itch.io

I appreciate you being kind and direct in response to this question (unlike whoever downvoted them). We all start learning from somewhere.

Yay! Steam is good, too, if you don't. But I prefer Itch's business model.

This is fun! Like you guys cut out and then expanded on the part of Animal Crossing that's just chasing fun little critters. Any chance of the full game coming to Itch?

This was cute! I thought the graphics were nicely polished, and the combination of silent incremental idle game with story cutscenes you personally cue yourself when you're ready for them is exactly what I want from a narrative idler.

Cute! This was a really clever idea. Some of the descriptions didn't quite work for me (for instance, I made the fidget spinner with the curved lines pointing outward, not inward, although I guessed what it was supposed to be correctly), but this was a unique good time.

Instead of lowering the price of the game, is there any chance we could just get a Steam key with our purchase so we can access the version that updates itself?

(I'm assuming this already occurred to the devs, but it seemed worth a suggestion. I much prefer buying on Itch to support devs and the site if I can, but it's nice when it's not the less convenient option as well as the less affordable one.)

Ahh, that makes sense! Thank you. (And I saw the solution for the other one I was a bit confused about.)

This was a really cute premise for a game! Unravelling who each demon was was fun, although I'm confused about some of the correct answers. (e.g. the demon who explicitly says they were just about to go drink coffee had "will refuse any drink other than water" at the top of their page).

This was interesting. I played for a few hours but never quite felt like I was getting the hang of what I was supposed to be doing. It feels ambitious for the game's size (I was surprised when I realized I could essentially do quests in entirely different locations!), but I always felt I was meant be doing something more—exploring? Killing more monsters? More research? Figuring out how to use all those random robot arms the spacedog wanted me to build for some reason? Using my repaired space shuttle and actually going to the temporary locations it suggested and somehow not dying once I was there?

Not to argue with Marc's very valid experience, but I personally liked the wall of text because it instantly told me I was getting a story campaign along with my casual gameplay; it was part of what drew me in. (I also play games like this on mute a lot of the time, so audio wouldn't do much for me personally without a visual signal/text.)

Maybe you could look into options to change the font so it's larger and easier to read if necessary for people with vision impairment? And/or have it so just one paragraph at a time appears on the screen in larger font and you click to continue.

Awesome! I prefer to buy on here because I like Itch's business model regarding devs getting to choose how much of a cut the website takes much better. (And it's reassuring to have a DRM-free copy in the unlikely case Steam ever goes under.)

This was super fun! I wishlisted it on Steam so I can nab the full thing once it's out. Is there going to be an option to buy it on Itch and get a Steam code once it's available?

This was a real delight to play. Just beautifully made. I didn't want to say goodbye to the cast when the curtain rolled!

Hey, thank you for the thoughtful response! It does actually make me feel way better knowing that that was your intention, and it wasn't just done thoughtlessly.

I think in the future, any sort of wink and nudge that shows that the game knows what it's doing helps a lot. Even something small, like if when you first looked at the book your friend said something like, "Oh yeah, my uncle was obsessed with that thing. It's kind of embarrassing. We're not Inuit and I don't think he's ever even met an Inuit person? He was just obsessed with that one story with no other context..." That shows that the character himself is appropriating the story, rather than making it feel like the game is. I'm not sure in this case if it would fix the finger-chopping pages being hidden in the basement to ratchet up the tension or the assumption that no one playing would be Inuit or familiar with Inuit religion, but it would help a lot. And I believe you when you say that going forward you're going to continue making the effort to be mindful of how cultural stories are integrated in your work.

Just want to emphasize again that I enjoyed the game. It was creative and well-designed, and I'm definitely going to check out The Third Shift and your other work. I hope you keep making games! Thank you for listening and staying humble.

Finally got the chance to play this tonight as prep for all the spooky horror I'm going to indulge in this Halloween season! Some thoughts: I love the overall aesthetic, the Gameboy graphic combined with moments of horrifying detailed close-ups worked great. The friend's "dead fish eyes" in particular were disturbing. I thought the way the tension built each day was well done, and it managed to spook me in unexpected ways rather than the ones I expected. I'll echo others and say that I expected to get something really screwed up from the water and have it announced in the cheery "you found..." voice, although the hand popping up with the key was great, too. The fish heads disappearing from the fridge were also a nice touch!

I do have some additional thoughts on the plot. I already knew the tale of Sedna; she's not uncommon as a motif up north, though not as common as she should be, and I learned about her and saw art of her growing up. I don't want to assume anything about you or your background, and I'm saying this to offer a perspective rather than out of anger, so take this as gently as it's meant if you can. I apologize if you *are* Inuit and I'm just totally off base. But it left a bad taste in my mouth to have her legend, which is so important to a deeply oppressed culture still recovering from colonization, treated like nothing but a ghost story. Especially the way it was told piece by piece (with the assumption we don't already know it), and then hiding the story's conclusion in the basement like this big reveal to try to play her fingers being chopped off for shock value. Moreover, for her to be reduced down to a spooky water monster in a lake the way you might use something from the Cthulhu mythos just seems...wrong.

If you go to the Canadian Parliament, you can see a commemorative statue celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nunavut becoming a territory, made by the Inuit artist Bart Hanna. It's of Sedna. If you look at her, she's beautiful, smiling gently as she's surrounded by the creatures that came of her fingers and now support human life. Her demands are that you share your catches selflessly with the rest of your people and never be cruel to the animals whose lives are taken. I know people crib from dominant religions like Christianity all the time for horror, but it really discomfited me to see Inuit mythology most people still aren't familiar with being used to try to scare or disgust players, instead of just making the monster some generic thing from the deep.

I've put two hours into this, but it feels like more! A perfect bite-sized game for quick study breaks. It's adorable and I love it.

There isn't a Mac version currently uploaded. You can check to see which files you get when you purchase something under the Purchase heading at the bottom. That said, maybe they'll be able to upload it for you.

Oh, for sure! It wasn't criticism of your decision, you explained the reasons why perfectly well. Just that people voting against it are probably voting that way because it prices it out of their range.

Nothing wrong with an Itch exclusive. The only thing is that the price being in USD might make it prohibitively expensive to some people since it won't adjust the currency for them the way Steam does. (I'm in Canada and would still easily be able to buy it!)

I found a bug: when I opened the game at the beginning of the winter season, there was no gift box with my starting peas in it, which means I can't buy any crops or plant anything for this season. I'll see if it resets once it's back to springtime.

I've been using this a lot! It really is helpful for keeping track of when to work and take a break; I was using webpage timers before, but for some reason they never seemed to want to go off reliably and the tab tended to get buried with the rest.

It's a bit unusual for a game of this size, but might I recommend a bit of DLC? Once you unlock everything, there's nothing incremental you can spend your peas on. I'd be more than willing to pay a few more dollars to add in, say, ways to buy outfits for all your cute pixel friends, or decorations for the farm. (I actually delayed clearing out my entire field because I liked how some of the "obstacles" looked.)

Sure thing! Thanks for getting back to me.

Hi, again! It says that the game comes with a Steam key, but I don't see one on my download page. I've noticed that tends to be the case with games bought in bundles, but since I bought this one directly I'm a bit confused.

Is there any chance of us getting the full Melon Journey game on Itch as well?

Rather late, but the creator linked a Bandcamp page in another comment!

This was cute! I think personally I would have liked a tiny bit more time per level, or barring that a button you could press to quickly reset the level, since using the claw wrong once was usually enough to fail the level. But it was good, simple arcade fun with just the right number of levels to get through! Thanks for building us a tiny game for free!

Small and sweet. I said good-bye to where I lived.

Thank you for getting back to me! Alright, looking forward to getting the game on here, then. :)

Is the current sale on Steam going to be applied here, too?

Cheers, good to see that those have been cleaned up!

Oh! I'm sorry, I thought sales were set by devs on Steam. In any case, excited to finally pick this one up on here!

Will the sale on Steam right now be applied here on Itch as well? I prefer to buy games here if I can, but the currency conversion makes it pricey.

This has quite the original puzzle mechanic! And you got a lot of leverage out of it. I found a handful of the platform-oriented rooms a bit annoying―it's one thing to fail at a test of reflexes, and another to fail because you can't see anything―but the room design in general was really clever.

I loved the scraps of lore, and the QR code element gave a cool delay to the information you gain that made it feel like it had more weight once you "decoded" it. One gimmick would have been enough, so I love that there are two and that they work so well together. Although I can see why other players found it annoying, particularly if you don't time things well enough for a screenshot before the code gets whisked away.

I'm not sure I really understood the ending, but that means I'll be thinking about it for a while longer and that's not at all a bad thing. Brilliant submission! 

Yay, update! Thank you for clarifying what choosing your hemisphere does, I love that it aligns with the seasons in realtime!

Hello! I've only just gotten started with this, but I'm really loving it so far. It's great that the seeds are mystery seeds and you only get to find out what they are once you plant them and add them to the book. The pixel art is gorgeous, and I love the amount of thought and detail you put into each plant!

I was surprised by how slowly the hearts accumulate, but as a design decision it does force me to really treat it like an idle game and just let it run in the background (although I've forgotten to water my waxy diamondback a few times already, whoops). Some sort of timer or health bar to show when they next need to be watered would have been a cool addition!

I do have a few early game questions that might be nice to answer in the tutorial at the beginning: what does choosing northern vs. southern hemisphere at the start of the game do? Is three the maximum number of plants before you have to begin harvesting them to make room? If I harvest a plant, can I randomly get the seeds for it a second time or is it gone forever?

Love the idea and theme behind this! The art is beautiful.

I was a bit disappointed to realize that there is no "good" ending, since the first thing I thought to try was a run where I only watered the tree without picking from it, or watered it and simply let myself be "robbed" of the fruit when I picked it. I know it's outside the scope of the game, but it would have been neat if doing so eventually unlocked a character who links to a willing community of helpers who share the spoils.

This was pleasant to play! I ended up wishing I hadn't maxed out the bird stat so soon. The giant flock of them made it too difficult to see my trees and it stripped the fun out of it before I finished maxing everything out, but I liked the simplicity and the sense of progression before then. The birds added a fun element of using your reflexes to the usual clicking and waiting.

Very belated, but you can find some of the rules if you click on the question mark from the calendar screen. One of them is that your mature crops are converted into peas at the end of a season, then every 300 peas are turned into one snail. All extra peas are lost.

Just finished this! I enjoyed my time with it.

I especially loved how the finished puzzles were placed in the context of a gallery, though I wished the text that had accompanied the puzzles was included somehow, or else meta commentary about the stories. I was saddened to find that only the Mondrian exhibit had that, I would have loved to know the inspiration/thought process behind the other two.

The opening dialogue was extremely charming (a non-judgemental response to asking what a museum is!), and none of the mechanics overstayed their welcome.

Super cute! I loved the little hint descriptions of each cat and the way they all have their own meow! It's very much in the spirit of Hidden Folks to encourage you to click on every one. Donated a fiver to my local shelter in appreciation. Thanks for sharing this with all of us!