Well, we can’t finish on to happy an ending for Ectocomp! :D Also thanks for the story recommendation, I looked it up as I hadn’t heard of it before :) Thank you for playing and letting me know what you thought kaetts!

Thanks for playing and letting me know what you thought of the game Ormulum! I thought it would be fun to write something about one of the lesser known merfolk for a change :) Glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks so much for playing and sharing your thoughts on the game StarryMountainClimber! I’m glad you enjoyed it :D

Wish I had seen this comment before. I didn’t see any obvious way to save so figured it’d be cached on the browser, but you lose all progress if you come back to the game after closing the tab. To be fair it is on the how to play card, but figuring it was typical command I missed it. It’d be nice to have a note come up at the start of the game or in the page description. (This is on me for not reading the how to play card as it is there, but it would be good if it was highlighted that the game doesn’t save progress as you go.)

Feels like it’s in the same vein as Uninteractive Fiction (IFComp) where the only way to win is not to play.

I really like the writing in this and the way the story builds with it seeming more and more will almost inevitably be given to the well.

I tried, but my brain just doesn’t want to connect the dots either. It’s a shame as it seems like a fun game if you are good at these sorts of puzzles :)

This game is really creepy. I like the way you’ve built the tension with the broken down car, and the things that happen that just keep building that sense of unease.

I like the way the eye follows the cursor around the screen. Really adds to the creepy vibe. The way the game is set out to allow the creature to interact with the surroundings is interesting.

I believe this is a student entry? If that’s the case, it’s a good effort at creating a scary game. The game tries to blur dream and reality so you’re never quite sure what actions will have consequences when you wake up which can have some really unpleasant outcomes.

The realness of this game made me feel uneasy and left me with a bad feeling given things can’t be made ok in the end, which I guess is the point. Some monsters can unfortunately be human.

This game looks beautifully presented. I like the fear meter, the symbol felt very lovecraftian in a way for some reason. (Maybe I’ve played too much Dredge :D ) There’s a lot to see here, so many rooms to poke through. I think I need to find a locked room again (I think it was on the first level! I’ve kind of been working my way through the game as I can get the time together this week) as I know I’m missing the means to help the ghost in the plants and there still seems to be a few others I’d assume I need to help I haven’t seen yet from the hints in the letters and objects before the house will let me leave.

I did find the error bugs rovarsson reported (so won’t report it again). Good to know that won’t affect the ability to finish the game though :)

Thanks solipsisgames! Yes, petite mort had me on a bit of a timeline otherwise it probably would have been nice to put a few more encounters in there, I agree :)

Huh, sounds like you might be right about the cap. It seems like it’s possible that the feathers on the cap might have made its way into the more modern retellings of the original folklore. I was actually listening to something just last week about how the folklore surrounding vampires had shifted over time. Like everyone knows about garlic, but something you pretty much never see any more is roses being used to repel or trap vampires in their graves. Anyway, just a rambling aside.

Neat little game where I found the premise and talking to each of the vendors interesting. I’ll admit, the twist at the end did confuse me a little though.

This is unusual, I don’t think we’ve seen an ectocomp entry quite like this before. It’s good to see new things. I did like it. I do think some of the pauses are too long though, a few times I was wondering if the poem had finished or not. (Including at the end, I was pretty sure it’d finished, but due to the long previous wait time I wasn’t sure.) It’d (IMO) almost be better to make parts of the poem go much faster to create a sense of urgency/fear, and then lower the wait times on the slower text.

It’s one of those weirdly unlikely things. I mean who would have predicted that a pandemic could cause a world wide comeback in sea shanties? Nevertheless, your advice here is sound :D

I love a good bitsy game. I really liked the twisted Oz setting. I’m glad I finally managed to get my dog back in one form or another.

There’s a lot put together there considering the petite mort timeframe to make the game. It’s a sad little game, where you are a ghost trying to get anyone’s attention before time runs out and learn what is needed, before time runs out.

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it :) Thanks for the feedback about the ending. I had thought to leave it more open ended, but perhaps it might need an epilogue of some kind if it feels like the ending is abrupt.

Ways to die simulator. It does warn you the game is unfair. I did find my way out after a few rounds of trial and error. Good for a first published game attempt. I’d recommend perhaps a spell checker to remove some of the typos if possible.

I really like the idea of using emotions to get through the game, and the writing is great. I got really stuck though and can’t see any way to get the keys from the guard or defeat the second skeleton?

Maybe try running it in an incognito window which I think usually disables the add ons to see if that’s what the issue is? I run a few security add ons for firefox and it plays havok with some of the games on itch that seems to fix when run through an incognito window. (And is easier than disabling and reenabling apps).

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed playing :D

Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!

I like that quote. Is that a Shakespeare/TS Elliot reference? :D

There’s a bit of a range in the achievements. Some do trigger on bad ends, I think about 4 of them from memory. I’ve used them mostly to signpost content and discoveres in this case. (I probably should have added some for special achievements like getting through the game alive without using your voice etc for those who like challenges. Maybe I’ll do that post comp.)

Glad the second chance was helpful! A lot depends on the routes taken and choices made. It is possible to make it through without it in a few ways, but other paths do sap your health pretty significantly. I didn’t want to punish people by making them replay the whole game (unless they wanted to) if your health drops too low as that sounds like it might get a bit frustrating.

Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!

All good, as I said, I really enjoyed the core aspects of the game, it’s just that any games that use timed text more than sparingly for effect are a bit of a pet peeve of mine, especially given I’m pretty time poor. It may not bother everyone to the same degree. But if you do decide to edit the game, I think removing the timed text would be a good move. Take care :)

This is a really nice little spooky parser game that builds quickly and leaves so many questions at the end. Poor old grandpa, no wonder he ended up like he did. Thank you for the walkthrough for parser challenged people like me. I did get stuck at one spot and it helped me out :) I also really like the title graphics, simple yet so creepy.

Ok, let me start by saying there are parts of this game I absolutely love. The artwork is cool, the way the game is put together professional, the story engaging. I really liked being able to wander around and investigate and was invested in finding out what was going on in this town to cause all the paranormal disturbances. I liked the increasing tension of the built in days left timer for trying to get all your cases completed as much as possible before then. I could see this game as being on somewhere like steam.

I’m glad I played it to the end, because if I’m honest, I almost didn’t a few clicks in. If I have one thought on how this game could be improved personally, it would be to get rid of the timed text. I’d love to replay it, but I’m not sure I have the spare time to deal with having to wait through the delays to get to the points I’d like to replay and see if I can get a different outcome. Clicking helps, but still is quite slow. If the game was ever edited to remove the timed text, I’d probably give it another go.

A help file or a bit more direction would be good in some places. I found myself quite lost on a couple of cases. I’m assuming I needed a keyword to search in the library that I couldn’t quite figure out in those cases. (Like in the case where the divination wouldn’t localise but there was no one who would speak to you further so there seemed no way to proceed with the case.) There is also a glitch where if you reinvestigate the forest, it replays the same scenes over rather than telling you there’s nothing else to find.

I really appreciated in one case where I didn’t have what I needed yet to return to the house, the game told me so and I didn’t waste the day. I was a bit frustrating to sometimes recheck a house and be told that the person would tell you if they needed to speak to you again, but in other cases, if you didn’t go back soon enough figuring they’d contact you, you lost the case. Given the amount of cases going on at once and the tight time frame in which to get them solved, not wasting a whole day by revisiting places where there’s nothing new to discover would be a big QOL improvement for the player.

Anyway, congrats on the game. It’s a strong ectocomp entry.

I was wondering what was going on here! It was like I’m sure I’ve seen this game in a previous year. Translation so others can enjoy makes sense :)

Hi there. This is a nice little speedwrite game. It reminds me of being in the genre of people being pulled into video games that feel (and perhaps are) completely real and trying to work out how to finish the playthrough and leave back to reality. A few thoughts (with spoilers) and some typos below.

Emails are a bugbear. At least the player can switch off at night! I’m invested though, what happened!

It says the room doesn’t exist?

I like the poem :)

Happy to help! Enjoy :)

Hi aurelim. I’m so flattered you took inspiration from my game! I apologise about it disappearing, my life has been rather crazy busy for some time and all my WIPs went down with dashingdons. Fortunately I have local backups! The game is still on hiatus (sorry can’t promise when the next update will be), but I fixed what I hope was causing the game breaking bugs and put it back up over on itch. Good luck with your game! https://jaciaa.itch.io/abysms-veil-on-hiatus

This is terribly relatable. It seems to be a thing where the more time you allow to get ready to go, the more time it takes and fills up that time.

This is such a nice little game. I really enjoyed trying to decide where and who to investigate on a tight timeframe to try and gather enough clues and guess the culprit correctly. Looking forward to the longer version!

Ok I did not see that ending coming… Fun little game though, nice one :)

Sorry I don’t rightly remember. I’d already gotten the ghost downstairs, spoken to both girls and gone in around the house a few times thinking maybe I was wrong about the hat and thrown out a various commands to try and work out what might get the ghost to come out or be captured after seeing that it was definitely where it was in the comments. I’m not the best with parser. It’s possible I’m missing a really obvious command.

I’m still kinda stuck.