Sorry. Forgot I had a gauntlet of appointments yesterday.
@JohnDoeNews
@JohnDoeNews
Spoiler
The greeting card + community shout out is an adorable concept. Finding all the dialog is the main gameplay, so I did wish there was a bit more engagement to uncover it all. Mostly, you were kinda just clicking everything. I may have encountered an odd situation with the key? I didn’t notice any sound or dialog when I found it, but I was able to get outside when I was unable to earlier. So. I have no idea where I found the key.
The story did have some humorous elements but overall stayed on the sweeter side. So, while Silent Night was a perfect song choice for the main game, the title screen song did feel a little too high energy both in tempo and instrumentation for the tone it maintained.
The first thing I noticed visually is that the sprite is stretched vertically. I think this was done to make it appear taller (?) but it looks rather off, particularly seen with the rest of the tiles which are in the correct aspect. Beyond that, I thought the tiles were curated, pretty, and the maps were overall well sized and decorated.
The story did have some humorous elements but overall stayed on the sweeter side. So, while Silent Night was a perfect song choice for the main game, the title screen song did feel a little too high energy both in tempo and instrumentation for the tone it maintained.
The first thing I noticed visually is that the sprite is stretched vertically. I think this was done to make it appear taller (?) but it looks rather off, particularly seen with the rest of the tiles which are in the correct aspect. Beyond that, I thought the tiles were curated, pretty, and the maps were overall well sized and decorated.
About the key... The only reason you have to look for the key before you go outside, is to encourage the player too look around, interact with everything. There is actually a single line of dialogue when you find the key behind the crib. and the key won't be there unless the table is set. So if you encountered the crib before, and then again to find the key, you might have skipped it, thinking you've already seen that comment.
But it wasn't meant as a gameplay element, it was just so people would look around instead of go straight outside.
The walking sprite is stretched indeed. It is an easy solution to an old problem. Why are beds 2 steps tall, if a character is only knee-high? Why do adults only reach half-way up a kitchen shelve or a dresser and are as large as a bucket or a toilet? And if a character is always only 1 tile high, why is a rake or a broom be 2 tiles high?
This is not the prettiest solution, though. It is an easy way out. :p
This is also absolutely the main reason I don't ever work with RTP. I like creators like Vexed Enigma, partly because they have a good sense of scale. They must have thought something like "1 tile = 1 meter" because that seems to fit the profile.
So, that is a little extended info about why I scaled that character up. Note that I would never do that in a real project, though. I have enough complete DLC bundles to make way different things for a while without having to deal with those scales in RTP. :p
Anyhow, thanks for the feedback. Sorry for my long reply, which turned out to be longer then the feedback I reply to. :p