The Moth Cycle

The game has an amazing artistic direction! I'd love to see how it develops if you decide to continue working on it. I had a good time trying it out, and I wrote down a few observations that I hope will be helpful if you revisit the project in the future.

• I first tried playing on Opera, but after pressing the Start button the game took a very long time to load, so I ended up switching to the Windows build instead.
• The font size on some UI elements, especially the Start button and the ending screens, feels a little too small, making them difficult to read.
• Most of the onboarding happens outside the game itself. I completely understand the time constraints of a game jam, but having to leave the game page to check the controls makes it harder to stay immersed.
• The game explains that the protagonist has six days to find a partner, but it doesn't explain how the player is supposed to accomplish that goal.
• Because it's possible to find a partner on the very first day, the six-day limit ends up feeling less meaningful. Since the jam's theme is Countdown, I think making time management a more important mechanic could reinforce the theme much more strongly.
• The difference in graphics makes it easy to think that objects can be picked up, but at first it isn't obvious what they're for. I only realized through experimentation that they're used to court the different characters.
• Although there are several different items to collect, the love interests currently only have two possible reactions: disgust or awe. Since one immediately restarts the game and the other immediately triggers an ending, collecting different items doesn't feel as rewarding as it could. Additional reactions or intermediate outcomes could make experimentation more interesting.
• I also found myself wishing for an inventory. Since there's only one available item slot, I ended up walking back and forth quite a bit whenever I wanted to try a different interaction.
• The room designs are really charming, but the player can walk through most of the furniture, and so the environments end up feeling more decorative than interactive.
• The enemy owl in the hallway instantly kills the player on contact. Some visual or audio warning before the collision could help players understand the danger before it's too late.
• Pressing the interaction button while a dialogue choice appears automatically selects an option, which made me choose responses unintentionally a couple of times.
• It took me a moment to notice that the protagonist was actually walking because the movement animation is fairly subtle.

Overall, I think there's a really solid foundation here. The art direction is charming, the world is fun to explore, and with a bit more onboarding and player feedback, I think the experience could become much more intuitive while keeping its personality intact. I'd definitely be interested in seeing where this project goes next!