The Ones You Keep

by hugimugi7

co-authored: @cal-clarke, @gobigredfan, @langit

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.15

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.33

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.27

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.42

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.54

Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.02

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.17

_______________________

Letters of Note

> It's one month after the worst wedding of all time - yours. You should be in a state of newlywed bliss, but instead you find yourself packing to move out and move on. There are just a few items left to go through first: your wedding gifts.

> Each gift came from a close friend, and each friend has reached out with their own version of the events that changed the course of your life. Examine their letters, texts, and messages to unravel what went wrong, and most importantly, decide who is worth keeping in your life.

_______________________

_______________________

Credits

- Joonatan Siponen (Hugimugi) - Developer, Direction, Pixel Art

- Charley Rand - Writing

- Cal Clarke (CeeJay) - Sound design

- Langi Tuifua - Voice acting

Secondary voices:
*
Gracey Tela
*
_______________________

Bug fixes

- *Fixed font bug where some special characters weren't rendered properly.*
- *Fixed bug where controls said RMB instead of LMB.*
- *Fixed bug with solo ending lines not showing*

Tags: #immersive, #multiple endings, #pixel art, #point & click, #relationship, #relaxing, #short, #voice acting

Genres: interactive fiction

Tools: GameMaker

Comments25

Hunter Van Brocklin3 Oct 2023, 00:48

loooved the voice acting here, and the unique form of writing/storytelling

NicolasJL93 Oct 2023, 01:36

loved the voices!

JasonM3 Oct 2023, 01:47

Interesting concept. Took me a minute to understand what I needed to do. I enjoyed the writing and story

MapleLeaf3 Oct 2023, 01:49

this is frankly phenomenal. oozing with love and intent in every respect. love it so much

Guzman3 Oct 2023, 01:57

Great graphics and voice acting

Syntaxxor3 Oct 2023, 01:59

Genuinely loved this sort of storytelling! Each character was so well-written and characterized, and the depth in terms of the ways people talk and react to your choices was... honestly surprising. Loved the little epilogue, and it works well with the theme, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of actual story and theming!

Thenerdster3 Oct 2023, 09:15

Wow! Excellent game entry. Intriguing gameplay and solid graphics, audio, theme. Well done!

Gorglomux3 Oct 2023, 13:53

Very nice blend between narration and gameplay. The game is also beautiful !

Anatol Dumitras3 Oct 2023, 14:09

A very interesting idea. Loved the voices, maybe a bit too long but it's good enough.

BauBau3 Oct 2023, 14:15

Couldn't agree more with what everyone else already mentioned. You guys made a very interesting and complete game! I only want to mention that the RMB is actually the LMB for me. LMB and Scrolling is a bit hard :smile:

Bastienre43 Oct 2023, 14:21

Amazing entry, great job!
Voice acting is top notch, as other said, and I'm happy to see a narrative entry for this theme.
Well done.

minjutin3 Oct 2023, 14:21

I had so many questions, like "what note? what happened? where? who?" and even though I got some answers, I feel like I was still left with more questions. Even though your decision to keep the mysterious atmosphere (or then I just didn't play long enough to actually get some answers) it may have made it even better. Great storytelling, great voice acting.

CobaltJT3 Oct 2023, 14:26

To be honest, I don't really know what to say.
The initial idea sounds a bit heavy for a game jam. But the writing and the voice acting are brilliant. The humor is on point, and makes it enjoyable to listen to all the letters.
If there was a hidden "truth" to discover, I didn't figure it out. Maybe my attention span is too short during game jams.

ZungryWare3 Oct 2023, 19:37

Phenomenal voice acting! Well, Marius's wise-guy accent was a bit hammy but aside from that, the characters all felt really believable and unique from each other. Great writing for sure. I enjoyed piecing together the events of the wedding and trying to decipher who did what. I gotta say, whoever wrote that letter is a damn coward. That is information you provide *before* the wedding, not during.

This had me engaged all the way through. Great work!

emilyy4 Oct 2023, 01:56

Loved the voices and the story behind it. The characters and letters were really interesting and funny at times. Great game!

Derek Glennon4 Oct 2023, 03:37

Voice acting, writing, and art were all phenomenal! Well done! My nitpicking complaint is that I desperately wanted to fit the cheese wheel and the painting together haha they just really look like they should be able to fit together!! :smile:

fosf04 Oct 2023, 03:43

I really like the storytelling background you made! wp!

Haotian Chen4 Oct 2023, 03:46

good idea, good graphic, great audio, i love it!

spooncats4 Oct 2023, 05:03

really innovative take on the theme and amazing storytelling!

mindhijacker7 Oct 2023, 04:24

Nice small details about Tommy and Manny huh? I think Tommy and Manny will not get along well. One sounds like insane strong dwarf and the other is a whimpy weaboos. This game is good. I did have to left Tommmy behind :(. Lewis is kind of a friend who is a drug addict in the disguise of alcoholic.

braiizen7 Oct 2023, 04:36

wow amazing storytelling! each character was so unique. Love how you never showed the letter or who wrote it gonna keep me thinking about it for a while now.

orangeoceans7 Oct 2023, 04:48

The format reminds me of FMV games (without the video of course). Personally, as with FMV games it was a bit hard for me to sit through the monologues, so I found myself getting distracted, but I can see the format really appealing to someone else.

I appreciate that there were no right or wrong answers in the end, or if there were, this wasn't spelled out by the game. The open-endedness is very effective.

fizzbark12 Oct 2023, 05:23

Great little game, the voice cast did a fantastic job. The most frustrating part was being unable to rotate the cheese only 45 degrees - it'd free up so much space! The ambiguity at the end works really well. Great attentions to detail with the characterization too - neat that a single tennis racquet is not a great gift for two people.

Natano12 Oct 2023, 13:30

Wow... I have to say that the voice acting and the pixel art are stunning! I took some time to understando what i should do, but i enjoyed this game so much.

Nice take on the theme! You did a really good work!

LDJam user 32133312 Oct 2023, 23:12

Well written, and I'll echo what the person above me wrote and say I really liked the graphics too.

I thought it was a bit strange that you got letters or texts from people, yet it was voice acted and I couldn't see letters on screen. While the voice acting was great and really helped bring the characters to life, I would have liked to read along from the letter, rather than get subtitle popups. But I get that you may have run out of time to add extra graphics like that.

Very unique entry, well done!

Other games by @hugimugi7

★3.85

★4.03