itch.io

This was such a delight. The bits of story sprinkled throughout were really sweet, both the Sky/Alex stuff and everyone else. The world felt impossibly huge at first, but by the end and after some light mapping it felt like my home. The jumping makes it so much more interesting to navigate than what one might assume from just “exploring rpg maker maps”. The pie was made. All the flashbacks were found. Everyone is happy ☺️

Lovely work, friend!

Just pure concentrated doses of big dumb Polly humor at every step, and it's fantastic. The fart joke got me good... I like how Tessa still feels like an actual character despite the whole game being a shitpost, and I can see why you're considering using her for other projects. This was just an Excellent time all the way through.

I found the not cat…

I played on Steam and left a review there, but I'm gonna post it here too.

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This is a fantastic visual novel.

The contrast between the rather cute art style of the characters and the gritty photographs of the backgrounds is one I love a lot. The writing has a somewhat similar contrast, too. It's got a lot of big, bizarre, heady ideas, and it gets them across with the exact right amount of ambiguity. But it also manages to contrast it with very grounded, relatable, cozy, and believably dramatic character writing.

It's hard to talk about the story without spoiling stuff, and it's all worth discovering on your own. So I'll simply say it is very much worth the 8-ish hour read, especially if you are one who likes things that are heady, psychological, melancholy, and deeply heartfelt.

Highly, highly recommend.

(Many more thoughts below, somewhat spoilery, though I tried to be relatively vague)

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----- SPOILERS AHEAD -----

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I certainly can relate to some things Asya says in her internal monologues, and one of her breakdowns in particular was so painfully similar to something I've experienced (from the other side) that I had to step away for a minute after reading it.

What surprised me the most, though, was when the nature of Ira and others' condition was revealed. I felt it was presented in a way that was simultaneously respecting actual things some folks experience, while still being exaggerated a touch for the sake of making a more potent fiction. But what surprised me about it was how similar it felt to experiences I've occasionally had for over a decade. The first instance happened shortly after I started learning how to code. When I tried to go to sleep, my mind exploded and it felt as if I was suddenly conscious of all the countless decisions and logic flows and ambiguities my brain processes from moment-to-moment. It was completely inescapable, and I was stuck in this overdrive trance until eventually my body couldn't handle it anymore and I passed out. This still happens to me every so often. So, while it's not exactly like what Ira and others experience in the story, I still felt I could relate in some way, as someone who has witnessed things humans aren't equipped to witness.

I can see why this sort of fantastical turn in the story might confuse or put off some readers. I was quite surprised by it myself, and while it didn't really trip me up (maybe due to that relatable experience), I am still trying to figure out if there's more to it than "it's just how it is" (which I would still be fine with). I haven't quite made a connection there yet.

The ending is absolutely gorgeous and sweet, which was another sort of surprise. Given how frightening a lot of things were throughout the story, I was bracing myself for something really painful or sad or dark. But I love the way it wrapped up. My immediate thoughts upon finishing were that it's a story about multiple identities, being plural, loving oneself and one's parts. I actually theorized that Tosya was a part of Asya that split off and hid away during her traumatic experience at the car shop. I'm probably not prepared to fully back that up yet though. But I think, more than anything, the true heart and message of this story (to paraphrase a friend of mine) is: If you love the world and everything in it, that means you must love yourself. The game's title practically gives it away!

While I can't fully relate to Asya's loving the world and everything in it, I can very very much relate to her struggle and journey to love herself. It takes great effort. I'm still on that journey myself, and it's often incredibly hard to keep on the path. But this game made it just a little bit easier for me.

if one explores enough sylvie games and listens closely to their cry, one gains an intuition for how to navigate other sylvie games. one unlocks the secrets of sylvie's mind. many pieces of sylvie are scattered throughout her games, and one can learn about sylvie herself, one piece at a time or sometimes a lot of pieces at a time.

this is sooooo cool. feels like magic the way the stories respond to the very specific points i choose to stop/continue one story or the other. the two worlds are so starkly different, but the way they're presented creates this third world in which they try to be reconciled...

super inspiring. thanks for making the tool available too! absolutely adding it to my toolbox.

this is such a good idea. god, i miss him.

My new favorite Pollysoft game!

It's got a bunch of the Polly hallmarks: punchy immediacy, demanding yet straightforward, dorky-badass tonal fusion, snappy pacing... But your design chops are sharper than ever here. I love the subtleties of how the ship moves and the range of your bullets, the way you've designed levels to highlight those subtleties, the way routing is open-ended... and Aggressor Mode makes all of that stand out even more, basically forcing you to do extremely cool movement. Everything just works together in such a satisfying way.

Lovely audio/visual polish, too. Great music choices and placements, and great use of silence when needed. The maw explosion sound and animation feels so good, especially with how it cleans up the screen. The "DINK" sound when starting a level is iconic to me now (and it cuts through headphones so I can tell when someone in the room is playing the game xD). And then the various boss sounds... it all just feels so good Polly. The cutscenes got me so hyped up, too.

So glad you got this one finished up and out there. Fantastic work!

Loooooved this, especially having just finished a playthrough of Brandish semi-recently!

i treasure this specimen! it must not be terminated!!

Very very nice. The hint system was done well, with escalating levels of info that only ever alluded to what the solution was, rather than how to solve it. Oftentimes when I went for hints, it wound up confirming what I already suspected the solution was anyways, and I only ever used 1 or 2 hints. It all made for a fun and gentle and pleasant time!

I did it!! It took me a while to figure out what I was actually supposed to do, but as I started piecing things together it was fun to keep going. Then actually learning the key and make sure I didn't mess up was delightfully tense. The ending made me giggle too x) Another lovely jam game from you c:

this is so good. just a perfect use of rpg language to tell a concise and potent little story. i enjoy how much ambiguity you leave in a bunch of parts of the story too. really great work!

Not yet, I'm afraid. I do still want to get around to it, but my time has been scarce recently.

Totally! Sounds awesome. Good luck! c:

Itch page works. Thanks!

Really great mix of funny and awful and sweet and devastating and everything in between such as: horny. Every story is punchy and captivating. You've really got a distinct writing voice, and it's awesome getting to know that better and better. Yeah this is just a delight.

Extremely cool to see these collected here now. I looooved Danse Macabre and Tank Beartallion. Evil annoying platforming isn't really my thing, but because you're my friend I did clear Regrab City back when you released it. I have not had the courage to try Horrible Tower yet though... not sure if I like you that much...

beautiful and perfect

Hey thanks! Your page and website look extremely cool. Couldn't help but notice The Sapling Cage in your recs, which I adored. Also have enjoyed most of Margaret's other writings and podcasts. I'll try to check out some of your own writings and some of your other recs some time too. c:

Cool, thanks for letting me know! I wish you the best with development c:

Aw, I very much relate to writing a character that parallels or is sort of aspirational to a recovery of my own. I hope now that you've released the game you feel better or have clarity or whatever it is you needed.

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SPOILERS BELOW IF ANYONE ELSE IS READING THIS
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Regarding the ending, here's my personal take:

I was surprised by the note it ended on, but, after thinking on it, while it does feel a little "cliffhangery" it's good that it doesn't expand on, show, or even briefly mention how the big stuff shook out. Doing so would have gone against what the real story was and what the master wanted Vrin to experience. It would have cheapened the stories of and little connections made with the characters of the town. The final note would have put all focus on the grand ambitions of nations, rather than the joys and struggles and mysteries immediately around you, where you and everyone else actually exist. This isn't to say we shouldn't be conscious of and maybe sometimes even take part in the moving of mountains, but we shouldn't get so swept up in it that we stop living in the real space and lives surrounding us.

...aha, the more I think on this story, the more I realize how much it impacted me :p But yeah. I'm a big appreciator of unconventional endings, and all that stuff above is something I've already been wrestling with in my own life, so... maybe I was just especially primed to enjoy it lol. Regardless, I think you did great work c:

I loved this game.

The flow of exploring, talking to NPCs, trading items around, and learning little spells to do even more of all of that, was just really pleasant and smooth. I had already finished the game before realizing there was a 1.01 update, but personally I had no troubles figuring out where to go. For me, everything was just the right scope to be easy to follow but exciting to be like "Oh! I know where I can use this!"

The writing wasted no words, and did a great job of giving a richness to the town and characters. It's very gentle in every way, but no less affecting for it. I found it funny, intriguing, and the whole segment with the old lady brought me from "cute and silly old lady xD" to "i'm actually crying a little..." to "holy shit this lady rules!" I hope you don't mind the comparison, but that character in particular broadly reminded me of the many witch characters in a book I love called The Sapling Cage, like she could have been a character in that world. That may be partly due to the political revolution stuff in your story. Speaking of which...

I found the political revolution stuff to be a fascinating touch. To me, it remained in the background, but served dual purpose in that it gave weight and depth to some characters and the larger world, while also serving as a backdrop to highlight the more important message you wanted to get across (a message that resonated with me quite a bit).

It's a smooth, gentle, breezy, and flat out lovely game. Thanks so much for making it and sharing it!

I streamed it too, so if you wanna see that, here ya go. I give some additional off-the-cuff thoughts at the end, around 1:41:37.

I win! This was awesome. I opened this after just waking up so I must have been delirious when I skimmed the page for controls and only saw WASD... I played the first couple levels without realizing I could recall the axe, and it wasn't until maybe the 2nd to last level I realized I could teleport...

Cool! Sure, you can go ahead and do that, but where possible please do include a link to the itch page and mention that the bonus pack and SFX pack are available there. Thank you! c:

Thanks for reporting, and sorry about the issue ><

I know the cause and I know how to fix it. It's just that the fix is pretty daunting. I hope to get to it fairly soon, though.

adored this... the space between my destinations was filled with research of fairies and exorcisms

Awww this is really cute... You got a lot of personality out of super simple animations. The ending made me very happy <3

1. Download "X-YZE_LINUX.zip" and extract it.
2. Inside the extracted folder, you should see 3 files: "_CREDITS - X-YZE.txt", "_README - X-YZE.txt", and "X-YZE_LINUX.zip". Extract that .zip file.
3. Inside of that extracted folder, you should see 2 more files: "X-YZE_LINUX" and "X-YZE_LINUX.sh". You should be able to run either of those.

Retl / Ann mentions you may need to mark them as executable. I'm not a Linux user, so I can't tell you exactly how to do that. However, a quick web search on the topic gave me this result, which may be helpful for you: https://askubuntu.com/questions/229589/how-to-make-a-file-e-g-a-sh-script-execut...

Just uploaded an update (V 1.02) that should fix the pause weirdness with controller, plus adds a setting to boost the brightness of the PUR background. Many other things too, but hopefully the bugs you experienced are taken care of now. Thanks again for letting me know about them and tracking down some of the repro steps!

Oh wow, yeah the way it looks in that capture card recording is way darker than intended. You're supposed to be able to just barely (but still reasonably) make out the silhouette of the level against the BG, but it looks like the BG shows up as basically just full black.

I'll figure something out to address that. Maybe a config menu setting that boosts the brightness of that BG specifically... maybe an outline around the level... will have to think about it.

Oh and when you say the dark level doesn’t show well on your capture card, are you referring to the contrast between background and level, or something else? Would you be able to show a screenshot?

Thanks for playing!

Yep, that softlock with the switches has been fixed with the 1.01 update.

As for the pause menu/thumbstick issue, I’m not sure… I had one person playtesting on Steam Deck, and they did have issues with the gamepad not being recognized, and that some gamepad inputs would pass through to the OS, such as the left face button opening the OS on-screen keyboard. We never entirely figured out the reason for this, and we hadn’t encountered the issue you’re describing. Some of their issues were fixed when they ran the game via Steam rather than via desktop. Which way are you running it?

Someone else, playing on Windows and with gamepad, seemed unable to pause at all. I’m wondering if this is all related…

Please do report back if you learn any more details! 

Thank you! Nice to hear a bit about the bonus material c:

I don’t have a Linux machine so I can’t directly test it myself. Can you provide more info on what’s happening?

<3 <3

I'm very happy to hear this! Nice job on the 3 levels. Good luck with the remaining ones!