I’m looking for beta testers for my first game, “To Ashes You Shall Return.”
You died young. How unfortunate. Your wife resurrects you via witchcraft, but the ritual comes at a price neither of you foresee. Explore a sapphic tragedy that tackles the bounds of mortality and how relationships endure through the unimaginable.
It should take approximately 1-2 hours to play. I’d love any feedback about the playability, story, or suggestions for improvement.
If you plan to submit this to HG, I’m not sure if they’ll allow a game with an infinity loop (even as a bad ending). You won’t be able to pass randomtest with it.
You have a fixed player character with a fixed romance. This could be a major negative with the CoG crowd.
From what I can tell from skimming the code, some choices affect the text, but there isn’t any significant branching. This isn’t by itself a bad thing- I use fake choices a lot, but you might want to consider some branching for the story as a whole.
The writing is solid and I don’t think I saw any technical errors.
Yes the game is complete, although I can always go back and add things. You have a good point about the infinity loop; I’ll double check whether that’s allowed.
About the branching, were there any specific places you wish there was more variety in the story? Or places where you wanted to make a different choice than what was offered?
Thanks again for playing and for the feedback!! Greatly appreciated
I don’t really think this fits as CoG type text game. Maybe a kinetic visual novel would be better as the story is linear with no significant branching.
Not specifically, more that a choicegame should have some branching to show that decisions matter and may change the story. It’s more about general player expectations and not me wanting to see something somewhere specific.
Actually, if I may ask, have you played many games from the Choice of Games and/or Hosted Games library?
Sure, I’ll do a bit of testing.
I played through to the “end”. Here’s how I felt.
Notes
The scattered memories at the start - is that death? Later on, you’re given the chance to say what death was like, and it doesn’t really match any of the options. “Bliss” was the closest.
When Vivien is in the garden, skin falling off, and Layla is smiling at her, I have to wonder what Layla’s seeing. Is she putting on a front? Is she just happy to be with you? Or is she willfully blind?
Inaya takes in your skeletal form and their whole demeanor brightens like you just handed them the keys to the universe.
I was happy to see this at first. Of course the pro witches would be excited to see some master necromancy in action! I don’t know why Layla was so worried.
That ended up not being the case. What did they assume at first? That Layla had animated a really good puppet?
If I saw a walking skeleton, my first thought would be “it is an undead” (and my second thought, “holy shit a skeleton”.) So why don’t the witches assume the same? Is necromancy so forbidden, it doesn’t even cross their minds as being an option?
It makes you think about what you’d do differently in that situation. You could spend the time writing letters to loved ones, or seeing sights you’d never seen before.
Did Layla’s pledge to free Vivien keep her from doing those things? Could acceptance have bought Vivien more time, while rejection just wasted all of it?
Is this what godhood entails?
Being a skull doesn’t feel like godhood to me. Godhood has got to be a lot better (because you could move) or a lot worse (because you can see every terrible thing simultaneously while being powerless to change any of it). Maybe this is just a little piece of godhood.
You are dust on the shelf that once held your skull,
Oh dear.
Maybe if the dust blows away, Vivien can at least have a dust adventure? Riding the water cycle maybe?
You know, Layla could have put the dust in a bottle and made it a family heirloom. Maybe that would have helped both of them? Or again, maybe Layla was so set on releasing Vivien from undeath, she didn’t think of any alternatives until it was too late.
Both game-critical loops, the failure to comfort and the continue to exist, work correctly. I pressed them many times to be certain.
In fact I only noticed one possible error in the whole thing:
Layla ushers you into her bedroom and fishes a ukulele out of her closet. Glancing around her, you see that she seems to have shoved the remaining house’s worth of clutter into a gargantuan pile in the closet and she shuts the door at lightning speed.
“shoved the clutter into a pile” and “shuts the door” are two unrelated actions that should not be in the same sentence.
Glancing around her, you see that she seems to have shoved the remaining house’s worth of clutter into a gargantuan pile in the closet. She shuts the door at lightning speed before you can scrutinize further.
Something like that would be a bit clearer.
But everything else was golden.
What a bleak outcome! I could really feel it.
It’s kind of funny - Layla is the one who makes all the important decisions in the story. Vivien, the player and main character, does not.
Does that play back into Vivien’s indecisiveness?
Was this actually a story about Layla?
Only once I had reached the end, and I was looking for buttons to press, did I remember to try the Show Stats button. Humanity Level is a nice touch.
Humanity: 1%
So you’re saying there’s a chance!
My final thought is that Layla’s coven fucking sucks. They must have known what would happen, and they apparently didn’t do anything to help. Even some emotional support would have been appropriate, but we don’t see anything like that. They’re the villains of the story and I hate them.
It’s more comfortable to feel anger than despair.
Well I can’t now! I’m dust!!
In short, this was very good. It seems like you accomplished everything you set out to do.
