Okay, I got to gush about this for a minute because this was such a great little game! Especially the spooky part of the game; finding out more about the WINTERS story and how much more the ghost effects the area was so cool and really took me back to WINTERS! It really was super great and only wished there was more!
Loved the visuals; you have a great way of taking what little there is and making the most out of it. Plus the little story in the back with the mom and girl and the conductor, adds to the overall environment. And the story itself was really cool and I got so into it and got super scared by Erin!
The cosy part of the game also was cute and nice, but I couldn't help but feel that there was more thought put into the spooky pat of the game, as the cosy part didn't go for as long nor did anything much happen. But I really loved the concept of one story having two parts to it that evokes two different emotions, that was a really cool thing!
This just makes mem want to play Waterborne more and hope that there will be more to the WINTERS story as both were really cool and great experiences! Good luck with the rest of the projects!
Thaaankyou for your kind words! Cheers for playing and sharing your videos. I'm really glad you liked it.
The cosy/spooky split happened pretty late in development. It was all one story originally but at some point I had the idea that it'd be nice to let the player decide what kind of vibe they wanted. Especially since it was supposed to be a Christmas season game :D
I hope you do get around to playing Waterbourne Immersion. Would love to see your playthrough and hear your thoughts!
I did a narrated play through of the spooky version. I really liked the winter atmosphere. I thought you were going to sneak in a cat text picture of Stevens when they were texting about the neighbor's cat.
The atmosphere is so beautiful. I loved the feeling of the journey interspersed with immersive phone sequences & entertaining & believable characters. I played the spooky version and came away from the ending in awe
Cool concept! I really like what you did with the two unique vibes for the story, and there's that nice poetic quality when taking the different meanings of the word 'inter'.
At first I wanted to play spooky storyline first because I love horror, but knew that it's always the better choice to do cozy first if I would play them both anyway. What a (train) ride it is!
I've got a soft spot for your use of stock photos, since you always incorporate cool VFX with them. There's also that feeling of deliberate leaving out certain details (explained in next section).
[Spoilers]
I didn't know that this would be linked to "Winters", so that was a pleasant surprise. It maybe kind of is telegraphed because it uses the same visual style. The mother and child are so sinister in the spooky version, which I found to be very effective horror, as I was caught off-guard by always seeing them as faceless background NPCs who set the cute family bonding atmosphere (this theme that is felt strongly due to the conversations between MC and her friend). I also felt it to be unique that the MC is quite pre-occupied with her phone that she's not noticing anything happening around her, while we as audience know the situation is bad, without actually ever seeing the full face of horror.
Yay! A comment that doesn't point out how short it is! :D
It was also telegraphed by 'inter' being 'winters' without the 'w' and 's'. But I didn't really expect anyone to pick that up. I was going to end the spooky version with 'inter' showing up on screen and the w and s fading into place with a '2' behind it. But I decided an abrupt 'the end' was better :D
Thank you so much for you feedback and thoughtful commentary. I'm very glad you liked it!
It was for a game jam and I spent too much time sourcing all the imagery and working out all the code to make everything move. The story was a bit of an afterthought. Both routes make the play time come out around 15 mins which is pretty normal for my games :D But yeah, it was very short. I was originally going to have a playlist of songs but it ended up being short enough to not need it and the spooky ending made reference to the song. It would be cool to have the money to licence a bunch of Christmas songs though :D
As with everything, I never say never. I may come back to this one day and expand it out. We'll see.
Thanks for playing and commenting, much appreciated!
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Okay, I got to gush about this for a minute because this was such a great little game! Especially the spooky part of the game; finding out more about the WINTERS story and how much more the ghost effects the area was so cool and really took me back to WINTERS! It really was super great and only wished there was more!
Loved the visuals; you have a great way of taking what little there is and making the most out of it. Plus the little story in the back with the mom and girl and the conductor, adds to the overall environment. And the story itself was really cool and I got so into it and got super scared by Erin!The cosy part of the game also was cute and nice, but I couldn't help but feel that there was more thought put into the spooky pat of the game, as the cosy part didn't go for as long nor did anything much happen. But I really loved the concept of one story having two parts to it that evokes two different emotions, that was a really cool thing!
This just makes mem want to play Waterborne more and hope that there will be more to the WINTERS story as both were really cool and great experiences! Good luck with the rest of the projects!
Thaaankyou for your kind words! Cheers for playing and sharing your videos. I'm really glad you liked it.
The cosy/spooky split happened pretty late in development. It was all one story originally but at some point I had the idea that it'd be nice to let the player decide what kind of vibe they wanted. Especially since it was supposed to be a Christmas season game :D
I hope you do get around to playing Waterbourne Immersion. Would love to see your playthrough and hear your thoughts!
Thanks again!
I did a narrated play through of the spooky version. I really liked the winter atmosphere. I thought you were going to sneak in a cat text picture of Stevens when they were texting about the neighbor's cat.
Haha yeah, I was wondering how obvious the Stevens reference was :D
I've commented over on Youtube, but thanks again for this, appreciated. And glad you liked it!
Thank you.
The atmosphere is so beautiful. I loved the feeling of the journey interspersed with immersive phone sequences & entertaining & believable characters. I played the spooky version and came away from the ending in awe
Beautiful work~
Thank you so much for the feedback! It was a lot of fun crafting a beautifully aesthetic experience, and then making it horrifying :D
Cool concept! I really like what you did with the two unique vibes for the story, and there's that nice poetic quality when taking the different meanings of the word 'inter'.
At first I wanted to play spooky storyline first because I love horror, but knew that it's always the better choice to do cozy first if I would play them both anyway. What a (train) ride it is!
I've got a soft spot for your use of stock photos, since you always incorporate cool VFX with them. There's also that feeling of deliberate leaving out certain details (explained in next section).
[Spoilers]
I didn't know that this would be linked to "Winters", so that was a pleasant surprise. It maybe kind of is telegraphed because it uses the same visual style. The mother and child are so sinister in the spooky version, which I found to be very effective horror, as I was caught off-guard by always seeing them as faceless background NPCs who set the cute family bonding atmosphere (this theme that is felt strongly due to the conversations between MC and her friend). I also felt it to be unique that the MC is quite pre-occupied with her phone that she's not noticing anything happening around her, while we as audience know the situation is bad, without actually ever seeing the full face of horror.
Yay! A comment that doesn't point out how short it is! :D
It was also telegraphed by 'inter' being 'winters' without the 'w' and 's'. But I didn't really expect anyone to pick that up. I was going to end the spooky version with 'inter' showing up on screen and the w and s fading into place with a '2' behind it. But I decided an abrupt 'the end' was better :D
Thank you so much for you feedback and thoughtful commentary. I'm very glad you liked it!
It was for a game jam and I spent too much time sourcing all the imagery and working out all the code to make everything move. The story was a bit of an afterthought. Both routes make the play time come out around 15 mins which is pretty normal for my games :D But yeah, it was very short. I was originally going to have a playlist of songs but it ended up being short enough to not need it and the spooky ending made reference to the song. It would be cool to have the money to licence a bunch of Christmas songs though :D
As with everything, I never say never. I may come back to this one day and expand it out. We'll see.
Thanks for playing and commenting, much appreciated!