Ill-gotten Light

GUHHHHHH I LOVED THIS SO MUCH??? The way it started one way, with the player (and the MC) feeling as though they know their duty and what needs to be done, but the longer the game goes on, the more and more their conviction starts to dwindle. And in the end, the final choice isn't even to fulfill the promise but rather the reaction... I played both endings (I was actually able to play both of them despite reading later that I should have done the Save/Load thing LOL the error didn't come until after so it was fine 🤣💦) The difference in the endings, particularly that final line in red, was so chilling and is still sitting with me as I sit here and write this.

The writing as always is simply superb. The way you create this sort of unease in your dialogue and narration, making it feel almost impossible to know the truth hidden within, is always wonderful, but works all the better here in this game where the whole theme is about questioning this latent truth. It works so well!! I'm also in love with how you handled Pharmakon and the color-changing eyes. Sob and the BG. So simple yet somehow so isolating and foreboding??? That void-like gray with nothing but the bloody altar. Everything about the aesthetics of the game felt so unnerving.

As someone who's played the other games in the series I do have some context about Ivehorn and the plague causing the people to fall asleep, though now this feels like it just opened up so many more questions LOL Which is so fascinating to me, as it's like, every time I learn a bit more I also get even more questions, so the world feels like it keeps expanding further and further lkadfas

SOB ALSO THE SHEER FACT THAT YOU MADE THIS IS IN ONLY 4 DAYS THAT'S LITERALLY SO IMPRESSIVE HHHHHHHH

Just a really fantastic, chilling, and thought-provoking piece that adds another line of lore in the Oneiron universe. It also fits the them of the jam so well (just realized there was a theme when I was reading about it LOL). Really well done (as always but still) 💕

Wow, this was so good!!! The discussion was interesting, and I could feel the doubts and the ambiguous feelings of the protagonist, not knowing who they should trust, being torn between their promise and their feelings! The feeling of a fight was also very well transcribed, it felt epic and yet frightening! Pharmakon's motivations were also ambiguous, 

Also, I love Pharmakon's design (also, the name's... interesting) and the background. There was something hopeless, colourless and somehow... just fatal? Nothing to think of, no escape, just a ritual sacrifice as an initiation rite. And the ending, without spoiling it, sold the idea of fatality which doesn't appear for the first time in your games, and that I still love so dearly.

Congrats on a great game, Naarel!!!!

EDIT: I think I can't rate the game since I wasn't a participant to the jam, but 5 stars of course defvgfredfr