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Then I'd venture to say that the design philosophy of this game might not bode well for its longevity. The struggle from this genre of game doesn't usually come from the controls being counterintuitive but rather overengineered (I am bread) or oversimplified (Getting over it). A lot of people in the comments mentioned the controls being jarring. I'd just take note of that.

As for the level design and "having players take risks to find out" if things are interactable or not, I'd caution you to reminisce on that and verify that's actually what you want. This is a pattern many devs fall into and it ruins games. Someone, like myself, will try interacting with a poster to see what secret dialogue the devs left for us only to die the first few times then genuinely stop trying. For the rest of the game, after they've been trained not to interact with anything, players will ignore anything you leave around. This is something the lead designer of Civilization IV,  Soren Johnson, commented on once: “Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.” If the cost of dying and retracing one's steps to get back to where they were outweighs the possibility for interacting with something, players will take the optimal path and just ignore it. 

Rated!

Rated!

This game makes me mad. I'm not sure if that was the intention, but it does. It reminds me a lot of Getting over it with Bennett Foddy. The simple controls yet frustrating controls and the mental health theme add to that correlation. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.

What I will say is the arrow keys is what makes this frustrating. Because of the camera perspective, diagonals mess with your muscle memory. I'll be hopping in the South East diagonal and try going North East, hitting the wrong key to do so. I'd work heavily on reworking your InputComponent if you have one. You could just make this game an "A and D" game or "Left and Right" game. Let the player rotate left and right instead of freely picking directions. It should help with the disorientation, as controls no longer are dependent on a fixed perspective, but rather the rotation of the player (which is something every player is used to).

Another issue I had was deciphering what was interactable or not. A few design choices clash here:

• There are no walls, so hugging the walls keeps you very close to death at all times.
• There are no checkpoints, so deaths are very punishing.
• To interact with something, you have to walk into it.

This let to me walking into things to see if there was dialogue based on it, like the window and pudding taught me might be the case. However, not everything is interactable. For example, the poster in the first hallway you hop past. I wanted to see if there was some funny dialogue and fell. 

I couldn't figure out what the 'Enter', 'Comma' and 'Period' keys were for. Though this might just be a skill issue. Clicking them didn't seem to do anything and walking into the poster to see what the MC said made me fall and die. 

Finally I'd just work on the audio. The hopping seems to be an integral part of the game, so I'd try and make the audio less annoying. You seem to be randomizing the pitch (or different sound files) when they play, but the problem is you can get the same sound over and over again. Look into a "grab bag" approach or have a "lastPlayed" variable in the player and make sure the same sound doesn't play multiple times in a row.

This game has a ton of potential and I want you to have the best chance of success possible. Best of luck!

Rated!

A visual novel for a game jam is a very brave decision. The genre is extremely hard to produce in a short time crunch without using stock/paid assets. I don't know how but you pulled it off! The visuals and dialogue are really good! My only gripes are with the quest system and the colors. 

While it's most certainly due to the time crunch, I would've loved to see the quest system used more than two or three times, even at the cost of lower-quality dialogue, or reused set pieces. 

As for the color, I really love the monochrome style. But I find it jarring that some of the frames used color. I suppose it's for the fire considering how it's stylized. But if I were to continue this project, I'd make sure to save color for elements requiring contrast, like fire or blood. Please remember to make blood red. Or you might have this happen to you.

Would love to see this worked on into a full release!

Rated!

Rated!

Rated!

Rated!

Rated!

WDYM KILLING PEOPLE IS ILLEGAL.

Rated!

Rated!

Mannn Midnight I already rated your game. YA DONT GET TWO

Rated!

Glad you like it! Thanks for playing :)

I'm glad the simple gameplay was interesting enough to have depth! We were worried that simple might become boring. Thanks for playing!

That's hilarous. On our end we actually considered a game somewhat like yours, but closer to something like that one mario minigame. Thank you for playing our game!

Thank you!

We wanted to add slight tells to the kidnappers but decided that it wasn't something we should focus on for the jam, since the gameplay loop was still complete without it. But thank you for playing!

Thank you! Love your game too!

Thanks for playing!

Sorry about the kidnap during dialogue! That was a rare condition we didn't have time to fix.

The idea behind the strangers is to talk to them if you're unsure whether or not they're kidnappers, pre-emptively hide if you don't want to talk, or trust them and walk past them, hoping they're not kidnappers (last resort). Sorry if that gameplay wasn't fun/wasn't intuitive! I'll do better next time. 

Rated!

The art in the intro/tutorial is extremely impressive. The visuals in-game are great as well as the concept. I wasn't able to make it all the way to 6AM but I got very close. Eventually there were so many partiers it became hard to interact with the correct person. Great game!

Rated!

The art style is very unique and not anything I've ever seen before. "Photobashing" huh? Gotta check that out.

Gameplay-wise I was a bit confused. it seems to be a game like "crash" where the longer you wait the more and more money you accumulate, but you can't be too greedy because the value can instantly crash (e.g. in this game, they hit the button first). 

If that's the gameplay loop, then it's very chance based. That's not exactly a genre I'm great at. 

I wasn't able to hit the quota, but it was fun to play regardless!

Rated!

Rated!

Rated! That was a lot of fun.

This game was loads of fun. I figured out who to trust eventually. It should be fairly obvious considering it's one of the first things you read after launching the game.

I wasn't able to beat it though. I typed in the code and eventually made it to the sign that says to jump on the platform but literally couldn't find aforementioned platform anywhere. Couldn't progress past that.

Rated! I'm basically just a god gamer and did just that. 🤪

Amazing, but very short game. The visuals are top notch and the mechanic is really cool. The game rewards you for quickly solving the bounce puzzle and shooting as few times as possible. I thought this game was going to be easy right before I saw the tutorial say "[shooting directly?] no effect" 

Rated!

Amazing little game. I was able to complete the first 3 puzzles before I got distracted. 8-bit games and puzzle games are actually both not my thing, but despite this game being a combo of both, I actually had a good time and spent far longer than I would have on many other dime-a-dozen puzzle games. 

I've never seen Pico-8 used before in a game jam and I was pleasantly surprised!

I could totally see this game being someone's childhood favorite gameboy game.

Rated!

This was spooky for how simple it is. Great job for your first solo game!

I got a bit confused at some points. Being mostly text-based makes it hard for me to get genuinely scared. Plus the artstyle is very bright and cheerful for a horror game. 

This game reminds me of "Crank It (itch)" and that one watchtower game that inspired them all. 

A wonderful revamp of minesweeper with modifiers and a AA coat of audio-visual paint, bringing life back to a timeless classic! This game is a wonderful, yet enjoyable experience. I really liked the modifiers that change how the information is manipulated on your display. 

Rated! Left you my notes on the rating page.