Ifu Post-Jam Update Notes

Introduction

I made Ifu for the Case of the Thinky Game Jam last month. Since then I've gotten really helpful feedback on it, and for my own sake have done some self-critique and analysis of genre defining games like Case of the Golden Idol, Obra Dinn, and Outer Wilds. Today, I released a small post-jam update, with changes outlined below. It's the only update I have planned for this game, except in the case of bugs. I've also written a pretty lengthy postmortem on Ifu's creation, shortcomings, and the lessons I've learned about how to make a good deduction/puzzle game. You can find that in its own separate post: https://otergen.itch.io/ifu/devlog/662433/ifu-postmortem

Update

• Changed the screen after the initial attempt at saving Ifu to help clue the player in that the game is intentionally looping.
• Wording on some injuries (both in the initial examination and when using the magnifying glass later) has been tweaked to aid in deduction.
• Marie and Ifu's dialogue was changed around and, in certain places, rewritten.
  • This was done to make the player's task of mending wounds in the order in which they were received clear to the player much earlier on.
  • In the dialogue restructuring, the conversation about Marie is now notably absent. The writing felt weak and honestly it felt like an out of place remnant of the original game I'd tried to make for the jam and scrapped.

• The Tips in the results screen have been front loaded to help guide the player, as well as their order changed around to reflect the dialogue restructuring.
• The “End Attempt Early” button has been made available much sooner, to improve QoL around restarting.
• After a couple of attempts Ifu will now comment on the wounds as you heal them, providing clues from his wound memories. Read more about this this mechanic in the postmortem post.
• The “What Happened to Ifu” screen now saves progress from previous attempts.
  • What this means is that if you make a mistake, you can still see the results of your best attempt in that screen, but they will be greyed out. You must still solve everything in the correct order in a single attempt to finish the game.
  • Fun fact, this was surprisingly hard to do because the results deal with both ordered and unordered lists, and furthermore the structure of Twine/Snowman makes it hard for elements from different passages to communicate.
• After solving one of the three injury sets, you can restart from that point rather than from the beginning. This should save a lot of monotonous clicking as you try to solve the final injuries.

Please let me know if you encounter any bugs with these changes!