(GAMEJAM DEMO) I'm Telling You to Be Afraid

omg this was so creative and charming!!

(SPOILERS)

i really really like the vibe this world is going for. the bits and pieces of the world and the characters we learn are really interesting, and the way it just throws you into the middle of everything and makes you piece what's going on bit by bit got me engaged af. i love the idea of strange shadow monsters suddenly appearing, and your job being about reporting what's happening. journalist protagonists are always great, being a natural fit for piecing together the worldbuilding along with the characters, and it's no different here. but despite the fact that the mystery of what the "shadows" are is already intriguing, this game never loses focus on what it wants to be about, and as such i think the tone and overall *feel* of the game are really unique and well handled; an engaging mystery with hints of darkness but keeping the focus on lightheartedness and the main character's journalism goal.

i have to mention the art cuz i love it sm! the style is simple enough to be easily readable but expressive and detailed enough to make the world feel real (as someone who sometimes struggles with portraying furniture and small objects, the ones here are really great! and the shadow's design was freaky as hell). the character designs are really good and stand out very well with each other (love how they move their mouths when they talk), and the color palette pops so much, it kind of feels like a storybook at times? and i LOVED the window icons on top of the character portraits, CGs and text boxes! sooo clever. and the way each area is really big, giving an impression of real scale and detail in every map! at the ending part i noticed a door that was cut in half, and the entrances to other rooms being white lights was a bit odd, but i'm nitpicking. overall this game looks amazing!!

the writing and characters are really great too! i got a very good sense of who everyone was just with their character designs and their first lines of dialogue, which is a great feat in characterization. diune was a really good protagonist; i love how meek and happy she seems at the start, and then you find out about her ambition and how (apparently) she cares more about writing a good article than actually solving the shadows' mystery. i thought it was really cool and unique to show the main character in a more morally grey light. all the other characters were really intriguing, even though we don't see much of them, and i wanted to know more about all of them! (side note, the part in the office where all the desks gave you information about the person who worked in them was a REALLY neat detail, i love stuff like that!). honestly when the game ended i got really upset, cuz i wanted to know more about the story and characters!

others have commented on it too, but there are some sounds ("Save", "Load" and "splap") that make errors show up, which was kind of annoying and took me a bit out of the experience since the error kept appearing again and again (which to be fair, is a really dumb behavior on rpg maker's part lol). aside from that, while using default assets is nowhere near a dealbreaker for me, i do think this game could've benefited greatly from more original sfx, maybe even some ost. then again, making original sounds can be hard haha.

overall i was dying to know more about this game and its world!! you did a great job hooking me in, and i really hope you continue this project because it has astounding levels of promise :D

p.s. bonus points for having a bts folder, stuff like that is always cool as hell :> (also the concept art jokes were really funny lol)