The Heart's Fallacy

I made this game for The Icehouse Jam 2019.  

Aurora loves to dream especially lucid dreaming. She has some issues with her family so she escapes them by fantasizing of a better life. One day, while she is lucid dreaming she gets trapped in her dream. She will have to face her fears and confront her problems if she wishes to wake up again.

Controls

Arrow keys: Move and scroll through the menus

Space bar, Z key or Enter key: Interact with objects or people

X Key: Cancel choices/Open Menu

This game won Second place in the The IceHouse Jam with the judges. This is what they had to say:

"Not my cup of tea but really well done. It takes quite some time to get down to business, but that's fine. Overall the realization is very good. The story lacks maturity but is in the theme of the Jam. The black spots for me are the graphics: pixel elements are fine, the portraits are ok but the general appearance (UI) is too generic, it lacks of soul. Still, to me, one of the best propositions for this jam."

"The Heart's Fallacy was ambitious and quite fun to play, with good ideas, but visually we didn't like it as much, the generic RPG graphics lacked a little of personality. (They were assets, right?)"

"I found this game very mesmerising and immersive. The artwork reminds me a lot of my step daughter's, very illustrative - and the game's game world graphics took me back to when I used to play my game boy colour. I was very glad I could play the game full screen too. What I found interesting was the slight 3D look to the objects in the scenes, seen from the top view perspective. What could be interesting to toy with is the technique of adding pre-rendered assets into the 2D space? This was used in games such as Firefly's Stronghold back in 2001, etc. This could enrich the game world more. However, I also love the anime / cartoon-style graphics too. With the help of the beautiful music, the game conveyed a strong sense of what was 'real' and what was 'dream' within the tone of the visuals. The intro was very intriguing and spooky, hooked me instantly. My favourite part of playing this game was entering the dream with Aurora's parents. The music here is so good. I would play the game just to listen to this piece of soundtrack. Very beautiful. Within the first moments of playing this game, the player has already experienced the dark vibe of the mysterious 'bad' dreams, the mundane mood of the miserable real world and the colourful prosperity of the 'good' dreams - but there's that feeling of when will it all shatter, and when will the spider-like create re-emmerge? Aurora's Dream scene with her parents gave me a mixed bag of feelings. There was the sense I was actually there within the dream, everything is beautiful and peaceful, happy, with the light twinkle of strings and piano fluttering around me ... yet is Aurora's dad in fact dead in the real world? If so, there was also a heavy sense of sadness in this scene too, a very interesting combination of emotion. And if so, how? Was it connected to the spider? The game made me ask questions which is fantastic. The dialogue sections are really well written, too. Voice overs would work wonders here, yet the music is also strong enough to convey the moods being generated by characters during such scenes. Overall, a very lovely experience which I would like to continue by diving deeper into the 'dream' with this gem  Well done guys!