The Little Mermaid: Sonnets End.

saw the updated version came out and i gave this a second go! and i have a LOT to say lol.

first of all, props for adding a save system! made the game a lot more enjoyable and the puzzles a lot more fun to figure out (though i do have some problems with it that i'll mention in a bit).

i gotta say, for a jam project i'm really impressed by just how BIG this game is. there's a surprisingly massive amount of art, screens, sequences, puzzles and story to chew on; it really sets it apart from other jam games. and it also really puts into perspective how little i actually got through in my first playthrough haha. i REALLY appreciate the ambition, and the dedication & effort put into making everything :D

and having played a much bigger chunk, i feel like i didn't do the presentation nearly enough justice in my first review, because the visuals were really great!! the background art has a simple & neat style to it, and it nails the feel of a huge mansion, a backyard shrouded in darkness, or whatever the scene needs in order to work. and i absolutely loved the sprites; the pixelart is super nice, super well done, and it makes every single character memorable in their own way (i especially love the mermaid you see from time to time, her design is awesome!). and the music, MAN i feel so bad for previously only dedicating one sentence to it. the music was AMAZING and fit every scene so well!! it's so unique and unlike anything i've heard before. i kinda wish there was a separate section in the game just to listen to the soundtrack, it's SO good.

(SPOILERS)

the puzzles were fun to figure out! though i found the part where you assemble the key a bit odd in places. i liked how you first see an item in one room and think "oh that's cool! just a neat little background thing". then you talk to a character that needs help and you're like "OH i remember that thing i found! i could give it to them!!" every time that happened it was so satisfying haha. but a few bugs i found kinda hindered the experience; like when you bring the bottle to the game room and talk to the guy there's no dialogue that thanks you for it, the key part just appears in your inventory (or maybe the dialogue is there and i didn't see it because it overlapped with another one, which happens sometimes across the game). or the fact that when i got the three pieces and went back to the main door, it still told me that i needed to get the key parts, and so i couldn't enter it until i got the bottle in the bar again, which had reappeared for some reason. but the key pieces collecting part was good overall! i liked going through each room, talking to everyone and learning about the sea creatures' story, looking at the rooms' items and learning about the lives of the mansion's owners... it was fun!

speaking of the story, it's super interesting but i think i'm dumb cause i got extremely lost lmao. the flashbacks were really cool and made me intrigued, but most of the time i had very little idea of what the characters were talking about, or sometimes who the character even was and why were they important. i'd like to say i overall got the gist of everything but i honestly didn't. i think having a character like the mermaid explain to the protagonist, even in very broad strokes, what's happening and why there are so many sea creatures in the mansion would've worked a long way to make the plot less confusing.

i'd like to mention a couple of bugs i found. there's a few places where the main character gets stuck and there's no way to get out, like the space between the closet and the guy who asks you for the card, where you can't even move. or, when you get captured by a creature and get taken to a blue part of the mansion, you can get out and go into a nearby room (the one with a painting), and there's no way to leave it. the load function helped me in the first case, but when i couldn't leave the room and i loaded, it took me all the way back to the start of the key pieces collecting part. i think there should've been another save point right when you get captured. and related to the load thing, in the backyard part where you can get hurt by the darkness, if you die and load it takes you to a game over screen over and over again (this gets solved by closing and restarting the game though, so it's not a big deal).

finally, the last part of the game i got to was a gray hallway with metal doors, where eventually the screen goes dark and i couldn't do anything. i understand the game's still in development but i would've liked a message that said it was the end of the game for now. that is, if i'm assuming correctly and that was the end of what you guys made, maybe i'm just making that up lol.

i know i've been very critical but i legit think most of this game's issues are just bugs and glitches, not design choices. there's a ton of things to love here; the visuals, the music, the story... and there's also a lot of little details that make it clear there was thought and care put into everything (like the fact that when you leave a conversation halfway through and come back to it, it continues from where you left it! i loved that!). there's a clearly enormous amount of passion put into this game, and i think if it keeps being worked on, it will end up being a fantastic gem that shouldn't be ignored!! :>