The Well of the Past by Chocolat-Endive
Get ready to embark on an interactive adventure, in which an old tale is waiting for you to be lived again.
It's our entry for LDJam 46. Hope you'll enjoy it! This has been a really fun event, and this is the first time we don't have time management issues. The game is playable in english and in french.
And this time, we won't promise to make a sequel or a more complex version, since we can't keep our word on the matter. :-)
Now we can’t way to try other people’s games !

Tools used :
Musical instruments used : Nanoloop mono on Gameboy, Korg Volca FM, Aodyo Sylphyo, Yamaha PSS-470 and a bunch of guitar pedals recorded on a good old Yamaha MD-8.
Ratings
| Overall | 1098th | 3.549⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1715th | 3.085⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1910th | 2.923⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2088th | 3.148⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1485th | 3.431⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 140th | 4.069⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 101th | 4.222⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 55🗳️ | 113🗨️ |
I think in the theme of a book it would have been nice if the choices would have been inside the book, on the page at the end of the text giving more of an impression of interacting with it.
I played through about a dozen times before I stopped, so I didn't get to see every ending so I was curious as to how the rest of the story would unfold.
@kjscott Thanks for your comment! There sure is some improvement that can be make to the UI.
@geegaz Thanks a lot! Most of my time was used to write the "book" while Bouteille was creating the code for the game. As for the theme, the game is about keeping a memory alive, but I guess it was not really ovious since you're the second person telling us that they did'nt understand it. Thanks for your comment!
I would have loved to feel a bit more "born into the world". The story starts and I didn't really felt very connected to the character. I am not good storyteller myself (that's why I can't give exact tips). I just felt like watching the story unfold and not being a big part of it. Maybe a goal early on would have helped. I really liked it aside from that :D
@lucien-catonnet the inventory system is more a concept than a real gameplay mechanics. It works, and one on the ending depends on it, but it's indeed not really useful or necessary during the playthrough.
Strengths
- La version française, un oasis de confort dans un événement largement anglophone.
- A mysterious and inviting tale, supported by sketches and great prose.
- Marvelous audio.
Possible improvements
- A very minor detail : changing the color of the color of the page or the text layout before the ritual starts / when it is over would make the strcture of the game a little clearer.
Super travail, merci beaucoup pour ce jeu !
It was fun participating in the story, if I were to critique I would ask for more colour
So not much of a critique here really! :) x
Beau travail, à continuer ;)
Great story but a bit disappointed by the ends, when you have a setup like this, I would expect at least one end to give an element of answer to all the questions.
@jlv Il y aurait en effet pas mal d'amélioration d'UI a faire en d'une manière générale pour rendre le jeu plus agréable.
@bisvilla We wanted to implement more mechanics with the inventory, but we didn't have enough time, so we just focused on the storylines.
@snowirbis Une des fins apporte plus d'explications que les autres. Néanmoins, cela reste assez mystérieux, et nous n'avons pas voulu apporter trop de réponse pour laisser planer un poil d'ambiance de conte/légende.
@slimmerburger Thank you! It was really fun to record this piece of music, so I'm glad you enjoyed it. Having some animations and maybe some kind of sound effects when using the buttons could indeed really improve the game
Well done!
@thedestoryer Yeah, there isn't a lot of consequences during the stories. Choices you make influence the ending, and that's all. If we make another game like this, we'll try to focus on this kind of mechanics (and inventory and combat).
@whydoidoit and @marcusnystrand We're also frustrated by the lack of content in our game, so I understand what you're saying. We had a ton of ideas, such as randomization of some events, other "branches" in the story, different kind of encounters some kind of "mise en abyme" of the whole story in the ruins (it just trigger an ending because we did'nt have enough time). I guess that making the game in two languages did'nt help us to create more content. Thank you for your comments about the soundtrack, it was really fun to record this piece of music, and I'm glad that you enjoyed it!
The mecanics were simple, but hey, its a text adventure. And its not eays to come up with a proper story and make it wortk in 3 days. More choiches to make would have been nice, but i understand the lack of it because of the time restriction.
Overall I thought the story was atmospheric and intriguing. The UI was simple, but it did the job and was easy to use, and the music really helped to cement the mood. I hope you manage to finish fleshing out the story! Nicely done.
Found some small mistakes in the text, but noting major. Like here there is "are carefully to listening your words", "to" is in the wrong place :)

Overall, a great job!