you have set 2$ for this game ^^

Yea im convinced that this is the best game i have played on LD :D you can also play my game if you want

Awesome game! I loved this moment when the program told my name. Mood combined with the music suit perfectly! This whole concept of deleting people is really depressing. Great job! One of my favourite.

Thank you for your kind comments ! The 2$ price is a donation suggestion from itch.io, the game is of course completely free @michal

Extremely well polished, incredibly well executed. Even as simple as the gameplay is, it managed to elicit a reaction from me - I ended up stopping the game after a few playthroughs. Sure, it means that I won't see the end, but... well, I shouldn't spoil it.

This game is amazing! I always love the concept of interacting with files outside the game to change outcomes. I had one of the endings (Deleting everyone but me, I assume it's the most basic ending?), and it's one of those games I'd definitely come back to try to find another. If there's any improvement I wish for, is for a faster walking speed. Aside from that, it's one of the best entries I've seen for this LD.

@chaosed0 Sometimes not playing at all is the only way to win... Thank you for your comment.

Hi ! @lexyvil thank you for your kind words. To get this ending, did you in fact delete everyone but you ? I'm still working out some bugs, so your help will be greatly appreciated.

@pandanym Yeah, I deleted everyone but the "Player" and the Glitch. I had a few popups appear when rebooting the game, kind of wish I took a screenshot, but it didn't matter after the prompt since the game still worked well afterwards anyway. The only actual bug I found was seeing ''missing_string'' in a dialogue box at one point when talking to the farmer/Christian.

@lexyvil Thank you for your answer ! . The "missing_string" is intended, and part of the game ^^

[EDIT] Sorry for the triple reply, looks like something went wrong

[EDIT] Same here

This was genuinely amazing. I felt as if I was interacting with an actual world. Maybe that's Undertale and Oneshot rubbing off on me, but still. I felt it.

You've managed to create an amazing experience. I felt so bad deleting things- and our good friend Glitch certainly didn't help with constantly calling me a monster. ~~Maybe I **am** a monster~~ ;-;

Interesting thing though- while I was experimenting with deleting people, one of the NPCs (Rikka?) asked me to bring her father back. Which I did. But there was no reaction to that. Also no reaction to bringing other stuff back either.

Also, when I deleted the lumberjack's house, they said they couldn't rebuild it since the forest was gone. But, it wasn't. I mean, the bridge was gone and river still there, but the forest wasn't gone.

This was honestly one of the best games I've played all of Ludum Dare. You've hit the nail on the head with this one.

***Amazing job***

@mrpiedpiper Thank you so much, firstly for your feedback, which is very heart warming, considering the time we took writing and designing everything. And also for the bug reports.

You're right, bringing back people isn't one one the things we're anticipating, as it would have taken us too much time to write dialogue for everything, and it was a mistake to imply it. We'll fix it asap.

You comparing our game with Undertale or Oneshot (which I adore) means a lot to me, thank you !

@mrpiedpiper Thank you for your feedback, it’s really helpful to fix the narrative coherence.

Yeah, you felt right ；）

We are also glad that you enjoyed it !

5 out of 5! Just perfect! The idea is amazing.

Incredible work on this one. It fits in with the theme perfectly, and really did make me feel sorry for what I was doing. It had a clever ending as well. In terms of art and music, it looks and sounds fantastic, and they both did a great job at conveying the mood. Overall you should all be proud of what you've accomplished.

If I had any suggestions on how to improve this, I'd say perhaps make the character move a little bit faster, and maybe make a bit more of the text skippable. As I imagine a lot of people will probably want to try out the different outcomes.

Little things aside, really well done.

Thank you @kahztein for your feedback !

We want to improve the game asap to give the best experience for readers.

We are happy that you feel this contrast between those two worlds, it’s the core of the mood.

I'll share my experience as I went through the game. In all honesty I rarely like narrative games because I'm mildly impatient, and when I saw the gorgeous art I just figured it would be a pretty game with simple gameplay. I skimmed the initial dialogues but I got hooked once I actually had to do a sacrifice. At first I thought ok, that's a pretty clever mechanic, and was curious how it would continue to play out. As I kept playing, I was shocked that I reached a point where I actually felt remorse, particularly with Rikka and the lumberjack. I think it hit me when I first saw a dialogue from the blacksmith that said things got bad after I had arrived, and for some reason I felt like that was directed at me, rather than my avatar, probably because you created that file manager mechanic. The remorse continued growing after that, and when it was down to 2 people I could really feel it.

I was very impressed with game, probably will be a top 5 for me this LD. You guys had a keen sense of creating emotions in the player, not just with the dialogue but also the art. The hanging heads and somber music were genuinely effective at creating the right atmosphere and guilty feelings. Concept is top notch and I'm curious how long it took you guys to come up with it. I've seen some variations of it in previous LDs but never as well executed as this one.

Astonishing.

It's so hard, I'm falling in love with the concept so much and I want the ending but I don't want to open it ever again, I just don't want to hurt themmmmmm!! I just love it, it gives some undertale vibes with the characters that are so endearing. I'm feeling so bad and I just stole some objects

@michal I clicked on the"NO,thanks"

Oh my god this is amazing. Yeah, this is absolutely the best jam i've played this ludum dare. So incredibly creative. anywho, by about day three i deleted everything except me and erika. nice game.

Just great ...

it's just an incredible game, everything is perfect, the idea uses the theme perfectly and the game is unique, I really like the way the story is told and how everything we delete has an impact on the village and the villagers, it's my favorite entry so far (and fun fact I made a game where the player manipulates files too)

Amazing!! Incredible thoughts, wonderful story telling, great job!

Your game was played on my stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on the third day of Ludum Dare streams. Thank you for sharing your game with us! You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://goo.gl/N2rkr8

OMG best game <3

I'm not sure what to add to the above. Amazing work, you really made the most immersive game I've seen here!

This was the best possible embodiment of the theme. Amazing game, and wonderful use of meta-gaming. Great job!!

best game i have played so far -- truly wonderful -- thanks for making this

Not only is this a very well thought-out concept, it's also an impressive feat of programming, narration, art and sound, for something made in a few days by 3 people. I find the game to be masterfully self-containing, it really feels like a small world of its own, and it knows himself to be. One can attach himself to this universe just before he has to destroy it. You really know what you're doing !!

Of course, everything from character design, dialogue and soundtrack is really well-made, and neatly falls in place. Nothing seems like it's missing, and there's many question I ask myself about what this could be if the scope was larger... What if characters didn't have only good intents between them ? What if they took decisions on their own ? What if file manipulation could be taken further ?

I found the secret ending ;)

Congratulations !!!

Definitely one of the best games I've played on Ludum Dare! It was truly awesome. Took me a while to find an ending that can be considered as happy (I think? no spoilers around here haha). Love the way the music changes after destroying. A really nice concept & mood, thanks to amazing graphics and audio. Congrats! I bet your team will win Ludum Dare :D

this is really one of the best art in the games i played so far, and the hole thing is so well put it together! amazing work

Really amazing concept! I included it in my compilation video series of games from the Ludum Dare, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/Ow-xrYDXDFE

Hi !, Nice game, I like the concept and the mechanic, it was fun ;)

The mood is so cool!

very nice job ;p

Awesome idea! I really liked the artwork and the dialog. The sacrifice theme was well implemented. It would be nice if the characters would have been a bit more developed so by the time I have to delete them I care more about them. I know it's a bit hard to do in such a short game :)

This is a very solid entry! I thought there was a bit too much of exposition at the beginning (the village part early on), but I stuck through and rest was very solid! I really like the concept and I appreciate how much work you have put into this! Audio was very nice, the same with all reactions after deleting the files.

Great work!

Pretty amazing what you did! The idea is very interesting, it's always cool to see people with such ideas, it motivates me to make something that breaks a little the scheme.
Music fits, good art, the sound fits amazingly xD
Impressive work!!

I ran the game and after pressing "Enter" post-warning screen. I got a screen with tons and tons of flashing gray lines. I pressed every conceivable button, clicked, keyboard keys and nothing happened except the flashing gray lines and the music. Forced to Alt-F4 to cancel, then tried again and everything was broken. After that, I tried a number of times to no avail. Redownloaded the game and then it seemed to work.

Then, once I got in... holy cow, this was a incredibly executed concept. The atmosphere - the mood, everything was perfect. I felt like a horrible, horrible person. Instead of taking the easy route, I decided to be the most evil that I could be... I left a father without a daughter, a mayor without a goat, a hermit without a forest. I tried to inflict as much evil as I could on this land.

I did then, of course try to rename files. And it kind of worked. I was able to turn the forest back into Rikka by renaming the file (which didn't lower the total byte count, by the way) and the system recognized the forest removal!

I play through twice now, and my goodness, this might have been one of the most clever executions of the theme, despite the initial bug that almost lead me to giving up. I love how sad it is, and how horrible the endings are :skull:

Thank you everyone for your kind comments. The response from all of you has been amazing and exactly the one that we hoped for.

Hey @aurel ! I believe this bug occurs when you put the game folder in your documents folder, since it's sharing the name of the folder created at runtime. We're fixing this in the post-jam version coming in a few weeks. Thanks for sticking by the game and we're happy you enjoyed it.

@pandanym - yes. That's exactly right. Windows automatically suggests that as the unzip directory. Glad you're fixing it!

Bloody hell, what an amazing idea and great execution. I loved the idea of deleting stuff out of the game. The way you alternate between opposite moods. Just amazing.

One thing I think could make the game a bit more usable is to have some sort of indicators on people that still have dialogues left on them, I feel like its the only thing that could make the game better.

Huge congratulations to the team, great jam entry, the most innovative one I've played this year.

Cheers!

Probably the best game I played in this Ludum Dare.It fits the theme perfectly. And the mood is awesome (Although I couldn't force myself to play it through all the way. It was too much for me)

Wow, this is amazing, really from music and graphics to the idea and its realization. Very cool, I don’t even have anything to add except how it’s rated at 5 out of 5.

Wow! What a game! I want to know the name... you know... but I didn't find any clue to complete the game "correctly". The mood is incredible and the interaction outside the game is fantastic. Maybe one thing that you can improve is the interaction with the characters, sometimes is confusing if you click in a character or not, maybe adding an outline when the cursor is hover is enough, but is silly thing, the whole game is brilliant (design, graphics, sound, etc.).
Amazing job guys! Congrats!

Outstanding... I can't find my word for this entry, I guess everything has already beed said above.

Best entry I saw this LD, and actually one of the best jam game I ever saw. Can't believe you made something as deep and complete as this in 3 days.

Really feel the OneShot inspiration too, but the game's still really unique in its way.

Can't wait to see your next games.

This is a super nerdy "Game jam"-game, and I love it for its nerdyness. The music, graphics and the game idea is overall really good. The story and dialog is okay, but it could have been better, and if it had not been for the deleting fills mechanic, I had very little interest in save the game characters. I would also have liked that the deleting files had more impact on the gameplay, and not just changing the dialog/story.

I am not super sure if using the AppData-folder is a super great idea, because it is an hidden folder. I know it not a big issue here in jam, but for non-nerds it not nervelessly easy to find.

When all of this is said, this is still one of the absolute LD game I have played. So well done.

Lovely art style! this is so good!

Absolutely amazing, especially considering it was made in such a short time. I ended the game pretty early on, since I could see where it was going, but I wish that ending would've been more satisfying. Maybe I deleted the wrong file but I don't think so. Just an aknowledgement for doing the right thing or something. Still, definetly gave me some undertale vibes or something.

Really liked this game from concept to execution. Lots of variation, neat ending. The only thing that was a slight disappointment was that changing the files content, this changing their size didn't do anything - but it would have been all to easy to cheat that way. One of the most refreshing games this LD =)

I don't like playing games, but this one was special. My favorite part is when the game asks you to delete 4kb to make space for the game. Being the good child I deleted everything. Looking back I should have formatted my whole computer.

Your game blow my mind! Great great job. The way you use the theme as very special! Congratulations!

I'm confused, how to get any good ending. That's the kind of game where I'm unlucky finding the right path, and I regret all I've done to the villagers. I deleted myself, deleted buildings, deleted people, nothing works :(

But it's fabulous!

WOW! This was amazing! (:

You've absolutely nailed the theme here - great job.

Whoops, couldn't run the game! Running into a similar issue as donmai on the itch.io page. My OS is Windows Server 2012 (not that that will really help diagnosis). Feel free to give me a ping if you get an updated version up!

This was a stunning experience! So well polished and a very interesting and well thought mechanic! I love it!

It took me a while to figure out I needed to talk to the mayor a few times to get past the first day, but after that this was an absolutely amazing experience! I looked at the files before deleting them and saw they were just zeroes which ruined the immersion for me just a tiny bit; perhaps you could fill them with random data instead? Also if the content of each file was unique, you could catch people trying to rename files and tell them off for it.

I'll be surprised if this doesn't place very highly. Fantastic work everyone!

Really solid game. I find it amazing how every time you delete something the dialogue specifically mentions it. You can really feel the impact you are having in this world and that makes the sacrifice an actual sacrifice for you as a player. Great job guys!

Very interesting experience. I really liked the whole thing really. If I had a comment it would be that the dialogue noise became a tad grating later on. The game itself wrapped up way too quickly, I was enjoying it quite a bit, but with multiple endings to explore that's no problem! Really stand out effort. :grinning:

Pretty cool! I got at least 2 of the endings, poked around for a few more tidbits but I'm sure I didn't get all of the dialogue and/or narrative. The concept is quite a familiar one after playing both OneShot and Doki Doki Literature Club; it must be a pain to handle correctly and account for everything, so good job on that.

I got a small chuckle over taking objects away and then restoring them while I deleted other ones. There of course are a ton more things you could handle in terms of file manipulation but it's a jam entry after all, so...

I'm not sure if there is a "good ending", perhaps there is and I just didn't find it yet! But I think that's something I'd like to see. Particularly, something that requires you to do some sleuthing in the "fake game data", I think, and something that involves the glitch and associated file and/or backstory. I think there is the initial "a-ha" factor of "oooo I'm deleting files around and it affects the game" but I think past that there could be a lot more done with the concept. Anyways, that's more of a musing than a criticism, but I do think I would appreciate a directed ending (or more than one) that tries to wrap up the experience a little more conclusively, regardless of whether it's a "good" or "bad" ending. Right now I think it ends at "the only way to win is not to play" but I feel like there could be more there.

Hey @ddrkirbyisq ! Thank you for your feedback. There is in fact a good ending involving file manipulation. We're working on a more extensive ending for this one but I feel it does a good job of wrapping up the narrative as is.
And yes, it was a challenge accounting for all possible actions haha

@pandanym: Excellent!