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Fun little visual novel. It had a very nice vibe to the whole thing and the summoning mechanic with the scrolls is pretty cool. Very nice submission!

@vantalogic thank you <3 I am glad you liked the vibe :)

Loved the audio, it was properly spooky in all the best ways. Really enjoyed making my way through the story too. Great Work!

@eric-nguyen oh thank you, I am happy to hear you love the audio part as I spent a good part of second day of development on it and it's my first project with so much work gone into sound design <3

glad to see a visual novel game, and I'm a renpy user too☺️！
I like how you use visual novels to achieve the theme. The story is interesting, the sound effects of tapping may be a bit strange. hard to believe that you have achieved these things alone, with a lot of drawing work and story production. good job！（google translate maybe a little weird,sorry for that😫

@kerosuta thank you :3 and don't worry I understood everything you wanted to say! I agree after playtesting it for a while knocking gets too repetitive... should've kept it as a sound effect to use one or two times at most >_< I had to cut a lot of corners to get it completed but feel very proud that I did everything including music and voice acting :)

Just a suggestion. If you decide to use Renpy to participate in ld, you can prepare something like a set of UI styles, fonts, character models, and some default materials that may be used in advance, which is not related to the theme and will reduce the pressure on you during the competition. glad to see you joy ld!

I love a good visual novel! This one was good fun, and you really nailed the suspenseful mood. I did run into an error right after picking up the wind scroll that caused a crash on my first play through, but the second time around was no issue. Great submission!

@kerosuta Thank you, that's a great advice! You probably noticed I couldn't do all the UI in time, as I didn't think to prepare any assets in advance. I will definitely try to keep it in mind for next LDs ^^

@falk-hoeppner I am glad you liked it, and thank you for reporting a bug! This entry included more coding than usual for me and I didn't have enough time to thoroughly play-test everything. Did it happen in web version? You took the scroll and game completely crushed, correct? I'll look into it and see if I can fix it for an updated after-jam version.

@kanity Hi! Yes, it was in the web version. I picked up the scroll, an error flashed across the top of the screen (i should have thought to grab a screenshot, sorry!), then the people engaged me and I could no longer interact.

Incredibly unnerving game. The audio made me shiver (probably shouldn't be playing this in the dark at 2 am). The game ended up freezing up after i used the raven scroll in the room on the left. I got an error on the screen right before that.

one of my highest ratings so far. The game is quite well rounded and complete. I am not the biggest fan of VNs, but I played until one of the endings (I imagine main ending 1) and was quite pleased with it

I'm glad that play it not at night!=) The mood and sound effects are pretty scary)

idea with runes is really great, your game is good!

The gameplay mechanics in this game are so intuitive! It's like the controls become an extension of your own instincts. Plus, the art style adds a unique flair that keeps you engaged throughout. Definitely a gem worth exploring!

@justking144 happy to hear the audio was scary, I put a lot of passion into audio design! unfortunately it seems web version is not very good (I assume you played web version and it froze, right? I seem to get errors with it too, sometimes it runs smooth sometimes gives out errors). So I recommend downloading a file if that's possible >_<

@cmakota thank you for your kind words, I am glad you enjoyed it! did you get the demon ending? :) I think it's the easiest one to get if you interact with everything.

@roman-dubrovin yay that's what I was going for, thanks :)

@derllie thank you!!

@smoky01 it's good to hear mechanics feel nice, and I am glad you liked my art style, thank you <3

Great game! The audio, the art, the theme, it all fits perfectly! I actually felt a bit shook up at some of the audio, which surprised me since I don't usually fall for scare tactics in video games. I'm a huge fan of point-click games, so this was great for me. I would love to see this as a full release with a focus on audio, similar to what they did with hellblade.

Overall, a great entry to LD55. Great job!

@isayneigh aw thank you, I am glad audio was effective! It's something I didn't really do in previous games and I put a lot of effort in it, so it makes me happy that it works. And I will definitely continue polishing this game <3

It's been a while since I played a click adventure game, and the tone you set for this one was solid. When combining spells, I thought I would have to play a more difficult memory game but it did not happen. If you continue to revise this game, I think you should consider implementing more difficult memory games when casting more difficult spells.

Great job overall! It was a interesting experience!

@brogan-ward thank you! I was going to make harder memory games with Thunder Strength etc, more complicated spells, however I was severely running out of time and had to write-in automatic summoning in these parts :( But I am glad there was an expectation of harder spells, I will definitely implement them when I finish & polish this game in the future <3

I knew there had to be at least one other renpy game out there except mine lol.

This game has the thickest & most eerie atmosphere I saw out there so far.

It is **dripping STYLE**, if you can look past the jank caused by time limit, you can drown.

Did the human ending, but the ambience/music hummed is so weirdly, deeply unsettling, I will politely not replay it.

**But I would certainly play a 1.0 of it.** At least once, or, as far as my sanity allows.

@themaskedman Thank you, for me it is a great compliment that you found audio properly unsettling :) And I am sure we can find some other RenPy users as well, I played a few last Jam at least. I like how it also offers the opportunity to code in more gameplay elements to create something more than a visual novel with just text ^^
And I will definitely finish & polish this game in the future, so if by 1.0 you mean a completed version - you can look forward to it <3

Ah, my dear Anya, congratulations!

Until this very moment, this LD has come to a certain conclusion for me, and I've breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Please forgive me for not having responded or offered any advice in your posts before this. Frankly speaking, it was indeed something that should not have been done and was quite impolite. It was my mistake.

So now, let me mention something that others haven't (is this transition too abrupt? :3):

When I heard the background music's drumbeats, they felt incredibly familiar to me. I knew that you must have deliberately chosen and thoughtfully employed that effect. Reflecting on my childhood experiences, I realized they must be shamanic drums. Their beats serve to communicate with the soul, nature, and ancient ancestors. Considering your plot design, this is simply a perfect match. In my view, the essential difference between magic and "shamanism" lies in the fact that shamans emphasize communication with everything around them, highlighting the connection between humans and the entire system. These are two entirely different things.

I could hear that you had already embedded many hints in the voice messages at the title screen. An important point is that they are not abrupt but instead smoothly guide the player's emotions into the entire game process. This indirectly shows that you have put an incredible amount of effort into many details that most people can hardly imagine. It's like something that seems commonplace if unnoticed, but becomes incredibly delightful when noticed, as if "speaking only to the right person."

Let me say something cliché， Anya, I love your game. You are, in my eyes, a talented individual who is willing to work hard. You polish the details of your game with the spirit of an ancient craftsman treating a sacred relic for pilgrims and torment your soul in the manner of an ascetic. I can feel it. You are bound to create great works because there are already two people in pain (and not because of "names" :3).

You are one of the few treasures I've gained in this competition, and I firmly believe our friendship will last beyond these "few days." Love you, love your creation.

This is a neat visual novel submission! Always impressed by these because writing so much in so little time is always very challenging, especially due to art demand! And this one delivers on art and atmosphere completely, enough to help me look past some of the jankiness surely caused by available time. Well done!

I always love coming across text adventures/visual novels when playing the jam games because I don't play them enough and it's a nice reminder how good they can be. I had a really good time with this - the writing was good, it has this really great, spooky vibe (Some of the SFX gave me a good fright - that growl in the south room) and it looks great too. Enjoyed going back through for different as well. Really impressive, especially for a solo dev!

@drgcandle Thank you for your thorough and insightful comment, it makes me very grateful that you hold my game development skills in such high regard, as I am always trying to improve and I know there is a big room for improvement but I am happy to know what I have now is being recognized ^^ Game design process is always so fun for me, working out the narrative of the game, the world, the story, the details. And I do try to make things not too obvious, but not too cryptic in my stories. You can try playing my other works on itch.io if you are interested, most of my games have a heavy emphasis on story and narrative as I believe it's my strength, but I am working on art, music/audio and programming as well to make everything in a game by myself ^-^

@thomas-gelman Thank you! I was running out of time so some art parts closer to the end are visibly rushed, and yes I had essentially no time to play-test, so I am happy that you still appreciated the art and atmosphere overall <3

@dan-allison Aw thank you for your kind words, it makes me very happy that you enjoyed your playthrough ^^ I was hoping to achieve some creepy vibes with my audio design and spent a lot of time working on it, so glad to see it works! (And yes, every sound apart from crow yell and thunder sound is made by me - growl is also mine, but I lowered the pitch ;))

This was the first visual novel submission I played for the Jam, and it was a blast. The graphics and audio was great, I'd love to see more.

I don't like renpy, but I can't mark, that it have good visuals and SFX, gamedesign of puzzle is very well. Thank you for this entry at LD55.

I really like the graphics style

@cainetinyarms thank you, I am glad you liked it ^^ I suppose it's more of a mix between point-and-click adventure and a visual novel :)

@pacelin I am glad you liked mini-games, I am not good at coding so choosing the engines with easier programming systems (though I still had to write a lot of code for RenPy, it was much less complicated! even if my fingers were falling off from pressing Tab a million times.)

@tyram thank you ^^

The game looks really neat. Dark vibes are shown very well. I really like the voice over work.

A very curious game. Beautiful stylised art work. Excellent work!

As a long-time visual novel player, I really liked this game. The art is gorgeous and works great with the lo-fi/distorted voice acting over the eerie music to create an enigmatic atmosphere. Also the memory based rune game is a nice touch. Great job.

@brainles-etertainment thank you, especially for voice over compliment ^^

@digital-bacon thank you, I am glad you liked the art!

@krummsakura I am happy to hear it, thank you! I also always loved visual novels and story-based games in general <3

Spooky. I enjoyed your artwork and the little bits of lore sprinkled throughout, folklore references like Chernobog, it added a sense of place. The Puzzles were quite simple. I sort of wished I'd had to figure out the scroll-mashup combos myself somehow, rather than it just doing it for me. Solid entry though! I liked it a lot.

🖤

This was definitely a weird little experience !! The graphics were great - cartoony but ominous, the rune minigame was super easy but added a bit of extra style to the game. The atmospheric music was quite nice, though I don't understand why there were random sounds in the background, like breathing, opening bottles, and banging on the mic, that one in particular always frightened me and took me out of the experience x')

The story was interesting and well written, I was invested in knowing what was going on. Not sure if I understood everything, apparently it's a country that's being bombed, and I seem to have real superpowers that are either very useful or very dangerous. Throughout the game, because of the creepy inner thoughts, and that all my interactions with other people or objects ended in destruction, I thought I was supposed to be an evil spirit. Though in the end, even though I pushed the debris into the person, the ending still seemed to treat me as these people's saving grace somehow. That's morbid, considering how I killed basically everyone I encountered in my first run! :v I also got the raven ending, which felt pretty good! Finally a secret in a game that I actually managed to solve lol

Anyway, if nothing else, I'm surely gonna remember this one!


@fupi Ah I know I didn't have time to playtest almost at all and noticed on my playthrough while recording a video that even after pushing the debris down, the text in the Human Ending is still the same :') Because to get the Demon Ending, you need to do 3 things: use raven scroll, use thunder scroll and push the debris; you did only 2 of those judging by your experience, and so you got the Human Ending; and the game didn't take into account WHICH actions were performed or not :'(

Thank you for the drawing, it's adorable as always ^-^ And congrats on getting a secret ending!! I wanted to make harder memory games but didn't have time ;_; And thank you for your feedback on the sounds! I tried to create some ambience for creepy vibes ^^' All the sounds in the games are created/recorded by me :)

And on the story, basically it's a dystopian country where the oppressive government holds power thanks to the demons they summoned, and one opposition group finally decides you have to fight demons with demons and found a way to summon their own. They conducted interviews (you could see them in flower room, down from main) to choose a suitable candidate and summoned a demon, Chernokryl, into that person's body. But the ritual went wrong and created an explosion wave & the demon arrived into a body with no memories. The choices you make determine if you rediscover your demon soul or succumb to a human body, remaining a "human" with no memories. Human Ending is the start of the adventure to overthrow the government, Demon Ending is you emerging as a demon and bringing complete destruction to the country.

I tried to make it not too obvious but not too obscure ^^' But anyway here is an explanation, and thanks for playing, hopefully you had fun <3

@vivid-hallucination Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed and found it spooky :) I wanted to add a difficulty curve with harder spells, but unfortunately didn't plan my time well and spent too much on audio and art ^^'

@kanity Oh wow, that story idea is mad cool!! Shame I didn't get it while playing, but now it makes sense!

@kanity Also, if you want, an easy way to add creepy ambience to a game is to just record anything, and slow it down a ton, until the sound is barely distinguishable. Maybe throw some reverb in there too. Anything sounds creepier when it's slow, low-pitch and incomprehensible. x)

@fupi Oh thank you, I'll try it next time! (And maybe make the story beats a bit less obscure as well >_<)
It was essentially my first game with full audio made by me (previous just had one tune), so everything comes with experience and good advice I guess :)

I enjoyed the game, I ran into a few issues when it came to going to the candles scene and then after summoning the ravens for the humans. In both situations the game either froze or crashed, not really sure.

Ahh this was a great little interactive puzzle game, I have a soft spot for point & click games. The audio/voice overs were very eerie; really helped develop the creepy mood. The fact that there are multiple endings also makes it so a short game can still be explored for more story depth.

Very nice job!

Lovely artwork and very spooky sound design! I'm not good with scary games/movies so had to watch through my fingers for a lot of the transitions 😆 Anyway it's really cool to see such a fleshed out story/universe in a jam game, on top of all that art/audio!

Superb atmosphere. The visuals are unique and consistent. They go well with the music and eerie voiceover. The mystery of the story draws you in - what happened here? who are you?

The minigame is easy, but it does add to interactivity. The first time I got an option to combine scrolls, I honestly thought I would have to do that on my own (that it would be some more challenging minigame) and was disappointed when the game just did it for me.

I enjoyed my time with this game. My first achieved ending was the "Human Ending". You did a tremendous amount of work in such a short time on your own. Very impressive and well done!

@aaronjnc I am glad you still enjoyed the game in spite of bugs, and thank you for mentioning where you encountered them! Was it downloaded version or web one?

@delauraen thank you, point and click is one of my favourite genres ^^

@samboyer276 ohh good to know it felt scary! that's a compliment in my eyes :) thank you!!

@fabula-rasa
thank you, I am happy that you enjoyed the game :)

I know about combine scrolls, unfortunately ran out of time :( Good to know there is an expectation for a harder puzzle here, I will definitely add it when I have time to polish this game!

Honestly I was expecting more players to get Demon Ending so I am surprised it's more often the human one! Maybe because of the last choice, or sometimes not exploring the flower room (as demon ending requires to use ravens and thunder in window and flower room, *and* push the debris)

Just between the visual novel and the role-playing game. The mix of warm colors and the slightly creepy atmosphere works really well! The sound also adds a lot of atmosphere, well done!! ^^

Scaryyy. Somehow the beginning reminds me the game Planescape Torment. I was feeling unease always something knocking on my nice bass repro :D.

This was an interesting game! I'm usually not a big fan of point-and-click games, but you seemed to capture a nice atmosphere with this game.

@emilalix thank you! <3

@wildcodeplay oh that's a nice comparison, I didn't play Planescape Torment but the name and screenshots in google are interesting! :D

@kabloosh thank you, I am glad you like the atmosphere ^^

Hey, finally got around to it, sorry for the delay! Very unnerving, very well made. Feel like there were some clues as to why it was so unnerving, still pondering.

Really impressed with how much stuff there was, with all the drawings and even voice acting! You did a great job of setting the mood immediately on the title screen. I started out playing on speakers and the cat on my desk got very startled, only to run away altogether once I started playing and there was knocking. I put on headphones after that which probably enhanced the experience anyway! The intensity of some of the voice lines was great.

The puzzles themselves were good. You did a good job translating and explaining them for everybody but knowing some runes and Slavic words beforehand I was already guessing at stuff which was intriguing. You also got me looking up and learning some new things afterwards.

I did figure the secret ending out after learning that it existed, so that felt good! Trying some of the not-so-nice paths did not feel good (pressing the slab down) but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.

In terms of criticism, I'd hoped to have to input the longer combined spells by myself and not just the short ones. I was even taking notes on a piece of paper only to end up not needing them, which was a little disappointing :')

But overall I can't criticise much, it was really good!

@ava-skoog Thank you for your thorough review, it made me very happy! Really glad the atmosphere worked, send my apologies to your cat ^^' But yeah, since I spent so much time on audio, I didn't have much left for harder puzzles (some drawings were rushed as well). So you would be right to note them on paper (and it's so cool that you did that!) if the game was complete the way I imagined it ;_;

Good game, quite fun to play

this is very cool!! I really enjoyed the atmosphere in this one, you did a great job making it creepy and mysterious. it would have been neat if the puzzles were a little bit more compelling but it's still good as it is!

It's kind of crazy that you managed to make all of this in 3 days, also I think it's really cool that you documented your process of making the game and how you came up with the ideas for the story!

great job!

@tetracold thank you, I am glad you enjoyed! I dedicated almost all the time in these 3 days to this project ^^ Will definitely update the puzzles later down the line when I have more time, or maybe better programming skills also :)

I don't usually play visual novels and feel like I'd be a poor judge of the genre but this was surprisingly great, and clearly very ambitious and polished. I particularly love the way you use sound and timing. The distorted voices, the vivid sound effects. There were a few beats in there where the audio seamlessly melds with the art and animations and it legitimately freaked me out a little. Honestly, top marks for effort on all fronts, this was incredible!

@smidgens thank you for such a kind review, it makes me really happy! I am glad my first time effort in audio department is being recognized <3 And I guess the genre is more like "point an click adventure", just pretty simple and made in a program designed for visual novels :)

@kanity You know, now that you mention it, I did get a little the adventure game vibe in there with the interactions (definitely a big fan of that genre). And I should have added too - the mood and atmosphere is just fantastic. You really nailed that unnerving vibe.

@smidgens I love adventure games too, just working on my programming skills still! :) And - thank you, mood is definitely something I go for the most in my games ^^

hello!! :) i finally got to play your game! omg, that was so creepy. Somehow I got the human ending, but for sure I'll try to get the others. Thats a really impressive amount of work, in the context of a jam, it's like a really full fleshed little game. I really loved the sound of this game, it made the atmosphere as a whole to build up a lot. The art is really engaging too, really loved the creppy candles animation, beautiful and yet mysterious! :) really impressive entrie, I loved it! Good job!

Loved the overall game, very well made:) I agree with the comments above, that's a lot of work for 3 days!

@hinamarina Hi! Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it! ^-^ I overscoped a bit so I am happy I managed to finish and it still feels like a complete game <3 And working on audio was a very rewarding experience!

@rudra-nil-basu thank you! I tried my best >:)

nice art and voice acting! Liked how it was more interactive then what I've seen in renpy, made it more of an adventure game. I got the human ending. I did hear the breaking out of coffin sound repeat, but I wasn't sure if that was also the person struggling under the rock. Nice job!

@aeveis thank you ^^ for the coffin I recorded crumbling a cookie and I am pretty sure I didn't use it for anything else, but maybe it was a similar sound >_> was it just in general BG music or when you got the ending? (if you remember ofc)

it was like the hollow "conk... conk" sound that I kept hearing. Maybe it was just part of the bg music and I associated it with someone banging against a coffin?

@aeveis yeah that was most likely part of BG music, but thank you for pointing out it felt confusing, I'll take it into account! (I recorded ambience for BG music also my touching/moving random things on my table so there are a lot of sounds there)