I guess this game would make more sense if you played it as intended, sad thing is that my answers didn't seem to matter at all. If I said something that didn't align with the narrative it would just say whatever it was meant to say originally. Looking forward to the sequel.
That was a really nice game, you should try and make the computer recognize the words and give out multiple endings. Other then that good job, the game looks quite good!
hey, i found a bug, I said i have when clarity asked if i have ever ignored someone in need and she asked if im trying to make myself look good... i dont know about you but admitting i ignored someone in need isn't trying to make myself look good
Thanks for letting me know! I agree that this is not what you would expect to happen, unfortunately the branching is quite limited in this version of the game. We are developing a sequel though, in which the branching will be much more robust! Thanks for playing, either way :
I hope in the full version you guys make it so that you can solicit different responses from the AI in order for you yourself to be able to say certain things to it in return. I'm sure you guys have thought of things along those lines and I'm just here to say that would be very cool!
Thanks for finding that bug! I looked into the script files and it seems like it's an issue with the parsing I was doing on inputs. It's supposed to go to that branch you found if you write "can't" but I think that my parsing doesn't like punctuation, and thought that can was the same as can't. Hope you were able to enjoy the rest of the game regardless :)
We're all working on this part-time so it's going to be a while unfortunately, we're aiming for 6 months from now but that's *very* subject to change. We're going to be posting updates to our email list which you can sign up for here if you want - https://www.getrevue.co/profile/microflip_games
I really appreciate you making sure I didn't have any easy words like 'yes' 'no' 'couldn't' and so on. I can't wait for the sequel! Thank you for this wonderful little game!
Thank you so much! That's a discussion we had early on and Cam, our writer, was a big proponent for the way it is now (without easy yes/no). We're also really excited for the sequel! :)
oh ill actually respond this time and this game is cool keep up the good work and when you said goat it made me feel like there is something to do with that word hmmmmmmmmmm 🤔
Thanks so much! Honestly for indies of our size / scale just recommending the game to your friends is a great way to support us :) I'm curious what you mean about refreshing your pc - did it crash? Were you using the web build or had you downloaded it? (I wanna fix the problem if I can)
I played the new version and noticed there is a spell error "adaptaions" also sometimes the subtitles don't appear in the screen (even with the fullscren) beyond that, I loved the new version!!!
Was a pretty fun game! The story was creepy and the sublte sounds in the background were great and added a whole lot. I didn't realise that the copy past thing was an actual mechanic until the second run though it gave the same reuslt as pressing Enter and going through everything. Pretty cool concept and a really fun story, great game!
Thanks so much for playing! We **just** put out a new update where hopefully that'll be a little clearer, sorry for the misconception we've had a bunch of people make the same mistake so it's definitely our fault not yours.
Good fundamental concept, but the story is flawed in a way that completely wastes it.
Throughout the story you are given the ability to communicate using words that Clarity types, to respond. This gives the illusion of being able to actually change anything within the story. For instance, I went through the game and spammed Echo the entire way through, and it reached the same ending.
Also, the story of the main character's traumatic event was completely removed from meaning when I originally felt the disconnect between my actions and the story.
Obviously, this is a great concept and an amazing experience if you consider that it was finished within only 48 hours. If you look at it from any other angle, however, you'll be left confused.
Confused as to why the whole draw-in factor for the game is proven worthless within seconds.
Confused as to what the event is that the main character (that is supposed to be you, since you're the one responding) seems to be so stressed about.
Confused as to why the main narration is unable to respond in a way that reflects your conversation with Clarity.
All in all 5/10 Wonderful concept, but executed in a way that conflicts with the concept itself, making it basically a visual novel.
Hi! Thanks for taking the time to play and think about the game :) You are completely right that the illusion breaks quite easily (we had some people just click enter to get through everything instead of even pasting echo like you did!)
Not being able to parse input more robustly is my biggest regret about this game, and we're working on a version with real branches that responds to your input (we're making it in ink and everything!).
Mostly you're right about all of that being because we had a strict time constraint, and to save development time. The rest of this isn't meant as a defense, but if you're interested I'd like to tell you about a bit of the philosophy behind the game, and (at least speaking for just me) where our heads were at when we made it.
We made this game pretty soon after I finished Zenosyne, which is a journaling game where the game asks you questions and you answer them. The game doesn't do any checking of player's responses, just reflects them back at you. I was impressed by peoples' ability to project meaning onto the game, and I was wondering if I could use the system again. Would players self-check themselves? The answer from out of ctrl seems to be a resounding sometimes and when players push against the bounds, they find a broken mess, the magical illusion broken.
The other facet is that we like visual novels! I wonder if you would have had the same feelings about the game had we listed it under visual novel instead of interactive fiction? Perhaps interactive fiction carries with it too much expectation about multiple endings.
Particularly I've been really inspired by this idea of "multiple middles" espoused by die gute fabrik http://gutefabrik.com/craft-multiple-middles/ in mutazione. That the player could make meaning for themselves in the middle of a story is super interesting to me. Are you actually changing the story here when you type different things? I'd argue that since you're changing what echo does, you are changing it somewhat, like if you could determine the dialogue for just one character in a movie. Maybe that's just not a satisfying way to interact with a story.
Anyways sorry this ended up long, I love talking about games and I guess I got long-winded about it :P Thanks for playing!
Wow, that was an amazing reply! You guys are making games with great concepts! The game type takes a lot more time than others, so it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to fully implement it. With time this could be really good, and the concept is perfect!
Very intriguing premise. I hope you continue to build on this! There's a lot of potential for a complex branching narrative. Having a limited "word-bank" could make for some interesting and creative puzzles.
What a fantastic game and concept. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this. The imagery, dialogue and audio combined, made this a great experience. I’d love to find out more about what happened with “Echo” and her backstroke as well as how Clarity was able to know so much. There is so much potential for a sequel or a longer game. I would gladly cross your palms with silver for a game like this! You can see the care and attention that went into this game. Great work!
Thanks so much! We're working on another version, although I'm not sure you'll get the conclusion you want, we're big fans of ambiguity :D. In the new version we're going to make sure that you can't just hit enter all the way through, I think a lot of the fun is making your responses up from the text CLARITY's questions, but I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I can’t wait to see the new version. When will it be released? I’m okay with ambiguity, so I’m sure I’ll be fine with the ending of the game... I guess there were just too many questions I had unanswered on this version! 😉 It was really nicely done though and I will keep my eyes peeled for the new one.
It's such an awesome game! I played it a couple of times just to see if I could get different answers from Clarity and uncover some more of Echo's mystery, but without luck. Would love to see this go further, since the concept and design are amazing!
I would pay 5 dollars (or more) for a more polished experience with answers that actually matter, I Loved it, It's so good, The voice acting is really good (You can feel the person talking),
Thank you so much!! You're in luck because we're developing the game out into a full experience (still deciding on the pricing but probably pay what you want on itch and maybe a steam release later), so stay tuned!
i love this concept!! i think it's fun to try and type serious things, but figuring out what different funny sentences i can say instead is pretty great too, thank you for making such a great game!!!
this is so interesting i really wish i got different responses for saying different things i tried being silent and also taking "Echo" literally and repeating only the last word said and even responding honestly as the character of course and at the end saying "I wish to understand" nothing happened :( just wish there was more to this neat game
Thanks! We're actually planning on developing this out with more branching paths and stuff (this version was made in 48 hours so we weren't able to get that in) check back in about two months! :D
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i got bored of it
srry good game tho
I guess this game would make more sense if you played it as intended, sad thing is that my answers didn't seem to matter at all. If I said something that didn't align with the narrative it would just say whatever it was meant to say originally. Looking forward to the sequel.
Nice game, can't wait for the sequel!
great
i finished this game i went the way the dev expected me to go and i feel our computers must have this so we have someone to talk to
That was a really nice game, you should try and make the computer recognize the words and give out multiple endings. Other then that good job, the game looks quite good!
Thank you! We're working on a sequel with more robust conversation options and multiple endings, hope you check it out! :)
hey, i found a bug, I said i have when clarity asked if i have ever ignored someone in need and she asked if im trying to make myself look good... i dont know about you but admitting i ignored someone in need isn't trying to make myself look good
Thanks for letting me know! I agree that this is not what you would expect to happen, unfortunately the branching is quite limited in this version of the game. We are developing a sequel though, in which the branching will be much more robust! Thanks for playing, either way :
any time, i know this stuff takes time, and honestly this is a really good game maybe you can even add more endings in the next one!
Thanks for saying so! Yeah games definitely take a long time to make haha. We are planning on having multiple endings in the next one! (｡･_･｡)
good to hear, and good luck on all future projects.
cool game
Thanks!
I hope in the full version you guys make it so that you can solicit different responses from the AI in order for you yourself to be able to say certain things to it in return. I'm sure you guys have thought of things along those lines and I'm just here to say that would be very cool!
Thanks! We shall definitely see :)
I don't think an advanced AI would misspell the word "truly".
Or maybe that's a subtle hint to Clarity being something other than an AI? lol
hmmm maybe? :D
What happens if you highlight a word, press CTRL + C, then press CTRL + V, then enter?
If you spam their sentence then it does nothing, you can effectively progress through the game by just spamming random things.
Yeah, unfortunately :( we're fixing that in the sequel!
i put "i can clarity" and it said "ok bye then" even though i was saying yes
Thanks for finding that bug! I looked into the script files and it seems like it's an issue with the parsing I was doing on inputs. It's supposed to go to that branch you found if you write "can't" but I think that my parsing doesn't like punctuation, and thought that can was the same as can't. Hope you were able to enjoy the rest of the game regardless :)
its a pretty great game, can't wait for the full game
Thank you!
"What is your name?"
"Clarity."
"No that's my name..."
LOL, interesting short game, it has a lot of potential.
That's one of my favorite branches lol, and thank you!
when full game?
We're all working on this part-time so it's going to be a while unfortunately, we're aiming for 6 months from now but that's *very* subject to change. We're going to be posting updates to our email list which you can sign up for here if you want - https://www.getrevue.co/profile/microflip_games
Nice game
Thanks!
spooky
boo
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I really appreciate you making sure I didn't have any easy words like 'yes' 'no' 'couldn't' and so on. I can't wait for the sequel! Thank you for this wonderful little game!
Thank you so much! That's a discussion we had early on and Cam, our writer, was a big proponent for the way it is now (without easy yes/no). We're also really excited for the sequel! :)
sorry but I found a way to get clarity to say yes copy is someone there and it'll reply yes
ooooh secrets ;)
I really had fun with this, keep up the good work :D
Thank you so much!
nice game
Thanks! Nice comment :)
XD nice joke
:0
i got a secret ending.... lol
when she said do you want to talk
i said can't
Nice!
really cool game and game concept, you have to get creative with your responses sense you can only use CTRL C and V.
Thanks!
I would love a game with more branching, where an answer would get a very precise answer
We are currently developing a bigger version!
i responded with sleep for the entire game lol
Then you missed some extra content :D seriously though we're working on a version with more branching, and more attention to what you respond with :)
also sick username, cicierega is the GOAT
oh ill actually respond this time and this game is cool keep up the good work and when you said goat it made me feel like there is something to do with that word hmmmmmmmmmm 🤔
No there's nothing to do with the word goat! GOAT as in Greatest Of All Time sorry for the confusion lmao
yeah i know it means that im just always trying to test things
This was really good but i was wondering. Were there multiple paths that i could have taken that would have explained more
Thanks for playing! There are currently not major branches, just a couple of variations to the way that CLARITY can respond. We went into a little more detail in our last devlog - https://ezra-szanton.itch.io/out-of-ctrl/devlog/209506/branching-minor-and-quali...
This is so good! it seems like you put alot of time in it. I love it. If i was not broke like a joke I would support you and pay 10 dollars.
(But I had to refresh my pc because it did not work)
Thanks so much! Honestly for indies of our size / scale just recommending the game to your friends is a great way to support us :) I'm curious what you mean about refreshing your pc - did it crash? Were you using the web build or had you downloaded it? (I wanna fix the problem if I can)
Oh the controls just did not work I refreshed my paged and it was fine.
I played the new version and noticed there is a spell error "adaptaions" also sometimes the subtitles don't appear in the screen (even with the fullscren) beyond that, I loved the new version!!!
Thanks so much for the feedback and kind words!!
Was a pretty fun game! The story was creepy and the sublte sounds in the background were great and added a whole lot. I didn't realise that the copy past thing was an actual mechanic until the second run though it gave the same reuslt as pressing Enter and going through everything. Pretty cool concept and a really fun story, great game!
Thanks so much for playing! We **just** put out a new update where hopefully that'll be a little clearer, sorry for the misconception we've had a bunch of people make the same mistake so it's definitely our fault not yours.
Good fundamental concept, but the story is flawed in a way that completely wastes it.
Throughout the story you are given the ability to communicate using words that Clarity types, to respond. This gives the illusion of being able to actually change anything within the story. For instance, I went through the game and spammed Echo the entire way through, and it reached the same ending.
Also, the story of the main character's traumatic event was completely removed from meaning when I originally felt the disconnect between my actions and the story.
Obviously, this is a great concept and an amazing experience if you consider that it was finished within only 48 hours. If you look at it from any other angle, however, you'll be left confused.
Confused as to why the whole draw-in factor for the game is proven worthless within seconds.
Confused as to what the event is that the main character (that is supposed to be you, since you're the one responding) seems to be so stressed about.
Confused as to why the main narration is unable to respond in a way that reflects your conversation with Clarity.
All in all 5/10
Wonderful concept, but executed in a way that conflicts with the concept itself, making it basically a visual novel.
Hi! Thanks for taking the time to play and think about the game :) You are completely right that the illusion breaks quite easily (we had some people just click enter to get through everything instead of even pasting echo like you did!)
Not being able to parse input more robustly is my biggest regret about this game, and we're working on a version with real branches that responds to your input (we're making it in ink and everything!).
Mostly you're right about all of that being because we had a strict time constraint, and to save development time. The rest of this isn't meant as a defense, but if you're interested I'd like to tell you about a bit of the philosophy behind the game, and (at least speaking for just me) where our heads were at when we made it.
We made this game pretty soon after I finished Zenosyne, which is a journaling game where the game asks you questions and you answer them. The game doesn't do any checking of player's responses, just reflects them back at you. I was impressed by peoples' ability to project meaning onto the game, and I was wondering if I could use the system again. Would players self-check themselves? The answer from out of ctrl seems to be a resounding sometimes and when players push against the bounds, they find a broken mess, the magical illusion broken.
The other facet is that we like visual novels! I wonder if you would have had the same feelings about the game had we listed it under visual novel instead of interactive fiction? Perhaps interactive fiction carries with it too much expectation about multiple endings.
Particularly I've been really inspired by this idea of "multiple middles" espoused by die gute fabrik http://gutefabrik.com/craft-multiple-middles/ in mutazione. That the player could make meaning for themselves in the middle of a story is super interesting to me. Are you actually changing the story here when you type different things? I'd argue that since you're changing what echo does, you are changing it somewhat, like if you could determine the dialogue for just one character in a movie. Maybe that's just not a satisfying way to interact with a story.
Anyways sorry this ended up long, I love talking about games and I guess I got long-winded about it :P Thanks for playing!
Wow, that was an amazing reply! You guys are making games with great concepts! The game type takes a lot more time than others, so it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to fully implement it. With time this could be really good, and the concept is perfect!
Very interesting concept and premise, I enjoyed the game a lot.
Thanks for saying so! (and making the video :) I love watching people play the game so this was the perfect christmas present for me to wake up to <3
i liked but why was the computer asking all those questions???
Thanks! Why do you think the computer was asking the questions?
i have no clue
Very intriguing premise. I hope you continue to build on this! There's a lot of potential for a complex branching narrative. Having a limited "word-bank" could make for some interesting and creative puzzles.
Thanks! We are planning to continue development on it, stay tuned! :)
how much this game have endings???
I love this game <3
Thank you! Currently there's only one ending but we're working on a version with more :)
OK, thanks
It was an interesting concept for a game never played something like this before but was fun
Thanks!
This was a delight to play! I've not played anything like it at all. Well done to all involved!
Thank you so much!
Thanks so much! We're working on another version, although I'm not sure you'll get the conclusion you want, we're big fans of ambiguity :D. In the new version we're going to make sure that you can't just hit enter all the way through, I think a lot of the fun is making your responses up from the text CLARITY's questions, but I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I can’t wait to see the new version. When will it be released? I’m okay with ambiguity, so I’m sure I’ll be fine with the ending of the game... I guess there were just too many questions I had unanswered on this version! 😉 It was really nicely done though and I will keep my eyes peeled for the new one.
We're not quite sure, it may be a while. We're going to make a devlog post here when we have more info!
It's such an awesome game! I played it a couple of times just to see if I could get different answers from Clarity and uncover some more of Echo's mystery, but without luck. Would love to see this go further, since the concept and design are amazing!
Thank you so much! We're working on a new version with branching story now so stay tuned! :)
Great thing. I can make funny sentences and its a good game
Thanks! :P
I would pay 5 dollars (or more) for a more polished experience with answers that actually matter, I Loved it, It's so good, The voice acting is really good (You can feel the person talking),
Thank you so much!! You're in luck because we're developing the game out into a full experience (still deciding on the pricing but probably pay what you want on itch and maybe a steam release later), so stay tuned!
i love this concept!! i think it's fun to try and type serious things, but figuring out what different funny sentences i can say instead is pretty great too, thank you for making such a great game!!!
Thank you for playing it!! :)
this is so interesting i really wish i got different responses for saying different things i tried being silent and also taking "Echo" literally and repeating only the last word said and even responding honestly as the character of course and at the end saying "I wish to understand" nothing happened :( just wish there was more to this neat game
Thanks! We're actually planning on developing this out with more branching paths and stuff (this version was made in 48 hours so we weren't able to get that in) check back in about two months! :D