you just wanted to hang with your crush!

lovely game with _astounding_ art, wow! there's a very specific name style that's super cool and i'm SO glad you included pronouns for characters. amazing work!!

@ty omg thank you.... <3 btw were you able to get to the end bug-free?

@angela-he i couldn't ;-; i got stuck a few times, though my friends progressed further than i could (so i'm gonna try again soon akdjahdha) but i don't think any of us got to the ending :/

@ty_ oh poop! ty for letting me know <3 ill upload a bugfree version soon T-T

It's always a treat to see what you cook up, but before I get into how fantastic the art style is, and how fast the narration hooks me and hooks me hard.

But, I think I ran into a bug or got very confused.

Spoiler:
!> I got out of the room, encountered something in the bathroom. Went downstairs after the one making popcorn, but couldn't find anything to interact with on the lower level - kitchen all empty. As I got back to the movie, I said something weird had happened, but then after that, there seemed like nothing more would happen.

Yet, with the bits and the little pieces of narration, it's impressive how I could feel the characters take shape and have a distinct feel to them. The narration felt very natural.

And oh, the art. The amount of it. How well made in that little time that 72 hours affords. And it adds a bit extra that one sort of can follow your entries over time here and they very much fit together aesthetically.

If there's more to the game after what I described in the spoiler, please let me know (and any trick getting to it). I really want there to be more!

@local-minimum oh boy, I fixed (most?) of the bugs on the itch.io version https://zephyo.itch.io/come-alive if you're still curious about the story :) LOL SO MUCH ART I died

Of course there's more! There's so much more :) Thanks so much for trying it out!

really really amazing work as always! the characters were super thoughtfully created, the fancy emotive text & spacial perspective enhanced the mood a lot, just all around incredibly good. it probably goes without saying but the scariest part of the game was probably the sheer amount of fantastic art you managed to churn out in 72 hours, dear god

most of the bugs from the original file seem to be fixed in the itch version, but one minor thing i encountered was
!> when you’re hiding under the bed with pav, ”get closer” -> “i have a crush on you” does nothing and you’re forced to click on “ahaha yeah.” maybe this is intentional! i only mention it because i was able to click on it later in the sequence (and also from pre-itch playthrough experience, lol)

again, it was really a treat to play this. congrats on another mind-blowing submission!

Seeing that Itch has been instructed to call this "flaming cheeto" is one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen, I haven't laughed that hard in months! 🤣 Now I want some Cheetos and cake.

First things first: my initial reaction was along the lines of "OH FRICKING HECK IT'S ANOTHER SCARY ONE" and I waited until midnight to download and play it. Was that a good idea? Yes. **Anyone reading the comments before playing for some reason, wait until midnight to play this!** My heart was barely beating and I was barely breathing at the

!> hiding under the bed scene.

Some of those scary moments and jumpscares got me *GOOD*, that's what I get for playing at *12 FRICKING A.M.* to maximize the horror vibes.

I think the plot can be summed up on one word: yes. Very few people can tell a story this good in 3 days (glances at @emily-pitcher 's [submission](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/dear-ghost)'s nothing-but-5-stars rating), this is perfection. I can only wish to one day be as good at drawing as you are, I absolutely *suck* at digital art and drawing people in general. Proportions are too hard, I'd rather draw a blob.... :P

As far as characters go, these are some *really* well-developed characters! I can't help but notice Pav's Zelda liking, I recently began playing Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and I've played and watched games all the way back to the original NES game so I recognize the Triforce and Sheikah Eye and all that. 👍 The characters are just AlL sO lIkEaBlE, characters are one of the most important parts of a story and you broke a hammer nailing them so hard! Also always indescribably happy to see a whole ton of LGBT characters as usual, as a fellow LGBT person that always makes me happy. [Insert non-binary flag while also playing the classic slap sound effect]

The audio is spot-on too, the horror music of the serial killer is going to give me nightmares tonight. I also need to note that I'm happy to have played a serial killer game, during Theme Voting I half-joked that if the community dared to do "One tool, many uses" the temptation to make a serial killer game would probably be too strong for me to resist. I can't draw crap, making a serial killer/yandere game would be the hardest thing I've ever done....

Overall, this game really speaks to me. Death, cake, LGBT characters, and a reason to almost cry over just a couple of small jumpscares, it's perfect. 😆 Especially the cake and death and LGBT-ness, all of that is in my profile pic/logo after all.

Once again, another flawless and breathtaking entry! It really is awe-inspiring. It hits you with pure atmosphere like a brick wall, and the controls are extremely intuitive even for a touchpad user like me. (Two-finger-tap to right-click on Windows is a lifesaver) The horror element is perfect for an October jam, just like last year's entry (do I sense Celeste vibes from WHAT I SAW?). Here are your 5 stars of flawlessness, go get yourself even more trophies. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to make sure to get some Flaming Cheetos sometime soon! 😂

Oh, and bug report, I don't know why but for most of the game the dialogue choices would only be visible for a split second. Probably my fault for opening and closing the characters list so much.

Awesome game! Not going to lie, I got pretty tense a couple times there. The graphics are amazing, as well as the gameplay and music. The mechanics of moving around the rooms felt great. You created a really good horror experience - I still can't believe you did all of this within the span of one weekend.

I did notice one bug though - when I clicked continue right after finishing the game and got brought to the scene where Cyan, Pine, and Pav are waiting in Cyan's room after the "attack," there was a bug where the name + select prompts when hovering the pointer over a character didn't appear, and if I clicked on a character it zoomed in on them without bringing up a message. Strangely though, when I closed the game and opened it again, then clicked continue, I didn't have that bug.

Regardless of the one bug though, I really liked this game! Great job!

Oh this time I got to the end. I had to save and exit and continue from save at one point:

!> Beiging left alone in the room after the movie I could not exit. I might have been tied to playing with a controller.

Very satisfying to get to the end of the story! Marvelously done as usual.

I liked the ability to rotate the camera during dialogue, it plunges deeper into the game. Unfortunately, after I left the room, I could no longer play as the game stopped working. I know that there is a version without errors, but the jam rules require you to evaluate what has been done in 3 days. Nevertheless, this is a good result! Thanks for the good game.

Holy cow, what spectacular work. Such an amazing style and execution. Huge story, expertly done in such a small timeframe. Each character had so much personality, the story was perfectly sweet and scary for Halloween time. Great interpretation of the theme. LOVE LOVE LOVE the whole vibe of it. I hope you are super proud of yourself

The art style of your game is stunning, I really love it! I especially like how this art is placed in the scene as if around the player (as if in a 360 video) and with a little parallax (creates a very cool effect). And wow, this is a damn great find! It brings a sense of presence in the game, when I watch the phrases of the characters and keep moving head between them. It's just like I'm talking to my Irl friends.

And one more thing, where can I find the hi res cover of your game? It is very cool 😊


The length of the game, the art, the writing!
I was absolutely immersed in the story, the art was pleasing and the characters were so 3-dimensional!
Truly a neat experience! I have no idea how you pulled it all off, I did seem to suffer from some of the bugs you mentioned, the story came at me kind of jumbled, one key part was missing, and some pieces came before they should've because I refused to choose the right place to go! :joy:

Tremendous work! Phenomenal presentation, the whole thing felt polished to a shine and was altogether just really beautiful to look at, from the character art to the way the text moved all the way down to the distinct text bubbles. Love seeing some LGBTQIA representation, the characters felt well-fleshed out, though I would like to echo some of the criticisms others have had that I didn't much care for the conclusion from the flower shop to the end, I found it unsatisfying and the flower shop/car scene could have been more than it was. I do think that could all be fixed in a post-jam version though! The music feels like it would have been solid, but I think I might have encountered a bad audio error? I was getting tons of awful pops and clicks, really bizarre and felt unintentional, but it was so difficult (and painful, quite frankly) to listen to I had to turn the music off--. All that aside, really great!

Damm, its the most well polished game I've seen so far in this LD. The art style is fantastic and the music fits very well. The characters seems so well built and I wish I could give an extra 6th star for the LGBTQIA+ inclusion. I will play all of your games later and I also followed you on twitter. I don't wanna miss out nothing you release.

Just the art alone is far and beyond what I'd expect out of a 72 hour game jam. What the heck, this is gorgeous. The story and characters are great. Just a super beautiful thing all around.

I'm having technical problems on Linux.

The first time I tried to play, I clicked on start game, then I got the sensitive content warning, but the ok button did not react. I could tab to it and it got red, but clicking it did not have any effect.

Then I restarted the game and now I have the same problem with the start game button. I can hover over it, but clicking it does not bring me to the game. The button has a short animation, but no effect. The settings menu, about and quit buttons work as excepted.

The stdout does not show any log entries.

Any ideas? I'd really like to try it out :)

hey @simonl :) did you try the itchio version?

Very impressive entry, bit sad that the LD version was bugged for me (ended up locked twice after going to sleep, with no interaction possible in the hallway after it). The itch.io version though fixed that as well as most of the minor issues I spotted, so I could finish it.

Loved the art and was surprised by all the content available (and with the post-jam version being even more complete). All the small effects and animations on the texts, menus or even the phone messages animation gave it a really polished feeling. The characters and dialogues felt very good and natural, the rooms felt realist and were well detailed. I also liked how the story went overall.

If I had to point a downside to the game though, it would be the ending which felt very disappointing as the prank don't really fit what we went through imo. It would have been fine if everything we saw was from Cyan's POV, but as we had the scenes from A's point of view it can't match. Only explanation would be that those were just Cyan dreaming, but then others would have no reason to mention the closet either (which Cyan didn't even see). And it also doesn't explain the post-jam's kitchen thing (nor the bathroom 'screamer' though that one could be random irrational fear from watching spooky movies).

On another note, the parallax/3d effect on the toilet stalls looked a bit weird at times.

Firstly, I'm absolutely blown away by this artwork, how you did it by yourself in 72 hours is well beyond my ability to comprehend! lol The writing and character development was also out of this world. This has to be one of the most polished jams I've ever seen in terms of style and sheer expressiveness. Absolutely worthy of 5 stars <3

Artwork was amazing!
Ran into game breaking bugs a few times so I never finished, but really nice all the same!

The art here is easily the most impressive in the jam. The quantity of backgrounds and character art is one thing, but the quality of each made me completely forget I was even playing a game jam game at all. The writing and mood were also really polished and well done, and I very much appreciate the ability to "look around" and subtle camera movements as it made the game feel a lot more alive than a typical visual novel. Genuinely awesome work!

It's amazing such a polished piece of content could be made in such a short time - I love both the art and the aesthetic. I hadn't seen the "rotate in a scene" 3D style parallax before which was a neat trick as well and warraned a deeper exploration of the world around.

I really, really liked this! Well done!

So great experience! Did you really make this game alone? What kind of engine did you use?
I like design, graphics, story and lesbian moments) LOL
dandy game!

Art is just beautiful, music is awesome, mood is awesome! I love it! I wish I could have finished it, but I stuck at some points. Idk if it's a bug or just me being too stupid.

This is fun! I really enjoyed the story you told, and got chills at different points, including the romantic and horror scenes! Thank you for sharing this story with us!

Damn this felt like a commercial, well published game. I don't have much else to say, I think my first phrase expresses it! WoW!

wtf how is it POSSIBLE to develop THIS MUCH CONTENT in the time frame. u crazy fr!!

loooved the story here! it feels absolutely like some shit i'd want to pull on my friends for fun if only it were actually feasible to become a vaguely-formed disappearing shadow lol. the characters were all super relatable imo, and with the w i l d amount of detail regarding each of their hobbies, personalities, identities, etc, it's a wonder you were able to even get to the art at all! the vast majority of the dialogue was smooth and realistic imo (at least, as a liberal arts college student, this is basically the kind of discourse i'm surrounded by every day). there were a *few* moments that called for a bit of suspended disbelief—like i don't think i'd expect a pine-type student to casually name-drop susan sontag and notes on camp the way it was inserted here? i also wish there had been a bit more clarity in the prank reveal scene, since it took me a moment to realize what was actually happening there, and i feel like that kind of plot twist reveal should be instant and visceral for the greatest effect. but, for the most part, everything was super smooth! i'm like 90% sure i've heard my housemate have that exact conversation about girl in red with oblivious friends before lmao

aside from the characters and dialogue, i thought the development of suspense and tension here was also super well done. i'm definitely more a fan of psychological horror than straight-up jumpscares, so i'm glad there was only one and it was early on in the game. left me wondering when the next one would be, tilting my computer screen and squinting as tight as possible while still being able to read every word of the story. i'd like to shout out the horizontal bar effect when you enter the kitchen as being one of the coolest parts of the game! (although i'm a bit confused about what the flying vampire pav-head was doing there or what it was supposed to represent in the prank?) A's gradual turning around at the end was a super nice touch, too. good stuff all around!

anyways tl;dr this is a ASTOUNDING wow. love the representation, love the characters, love pine's plushies. can't wait to see what you get up to in future LDs!!!

edit: i can't believe how ahead of the curve you were on squid game holy shit

edit 2: idk if you'll see this BUT i also wanted to mention how cool the shifting black screens were!! loved that effect. it would be so easy to slap on a fully black screen but this made the transitions between scenes so much more ethereal

Thank you for sharing!