related terms, but only recently in revisiting the story have I come to see what you’re saying: following the bloodlines and understanding the strict rules about succession is a good deduction puzzle for a family tree game, but if identifying that “rightful heir” is the happy ending for the game, that does indicate that that’s a good way to value relationships (and that monarchy is a good way to govern, which I obviously don’t agree with either.)

With making an expanded/reworked version of Trevosa, we have a new (at least new to me, an inveterate game jammer) opportunity to actually take the time to put thought into the overarching themes and values of the story. We’ve already mapped out other groups the player will be meeting who have their own values for what family means and how people relate to each other. But your points made me feel extra convinced that we need to think more about the player’s role and what we’re presenting as the happy ending to the tree investigation.

I always feel really energized when I hear thoughtful critiques of our games, because it’s bracing but makes me excited to do better! It makes me wonder who else has thoughts that they (out of motives of kindness, which I appreciate) don’t want to tell us directly in a comment or on discord. But I’m glad I found this one and thank you for being so thoughtful about it!

I hope to see your work in narrative deduction sometime! For something like Dungeon Descent, truly my ideal outcome for making something like that would be it giving others ideas for how to make something better than what I can make in the time I have, so hearing you’re drawing inspiration from our games is awesome, thank you.