winterwalk beta

I thought the writing on this was very cute and charming, especially the *you're part lol. It might be fun to play with the styling. I love the cozy orange color, but maybe that can be saved for indoor sections (beginning and home) and the screen gets cooler as you get colder? I think it might add to the coziness of the indoor sections and harshness of the outdoor ones. I appreciated the little text styling tidbits you used like with the street directions as well! The art added a lot and helped visualize your surroundings and break up the block of text. I just went home and had yummy stew and didn't freeze into a cube. Great job! 

I think this game is really nice to play and all the different options were very entertaining. I do think you could benefit from a good background track, just something simple to go along with the concept of the game. 

I also think some of the paragraphs were hard to read because they were in a solid block of text, just adding more line breaks would help with that if you wanted.

There were a few coding errors that popped up when I was playing, specifically one when I encountered the cat in the alley, one when I went to Manchester Boulevard, and one after the stick sword option when I entered the playground. I have screenshots if you need them!

The game was very enjoyable despite those small things, especially the character interactions, like with the coffee shop employees.

I thoroughly enjoyed my winter walk! I kept freezing though because I wanted to explore all the options and the writing was so compelling, you manage to paint very vivid, nostalgic, beautiful and bittersweet settings and feelings of lost youth and childhood that I think every player will connect to. Your sketches, despite just being sketches, are really charming and contributes very strongly to the setting! I'm really excited to see what they're going to look like when they're complete.

I did find the game over screens slightly jarring, mainly because other than my hands getting cold, I didn't get a quantitative sense of how cold I was getting, and the "freezing" mechanic didn't jump out as something I had to be immediately wary of. Maybe constant sentence/variable that shows how cold you are at the footer of every page, or even warnings like "Better get home now, your fingers are freezing over." or something depending on how frozen you are.

I would also consider breaking the text up into multiple different screens - it's not much of an issue, especially if the player likes to read, but might help add to a sense of progression. Also, I think the screen where I encounter the little girl and she disappears is a dead end as of now.

Lastly, I think the game would be even more immersive and appeal to your senses and the theme of memory, would be to add a soundtrack or some sound effects. The scene inside the pastry shop is sticking with me and I'd love to hear those bells when I enter and the subtle chatter (if any) in the background. Overall, I think you have something beautiful here and I can't wait to see the final product!