Moving In and Moving On

Great job putting all this togheter, minor feedback would be the speed the character moves makes it a bit immersion breaking (too fast) and maybe advance dialog and make a choice should be different inputs so you dont make a mistake. Nice game!

it's a shame that i couldn't finish the game because of a bug, but the sound design and the mood was well executed!

Nice work with the visuals and the music!

Ran into a bug, and added screenshot of the place. After the dialog ended, I was unable to do anything :(

Thank you all very much for playing our game! :bow:
@pe7e I'm very glad you enjoyed. Great feedback - we'll add them to our list of features to work on post-jam!
@zamizmi @crushedsummers Really glad you liked the sound design and vibes! I'm so sorry you ran into bugs- crushedsummers, was your game bug also in the music room near the oboe? We'll do some more playtesting and try to debug soon.

@artmuse62 yes I confirm that it's the exact same bug as Zamizmi ;v;

The wonderful @tess-winlock just pushed a hotfix for the oboe bug, FYI @crushedsummers @zamizmi! :D The text may still write over itself multiple times, but it should no longer be a game-breaking bug!

Good game with an engaging storyline. Not my favorite genre, but this game drew me in - the story is not complex, but it's touching and atmospheric. The sound design really helped too. Especially memorable was the summoning spell. Excellent job, guys!

Arts is amazing as well as music. Can you please the music it on soundcloud?

Interesting game! I like it!

Woah, I'm glad I found this little gem! Not many games have voice acting and the audio here was amazing. The story was ok. I would've liked more depth and context to it... but it got me hooked until the end anyway (which, trust me, is a huge compliment since I'm not a big fan of reading). Great job!

Really nice voice acting for the ritual! Good overall atmosphere and mood. The art style was fitting. Nice background music too.

Having a journal is a nice touch. There's a lot of dialogue and it can help figure out the objective if someone misses or skips something.

As others noted the character moves a bit too fast. Apart from that there are only some minor glitches, nothing blocking.

I have to say I am absolutely blown away by this entry. The sound work is amazing, the whole atmosphere is great and the story is perfect for the theme. This was clearly the work of a very talented team, keep it up!

@usenrame I'm so glad you (and everyone else who commented) liked the music!! I am planning to polish up the songs and put the OST up sometime in the next few weeks!

Ahh, thank you everyone for your kind words! We’re blown away by your feedback and are so happy that people have been enjoying! Thank you all so much :relaxed: :cherry_blossom:

Seriously though, mates, you're doing awesomely; the art style is totally up my alley. Plus, the gameplay is super engaging. You guys are killing it!

I agree with everyone down there, the music is just amazing! I also really liked the atmosphere of the game and the entire art, animations are very smooth and story was engaging to me, kudos!

you did a really good artwork in your game, i like it!

I pressed ESC and the game got stuck in this screen, and I had to restart :(

But up to that point, it was really promising! Especially nice that the interactables were brighter than the environment. And you got to pet the dog (or at least try)! And the voice acting and sounds were great, especially at the summoning.

What a wholesome story! The ghosts weren't scary at all, everyone is so nice. I like the vibe of old manor, I wish there were a few more dusty rooms to explore and some dark secrets to find but appreciate the game as is.

The soundtrack fits the game very well, too! Good luck to your team in future projects!

The art is absolutely amazing, there is so much detail in the world. The player moves a bit fast in my opinion but overall the game is very enjoyable. The story was perhaps a bit too straight-forward but it was engaging until the end. Solid game all around!

Nice artwork!

I feel like you move too fast but it's a good game.

@flogram Thanks for finding that! just pushed a massive bug fix!

Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support!!
* @starstia made almost all the art, and @starstia and @galen-skibyak really made the manor come to life in engine!
* @ariyassa just posted the banger soundtrack HERE on Soundcloud, FYI @usenrame! They did ALL the sound design and music creation and audio effects!
* @tess-winlock just squashed a whole swarm of bugs and pushed the updates up to Itch.io! (Thanks for catching the journal bug @flogram!)
* Our two voice actors also did phenomenal jobs and provided great recordings for our sound whiz!

I am so so proud of this team! Y'all are AMAZING, and I can't wait for the next adventure together :clap: :100: :cherry_blossom:

Very nice and cozy narrative game, the atmosphere was great and the voice overs and sounds really made the whole thing come together. Great entry!

I really like this entry, and for one appreciate the fast movement speed hahah. When I first started it kinda surprised me, but it was perfect for the amount of movement that was required for the game. Love the atmosphere and mood - solid submission :thumbsup:

It's a nice story to experience. The visuals are very cool, and sound design is good - from SFX to voiceover, all feels quality. Well done!

I honestly didn't feel the need to open the journal at all. The game is straightforward, and you are doing just one quest at the time.

With a heart full of respect and gratitude, I'm back, and this time I want to leave something more sincere and valuable behind.

I've just had a long discussion with our team's artists about the questions you've asked, considering the directions from which you should approach them. Since our development environments differ and our social contexts are not the same, much of our experience may serve as a reference but might not be replicable. It would be great if we could help you.

Firstly, our team was officially formed four days before the competition, but our core members were already there in February. At that time, we emulated the most primitive Game Jam environment, starting from scratch without any preparation to grind through a small project. As a result, our core artists and our programmer have a certain level of tacit understanding in the workflow. We all know what the other person needs at any given moment and when to prepare what components.

For example, in the early stages, they would first prepare modular character, background, and UI sketches for testing. This also established certain visual dimensions for subsequent production, which we call "standard parts."

Our last artist arrived two days before the competition, and at that time, I held a meeting with the four of them. They quickly communicated some ideas about the art:

We must not choose Western fantasy themes for this competition. On the one hand, as a team from China, we naturally have cultural barriers and are at a disadvantage in this area, so we must play to our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. On the other hand, we anticipated that many people would choose Western fantasy themes, so we must create something more differentiated.

After determining the general direction of production, they quickly communicated their respective areas of expertise and artistic styles, then compiled a document about each other's works for reference. On this basis, they established a workflow, with some responsible for background images to determine the size of standard parts; some for the title interface, as this is the most visually demanding and requires a strong first impression; and some for the overall polishing, segmentation, and packaging. They quickly set up an "art factory."

Upon learning that the theme was "summoning," they quickly decided that our theme presentation should be realistic. Moreover, since three of them are very good at sketch styles (to be honest, I'm an art layman, and I'm not sure whether they are really good at "sketches" or if it's just easier to be lazy with them), the overall art style was also determined.

After confirming the main artist's ideas, they quickly collected many reference images and compiled a new document. It includes many details, large and small, such as line thickness, color presentation, and overall style references. This saved them a lot of communication costs in the later stages, allowing them to focus on art production rather than communication details in the second half of the competition.

Alright, now let me provide something more concise and valuable:

1.In the early stages of team formation, understand what game engine you are facing. On the one hand, many things can be implemented by the program rather than necessarily needing to be drawn. On the other hand, you need to know the limitations of this engine and what format and standard of materials it requires from you.

2.Before establishing a theme, have a general expectation of the direction and art style you want to take in this competition. At least know which aspect your desired work leans towards and in which aspect your teammates excel. You can prepare some relevant materials together, such as a bright color scheme and a gloomy one to cope with the next game being light-hearted or terrifying.

3.It is crucial to allocate the workflow in advance, prepare work standards, and confirm reference details. This will allow you to quickly form productivity, avoid much unnecessary time waste, and greatly reduce the possibility of "rework."

4.There must be as complete a value assessment of the art work as possible, ensuring that your time allocation is spent on effective artistic performance as much as possible. It is very likely that some art and animations you have spent a long time on may not be very noticeable in the game, making them ineffective.

5.Always try to maximize your strengths and create differentiated or very familiar things. This will help your art realization more.

That's all we can think of for now, my friend, as our artists are still quite "zombie-like" at the moment, and our experience is not very abundant. We have told you everything we can think of without reservation because we believe this is the embodiment of the "independent spirit" and the thing that should be done more in this competition.

We are very willing to communicate with you in depth and are also happy to become friends with you. At this moment, even though we are at the other end of the world, I still feel that my heart is connected with yours.

This is what I call the most precious thing.

Cool game! The controller was really fast but I was constantly stopped by invisible collisions or small objects. Other than that the gameplay was fun and the story interesting. gg

It felt very nostalgic with the music and the rpg maker vibers:-) loved it

As I love writing comments while playing, saying right away that I absolutely love the animation of the hat on the MC. The music is also lovely. Then, I checked the engine you used and felt impressed as I am not a very proficient programmer myself and struggled to make a good dialogue system in GameMaker :)

But I also had that problem with walking over assets:

I remember then, in my GameMaker game, I solved it with brute force by using transparent blocks.
Looking at assets and the overall mechanics, I would say RPG Maker MV could also be a good engine for this game. While a bit restricting, it would allow you to do the same things and in an easier way, leaving you more time for development :)

Also, I noticed these buttons on dialogue window that don't seem clickable:

If it's just part of design, I feel like it can be confusing for a player to have unactive buttons :')

Really nice voiceover, always such a treat to hear some voiceover in jam games! The singing is beautiful ^^
Dog spirit is also adorable.

I could "take the rope" from the tree again after talking to Butler. That activated rope-themed dialogue with Butler for 2nd time. However, it didn't affect my quest and he accepted my cleaning efforts.

Also, I think it would be neat if looking at lady's portrait after learning who she is from Butler changed dialogue a bit. Though it still works as is.

I think, when we get to these dialogue lines, it's better to hide baroness's sprite and leave just the MC:

Door of the music room is a bit buggy to get through, you have to go a bit up:

Finally, it would be neat to have some picture/still/words before credits to wrap it up carefully

@kanity As the programmer, thanks! I feel really seen!! Thank you! And Thanks for the thorough comment! We chose gamemaker thanks to chatterbox, and boy did I suffer through that UI. Those buttons you found are a hilarious case of 'i don't want to touch it while it (mostly) works' but I'd probably remove them in the patch.

I'm so glad you enjoyed the game! We have ideas of how to expand it, and we'll keep the itch page updated if we do!

@tess-winlock thank you, I will follow the game on itch ^^

Congrats! :clap:

So much work put into the depth of your game: great audio, I imagine a lot of time spent on writing the scenario, the dialog, the interactions, the branching system...

Good job!

Loved it! Music and sounds are gorgeous! I had an issue with sprites displaying as black squares but after a few page refreshes, game magically fixed itself.

Nice entry! I can tell this must've taken a lot of time because it has a very ambitious scope.

@blue-pin-studio thank you!! as part of the production team I feel seen haha. we put a fair amount of planning into LD ahead of time and made a lot of key decisions weeks before the jam even started, such as deciding on the game engine, roles, and what each of our team members' capabilities and styles and game preferences were.

from the programming side, we set up a our github ahead of time and our lead programmer put down a lot of boilerplate based on what we roughly projected to be the kind of game the team would most gravitate toward. for audio, we also knew we'd have voice actors, so we decided ahead of time that fully voice acted lines would put too much pressure on the narrative team and we would only have accent sounds. so by the time the jam itself happened, the whole team vibed pretty quickly and we were able to hit the ground running the moment the theme was announced.

I believe that prep work laid down a solid groundwork such that we could support some of the more ambitious systems (branching dialogue, adventure game-style movement with object interactions, voice acting, etc) because by the time the jam itself came around, we already had some base systems to work with :)

arrr this is one of the harder reviews for me to write. I can see you have put a lot of hard work into the game, but because of my dyslexia, I do find it difficult to enjoy games that are heavy on text. I do recognize that most players do not have this problem.
sorry I will not review you on: overall, fun, innovation and humor.
but I have reviewed you on the aspects that I can fully enjoy: theme, audio, and mood, all of which you did very well in all these category's,.
The music, in particular is really good it matches great with the art and set the mood, you are also using the theme in a clever way.

This was super lovely. The music was atmospheric and the art was super neat, I would have loved to explore the world more!