I have always been attracted to story games with mysterious scenarios, and this one was stunning!

The story, the art, the audio, everything was amazing. If only there would be more cutscenes and more options to choose from, to learn more about the faters, the soldier and the painter, but I digress.

The only remark I can muster is the lack of music during the actual cutscenes, but it might take away from the charm of the game, so this is just a thought.

Stunning great game! Making me rethinking of game narration.

I should have kept things as brief and deep like this in my game, which is also story-driven... I put too many disattractions in my script, blurring the base metaphor of my concepts.

Back to this game.
As the inevitable "media" for players to understand and affect the game world, as well as the way the game try to make influence on the players, the existence of "teacher" made the game so much profound.

And I have to say the very first startscreen button itself is a great great intro of this game.

Really beautiful game!! I wish the story was longer / the tree more expansive - but impressive nonetheless for 48 hours.

I think the narrative does a really good job of not explaining itself too much, there's just the right amount of mystery to keep interest. and great simplicity and general aesthetic, music fits very well.

I enjoyed playing your game

Very interestinf anf thought provoking game, I only wish there was an artwork or two more, maybe one for each of the final four senario's. Otherwise a very cleaver take on the topic "Delivery", very cleaver

I imagine a work that will finally fulfill me yet it never comes.. damn. This was inspiring! I wish there was more. Having the whole story laid out like that is fascinating. I feel like it opens up lots of possibilities for puzzles/mystery without the player getting lost since they can always return to 'nodes'. I hope you expand on this as I think with this particular format you could do a lot of very interesting narrative things!

I like this text heavy approach to the theme, it really stands out. There's a simple elegance to how you present everything and I really enjoyed my time playing through it, well done!

I had both my hands glued to the left mouse button mashing like a solider on a snare drum. TOO MUCH TEXT.

The art style was cool. I wish I had the patience to sit and read text on a screen but alas I do not.

I liked the interesting rough artstyle.

I would have liked to see the story progress more, maybe exploring another tree based on the results of the first one.

Very very Excellent game and stunning gameplay. I loved the art style and I thought i should play gain to see other endings but no!

As the first comment guy said there is not that much audio

Also, play my game also

Very, veery atmospheric and nice looking. I quite enjoyed it, it was a very different experience to the other games!

I enjoy games which tell a story!
Enjoyed visual style and music
however did not have patience to go through the whole game

Very interesting. The story was thrilling and I kept reading to the end. I think it helped a lot that you kept the sentences very short all the time.

I think it would have helped to keep the focus of the story on one of the two (painter or soldier) but make it deeper. You kind of have two stories in one.

You have a very good writing style! Good job on the game.

I had a good time playing it. And I must confess I'm not fan of visual novel. I guess the storytelling let me forgot about that point :D congratulations. Only thing I see that could be better is the name of the character talking should be slighly alligned left or right to let us understand who talk. The light change of color and the name change didn't do that properly in my case and why always pausing to check who is talking.

Fantastic art, but as for me, reading part was way too long :sweat_smile:

Thank you everyone for your comments!

I wrote a [post-mortem here](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/firelore-first-fate/$370060), if you're interested.

You've done a nice job with this one. I seldom play/read visual novels, but can appreciate the writing in this game and also the themes used.

The exposition was well done in several places (the soldier's name, the painter's painting). Some things, I would have preferred if they stayed as subtext, e.g. more subtle. The branches were sufficient. The Teacher was fine, but rambling/repeating at times. I'd probably test removing some of their short sentences and see if the story would still flow and feel the same. (My bet is that yes, it would, and that the teacher's voice would become stronger. The rambling waters it down a bit .p)

The characters had quite distinct voices overall, so again, within this time limit I'd say it was well done.

The title remained a mystery, but it could be just me who missed something? :) Also, really agree with peterfiftyfour's comment above! Def. potential here to take this further! Good work!

I don't have much to say that hasn't been said, it's really an interesting concept. Kinda reminds me of the Giver in a way. I think it worked without music in the "cutscene" parts but if they were much longer it would be nice to have to add to the atmosphere.

Loved the idea, but the Teacher operates with so many words and emotions. I don't really want to learn from that kind of unbalanced guy. The overall approach to the narrative could be different, less of a visual novel and reading, to my case. That's a slippery slope with these kind of parables, one could find it too much patronizing.