Salt in the Wound

ohh this was a pretty cool demo with a unique fight system and a GORGEOUS artstyle!

first of all, i really like the way the story is told! the house having a couple hints to the main character's life was really nice. and the flashbacks especially were REALLY cool. i loved the way the screen turns sepia, the old-timey music that starts playing, the obscured characters and hidden parts of dialogue... and the buildup of the protagonist not interacting with any of them until the very last one?? it was all awesome! :D

i also liked the fights a lot! having actions that directly relate to the main character and the plot instead of just "attack" or "guard" is one of my favorite things in rpg maker games haha. i didn't mind that the actions weren't described or that the actual damage wasn't shown; it made me want to try everything to see what worked!! i will say the encounter rate is a bit high, and since there wasn't any clear reward for winning fights, towards the end part i just kept escaping from them. i understand it's a demo and there's not that much use for xp here tho.

now, i have to give my biggest props ever to the artists because HOLY HELL this game was BEAUTIFUL!!! the backgrounds were ungodly pretty and have a super unique style?? the character sprites were really nice with good use of pixelart?? the enemies (which i'm assuming were also original) were extremely well designed while also having a confusing anatomy that's not clear with the darkness of the screen and it makes you even more scared of them??? even the cover image of the game catched my eye immediately with how amazing it looks???? this might genuinely be one of the BEST looking games of the entire jam!! (i think the collisions in some parts were a little weird, but it's easily fixable and it's not a big problem beyond being a little unsure of where to go sometimes. it's not a detriment to the art at all!)

overall this was a really neat demo with a lot of super interesting ideas and a killer presentation! i think if some parts were tweaked, this could very well lead into an AMAZING full game in the future :>