While the graphics are simple, they work, and it's very cozy to sit back, relax and click through the game to the calm music. It's just a shame the start of the game lacks graphics (if it's not a glitch), just having a grey empty area apart from the dialogue box. This might put people off the game. Which is a shame, because the gameplay is quite good and the dialogue is interesting. Just a simple picture or two during the opening part would help a lot!

I really like that you have a full menu and save system.

Good job, I hope you continue working on it after the jam, fully realizing the graphics!!

@okamit Thanks so much for giving it a try and leaving a thoughtful comment! I'm glad to hear it felt cozy and relaxing, we were hoping for a very casual experience. As for the missing background art, it's a very high priority for post-jam version, so thank you for that feedback! I see the game of your team also used point & click mechanics in a house. :)

I hope the post-jam goes smoothly!

I only found a few endings and I'm not sure if I could do better?
SPOILERS:
>The best he could only answer the hat and the fish and the worst I got trapped in one of the windowsill jars?

I felt like I had interacted with everything but if there is another ending please let me know! It was fun to explore and start to learn more of the client!

Nice one :) I'll look around for your post jam version :)

@sdata Thanks so much for playing through it! I will try to spoiler tag the reply, lets see if it works...

Spoiler about endings:

!> Being trapped in the cup is indeed the worst outcome! (Technically it's just your soul trapped in it, because we are basing the character on existing fairytale lore.)

!> The main ending is the one you got to, with the phone call and the two questions. It can play out a bit differently depending on how you acted before/during it, so there are some modifications to the ending, but I think you got the one that reveals the most (if it included both the calendar/mom and Pepa)! There is also the option to refuse the job, and an option that completely avoids the phone call.

I would really like to include more lore in the post-jam version!

@titaninette Thanks so much!

This is pretty nice! While the graphics are indeed cozy as one of the commenters mentioned, the mood of the story is on contrary rather unsettling. I wonder if this stylistic clash is intentional? The writing gave me just enough hints to get an intuition of what's going on, but if you do make a post-jam version, it'd be great if you let readers dig just a bit deeper into the client's secrets (and check their answers!).

On the techinical side, I had some trouble initially trying to run the game. The exe did nothing on Windows, but the shell script did work for me on Linux. There was no audio at all, though, for some reason. It might also be good to check the penguin box for the `pc` download, too, since you advertise a Linux version here on LD.

Solid entry overall!

Hey matey, thanks for submitting your game to stream! I enjoyed playing it, here's the vod, I hope the feedback helps!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007237865

@toasteater Thank you for the feedback and playing it despite the initial issues, I really appreciate that! The clash is intentional, I wasn't sure if it would come across, so that's great to know. c: We would definitely love to explore the lore/client's backstory more.

I completely forgot to mark Linux there, thank you for noticing! I'll fix that now. If you don't mind me asking, did you try adjusting the sound in settings? The default is preset to mid-range volume, but maybe that somehow got reset in Linux version? And if you don't mind answering, did you ever run other Ren'py games on the PC successfully? I'm just trying to figure out where to begin to look for the problem with the Windows file.

@justcamh Thanks again for giving us this opportunity, it was fun and very helpful for our work on post-jam version. :)

Ren'Py represent!

I like the proportion of choices to dialog--makes me feel engaged to be making a choice every few clicks.

I got suspicious of my client at "MONETARY REWARD."

I LOVED the inspection mechanic! A slight graphical touch made the world seem so much more engaging! The slight audio touches, like the ringtone, were also great and I'd love to see more of them.

I have no idea if this person is an alien or a magician or an alien magician but I am very curious.

Nice game, I like the drawn art style. I got to both endings, and getting trapped was pretty weird.

I really liked this game! You were capable of show the characters' personality for us, without even a voice or picture. Amazing!

It's a charismatic narrative, with aincredible music - also, i have to mention the nice touch with "start menu".

I didn't have any problems (bugs) with this game, and even could greet "pepa" haha. Great work and i can't wait to see how you'll improve it. Wish you the best!

@ynneblack

> did you try adjusting the sound in settings? The default is preset to mid-range volume, but maybe that somehow got reset in Linux version?

I didn't, but I tried again today and this time it worked out of the box somehow. Did you make any changes to the "LD48 1.0 for PC/Linux" download, other than the name? Anyway, it works now for me so that's good.

> did you ever run other Ren’py games on the PC successfully?

I've been able to run DDLC and Highway Blossoms on the PC in question. I believe those were made with Ren'py but I could be wrong.

I liked the pencil art and the music. Little details in the rooms were also nice and funny.

But the lack of graphics at the start of the game at first made me think that there are mistakes in the game or it won't have any graphics at all.

@abigailcorfman Thank you for the detailed feedback and for your guesses about the client's identity! It was the first time I added a "minigame" mechanic like the room inspection so I'm really glad you liked it. As for the client's identity,
!> He is from this Earth! And looking at it, he does dress a little bit like a magician. :D

I'm excited to see more interactive story games like yours, it's not an easy genre to tackle during a short game jam!

@toasteater Ah, the file should be the same (renamed for clarity) but I really hope this means it was just one-time bug, the only other explanation I was able to find is that there could be a mismatch between system language and the file name, and that would be hard to solve. Thank you so much for looking into it and trying the download again, I really appreciate you taking the time to do so! :)

@lrvstudios Thank you! I'm glad you met Pepa.

@natalia-dushkina Thank you for playing it. :) We added new backgrounds to 1.1 version!

I like it really much, you could improve the point and click experience by allowing to inspect many things by not confirming that you want to inspect, and maybe add a button to "stop inspecting and go to other room"

Had some trouble on my end getting this to run but really like the concept

Really like the idea of learning about a mysterious character through objects, makes for a really creative take on the theme of "Deeper and Deeper"! I got the ending where my character... died? Kidnapped? It was really weird but I got the good ending eventually. All the small details from Pepa the Fish to the wet hat add so much character to this game! It manages to be really cute yet still have really unsettling tones, which is something that is hard to accomplish. The pencil graphics add a nice touch to the game as well and really fit with the mood the game was going for. Well done!

Don't look in the... I was expecting something weird to happen, despite the soft music background. And it happened! Nice art, loved the game style. The lore is out there, totally!)

Very nice! The simple drawn style and music made a great atmosphere, and it was a really neat setting that didn't say *too* much about what was going on to let me fill in gaps. Really good showcase of ability in this one! :smile:

This is really a genuinely charming game, and I was surprisingly intrigued by the story, even though it's so "simple". The art style, the music, and the narration gave me an oddly cozy feeling, at times with a very dark or sad undertone. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring every detail of the rooms and conversations, trying to make sense of everything and piecing together a story in my head. I was really impressed by the creativity!

The "saved games" feature is a nice touch! Unfortunately, I only discovered it after I had tediously re-played about 4 times to explore the missing branches. :face_palm:

Thanks for making this, it made me feel nice and warm inside! :hugging:

Indeed a really nice evening experience. It was simple and lovely. I felt pretty relaxed and sometimes shifted the atmosphere a bit (the two eyes looking at you from the bathtub), first I really expected something like a corpse in there, the music in the bathroom is really the opposite of lighthearted so I expected some dark secret there. But then I finished the game made a friend and it really was just another job. So the best part of the game was, that you really were able to create real tension with really minimalistic setup!

Really interesting little game, I'm pretty sure I got all the endings.

I loved this, the mystery and the tension just based on the story beats works really nice. I would love more episodes. Only thing to mention: the "monetary reward" seems to have disappeared, I never actually got to collect it ;)

Thanks to everyone who commented on the art – it was the first time we used traditional art assets instead of creating everything digitally, so it's good to see it received well! We also really appreciate all the comments about the game's mood/feelings it evokes, and guesses about what's going on there. :)

@morcado Oh, thank you for the suggestion! :) That's a good idea.

@vixenmink Thank you! May I ask if you use Windows, Mac or Linux? It would be helpful to know which version caused problems. :)

@crow-seeds Thanks so much for the feedback! We were trying to balance the casual and creepy tones. As for the ending,
!> It's just the player's soul that was trapped! It continues existing so it's not strictly a death. Some of the other souls have been in the family for a long time.

@phi Thank you so much for such a detailed feedback, I'm really glad you enjoyed piecing it together! We weren't sure if it would be OK to allow the player to fill in the blanks how they wanted, instead of actually revealing the full story behind it. "Cozy but with a sad undertone" is exactly what we were aiming for!

I'm sorry about the replays, though, I hope you at least got to use "skip"? I'll make sure to add this option to the game's description.

@killua I'm really glad the tension came across! Thank you for playing it and leaving such a nice comment.

@rialgar Oh, if you finished the task, you were supposed to find it there so that may be a bug. I'll look into it, thank you.

We were discussing a possibility of expanding the game's story in another installment if we figure out a compelling premise! If we do that, I would post about it on itch.io in dev updates or something like that. :)

@ynneblack Your game isn't the only one that I couldn't run so please don't think it is something on your end especially since other people have successfully run it. Once I upgrade this thing, I look forward to playing this game again.

Your game is so gorgeous I love the way you drew all of your art it's even on your icon !!!! . I love the music and the visual style I feel like this would almost work as a traditional short story book . I disturbed the teacups... my mistake . Awesome game I love it !

Oh I love this. I got a really nice ending the first playthrough and got the impression that it's a very chill, wholesome game. On the second try it went a bit different :D.

I love the visuals, they're very cozy and give a sense of security. The music goes great with them and adds a lot to the atmosphere. The change in music made the bathroom scene very tense. Maybe a bit too tense even, I was convinced there would be a body in the bathtub :D, great way to mess with the player's expectations.

I loved the narrative as well, I think you did a great job evoking certain feelings and moods. There was one typo somewhere, I think it was the word "obviously" that's very nitpicky of me though :D.

Overall great work! Well done!

That was a interesting and relaxing experience. So much beautiful art, along with many interesting objects and engaging narrative really helped immerse me in exploring the mysteries.

Full menu with save slots make it feel like a full professional game, though for a jam I probably would have enjoyed more content rather than a proper menu.

In any case, it is a beautiful work, enjoyed playing it a lot, wish there was more to learn about the mysterious oddities of the person living there.

@jonathan-jennings Thank you!

@pnkvrt Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! c: You aren't the first to expect a body in the bathtub, that's wonderful. The sorrowful music goes with the character so we thought it'd set the mood, but this impression is even better. Typos aren't nitpicky at all, thank you, I'll look for it!

@nonumbersgames Thanks so much! I'm really glad it felt immersive.

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