Man, all games are broken when the first people who aren't developing them play them. Such is the nature of game development.
Oddly, the romance one is the only quest I was really sure it happened on. There was something else, and I can't remember what, so it was on my mind, and then it happened with that one and I went 'okay, no, that's real'. But, if you can't trip it, I must've done something weird. I'll see if I can repeat it, next time I play.
Took me a few days to find the time to play again, but... you have fixed most of what I reported! Can confirm the boat works as intended! I HAVE DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF THE LAKE :D
But, I started a new game so I wouldn't have whatever broken shit possibly hanging around in my save, and I managed to pick up a different quest, that I missed the first time! ... that is now also stuck on the night of Day 7. So, here's what I picked up on this playthrough:
Sorry I keep breaking your game! *laughs*
Also, having gotten the Kaylie/Tina romance quest, the 'I'M IN LESBIANS WITH YOU' line is amazing, and I shared it with my friends, who also thought it was pretty great. I'm gonna rec this game once I'm actually able to finish it, I swear.
So, /img/faces/People4.png is called when you approach the black van next to the gallery, and there's no such file. Got past that by duplicating People1.png and renaming it.
Then, as far as I can tell, the amulet quest requires me to go meet Old Silver on the lake, at night... which is great, except the boat won't cross into the deep water, which means I'm stuck in the shallow edge on the left, where the boat spawns. I can't progress the game past this point, because until I complete the amulet quest, the game won't allow the day to change, and I've exhausted everything else I could possibly do, including trying to go back to the Factory after having met with The Cop inside, as prompted when I entered the hotel (trying to re-enter the factory tells me to wait, so I'm assuming that's a do it in the morning).
Also, earlier, there's still filler text when the old fisherman tells you to visit Margaret with the scales. Not gamebreaking, but I noticed in the devlog that you'd tried to track down and replace all the filler. And the quest journal is displaying <br> tags between lines. I think that plugin takes \n for linebreaks, but I haven't worked with it in a while.
You've got an interesting story, and I'd love to see where it's going, but I'm kinda stuck right now.
Every time I thought I knew what was going on, somebody would say something that would make me rethink it. 'Well, obviously it's-- Yeah, except it can't be because...' Near the end, though, there was only one possible answer. Only one person could have done it, even if I did suspect, until the last, that they'd had someone else's assistance.
Damn, dude, well done. And I went through two endings (I'm pretty sure more were possible, but i don't have a burning completionist urge to be intentionally wrong), because I was sure there was a better one, if I just had that one conversation a little differently.
As noted above, it turns out the window wasn't usable because I wasn't finished with the room. That said, the window behaviour is still weird, before the solve. I'm sending the savefile from before I solved the room, so you can decide if that's what the window is supposed to be doing, at that point. The fact that 'Placeholder' is still in suggests it might not be.
Okay, I can now confirm that clearing the leftmost of the two ... blocked objects in the room makes the window work correctly. It's only behaving bizarrely before that point -- which is to say, there's no in-game suggestion that you can't use the window yet. It tells you there's an exit there, acts like it should be an exit, and just doesn't work, before that puzzle is resolved.
This game is delightful! The art is beautiful, most of the puzzles are bizarre, but not too difficult.
Unfortunately, I am stuck on just one ingredient: stardust. I have viewed, grabbed, and tried to speak to everything on both sides of the room. I have only three things left in my inventory: the broken crystal ball, flame (for the second time), and love philtre (for the second time), and I haven't managed to get any of those to work on anything. There are four constellations in the sky, and I cannot interact with them in any way.
I can't tell if I'm missing something obvious, or if there's a bug. May I have a hint?
Brief, but excellent. Took me a sec to figure out the navigation tool and the pillars, but it was just a matter of understanding what it was telling me. And it was definitely telling me, as I realised after a bit of prodding it. I very much enjoyed this game, and would happily play something longer, along the same lines.
This is a fantastic game, and I'm loving it, so far. The premise is strange, and I'm definitely trying to keep track of the lore, as I go on.
But, I've hit a bit of difficulty. In the warehouse basement, there are crates stacked under the window. Looking at the crates suggests that one should be able to exit through the window. The window shows the exit cursor. Left clicking the window gives its description. Right clicking the window just says 'Placeholder'.
Is this a bug? Is this the end of the currently finished portion of the game? Was I not supposed to get to this point without doing something else along the way? I'm terribly confused, but very enthusiastic about discovering more of the story.
Goose is delightful, even as only two-thirds of themself! Harold is perfect! I said perfect, goddammit, and I mean perfect. I wish to feed him bonbons and listen to him bitch. DeLus is, in fact, the light of the party, and every scene I waited to see what tactless horrors she'd unleash upon us next.
And the end! I flipped through the notes again, going 'this can't be right...' but there was only one conclusion that made sense! Wonderfully horrifying!
I shall now go loot your creator page for more treasures!
I've been playing games for the last two days straight, because I'm procrastinating about a project, and let me tell you something: after being disappointed with almost everything new I could put my hands on, this was a GEM. This was a DELIGHT. This was exactly the game I was looking to play and didn't know it.
I love that looking at everything, everywhere, all the time is not only a valid gameplay decision, but actually has benefits! I got all the notes, all the skeletons, and both endings. (And I'll tell anyone playing for the first time, save when you can see the end of the third day's quest, but before you act on it, so you can go back for the other ending.)
The writing in this game was amazing. The details, the journal entries, the moment when you figure out what's going on, but the necromancer is still clueless... It's all got real tension to it, I really started to wonder if he'd figure it out in time, if he'd get a choice at all.
AND THAT LONG WALK BACK TO THE CASTLE IN THE BAD END holy shit. The colour change, the necromancer's... er... you know. I'm trying to avoid spoilers.
AND THE WHOLE THING ABOUT YORICK. AUGH. MY HEART! POSSIBLY ALSO MY SPLEEN!
I love every one of these characters not for any IC moral goodness, but because every one of them was exactly what belonged in that place in the story. It would have been so much less had any of the 'friends' been left out. And your villain was so delightfully villainous, subtly wrong in ways that first made me question my perception of the character and which genre stereotypes were at play and then proving to be exactly the thing I'd doubted.
Anyway, I love this game. If it were a cat, I would rub my face on it. It's just that good.
