Thank you for the review, Kastel! I’m glad you enjoyed the game!
I think this is the coolest thing anyone has ever done with something I wrote.
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This thread has reminded me that I mentioned a bluesky thread a while back, but never did it…
I’ll try to add a post a day. Today, it’s Spring Gothic.
I’m always looking for people to follow, get in touch if you’re on BlueSky
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I’m glad you appreciate it. I thought that since this was a game Thing, the games would be best of when played.
I found a bug in our own piece. I’d better hurry up and fix it till somebody gets stuck.
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Wow, Kastel, thank you so much for the praise!! It totally made my day to know that my game left such a strong impression on someone.
I am really interested in your comment about making it easier to play it through to see the alternate endings. I am new to Twine, so I’m going to explore how this might work, but I am open to suggestions!
There are, of course, a bunch of ways. In your case, I think it would be enough to just link the credits to the major branching point. While I know there are different paths and a few minor endings, the most important one I think is the credits linking to the three choices where the protagonist either keeps on fighting, decides to live with her sister, or searches for Ada. I wanted to do all the endings, but it was annoying to go through the entire process of the game. Only did the first and third endings as a result.
It’s also customary to have an option to restart the game from scratch.
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Feedback from gameplay as I slowly play through the games!
As the Fire Dies:
Summary
- Beautiful writing and delightful descriptions of the dream worlds
- Puzzles were simple and quick to solve, basically just clicking in the correct order. Nothing wrong with this, however! Kept the focus on the engaging writing
- Each dreamscape was very evocative and the individual elements were creative!
- On one hand, I kinda wanted some overall message or reflection from the dreams/keeping fire alive…but on the other hand, there’s something nice about it just being an experiential dreamlike mood piece.
- The actual gameplay process of keeping the fire alive felt a bit clunky, but I appreciated the core concept and I think there’s a nugget of something great here from a mechanic perspective - perhaps cycling descriptions of the campfire scene or adding more details like the feather in the woods would keep this part of the game fresh. As is, it felt a little repetitive without adding much, though there was a glimpse of a deeper game system that could be fleshed out here.
- Good use of gentle humor in the writing
- Overall, you captured the fantastic nature of dreaming very well, using evocative descriptions of impossible scenes. I think my favorites were the whale (found that one in particular really gorgeous) and the mittens.
blackberry bloodbath:
Summary
- cool starting animation
- cursor animation is fun, though there seem to be some stuck pixels in the bottom right. Trailing stars aren’t updating in color as the age transitions (eg 17 is still showing green stars)
- loving the early 2000s UI, although it makes the text quite small and tricky to read
- pixel art + animations are effective
- is the CD player supposed to play audio?
- nice use of background color to convey different “chapters” for ages
- font section seems to be a bit degraded at times? Missing pixels, rather hard to read
- click text next to the icons on the left isn’t going away when transitioning to a new section (eg I have multiple messages for the doodles folder displaying stacked on top of each other)
- whiskey sour section has overlapped text
- wonderful use of branching narrative to create quite unique variants based on choices. Replaying this gave very different experiences for several playthroughs
- overall writing is beautiful and evocative
- great job capturing the teen voice in the chat messages
- subject matter is handled so well. For example, the somber offerings of treasured possessions at the ritual scene paired with the rather vain and flippant wishes absolutely nailed that coming of age feeling - everything feels SO IMPORTANT, in that moment, without the more harsh truths of reality to compare it to. The gradual growth in stakes while the player becomes more numb to it all was beautifully bleak.
- sidebar icons were a great way to show progression as the character aged, especially with the final dull notes for the 21 year old
- was a bit confused by the best friend being dead scene. Was it all metaphorical? Was it suicide, exaggerated in the narrator’s mind’s eye?
- poetry as narrative worked quite well. You had some lovely lines and the rhyming/meter was tight and polished. I wonder if it would be enhanced if it grew up with the writer? Like start more cliche as if written by a 13 year old and become tighter and more refined (and terse) as the player ages and becomes more dead inside/loses their spark
- overall story is relatable with wonderful imagery and the type of emotional content that really captures growing (and being damaged) through the teenage years. Some deep concepts and cathartic darkness. All in all, it’s a disturbingly memorable piece - excellent work! I feel like a lot of emotion was poured into this creation. It’s raw, yet polished.
Canvas Keepsakes:
Summary
- Main menu looks great!
- There’s a volume slider, but there doesn’t appear to be sound? Edit: it played later, blasted me because I had turned the slider all the way up as I didn’t hear anything. Maybe consider having a sound play at first start or when adjusting slider to show player what the volume level is
- Hover CSS for links is hard to read
- Engaging hook off the bat, with the cute little familiar (?) and entering a sketch
- Nice spooky sounds when entering sketches. Sound seems to replay from start when changing passage - intended? Twine’s audio settings should let the sound continue playing while navigating passages until it’s told to stop
- Shaking huh → snake hiss jump scare: effective!
- Good growing urgency to pick a keepsake
- Text effects, backgrounds and text delay effectively enhance the writing
- Pixel is an adorable little butthead
- Good use of humor. Loved this line in particular: “What, has the price of newt eyes skyrocketed or something?”
- Well-done portrayal of player’s current dire circumstances (rent, landlord, relationship to mother)
- Nice buildup of tension to gallery scene and good twist explaining what’s all going on
- Combat section has very energetic and exciting writing, though it can be a bit confusing at times to figure out who’s attacking who and what all of the action is.
- Vex was a poignant inclusion
- Well-done changing the core painting based on user choices
- Great branches in storylines to make a replay interesting (such as some romance options, different story choices with initial keepsakes, panic attack). I think there might be an issue with one of the choices near the end with Pixel, as I’m given the choices to make up with him, even if I don’t betray him
- Overall, this was a well-written, engaging piece! I liked the themes of sacrifice, loss and the cost of creation - I think these were woven well throughout the work and gave the story extra depth and punch.
- I was amused at how our games kinda overlapped a bit in theme/subject. We both even have cleaning a shitty kitchenette as a gameplay activity while dealing with demons
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Hi Kastel—thank you so so much for your kind words here and your comment on itch!! I definitely got carried away with the timed text, and if I have time in the next week I might try to make an edit to remedy that. I’ve only worked with Inform before this, which doesn’t have an easy way to implement timed text the way that Twine does, and I think I went overboard at this new discovery hahah.
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Thank you for your generous review, and I hope you are well!!
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Wow thanks for the lovely review Loressa! I’m really glad you enjoyed Canvas Keepsakes.
Great shout re the sound at the start, I’ll maybe see about adding some music, and thanks for the heads up re making up with Pixel, I’ll try to update that at the weekend 
And you found Vex!! I wasn’t sure anyone would, that’s awesome.
I just played Succor and yes, haha, so much overlap! I really loved the demons and the options to deal with them felt so cathartic… The image for the rage demon didn’t display for me, but the other ones looked really cool. I feel weirdly motivated to reorganise my kitchen now 
And more inclined to try to fight bad days with positivity 
What a fab game.
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Summary
Oh thanks for the bug find with rage demon, I’ll fix that ASAP. Glad you liked the overall game and I’m weirdly happy that this game is making people want to clean their house
I played through your game 4x because I wanted to see all the options and I am pretty sure there were still several endings and branchings I missed!
Re Vex, my only nitpick is the description of how she comes out could be refined. The writing feels a little clunky here and I had to reread a bit around this to figure out what was going on. It was my first playthrough and I ended up finding the entire fight sequence a bit confusing because of all the he/she/theys flying about and not knowing which thing was hitting what - on a subsequent playthrough it felt a lot more easy to follow, so I’d suggest a tighten up regarding the Vex section in particular because it introduces an entirely new character to an already chaotic sequence.
I really enjoyed how much variation you gave to branching at the end. It made replays really enjoyable and worthwhile because I got an entirely different outcome! (I love my spider demon pet). The only change I’d suggest is maybe to pull in some more choices from earlier (like cleaning order or art choice) as fun call backs in the end.
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Just finished RADIANCE INVIOLATE. The tone is absolutely spot on 
Sadly, I feel I kind of failed. 
But even that sense of failure enhances the tragedy of the dark perspective on the inevitable actions taking place. Well done! 
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I just played through Labyrinth in ECHOES. I had so much fun! I hope to play through the others soon. I also loved that I could go back to the room and see the finished work, if you get what I mean.
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Hey, thanks for playing! Really glad to hear you enjoyed ‘Labyrinth’ (as this was originally conceived as a 4-player game, I was always a little concerned how it might translate to a single-player experience!). I do hope you try the others at some point. Some of the fun is seeing quite how different they are (but also spotting the occasional crossover!).
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Amazing!! Thanks so much for the feedback and I’m glad you liked your spider demon 
Definitely seems to be the most popular of the three!
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