itch.io

Excellent game with very interesting lore behind it! I'm fairly cautious about these short horror games because they tend to have a strong start, but weak finish. I have to say Decrypt was consistently good all throughout and had a very satisfying ending, I can't believe it was only 45 minutes long. Were you inspired by the movie "Event Horizon" perhaps? It certainly had a similar vibe.

I saw your game over at the r/tbs sub-reddit, and it turned out to be a nice little surprise. It's rare to see a tbs game break from the mold of the genre and introduce some interesting concepts and Cryptozootography is certainly a breath of fresh air. Turning enemies into allies instead of just killing them off to win a map, set attack patterns and even the core concept of photographing cryptids make for one satisfying play experience. My only complaint is that the game is much too short, it ends just when things start to get interesting. If you're planning on releasing a longer version I would suggest to make the photography and day and night cycle mechanic more engaging, there's a lot of fun things that you can probably do with it.

In any case, thank you for sharing your game hoping to see more from you guys in the future!

Hey guys, just wanted to drop you a line and say "great work!" A worthy tribute to the Shining Force games. I'm really enjoying the game a lot, everything from the story, sprite work and music just hit all the right SF nostalgia buttons.

This is pretty cool, too bad you can't do the whole game. That would have been interesting.

Thanks for the reply, the insight you just gave on your development process is very enlightening. I have heard of a similar comment before saying that once a video game is released it has a tendency to take on a life of its own. I think that it is this subjective kind of view, what you call the "viewer's interpretation", that makes for a valid argument that video games can be considered as an art form since it can be interpreted in different ways. I believe that your game resonating with me as being  a portrayal of the Holocaust when it was not your original intent says a great deal about the matter.

Thanks again and  here's hoping you can come up with more thought provoking games.

First off I want to say that playing this game was a beautifully haunting experience, how the narrative unfolded through the letters of friends and relatives was simply brilliant. Considering that it only took me about an hour to complete I'm impressed with its overall presentation. On the downside the mechanics were not readily apparent at the beginning but can be figured out through logical deduction. Also, I experienced a couple of bugs midgame where Tikvah would hold onto an item (the egg basket and milk pail if I remember correctly) and wouldn't release it. She could still pick up other items and use them but the item she was stuck with was unusable until the next day. Okay so unto my topic, I noticed a few things about the game which might hint at its setting:

1. "Tikvah" is a Jewish name (it means "hope" right?)

2. Judging by the outfits of Tikvah and the mailman the game takes place in Eastern Europe

3. The segregation of Tikvah's community from the rest of society as hinted at in the letters (I might be reading too much into this one)

4. Was that ash falling from the sky in the second to the last day?

If I'm guessing correctly your game is either set during the the Holocaust or is inspired by it. If so this makes your game even more impressive as the Holocaust, being such a sensitive topic, is difficult to portray in a medium such as video games. If it is about the Holocaust then I would say that you handled it in a very respectful and  dignified manner without lessening the horror of that particularly dark period of human history, thank you for the experience and kudos to you sir.