Great art style with interesting level design.

I like the game and the way you interpreted the theme! I mostly liked how you guys created the level and the boat rowing movement!!!

It was bit tough in the beginning but I got it!!!!!!!!!!

First of all, I love this logo and map desing. The animations for the boatman are solid too. The music is climactic and mood is set beautifully.

On the other hand I think that the boatman dialogue is... unfinished? When I picked the very first soul he was like ":D" and ":$", which is extremely unclimactic given the circumstances of this dialogue appearing.

The controls are sadly pretty awful :(. The boat feels like it is covered in something really sticky. Why is there no simple option to go forward? The boatman doesn't have any paddle, so doing "adadadada" spam in order to move forward doesn't make any sense here (or am I missing something?)

Overall for me the idea for this game is solid, mood is there but it surely requires much more work to be really enjoyable.

What an unexpected little gem. You can tell a lot of love and effort went into this. The visuals, the noises of the squeaking boat, the music - the entire atmosphere is just gripping and sucks you in. I ended up playing a few rounds as I wanted to see how my actions and decisions altered the dialogue of the lost souls. My only suggestion for improvement would be to work a little more on the controls, they do feel a tad clunky and it's quite hard to navigate the large river.

Great job everybody, I had a wonderful time with this game. P.S.: Love the map!

Lovely game! great atmosphere, nice characters, amazing art-
It seems some people are having problems with the controls which is a shame- pressing both A+D together makes the character go straight! So don't let that be a reason not to explore this submission!

Very cohesive package - graphics, illustrations, audio and story. Game looks amazing and the moody green-tinted visuals made the river Styx believable to me. It was fun to explore all the different sections you put in the river, which do add a lot to the world building of the game.

The only thing I had a problem with is the speed of the boat, as it is a bit slow to get around.

All in all, I feel you have a great chance to top the mood score this jam for sure!

Gorgeous game. I don't think the controls are nearly as bad as people are making them out to be, although it was challenging to get used to them in the beginning. I ran into several technical problems -- going to main menu->back to the game doesn't reload the character's delivery state, so if you try to redeliver someone it doesn't work. Also, unfortunately it crashed instead of playing the ending sequence, so I didn't get to see the ending. Still, this was a great submission -- well done! If this were expanded and another pass was taken at the dialogue I'd definitely buy this on Steam.

This started pretty great with menu, art style, dramatic music and animation, but as I was presented with this control scheme I felt frustrated. First, I thought I'm missing something. I pushed A and D and somewhat moved forward, so I accidentally dropped first guy at first pier to the right. I thought, alright, maybe it's not a bug, but you're supposed to do that. After some time I acclimated to the control scheme, but when I was exploring the map (which looks very cool in 2d btw) I stumbled across 2 major problems. 1'st - lack of clear direction (I wanted to explore myself, but as I was stumbling upon interesting features - I couldn't interact with them, but that's ok) and 2'nd and most important - speed of the boat. I don't mind non-conventional controls, but if you do them - you must polish them as much as you can, or else they will be just frustrating

Love the concept and mood! But have to agree with the difficult controls, and this leading to a poor understanding of the level design on my end. This is definitely a concept that could hold a deep narrative.

That was an experience. I really liked the theme and the world, but I found the boat a bit of a chore to control (just read another comment above and I never thought to try A+D together) and I accidentally delivered the first guy to the wrong gate because I wasn't sure what I was doing at first. I didn't get an end state after delivering everyone, so not sure if I missed someone, but I liked what you did with the narrative.

Nice game :) I liked the controls, except for the map button ;) I also do not quite like the dialog of the boatman... I would rather go with just "..." for that he might not be a talker but he also should not be a :D I guess .p Also i think it would be cool to carry more than one at the same time. They could also have different dialogs based on that what could improve decision making.

I crossed most of the map with just the first soul onboard :D

A pleasant and stylish game. It seemed to me that the control does not always switch to direct movement when both buttons A and D are clamped.

I feel like a tutorial would've been great, thankfully I realized A+D was for going straight so exploring the map wasn't an issue, in fact when going at high speeds it felt pretty good.

Though I unfortunately completely missed the fact they were a gate for heaven as well, I only saw the hell one and sent everyone here, not knowing I had to choose.

I also got severely confused by the plant traps, I tried again and again for like 5 minutes straight to get the soul, not understanding how I was still missing it, until I went a bit further after starting to think it might be fake and realizing there were plenty more plants.

Unfortunately before I saw those, that made me think I could not pick up a second passenger, which I still don't know if it's possible, would've saved me several trips back and forth and awkward getting stuck moments trying to shortcut or go faster.

I would've liked the length of the dialog to correlate to the distance to the gates, so characters with long dialogs would be far and keep you entertained for the long trip back, and character with short dialogs would be near and not keep you waiting and doing donut drifts or spinning in place in front of the gates.

The later example actually got me to accidentally cutoff a dialog midway because I hit the trigger for the gate unwillingly. Same for the first soul, I had no idea how the game worked by that point and didn't even understand what the gates where so I just got to read the first two lines before the dialog skipped to the end which made no sense out of context.

The map was half helpful half not, as it's missing a big island in the top left area which made me not trust the map, turned out the rest was fairly faithful though. The low water passage blocked by land near the guy in the large skeleton wasn't an issue however, I think that added to the experience to have to find another way.

So yeah, overall I feel like there's some good ideas but the execution doesn't quit hit the mark for me.
It's easy to overlook tutorials in jam games, as there's so little time to do what we want, but I think they shouldn't be left out, you even added some texts for the controls and a couple slides for the introduction, but I think you could've gone a bit further and clearly explain what to do, even if it breaks the 4th wall, better this way than the hard way when you realize you got the game wrong after finishing most of it.

I agree with the person above and I have nothing to add. Thanks for your game!

Rly cute aesthetic for the game. The rowing mechanics were annoying for me and didn't keep me fully immersed. Otherwise good job :P

I like the vibe of this one and I enjoyed the variation in environment throughout the map but I have to agree with others that the movement system is a little confusing. It doesn't really behave like a rowboat, but once I figured out that holding both A and D moved you forward it was a lot easier to get around. I also found the dialog a bit strange in that it doesn't really fit with the rest of the vibe of the game. Really great entry overall though, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere.

Great submission! The art and sound were really good, it was very moody experience. The writing was great and each character having different portraits for different emotions was a nice touch. I liked the map design but as others have said it could have been more fun to explore with slightly more intuitive controls. Though I did like the slow boaty feel of the movement. Overall really great job!

My favourite thing about this game was the audio. It was nice and simple, but it really fit the mood, and didn't get repetitive at all, not a track which was obviously looped.

As well, the mood came across really nicely, and the map was my favourite part of the art! A little player indicator would have been nice, to show where you were.

The rowing mechanics were innovative, but also frustrating.

Overall, nice job!

Cool visual style. And now i know hot to row!

I love the aesthetic and mood here. The audio goes well with it too. The controls are a little frustrating but I got used to them. The writing was well-done though I agree it doesn't completely match everything else. Overall, nice work on this :)

I don't know how people are dealing with the controls... I tried holding down both A+D, but then if I need to turn it spins out of control and it's so hard to make it go where I need to go. I spent a long time wrestling with it before I gave up, which is such a shame because the world and ambiance is so cool and I want to explore it. This is exacerbated by me not knowing where to go at all. What is the "Gate of Hell" and what is the "Gate of Heaven"? Is the Gate of Hell the giant pool of red? I went to a pool with giant hands and ran into it but it doesn't do anything. I tried to go to a red X and I thought I was in the right place but there was nothing but a glowing thing.

Please make a version of the game with a simpler control scheme, would love to play it and check it out.

After playing again and reading someone's comment, I see now that the piers are the gates, and the balls of light are the souls. So I need to go to the red Xs to pick up the balls of light and deliver them back.

Controls were tough but excellent ambiance and mood, looks great too! Couldn't really figure out how to drop off my passengers though. I Played it on my stream if you're interested: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1818416980