The presentation was very well done! The cutscenes felt pretty slow though. Beautiful piano and great worldbuilding made up for it though!

Compelling story! I love a well-done narrative game for Ludum Dare. Cool that you did it in Unity, too.

It was interesting how the questions developed from just reading comprehension to deeper knowledge.

I agree the pace of the UI sometimes felt a bit slow - but having it a bit laid back like that helps the mood quite a bit.

Interesting story and lovely atmosphere. I was a little taken aback at the question sections though. It kind of took me out of the story.

Definitely a different take than most LD games, but really well done in both presentation and writing.

I'm sorry, but the slowness of the text, with no way to speed it up, made the whole thing intensely frustrating to me. I'm a fast reader, and so I kept on being distracted from the narrative by the frustration of having to wait for the text to come up very... slowly...

You ask for responsible reviews, by which I guess you mean that you'd like reviewers to properly play through the game before reviewing. And I'm sorry, I can't.

Interesting story! I feel like the question system was done really well and added a lot to the story. Just some details to note, the scroll bar direction is a bit misleading and I didn't know I had to click the chapter name to progress.

Really liked the "run this loveliness." This is game while being minimalist really feels beautiful. Loved the music.

@zarkonnen This is a bug, now fixed

@owl-skip I'm afraid I still can't fast forward the text once I get into the conversation with Harry. In the intro, I can click to make it go faster, but this doesn't work once the conversation begins. Uh, and in fact, perhaps due to my incessant clicking, the game is now not showing any text after the "Childhood" intertitle. Sorry!

@zarkonnen you should have a slider now to speed it up considerably.

Beautiful game. I like the writing and the presentation is fantastic. The visuals and music tie together really well to support the story.

I agree with retrisma and rjhelms, though, that the text displays a bit too slowly. It also would have been nice to have seen more interactivity somehow... but I imagine that would be a lot of work to implement for a story like this.

I wanted to take a look at the source code, but the linked github repository is empty! :anguished:

@squimmy Check repo now.

@owl-skip Re-played, to the end this time. (And adjusted score accordingly.) Really good story. You may enjoy or already know this story by qntm on a similar topic: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo (Note to other readers, this story is kind of a spoiler for the game.

@zarkonnen Awesome, I've never seen this! Thanks.

@owl-skip Thanks! I was curious to see how the dialog text was stored and parsed.

@zarkonnen I had exactly the same thought recarding mmacevedo :grin:

Beautiful game! I love the simple aesthetics and atmospheric soundtrack!

Great story as well... I mean it's a whole game

The questions section wasn't much of a fun to me. Especially not being american and not knowing states/football teams.
It also took me some time to realize that I need to press the chapter name to continue. The game bugged a couple of times at this moment and I had to re-start it 2 times.

But that still was a great experience! Amazing job!

Thanks @caudatecoder ! I will check that bug. :)

Hey! I absolutely loved this! The minimalistic graphics worked super well, and the overall mood came through very strongly. Cool topic too, I think the part of scientific history that you mention is very interesting. Have you read or watched the play by Michael Frayn called "Copenhagen"? The vibe and topic kind of reminded me of that a bit.

Just to give some very minor constructive comments:
- Like some commenters above, I found typing too slow and set the text speed to its highest, but it made the text typing sound rather annoying and a bit too loud relative to the music
- Often it felt like the text is a bit too low on the screen as the continue button and choices were at the very bottom and the top was empty most of the time, although this might depend on the screen/computer?
- Since I as the player am the "therapist" - as I'm answering those questions - I'd probably feel it's more logical to press continue before "my" lines appear, and then the AI just responding on itself
- The final screen was a teeny bit confusing, I spent some time clicking around wondering if it's the end or I can't see how to progress. I liked the quiet pause at the end but would maybe prefer something to appear on screen after some time to indicate it's over

There are all super minor comemnts though and didn't get in the way of me enjoying the game!

Also it's very nice to see a narrative game on LD! We made one as well, seems like very few teams chose to do this :)

First of all, special mention to leave the player the possibility to speed up the text. You thought about it! Then, it's a beautiful text-based game. And another proof you can make a game without doing AAA graphics, if you have imagination!
I left the "Fun", "Graphics" and "Humor" stuff un-rated, but I highly rated anything else.

Very sombre and mellow... nice work.

@hefka Many thanks! Re: the rating, I think you can read Fun as 'involvement' and Graphics as 'Presentation', worth a rating? Would really help.

@fishbrain Thanks!

On my first play, when I got to 'Childhood' some text seemed to very briefly appear on screen, then disappeared and nothing happened after that. The music and descending particles all continued, but there was no more text and I couldn't progress. However, after starting over I could not replicate the bug.

It took me a second to figure out I had to click **on** 'Continue' at first, some kind of mouse-over or other markup would've helped in that regard. I initially felt the same about the chapter/topic titles (Childhood, Mother, etc), but the slow fade prompted a click faster than 'Continue' did.

I increased the text speed to about 70%, which felt more comfortable. I appreciate how there were short breaks after a comma and period, that gave the text a more spoken cadence.

I would have preferred it if the choice dropdowns didn't already have an answer selected. A few times the right answer was already selected, which felt like it took away what's supposed to be my job as a player. Having to google sports teams at one point also took me out of the game, which broke immersion/attention. For the next one I didn't know the correct answer to I just selected answers one by one, which didn't really give me the sense that I was succeeding properly.

I'm glad I read @sasha-v's final bullet point because I, too, hadn't realized the story ended right-away.

All in all, the story felt intimate and I did appreciate the open ending. I wrote a much more clunky narrative text game in Twine a while back for Ludum Dares 47, and your presentation added a lot more life and kind of a pleasant flow than I ever could.

@flaterectomy Thanks for the really in depth critique, this is really valuable and thanks for looking at the UX so closely.

That was pretty cool, mood and music fit well together with the graphics, feeling of a calm talk. The ai guy didnt give me the feeling of instability he seemed pretty relaxed just concerned about a few things. Gameplay was alright but didnt want to redo the game to get another ending.

What a beautiful experience, the character portrayed felt incredibly real. One thing though, as someone not into football and not from the United States, I could only guess which team belongs to Chicago, but maybe that was intentional?

Nonetheless, amazing work!

@trexxak Thanks, that's so nice! I think the idea is the computer is testing you a bit, gives a bit of personality.

it was a nice journey

Great presentation and great writing! Although I managed to get myself softlocked when I started the second therapy session (I think I may have clicked on "Therapy" multiple times, causing it) I liked the atmosphere it was bringing.
The lack of visuals were somehow better at giving me an image of what was happening, it really felt like I was talking to a computer screen. Great work!

@not-as-artistic Thanks! I'll debug that now.

Very nice game enjoyed it

Thanks @parttimeindie

This game made me feel things. The content itself doesn't carry as much to me as the overall atmosphere. Harry seems like a pretty stable dude. Maybe if he was fluctuating between states, I would be more interested in the story itself and get some more 'unstable' vibes

Thanks @michael-feldman , you know, unstable is as unstable does when you're talking about a supercomputer.

It was definitely a fun time.