Single Circle

Game is cute, love the little drawings. However, the game felt strangly linear to me, so I was pretty suprised with the multiple endings. Guess I musta missed a few of the key decisions.

The music is soft, but I don't think it suits the deep ocean atmosphere. I would expect more atmospheric music to give more ambiance. Some deep ocean and deep water sounds would help with the mood. The art is cute, in a personal style, but I had difficulty visualizing it, it didn't seem very clear. And the plot I found very linear, I didn't really see interesting plot options. I found it very monotonous, but at the same time original. I wish I had appreciated it more. Despite understanding that he would be trapped in a small space diving, I didn't feel that in the game. So I don't know if it's appropriate for the topic. But anyway, I liked seeing the possibilities of the narrative game, I just think it wasn't well explored.

Hello, this game is the kind where it's the same route but different choices let to different details. It has the inconvenient to quickly seem repetitive, but it can be a choice. Different images for different branches gives the impression of agency, and a single path is more "etched in stone", which in not uncompatible with the overall move.

But it would have been nice to have images to distinguish endings apart other than the "end picture", and maybe it would have been preferable to have less images in the main route. It's a colourful succession of creatures, but unfortunately you only pay attention to them at the first run, and then you tend to skip, especially when they have no choice attached to them (for example the artist jellyfish). I wonder if you planned different interactions but didn't have the time to implement them all? Well, overall, it would have been more impactful to have less creatures and more alternative states of a same creature, to better mark a different choice instead of indicating in text-only (for example I did not immediately notice that the final choice with the queen was different when you are not insane).

The music is nice. Sure, it does not really convey a "deep and mysterious ocean" impression, but it's whimsical and sweet (like an "Under the sea" but calmer), which is appropriate to the fairy-tale-like creatures. However, I was bothered by how it never changes. For this game, it's less a problem compared to others since you never depart from the dreamy mood, but maybe it would have been better to have a different tune for the end?

When you make a short game with alternative routes, it's important to keep in mind that people are going to replay it with less attention to what they have already seen (or believe to have already seen).

And other thing to avoid a repetitive sensation: the insanity has an impact on the story, so let the player knows something is happening when they pick this kind of option. Not by a ugly score, of course, but by small hints, maybe the screen going darker or vivid colours speckeling. (I write all of it but I'm not even sure if you can do this in Twine).

About the theme: it's interesting to have the small bathyscaph with a small window, but I think it could have been more claustrophobic. Maybe by keeping the image small because to me it seems really big for a small circle? And with how the content was displayed (fully), I did not have the feeling of "you are limited in your view". There was the Big Eye scene, sure, butfor the guard you I'm not sure you should be able to examine details like that.

Small detail, but about the written observations. I had too much the sensation of you the creator making the pages for your game, and less of a scientist writing sciencey information. This kind of additional documents are meant to enhance the immersion, not to break you from it.

To conclude, you hinted well the state of the surface world. Strangely you learn more that than whatever is going on with how why the heirloom, not that it's a problem.

Very cute, I liked the music (though as others have said, needs a bit more of a lead out silence before looping, just a minor thing though) and the graphics, they both really gave the game a cozy vibe. I hope you don't mind me saying, but I thought the game felt more like the adventures of a young child's imagination of what it's like to be in a submersible rather than like I was actually in one, but regardless of interpretation it fits the theme very strongly and has a wonderful mood.

I think my only gripe with your story was noticing that my starting choice put me on an ending track, when I made it without having more context about the rest of the game. While I picked the sloth the first time and enjoyed the image of holding onto it looking out the porthole as the hints of the invisible sanity system loomed around me (and I ended up with Ending 3). The second time, playing with a friend to show them the game, we picked snacks as our first option and then ended up with Ending 6. Calling it Normal felt a bit deflating, and it felt like an inferior ending despite the cute scene exchanging food with the tinies. While both playthroughs were enjoyable and different in what other choices we made along the way, it still felt as though the biggest choice I made was in the beginning. Maybe it's just the emphasis of your game on having and displaying different endings, though, and how that's a double edged sword of both inviting replayability and showing players the extent to which different choices do or don't matter in the end. If I didn't know there were 6 (and a half) endings, but just that it was a "choices matter" game, I might not have seen or minded the importance of starting item so much. As it was though, I got a sense of how most or all the endings would play out after just two, which may have defeated the point of having six.

That's really my only issue with the game though, sorry for a long paragraph about it, I think I was still trying to figure it out in my head as I wrote it :sweat_smile: . As I say, it was very cute and enjoyable to play.

(And I've never specifically asked someone to play my game before, but as a fellow Twine developer, I'd be honored if you'd give my game a play :pray: . It's nowhere near as polished in terms of graphics and sound, but has a slightly longer story with more small choice branches, though still some big ones too. And if not, I understand, it feels weird to ask, but I'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts of another Twine dev.)

Very easy to describe:

:heart:

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