I am sorry, but your Game does not start. Answer my comment once it is playable and i would be honored to test your game^^

@fireshake it should work now :) (thanks for telling us!)

I really like the art style and the idea. I'm sure if it was fleshed out further it would have been interesting, but as it is, it's difficult to progress due to a lack of direction and some confusing UI. Some specific critiques:

-I can't figure out what the boxes at the top are meant for

-Some text seems to overflow the given area, so they aren't legible

-It seems like I can interact with other people mid-conversation

This game seems pretty neat, it's visually distinct and haven't seen a lot of visual novels on here,especially with this kind of more traditional approach to art.

I had a little trouble understanding what the UI was for (and early on kept accidentally clicking on one of the npc's feet initiating a talk with them a bunch). I'd recommend adding some sort of state to npc's so the player wouldn't have to redo lengthy conversations (like the npc at their laptop).

Otherwise an interesting premise and presentation, great work! :smile:

The graphics were my favorite part of the game. After reading a ton of dialogue, I eventually stopped reading and quit. It didn't seem like there was much more to do than reading. I suppose there are people out there who love to read while playing games, but unfortunately, I am not one of them. The overall experience was not bad. I do wish you the best of luck with the jam.

Like Almigthy Games says the art is great, but i lost interest fast when i have to read a lot in games. Good Job!

Good Job, it would be fine if you add some background sounds, like a soundtrack that tells the story

I really like the drawings, props to the artist. Unfortunately I went into many bugs with the web version, like messages not scrolling, and the "down arrow" button clicking the passed out guy #1 behind the dialog box and mixing up the dialogs a lot. This made it really difficult to follow the story, which is already deliberately confusing. Would be much better with another day of bugfix !

Interesting concept and a nice art style. However the numerous conversation bugs (such as jumping between participants, characters not showing up in the room when they should, etc.) and the amount of reading required sucked a lot of the fun out of it. If the bugs were fixed, things were streamlined further, and some further audio was added, this would be a much better experience.

The art style is nice. I feel that it would have been nice to have choices as replies and separate story endings
But good job tho

Hi everyone, the clickable character bug is fixed, sorry about that!
The webversion is playable fine now!

Cool concept, dope art. Couple bugs in the web version, and not super entertaining but all in all a good game just not my personal preference. Good job!

I like the graphics but the game becomes tedious quickly after reading so much dialogue. It's not very intuitive to discover new dialogue options.

Interesting concept, but a bit too much text for me, but i think in this gamestyle its fine =)

Hey, the graphics are awesome and really helped the story telling. My son and I played it together and the story really got his attention, even though I was a little bit worried it would be fit for him (he is 7yo... hehe).
It looks like the mouse events was super sensible, cuz sometimes we ended up missing some lines that jumped ahead with a single click. Since the dialog area and the guy with the foot up were in the same place in the screen, we also got caught trapped in that dialog a few times.
Nice story and, again, great art work. Congrats!

The graphics were neat. I missed music a bit.
I tried it 2 times, and sadly it wen't unplayable both times.

I struggled to find new dialogue options after clicking through the three characters, it would be nice to see who you're talking to e.g. with some kind of silhouette around them. Really nice job on the dialogue and art though!

@fireshake now it should be playable. Sorry about the trouble!

@dummydojo , @kimkillaqueen, @sylvainpv, @oldblack there was this bug when we published first time, now it's ok :)

@almighty-games, @timetravelhamster , @woob we should have added in the description early that it's a visual novel. Fixed!

@daimilodev , @nerzal we didn't think about background music. Noted for our next jam! (this was a 2 people only team so lots of work to do)

@joamd nice catch! We didn't think about different story endings and branching choices. The whole mechanics was around asking about the clues.

@daregb , @scott-redrup I'm with you on that one. As other people mentioned, the buttons and what they were for ended not being that intuitive. Apologies...

@fabrito that's just... no words for that. Knowing that you were playing and having fun with your 7yo gets me speachless. Thank you very much!

Just played! very nice! Probably I will tweet about this in the next day on this page https://twitter.com/Free_IndieGames !

Very good job! I enjoyed playing this game, the graphics are great and the dialogues funny! I would have liked to discover what does Sam look like at the end, as a reward :). Keep creating!

First visual novel I've tried this jam :) Love the art style, great job!

@bongooo cool, thanks!

@caroline thanks! As for what Sam looks like... just think about the coolest person you can: that's what Sam looks like :D

@zesix thanks! Writing so much dialog was a first for us too!

I enjoyed the visual novel! I wasn't able to complete the web version due to text/scrolling issues, but the biggest quip I had was:

1. The U.I.
2. Lack of Audio
3. Short-cutting accessed scenes (to negate reading text multiple times).

Great job for a 2-person team! I feel like a VN is ambitious.

Cool entry, the lack of audio and the plot made me remember of the local jams when it's about 4:00 AM and everyone is spread like dead bodies lying over any sort of surface!!!

As others said, would be awesome some sort of "motion" ... audio or more animated sprites could help you achieving some sensation of motion!

It wasn't very clear what could be and couldn't be interacted with. That being said love the art style and personality here :)

First I had some little difficulties entering and leaving conversations because I triggered all kinds of stuff by accident. But once I got the hang of it, it really came together and had me entertained for quite a while. Thank you for your great contribution to this jam!

@jasmine-cooper Most of it is lack of time (3. is unclear UI), but the feedback is really useful to decide what to prioritize for future jams (we did try to make it a very short VN, but clearly not short enough for the amount of time). Thanks!

@ivan-garcia-filho haha, that's good! It is a story about memories after all, and I love local jams (I always bring a lot of junk food and sodas to keep going through the night, and then I'm a bit high on sugar and lack of sleep, which is a pretty nice way to be to interact with people). If we do a second version we'll definitely look into more movement. Thanks for the feedback!

@tony-redmer thanks!

@vectorwolf thanks a lot! A Visual Novel is a bit hard to get into, so I'm glad you liked it!

I really liked the art work like how some people are able to do such amazing art work in just a few days I am so jealous right now.

I'm so happy I found Sam, I loved the game and I think you made a really good job, thank you!

@chief141 haha, thanks! Just keep drawing and you'll get better. Don't forget
- to have fun (otherwise you might quit and that's just conterproductive),

- to watch images in different styles you like (I recommend reading webcomics, there are a lot of really good ones out there (I probably have a recs list somewhere if you want), and following artists (tutorials and sped-up recordings of paintings are very common and can help - though I remember thinking "Yeah but the first step is already better than anything I could do; where is step 0.1?")),

- and if it doesn't bore you, drawing from life, which I personally find quite relaxing, and is definitely very useful.

@juliette Aww, thanks a lot!

I love visual novels! Glad I found your game! Great idea for the art style, looks good and efficient for a gam jam. I personally think the theme was a little forced, I would have add maybe an end scene when you find Sam to show that now the relationship was 'alive'... Good job tho!

Wow, that’s impressive writing for such a short amount of time! Cute story, nice game :)

Really loved the UI, though I never appreciate people adding to their game after the deadline. Otherwise good story and good game.

Actually I don't really like visual novel games. It's make me feel bored. But I really liked graphics also audio was good. I played till the end.
Good Job dude.

@lucisaurus thanks! Haha, yeah, the theme was the starting point, but developping the story we didn't make sticking to it a priority. I like the fact that they just get in contact (the relationship becomes alive) but then who knows what happens. Like all living things it develops on its own, and that includes the possibility of dying. Who knows what Sam thought of the player, after all?

@damienp thanks!

@maxkyckling Oh, I'm sorry about that. I dislike playing games with bugs so I even purposely wait for a few days after the end of the jam before trying out games so people have had a chance to fix them. From the itchio page you can download the deadline version (called LDversion) for mac and pc. Unless you use linux?

Really cool game! didn't really see how it fit the theme but I kinda got it in the end. There was a part where I asked the photographer about pirates but he didn't answer, but other than that, the game went pretty smoothly, and I like how you guide the player to the answer even though there are plenty of options to choose from. Well done!

Cool concept. Not being familiar with the visual novel genre, I got confused a few times being stuck in "conversation contexts", where you can't interact with most of the screen, only with the two buttons in the top left corner. Having a clearer visual indicator that you're still in a conversation (either by fading or covering the background, or making the controls in the corner more prominent) would be a welcome improvement.

Nice entry. Even though I'm not really into visual novel stuff, I find this game really interesting and intriguing. The art as well as the UI is great. I guess that game could benefit from some background music, but I understand that the 72h is such a short amount of time. All in all, well done!

Nice entry! Good story although a bit tiresome to click through all the dialogue. I am very impressed you managed to get this into 72 hours. A background track would definitely of helped and maybe some interactions to do on the bicycle scene, to mix it up a bit?

Please keep it up! Maybe add some mechanics similar to the walking dead where you must decide on a response to a NPC within a certain amount of time or something?

Great work for the time frame, you are obviously talented in story telling :D

Great work ! :heart:

Interesting game. Bit annoying having to click through all dialog again if I talk to someone a second time, but besides that really nice.

@meme-310 Haha, why did you try this one then? I'm flattered you did! And glad you liked it :)

@random-thoughts Thanks!

@ditam Well, that's not a typical visual novel by far so I don't know if it would have helped. They're usually more about choosing between different dialog options and less about choosing who to talk to. I guess in this way it's almost a point-and-click, and the conversation contexts are our very own lovely little failed experiment. We actually considered adding a zoom in to each conversation, but it didn't get done. It's definitely on the to-do list for the potential more-finished game with updated graphics, audio, more interaction, and a more complete story, that may or may not happen in the future. Thanks for the feeedback!

@stefan-jovanovic @vernalbehemoth Aw, thanks a lot! Yeah, music was forfeited due to lack of time, but I'm thinking next time I'll put aside some time, even just one or two hours, specifically for it, because in retrospect very basic audio and music would have added a lot with comparatively little effort.

@vernalbehemoth Maybe I'll add some interactions in a future version, you're right. It wasn't really the point of the game, but it would make it more engaging, and it makes sense that you could choose how the player behaves. Thanks! :)

@mrstari thanks!

@krammetje Technically you can just interrupt them to ask a question, and they'll change tracks (but then you won't get to the end of the default dialog). I should think of a way to show it in the UI, or, you're right, cut the default dialog in several smaller pieces.

omg this looks soo amazing, great job!

very solid game for a game jam! the gfx style looks also very cool to me. Great one!

Beautiful graphics, could do with a few more sound effects and some animation, bit too much reading for my taste.

@z4v0 @rujo thanks!

@minnka thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely put some time aside for sound in the next jam.

I played FindingSam_windows_newest, but unfortunately I ran into two bugs, the later of which ended my playthrough prematurely:
- The first one was easy to solve for me: When ending a conversation and using the mouse button, I started talking to sleepy guy. At least I could avoid that by pressing space.
- The second one was not so benign. When talking to rabbit person another time, suddenly I lost all on-screen buttons, then the cat/music flashback started playing again (even though I saw that already a few minutes ago), and then when the flashback/dialog ended, I just came back to the main conversation character selection without anything open and without being able to click anybody.

A bit frustrating - I would've loved to finish this. I felt myself drawn into the story and I'm really interested in how it continues. It was kinda cute how much the protagonist remembers liking Sam, despite not being sure about any details, not even how they looked like or their gender, haha. The art works well with the writing to set the scene.

@tobiasw Ow, this first bug was supposed to be fixed :/ guess I forgot to check the windows version and only updated the web one, weirdly enough. (I never even met the second one, I'll keep it in mind)
Thanks for the detailed feedback, it's very useful! (also I'm honored you checked out my game, yours is probably the one I spent the most time on this jam (I even planted a record-setting tree!))
I'm really glad you liked it! I was worried it wasn't game-y enough, but the goal was to have people invested in the story, so your reaction is great. Thanks!
(if you do want to play the rest, either try the web version, or re-download the windows build tomorrow -I'll post a dev log on itchio once it's updated- but from what you say you could have been close to the end - the story is not that long)

@nolanfa Haha - coincidentally, I was also worried that my game wasn't game-y (or fun, for that matter) enough. Guess we both should worry less and just make the stuff we want.

Played again, and managed to find Sam! Nice! It felt a bit anticlimatic though, just a "Yeah, contact established!" and that's it. But apart from that it was engaging.

I'm a bit confused as to why our protagonist tells their best friend that they wouldn't recognize Sam, after -if I understood correctly- getting a picture of Sam from the photography guy. It's also a bit weird that the picture didn't become a clue or ever came up again, considering it seems like the most useful clue of them all?

Btw, asking the photographer about pirates results in broken dialogue.

@tobiasw about the end, I didn't want to get into too much detail: I didn't want to decide on Sam's gender, and maybe they get together in the end, but maybe Sam wasn't that into the player, or maybe they break up after two days and stay friends. Dunno, the incertitude was important for me.

about the picture... huh, maybe Sam had their back to the camera? (I think I just forgot when writing that line XD) You're right, if I make a full version I'll give a bigger role to the picture.