This was an amazing experience! I got it from the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, and based on my preferences alone, it was worth the price in itself. As someone who lives in a third world country, the world that unravels in this story really shook me. If climate change isn't stopped, literally half my country will be underwater, possibly more. I really connected with the situation the world building set up. It was so scary because it felt so real to me. It could definitely happen to me.
By the time I hit the ending, I was so engrossed I literally googled the game trying to find out if there was more content that I missed hahaha. Only two hours! I wanted to see more!
I love how this game kept playing with my perception and my expectations. It really plays on what you've come to expect from stories like this. I love it.
Of course, it's not without its downsides. The first ten or fifteen minutes, I was pretty much just guessing on what were the right answers, since the choices were really vague. After that, I somehow got the logic of the game. I can't tell if it's because I memorized the choices, or I learned to think the way the game wanted me to. Probably both, especially since I didn't make any mistakes at the very end. The main gameplay loop had its flaws too. Because I had to reread parts, I would end up clicking faster to skip them, and accidentally click a choice without looking. One time, it did lead me to dialogue I hadn't seen before, but then I had to reread a bigger chunk of text after, so it didn't feel worth it.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game and immediately recommended it to my friends who love this kind of stuff. Thank you for this!
Edit: I'm still learning how itch.io works, so I didn't realize reviews go to a different place. Oops!
Because I had to reread parts, I would end up clicking faster to skip them, and accidentally click a choice without looking.
Don't click-to-advance-text in the bottom area where the dialogue options pop up. I always moved my mouse upwards to make sure that I wouldn't accidentally click a dialogue option. I wish Space Bar could be used for text-advancing.
Anyways, I fully agree; this is the best meta narrative I've ever played!
It is interesting to say the least. It would be a bit helpful to have a small tutorial to understand what I am looking at before anything else. But that's a small gripe on my end.
The story is pretty interesting. I look forward to the final chapter.
I was a little lost in trying to play this, though. I wasn't sure what the interface represented or how my choices affected things. I figured I'd pretty much just pick whichever option had the highest percentage, and that seemed to work out. But if doing that does end up being correct, it kind of trivializes all the decisions.
Oh, wait, I played with Helper Mode enabled, so maybe that's what that was. That's another thing I would critique, though, that I had to choose whether to enable it before starting, with nothing to explain what it was, and no way to guage whether I'd want it. I went back to see what happens without it, and it seems to just omit the percentages. But the "receptiveness" ratings still pretty much give away which answer to choose. And do the percentages mean there's an element of random chance regarding success?
None of that makes sense to me. Shouldn't I have to be figuring something out in order to get a success? But the way it is, either success comes from following what the receptiveness ratings show, which is trivial, or from getting lucky on random chances, which I don't have control over. Is there something else I'm supposed to base the decisions on? Otherwise, it seems like the gameplay element was included more for being plain interactive than for being actually interesting or fun.
The failure responses do kind of hint at why a choice fails, so maybe some strategy could actually be involved if the receptiveness ratings weren't shown. But then partially correct choices shouldn't just randomly succeed or fail. It would make more sense for you to simply gain a proportional amount of insight.
I don't really understand how the mechanics all fit together. What does "insight" represent? Any choice, even "failures," seem to move the narrative along regardless, providing the same information. The difference between a success and failure seems to be whether your future self becomes more receptive to you. But then labelling accumulative successes "insight" wouldn't really fit. And since insight is needed to unlock more of the narrative, I would expect it to be acquired by "questioning and doubting," like the game keeps saying. But picking the choices your future self is most receptive to doesn't really have anything to do with that...
On another note, I also found it hard to tell which text belonged to which character. It seemed like your spoken voice was yellow, your future self's voice was red, and then what looked like your thoughts appeared in green. But later the rebel voice was also green. And text also changes color during transitions, making things even more confusing.
One last thing I'll suggest is to allow us to refer back to what the last statement was when making a choice, so that we don't have to risk forgetting the context of it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I hope they can be of some help, and thank you for the game. The presentation is very impressive.
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The game is good but the soundtrack is epic!
Mac version says it cannot be opened? I dont know if this is my computer or not- but this game looks incredible!
Hi. I think this might be a problem with several Mac games on itch, according to this post on Reddit. Hopefully it helps: https://www.reddit.com/r/itchioJusticeBundle/comments/h8h7c6/some_games_wont_ope...
Thank you very much!!! This helped fix the problem! And the game was absolutely INCREDIBLE!
Absolutely love this game!
There is a little bug. If you don't skip the text effect and let the dialog «type in» scene, you have to click twice to read the next.
Opposed to: if you click and make the current text to appear, you have to click once to continue the dialog (at least on the linux build)
can you please make it possible the skip the messages before the title screen appears? it takes forever
This was an amazing experience! I got it from the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, and based on my preferences alone, it was worth the price in itself. As someone who lives in a third world country, the world that unravels in this story really shook me. If climate change isn't stopped, literally half my country will be underwater, possibly more. I really connected with the situation the world building set up. It was so scary because it felt so real to me. It could definitely happen to me.
By the time I hit the ending, I was so engrossed I literally googled the game trying to find out if there was more content that I missed hahaha. Only two hours! I wanted to see more!
I love how this game kept playing with my perception and my expectations. It really plays on what you've come to expect from stories like this. I love it.
Of course, it's not without its downsides. The first ten or fifteen minutes, I was pretty much just guessing on what were the right answers, since the choices were really vague. After that, I somehow got the logic of the game. I can't tell if it's because I memorized the choices, or I learned to think the way the game wanted me to. Probably both, especially since I didn't make any mistakes at the very end. The main gameplay loop had its flaws too. Because I had to reread parts, I would end up clicking faster to skip them, and accidentally click a choice without looking. One time, it did lead me to dialogue I hadn't seen before, but then I had to reread a bigger chunk of text after, so it didn't feel worth it.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game and immediately recommended it to my friends who love this kind of stuff. Thank you for this!
Edit: I'm still learning how itch.io works, so I didn't realize reviews go to a different place. Oops!
Don't click-to-advance-text in the bottom area where the dialogue options pop up. I always moved my mouse upwards to make sure that I wouldn't accidentally click a dialogue option. I wish Space Bar could be used for text-advancing.
Anyways, I fully agree; this is the best meta narrative I've ever played!
If this ever becomes available for Mac, I'll grab it!
Should be a Mac version out within the next week :)
The Mac version's out now!
holy shit im shook as fuck?? hot damn
storyline is confusing in the best way. gonna let this marinate in my head for a bit. there's tons to think about, and that ending? holy shit man
only thing i wish was different was that there was a save function, but i guess that might ruin a part of it. oh well
love this game man! keep on keepin on dood
It is interesting to say the least. It would be a bit helpful to have a small tutorial to understand what I am looking at before anything else. But that's a small gripe on my end.
The story is pretty interesting. I look forward to the final chapter.
I was a little lost in trying to play this, though. I wasn't sure what the interface represented or how my choices affected things. I figured I'd pretty much just pick whichever option had the highest percentage, and that seemed to work out. But if doing that does end up being correct, it kind of trivializes all the decisions.
Oh, wait, I played with Helper Mode enabled, so maybe that's what that was. That's another thing I would critique, though, that I had to choose whether to enable it before starting, with nothing to explain what it was, and no way to guage whether I'd want it. I went back to see what happens without it, and it seems to just omit the percentages. But the "receptiveness" ratings still pretty much give away which answer to choose. And do the percentages mean there's an element of random chance regarding success?
None of that makes sense to me. Shouldn't I have to be figuring something out in order to get a success? But the way it is, either success comes from following what the receptiveness ratings show, which is trivial, or from getting lucky on random chances, which I don't have control over. Is there something else I'm supposed to base the decisions on? Otherwise, it seems like the gameplay element was included more for being plain interactive than for being actually interesting or fun.
The failure responses do kind of hint at why a choice fails, so maybe some strategy could actually be involved if the receptiveness ratings weren't shown. But then partially correct choices shouldn't just randomly succeed or fail. It would make more sense for you to simply gain a proportional amount of insight.
I don't really understand how the mechanics all fit together. What does "insight" represent? Any choice, even "failures," seem to move the narrative along regardless, providing the same information. The difference between a success and failure seems to be whether your future self becomes more receptive to you. But then labelling accumulative successes "insight" wouldn't really fit. And since insight is needed to unlock more of the narrative, I would expect it to be acquired by "questioning and doubting," like the game keeps saying. But picking the choices your future self is most receptive to doesn't really have anything to do with that...
On another note, I also found it hard to tell which text belonged to which character. It seemed like your spoken voice was yellow, your future self's voice was red, and then what looked like your thoughts appeared in green. But later the rebel voice was also green. And text also changes color during transitions, making things even more confusing.
One last thing I'll suggest is to allow us to refer back to what the last statement was when making a choice, so that we don't have to risk forgetting the context of it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I hope they can be of some help, and thank you for the game. The presentation is very impressive.