Take care of her by KiiroHanabi

This game is available in English and French!
In Take care of her you are inside a human brain! The poor patient is in a coma and you have to review his memories and choose the ones who will make the cut. Which cut? Well, the disease and the treatment have impacted the brain, and as a result it is running out of space.
You'll have to make harsh decisions about someone's past life, take your time and relax. Maybe you'll be in peace with the outcome.

We'd be glad to know about the choice you made in the game, comment below! :D
If you are French, we recommend you to play the french version because it has the original text, but the english one is fine too!
About Graphic Design! Dev Log 1: A post about the inspiration for the graphics and our thought process when we made them.
Dev log 2/3 : Writing and narrative design in Take Care of Her: Wanna know more about how we write texts for our game? Read this!
Dev log 3/3 : Music in Take Care of Her: Enjoyed the music? You can learn more about our thought process here!
Controls:
- Click on a memory space to save a memory or on the trash bin to erase it.
Team: - Wissam: Game Design, Graphic Design, Programming (https://vhalteix.itch.io/) - Lucas: Narrative Design, Writing, Sound Design (https://rosenrips.itch.io/)
This game was made using: - Game Maker: Studio - Microsoft Powerpoint - LogicPro 9
| Windows | https://vhalteix.itch.io/take-care-of-her |
| HTML5 (web) | https://vhalteix.itch.io/take-care-of-her |
| HTML5 (web) | https://take-care-of-her.000webhostapp.com/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/take-care-of-her-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 198th | 3.782⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 676th | 3.148⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 189th | 3.65⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 263th | 3.89⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 376th | 3.75⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 93th | 3.875⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 644th | 2.487⭐ | 79🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 34th | 4.14⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 103🗳️ | 136🗨️ |
I'm glad you made this game, I absolutely enjoyed playing it.
Hey, thanks you so much for the comment ! We wanted to work on another kind of feedback but we were running out of space (I mean time :P). So, which memory did you enjoy the most ? Cheers !!
All those short storys showing an episode of Daniel's life were really interesting and felt like you gave a good thought to them. It's hard to choose one favorite, they all had some unique touch to them.
And i liked how the music changed with the different memories.
@darkguardsman well, if you feel like this isn't a game, we did our job :P thanks for your review !!
Thank you =)
At LD 40 I found a game called Headstuck. It gave me similar emotions. Thanks.
Also, the choice of a very limited gameplay comes from two reasons: giving more place to the narrative and reducing the difficulty of the development so I could be able to make the coding part quickly, which is important in a gamejam.
I like these kind of games too, I'll definitely check Headstuck, thanks!
We had a lot of fun doing the writing, graphics and music so we're glad to know you liked it! :D
Are you using a installer?

Edit: the French version was actually using an installer, I forgot to change the option at the last minute ^^'. Now everything should work!
Tu saurais nous dire quels souvenirs tu as conservés ? Ou bien ceux que tu as préférés ?
Et ouais le dilemme c'était vraiment la façon dont j'ai voulu aborder le thème, j'aurais pas aimé être confronté à mon jeu au final (parce qu'en créant les images des souvenirs et en les connaissant à l'avance j'étais incapable de tester le jeu comme un joueur, même en me forçant à me plonger dedans haha)
Salut, merci beaucoup pour ton retour !! On a vraiment travaillé autour du fait que les thématiques de chaque histoire pourraient se rapprocher le plus possible d’événements réels, afin que le joueur puisse se sentir concerné soit car il aurait vécu quelque chose d'à peu prés similaire, soit car le souvenir touche le joueur et que celui-ci ait un choix à faire.
Merci beaucoup d'avoir joué à notre jeu et de nous avoir laissé un retour !! Quels souvenirs as-tu gardés ? :)
@hishicorne
Daniel est sûrement ravi que tu ai gardé ces souvenirs :D ! Merci beaucoup pour ton retour !!
Continue to do pearl like this one
I have the impression that you run out of time at the end because the last memories are very short compared to the first ones. And it breaks a little the immersion :/
My favourites memories are the one in the forest with eva and the one when daniel is really sick with his girlfriend/wife standing next to him, very harrowing :cry:
sorry for double post ^^
@kack3y Haha thank you! Actually, we did not run out of time for the last memories. We wanted to change the pace to focus on characters. It was shorter memories as a content, but bigger as they were defining the most important people for Daniel. And it was also a opportunity to be more graphic than textual in those memories. We're sorry if it broke the immersion and we take your feedback into account!
I guess you're talking about Intimacy and Treatment. Treatment is one of my favourite memories too :D
The *only* thing I would have liked to have seen would be some sort of "epilogue" that shows the ultimate results of your remaining memories, though I know that probably wasn't super feasible for this jam. Excellent work.
Indeed, we did ran out of time; and we did implement a sort of epilogue reminding the player what each memory did to Daniel's mind. We wanted to create a archetype system that would give an overview of Daniel's life after player's choices, but well .. It's a jam !
Thanks you anyway :D
And it is fun but than its getting intense, if you have to delete all this important moments... O___o
we are just our collected memories so its almost like killing someone, piece by piece. like it never happened.
in a way its more brutal than most shooters.
i love this game by the way, not sure if i pointed that out yet.
the style is cool, the music fits well, its easy to understand and talented written.
the only thing is, maybe sometimes it was i little to much to read and at the end -probably because of the time limit there was sometimes almost no text. i think for the perfect game it should be like something in between. but hey-its amazing what you did!
Your analogy to shooter games is interesting. Actually one of the fact I like about the situation is that at the end of the game, the player will know more about Daniel's life than himself will. Kinda unfair for him, and sad too. I didn't see that as killing someone piece by piece, but now you said it, that's a fair point!
Thank you for making the English translation - I would have played it in French if you had not, but my French is extremely rusty (High school was a long time ago for me...) so English was probably better.
I really like that you had different music in each scene. While the game itself was simple, the premise/story were something else entirely! I've played a lot of Ludum Dare games over the past few years, but this one stands out.
(PS: You should totally give a way for people to follow what you both do somewhere!)
Thank you.
Yeah, we didn't focused on gameplay, we started with a simple, easy to develop idea and put all our efforts on assets and it worked well for us.
(I added my twitter and my itch in my profile :D)
Hey ! Thanks you for this really nice feedback.
Indeed, we wanted to create 4 or 5 different epilogues according to the player's choices, but we pretty much ran out of time. Thanks you for playing our game and I'm really glad u liked it ! Which memories did you pick ? :)
Cheers !
feel free to check our game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42
Thanks you for playing our game, I checked yours as well :)
@shakedimus
Thanks you very much for this comment :D I'm glad you got moved by the story !!
Thanks you for checking up our game ! We really tried to use pictures to add symbolic meanings and illustrate our game and each text :) Thanks you very much :D !
@sam-machell
I'll ask @kiirohanabi if he can do a macbuild :)
Thank you.
Edit: I managed to make the web version work, I hope you'll enjoy it!
@randytayler Thank you! "Human" is the word our game is revolving around, I'm glad you appreciated the story :D
@yaro We understand the text can be a lot to read for some people, we'll learn from that! Happy to know you still enjoyed it!
@heidi We were a bit worried about the final screen, since we couldn't make a specific ending for each combination of memories in so little time, so it feels great to know that the list format and its kind of dramatizing effect worked. Thank you for the feedback
That is exactly what we tried to achieve, last memories are shorter but more focused on characters and condensed, they don't tell long story, but they imply strong relationships and past events.
The music combined with the deep story and pleasingly art work had you forget about anything else, and really read through it all. It reminded me of Firewatch, which had me experience similar emotions and the "space-out-from-anything-else" thingy.
Great job guys, keep it up:)
(You just reminded me that I bought Firewatch when it was on sale but forgot to play it since, I will! :D)
Hey, thanks you for reviewing our game ! I'm glad you got hooked to the way we conceived the "lack of space" in memory :) and indeed, "Her" is really the person you want it to be.
The idea is that the players can relate to the story; That "her" becomes someone who has a meaning for them and not only for Daniel, based on their personal experience and how they can refer to this story while reading the text.
So, yes, "Her" is confusing sometimes :D glad you liked our game !!
@brallex
Thanks you for this comment ! I really loved Firewatch, this game moved me and I'm glad our game reminded you of it !!
@megalink
Thanks you for reviewing our game ! I'm glad you liked everything from writing to general art and atmosphere.
Yes, a narrative category would be great, I think most of the new / young designers work a lot around new ways to tell a story via games, and this category would be quite welcomed :) ! Thanks you again !
@sam-machell
Hey, our game is now in HTML5, you can probably play it :D !
I have only some advices for you. It was not so pleasant for me to read the text if it was not horizontal. Another thing is that the music could be in a loop because some people are not the fastest readers and then a lot of atmosphere is lost when the song stops in the middle.
@megalink @kiirohanabi
I think a narrative category is really difficult to handle. Because the narrative can not only be a text. It can also be the audio, the graphic aspect (tell a story through the enviroment) or can be told by the gameplay itself because a action in the world give you response about the world and the character(also have all games a narrative, more or less). And I think the narratavie is already to seen in the ratings. Because it influence the mood, the theme (you have got the most stars from me there) the fun and the humor. And maybe many people will not see a narrative if there is no text.
Choosing to loop or not the music was a point that needed more time to be discussed. We did not time the music to end when the player would finish the text, as we wanted to add an atmosphere, then leave the player by themselves to make the decision alone. Maybe musics should last longer, or maybe the loop is the best option, we'll work on that! Thank you though for pointing that out, some external advices are always welcomed!
I definitely agree about narrative not only being pure text and story. Narrative is also about how you deliver that story, creating a mood, giving hints, etc... with the help of graphics, audio, level design and game design. Therefore I get your point about other categories already taking the narrative into account. I guess this kind of question would need a real discussion, with many points of view. I'm not even sure about what I want actually ^^'
And you're right, "many people will not see a narrative if there is no text." It may be frustrating to be judged by players that don't think about narrative as a whole design, but I like to see the situation on the other side and hope that these players will discover great experiences from narrative games that will open their vision about that. Who knows? ^^'
Points I didn't like: The game filled me with pain and regret when it didn't have to be this way. We always have stuff that we won't miss or even sometimes wish to forget. Maybe it's just me but I kinda hate when I'm being tortured like this :D
Also, the text was a bit hard to read for me, it could use some spreading out vertically and cramming horizontally. The music stereo effects were very nice but a bit too much.
Regardless, Amazing job. Congratulations :)
About what you didn't like:
- "pain and regret": That's the way I wanted to work on the theme. Running out of something implies losing stuff to get through a situation and making choices (or at least that's one interpretation). And I personnaly enjoy the way games can make you feel bad for something virtual, and help you to question yourself. But I know that anxiety can get in the way and break the experience. I'm sorry if it was the case!
- "text a bit hard to read": We got some feedback about the text and we'll definitely take that into account the next time! One of the constraint was to fit all the text into the graphics without having to compromise the whole structure, so spreading the text was not the easiest (and I did my best to put bigger font-sizes in the english version as it was a bit shorter than the french one). Maybe the font itself wasn't helping too?
- "stereo-effects": That's @demn who worked on the music so I can really say much about it myself ^^'
Hey , Thanks you for checking our game ! my buddy Kiiro pretty much answered everything about writing and game designs, but since I wrote the music I wanted to know what you meant by "music stereo effects" : Did I use too many different effects on the music ?
Thanks you for playing !! :D
Some critique: Some of the very diagonal text can be hard to read in large paragraphs, and it would be really cool to see some movement in the graphical elements even if it's just some slight rotations/rocking back and forth.
Here's the mess I ended up making of his memories:

Hey Jern ! Thanks you for your feedback, we definitly have some work to do in ergonomy and also in ways to dynamize our text :) I'm glad you liked Daniel and felt guilty :P !!
That's a really Rose focus playthrough you made here :D I'm glad you liked Shooting Stars, it's one of my favorite !
Also, don't know what I got as I could not see a number. It seem like a good ending which him waking up an remembering what it is to be with family and feeling better but not sure. :P
@prodigalson I'd have loved having some voice overs to put more emotion into the text, and making it easier to read and follow, but it wasn't possible for the gamejam as our first language is French so English dubs would have took hours to record and be somewhat credible.
When you say "No music to make me sentimental", do you mean that the music did not help you?
Also there wasn't any ending number because it wasn't how the ending system worked. It's more about being confronted to all memories, that you kept or not, making you realize even more that Daniel will forgot a huge part of his past life in any case. But you can help him a little bit to give him a basis for the rest of his life.
A personalized ending for each combination was too long to develop so it was out of the question.
**Spoiler warning** Final screen was a great touch, sadly I can't tell you in detail what my choices were since I played few days ago, but I do remember that consequences of my choices produced a person that I could imagine. Design of screens and music are really enjoyable.
If I can think of any criticism: 1) the title misled me to believe that main character is a girl, until I noticed "he" in sentences. The design felt a bit girlish as well. 2) I guess this is a funny thing to say about a game which is mostly about written content, but the stories could have been reduced a bit more, maybe by 20% at least. I am someone who likes to read, but in games not so much. While memories are all about impressions, they are not experienced as paragraphs of descriptive sentences. But it's just my point of view, I'm sure many will disagree.
Hey, thanks for playing our game !
Yeah we had some feedbacks about the fact the text. The text is written with an overall design behind to make the player projects himself unto the character, thus it's not really about description but more about feelings, which can be deconcerting in video games - this is usually the domain of literature.
And yeah about the title, we just felt this would be a good way to surprise the player, especially since there are severals "her".
Thanks for your feedback !!
A "couple typos" is fine by me, since we translated it from French quite quickly ^^'
Hey ! Thanks you for playing our game twice ! I'm glad you got hooked up to our game in the end, don't apologize for skipping screens haha.
We thought about the whole musical and graphic aspects of the game as a way to enjoy each story in a different way than by just reading text, as they all try to encapsulate the mood of each screen. I'm so glad this worked on you !! Thanks you for playing our game :)
@ratherjolly
Hey ! Thanks you for playing our game and for these compliments, they mean a lot ! Cheers :D !
I have rated your game, but all of my feedback was captured in the stream.
You can hear my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/300361630
And reading the text with you again, I saw typos that I thought I corrected but well I guess not haha. I will probably upload a corrected version later (especially for the "We'll she be there" instead of "Will she be there" @_@)
Thanks you for playing our game on stream ! I was very pleased to hear all the logic you gave to the game while reading and trying to preserve Daniel and the joy in his life.
Also, your voice is very smooth, and I really loved how some sentences were pronounced differently given the impact it had on you. You're great reader :D thanks you very much !
Fantastic work, can't wait to see what you guys come out with next.
We wanted the player to really feel like THEY are running out of space for their own accomplishment more than for the game's one. We're so glad to see it worked!
L'écran de fin... pour certains ça a beaucoup plu, pour d'autres non. Effectivement si on avait une semaine on aurait travaillé sur un système complexe pour générer des fins en fonctions des souvenirs conservés et tout, mais c'était hors de question ici. Donc on a fait le choix d'une approche plus froide peut-être, mais qui confronte le joueur, plus que lui montrer ce qu'il a réussi, ça montre aussi tout ce qu'il n'a pas sauvé, pour renforcer le "Running out of Space". On aurait pu polish un peu plus le tout si on avait eu un tout petit peu plus de temps n'empêche, mais on est quand même satisfait de ce qu'on a réussi à créer !
Good job!
@diwo Merci beaucoup ^^' On compte pas arrêter le game dev pour l'instant donc t'inquiètes pas ! :D
Thanks you very much ! Yeah this is the same concept put differently haha !
Thanks for your kind words about the way we used narrative in the game, we really wanted to tell the player a story and to let him shape Daniel's life. What I really loved about the game is that your choices obviously mean something about you, and you can either try to do the best for Daniel, or get hooked up by the concept and relate to each memory with something that happened in your life.
Thanks you for playing our game :) !
Pros:
- Awesome art and music
- Nice decision making and story
Cons:
- Felt that some text were a bit long and hard to digest while others very simple/short
- Got a bit confused on the chronology, I just thought the Comb was about Rose, not Eva, since the previous memories I thought there were more focus on her.
Obs:
Also I actually took some time to understand the last one :sweat_smile:
Aaand my choises were Sacrifice, Intimacy, Shooting stars and Treatment!
Cheers!
Some of the illustrations look amazing too!
Thanks you for reviewing our game ! Chronology is indeed a bit confusing, but that was intended, to get the player's "awake" and shake up his conception of the story.
Thanks for your feedback, it is taken in count for our next work ! Thanks for keeping Shooting Stars :D
@wrenpirate
Aw, thanks you very much for reading our little story ! Thanks for this little translation issue, I had a hard time going from French to English so I'm pretty sure there are common errors in the whole game ! Thanks for playing it and I'm glad you liked it :D
@dleanjeans
Thanks for playing our game ! We made the choice to not repeat the music because some players/readers don't really like listening to music while playing, but we would have made a feature to loop it or turn it off if we had more time.. ! Thanks you for playing our game and for your kind words !!
I sometimes had trouble with the readability of the text, especially when it was tilted (line breaks became hard to follow). Also, although the music was amazing, some of the tracks felt a little too intrusive for my taste, which also distracted me from reading.
Apart from that, it was a really beautiful experience. Thanks for making this!
What do you mean about the saving slot UI? We wanted to add an Options button that would manage the audio and stuff, and I tried to add some visual feedback to the slots but it wasn't working at the time so I couldn't implement that. Or maybe you're talking about giving it more style? I thought about something like a film strip, but it was too cliché and I wanted something more neutral so it would not interfere with shapes and colors from each memory, and what is more colorless and shapeless than white? :D
@josia-roncancio Thank you very much! Yeah, the dilemma often relies on making him forget hard memories that are still a part of him and keeping the good ones, or letting him remember that part of his past, which is an important one.
The fact you finally chose to keep only characters' is really interesting! We were wondering about keeping characters' memories at the end or putting them more evenly in the game, so your playthrough shows that it makes sense and create a form of third option, in a situation where the played is stuck in a dilemma and, as you said, it gives the player power! Thank you for reporting that!
We are aware about the readability of the text when tilted, and that's something we will think about in future games! As I said to Julia-Lundman, if we had more time, we would have added an Options menu where the player could choose to mute the music, change the volume, or even choosing to loop tracks or not. Music and reading isn't something that everybody react to the same way so making the game more accessible with options is (we think) the best way to handle that issue :D

A lot of text can be difficult for sure, I'm glad you still played it. And about your French, I think you wanna say "Un bon jeu avec un air très plaisant" ^^'
Thank you for playing !! :D
Thank you for your kind and supprotive feedback ;)