A reflective journey into space for a sick, old man’s dying wish.
Character art by Crystal Hou.
Background and music in credits.
9 comments
Comments are closed.
A reflective journey into space for a sick, old man’s dying wish.
Character art by Crystal Hou.
Background and music in credits.
Comments are closed.
I like the setting you’ve created, and the story is solid. It’s extremely exposition-heavy, though, because the dialogue is almost completely one-sided.
I like the reflective story, it feels like a real conversation and getting to know the old man. The choice near the end is interesting, but feels a little bit like an arbitrarily-inserted choice (it seems like the requirement to continue the process is artificial, not intrinsic, if you could just pull a lever with no technical consequences). You deal with the consequences at the narrative level, but it might be interesting to also deal with them at the game design level — you now have to navigate conversations with the boss, or maybe there is a technical reason to continue.
I felt sad for the man at the end. It seems odd that a space elevator would be built for such a gruesome purpose. Is there a secondary station in orbit or does the elevator just dead end with only a recreational, but not transportational purpose?
I appreciate how natural the decision points feel. Every time I’m given a choice about what to say next, there’s one option that I feel is what I personally would say without hesitation, plus a selection of other options that steer the conversation very naturally down other plausible paths. That element combined with the heightened self-consciousness of being in such an emotionally loaded situation gave me a space to reflect on my own conversational tendencies and why I react the way I do in certain situations.
I like the reflective quality of this piece. The old man seemed very kind. It felt like I was put into a position of a god, or like Charon the ferryman guiding the man across the River Styx. And the confessional feeling that I get out of it makes for a natural sentimentality. The ending felt a little rushed; maybe you could put a fade out to black? For the ending that I got, it just cut straight back to the start menu. I feel like you need to let the ending pause for a while to sink in a little for the player.
I really liked the dialogue; it felt very natural. A lot of visual novel-esque games have the problem where multiple options are given to proceed, but none of them are what the player would want to choose. You manage to avoid this pitfall, and overall the experience was very good.
I like what you did here because it harkens back to someone we all know and have loved before. it’s left unsaid but this definitely calls on the player’s personal experience to bring sympathy to the game. I think that the old man should have had rockets because he is floating, but that would ruin the realism this game demands.
I enjoyed how atmosphere (ha) over the conversation taking place where the setting here becomes almost non-important in comparison to journey. I feel as if it could have been replaced with anything and still remain the same related and accessible story about a man reviewing his life and the places and experiences his relationships brought unto him. Illustrations were good too.
Wonderful. Great way to tackle at many different themes. The character’s expressions are very effective. The “regret” part may be a bit heavy handed but it’s a minor detail.
I’d try to integrate background and foreground a little bit more by overlapping an image of the elevator’s interior (even if it’s just a glass pipe) to the photographic backgrounds. Also: replace the tilted earth one with a picture of a city.