hi, thank you for the kind review! you got what we were going for and I appreciate it a lot.
ending note:
I originally had “restart” as a button at the end of the good ending, but I took it out mid-coding and went with the timer to stylistically align with the other endings. I made the timer 20s cuz I was worried people (such as esl or slower readers) wouldn’t finish the last paragraph before it forwarded to the beginning. probably an explicit restart would have been better!
I’ve also enjoyed the response about my kite, the one you made. Thanks a lot, it has been really nice. And I’ve also enjoyed reading about the others and the format.
Also, congrats on completing all the (English) games!
Thank you for this review! I like a lot of your suggestions—I’ll definitely be incorporating the curtain idea into a future release.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful review! There’s so much helpful stuff to unpack here.
I’m touched by the fact that it spoke to you even as someone who grew up as the youngest and has no children. I wondered how this might be received by players who aren’t around little kids, and I feared they’d just find Jasper annoying and quit (which I would completely understand, haha). When sharing this game with my friends and family, I also worried it would reflect poorly on my two-year-old, who was the inspiration for the game, but in all fairness to him, is not nearly as volatile (or existential-crisis-inducing) as Jasper.
You’re totally right about the ending(s). I had other ideas when I started, but didn’t get far enough in four hours to pay them off. I’m at least glad to know that the Yarry ending is the one that best sticks the landing. When my wife playtested it, I had bungled the values and the Yarry and Larry endings were swapped! Which would’ve meant the most-commonly-seen ending would’ve been the unresolved Larry ending!
One thing about the Choice of Games model (and IF in general) that’s a bit of a sticking point for me is the lack of progress signposting. Linear fiction has reliable page/word counts that give a good idea of how long it’ll take to get through a piece, and a vague notion of the shape of the story’s arc as one reads. But especially for longer IF, word count is never a reliable measure, because that’s a total, and there’s no telling how much of that content you’ll see during your personal play-through.
This speaks to your desire for a signpost denoting the final choice(s). And since I’ve already played with the CoG rules to include a repeated stat display within the body of the text, I could find a way to highlight that final decision.
This also ties back to the ending(s) I wanted to implement but ran short on time, because if I’d taken them as far as I wanted, maybe the story itself would provide stronger signaling of the climax. Maybe something for a future version.
Like I said, you’ve given me lots to consider in this and/or other pieces.
Also, please forgive me for the plug, but if you’re interested in more darkly funny horror about everyday existence, I wrote a (non-interactive) novel about my experience with hearing voices and paranoia. It’s called I Hear You Watching, and it’s way more intense than “Yarry.”
Thank you again for your thoughtful review.
Thank you for your lovely feedback and recommendations!
Quite the keen eye you’ve got there; while making the story, I didn’t notice that every top option leads to the main ending. Still, it is a very valid point and I will ensure to keep it - as well as the spacing between paragraphs - in mind in the future.