P2: Otowa Blues – Team Binturong

Three unforgettable days await in a little village called Otowa. 

Just cozy, healing stories.  Just the blues.

Full walkthrough (timestamp in YouTube description)

Game link: https://kmjhamster.itch.io/otowa-blues

Headphones are strongly recommended for the best experience.

Artist’s Statement

Otowa Blues is an interactive fiction with a cozy, healing style. Players take on the role of Rin, a programmer weary of city life. Hoping to start fresh, Rin comes to Otowa, a small, Japanese-style village. In Otowa, Rin serves as a “curator,” transforming a rundown train station into a mini-museum and helping the villagers confront a challenge posed by the railway company.

Otowa Blues draws its aesthetic foundation from the Japanese cultural concept of “Monogatari.” Literally, monogatari (story) means a “narrative of items.” We chose culturally evocative items (such as fireworks and a Summer Festival fan) and embedded the narrative within them. Through a loop of “exploration” and “curation,” players gather the fragments of stories behind these old items and then connect these dots, immersing themselves in stories about family, friendship, regret, and dreams.

The core experience of this game is a warm, healing and thought-provoking narrative. Every design element of Otowa Blues revolves tightly around the narrative: the Scribblenauts art style creates a light, refreshing atmosphere; the original soundtrack matches the emotional tone of each part of the story; the large-map walking-sim lets players roam the village freely and without pressure; and the curation gameplay turns text that would otherwise be “passively read” into a story the player “actively tells.” We sincerely invite lovers of cozy games and interactive fiction to spend three unforgettable days in Otowa!

Target Audience

Otowa Blues is best suited for young adults who like strong narrative games through interactive fiction. This game specifically avoids the fast-paced, cutthroat intense nature of achievement styled games, which generally conflict with the interests of our audience. People who generally like single player games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing will enjoy our game, as we incorporate both a strong enacting narrative as well as cozy elements (like the Scribblenauts style arts) to immerse our audience.

Our game predominantly involves two kinds of fun, specifically narrative and challenge, though throughout development our focus pivoted significantly towards narrative. We wanted our players to really resonate with each character’s story and we wanted the player to feel a strong innate desire to help the village of Otowa prosper. While we definitely focused more on narrative than challenge, we viewed the challenge of puzzle-solving as productive friction that encourages players to engage more deeply with the narrative.

Concept Map

Loops & Arcs:

The narrative discovery in this game is the basis for the puzzles. Rin learns of the stories behind objects to unlock inspirations, using them to curate the exhibitions in the station to bring in more visitors. Reading, constructing an overall impression, and describing that impression with items are central to the gameplay. 

Rin first explores locations like the station, Ryotei, the village, and hot spring, where they interact with villagers. In each interaction, Rin asks about the backstories of a specific item. After gathering information, Rin returns to the station to enter the exhibition curation phase. The station’s puzzle minigame asks them to choose relevant items(exhibits) and inspirations(exhibition labels) for a theme. If they choose incorrectly, the system gives hints so that they can try again. When the exhibition succeeds, tourists respond, and the station becomes more revitalized again, progressing the story.

Beyond the exploration and curation loops, there are cutscenes that serve as narrative arcs — presenting crises, plot twists, and other developments. By delivering information directly, they provide motivation for the next loop. 

Puzzles:

Based on Bob Bates’ Designing the Puzzle, the curation phase puzzle can be defined as a combination of a people puzzle and a gestalt puzzle. The player selects an exhibition theme centered on a character (e.g., Yuji, Artisan of Two Worlds), then chooses items and inspirations to match that theme. This puzzle is not about the functional use of objects, but rather about “selecting items that resonate with one’s impression of a character” (people puzzle), and about a holistic grasp of the “character–inspiration–item” constellation as a whole (gestalt puzzle).

To prevent the puzzle from degenerating into a “detail memorization test”, we introduced hint popups in the interface, freeing players from the cognitive load of retrieving specific information, so they can instead focus on recalling their overall impression of the character.

Otowa Blues is not a puzzle game — the puzzles serve the narrative. People puzzles and gestalt puzzles help players construct their own inner image of Otowa, immersing them in the story rather than introducing extraneous logical challenges.

Curation interface

Intended Experience & Narrative Architectures: 

The game is designed to create a slow-burn emotional narrative that players would grow to empathize with. The player is meant to change their thoughts that the items are just random clutter of useless items to seeing them as traces of life. By the end of the gameplay, the station becomes a museum of the village’s memories: past, present, and hopeful future.

The game achieves this experience through three narrative architectures. In the exploration phase, stories are embedded in the history of items and in casual conversations with villagers. In the curation phase, the curatorial tasks evoke the information gathered during exploration, prompting players to piece the story together. In the cutscenes, players directly experience the enacting stories. 

Scope of Our Game

We would describe the scope of Otowa Blues as more of an MVP than a slice. This is because our team was generally more interested in the narrative and game design aspects of Otowa Blues rather than artistic polish. We have implemented the smallest version of our game that still demonstrates the core idea that our intended experience works. Days 1 and 2 set up the emotional load of Day 3, so playing just a more thoroughly built first day (e.g. a slice) would not give the full intended experience. Furthermore, the gameplay primarily serves the narrative instead of being replayable. 

We also put effort into the art and music, giving the game some of the characteristics of a slice: 

• Music: Detailed sound effects. Original soundtracks (Composed by Xinrui Liu, University of Bristol).
• Art: largely original assets (map, characters); AI-generated assets include interior backgrounds, item icons, and curation UI.

Story (Spoiler warning)

Day 1 

Rin steps off the train into the quiet mountain village of Otowa, only to discover that the stationmaster, Hikaru, has abruptly left—leaving Rin to act as stationmaster in his place. A letter reveals Hikaru’s plan: to transform the rundown station into a “mini-museum.” But in Rin’s eyes, the exhibits are nothing more than a pile of junk.

Before Rin can even settle in, a cold railway-company Inspector arrives and declares the station worthless. That evening, at the welcome banquet, Rin meets the villagers—but the Inspector delivers a heavy blow: the station will be permanently closed in two days, and two days from now is the day of Otowa’s Summer Festival, the day when Otowa’s children, scattered across the country, all come home. Rin thinks of his own hometown, ravaged by industrial pollution, and resolves to do something for Otowa. He reasons that if he can realize Hikaru’s dream of curating the museum and make the station more renowned, perhaps the railway company will take back its decision. And so Rin spends the night wandering the village, gathering the stories behind the objects from the villagers.

Day 2 

Rin’s exhibition gradually takes shape, and a few passing travelers stop to look. The Inspector comes again, still unconvinced. But as he leaves, his muttering to himself reveals that he, too, has a lost hometown. Rin spends the whole day unearthing the hidden stories within these “odds and ends”: Yuji the brewer is secretly a fireworks artisan; Jiro the chef is estranged from his music-loving son, Hachi; and Mizuki, the hot-spring keeper, quietly harbors a dream of painting. As the objects gradually reveal their meaning, Rin assembles them into different exhibition themes—each one like a miniature portrait of the inner worlds of Otowa’s residents, their longings and their regrets.

Day 3 

This day is both the Summer Festival and the final deadline for the station’s closure. After Rin finishes the exhibition, Hikaru finally returns—bringing with him an exhibit he considers indispensable: a record titled “Otowa Blues,” a song written by Jiro’s estranged son after he left the village. They listen to it together, the music holding within it the tangled emotions of “yearning for the city” and “missing one’s hometown.” But the day grows quiet: only a handful of people arrive on the last train, and the Inspector never appears to deliver his verdict. This seems to be the station’s final night, and a desolate Summer Festival.

As the dejected villagers gather in the festival square, a faint train whistle cuts through the night sky—an unscheduled train pulls in, and Otowa’s children step off one after another, the long-awaited homecoming everyone had hoped for. The Inspector reappears, carrying a letter: thanks to its spread online, “Otowa Blues” and the exhibition have unexpectedly gone viral, and the decision to close the station has been suspended. The company invites Rin to take part in an interview to share his experience in “uncovering a village’s cultural potential,” though Rin makes no promise to attend. Fireworks bloom, and Rin—who once was powerless to save his own hometown—has now saved Otowa. Yet beneath all the jubilation lies a quiet unease: what price will the company’s “goodwill” ultimately exact? And what will being “seen” by the world bring to this small village? But no matter what, at least the memories of these three days are real. To the melody of the blues, Rin and Otowa move toward the future.

Initial Decisions

Initially, we pictured the game as a combination of a Papers Please-like puzzle game and an A Short Hike-like open world exploration game, where the player as the new stationmaster of a remote village needs to prevent the village train station from getting shut down by the railway company. The main objective was to garner enough passengers within a set period of time or, through exploration, reclaim the village’s control of the railway’s right-of-way. The gameplay would be composed of a workday period and an off-work period. During the workday period, the player conducts ID checks like those in Papers Please, and issues correct train tickets based on a train system map. During the off-work period, the player is free to explore the village to learn more about its history and current state of affairs, which could help fight against the railway company or attract more passengers.

Initial Gameplay Concept Map

All of our main characters were hand-drawn and designed with attributes corresponding to their profession and personality (like Lisa Ing suggested from lecture 8B). 

All characters (hand-drawn by Hongyi!)

We hoped the mechanics of ID checks / puzzles in the workday period and the open world exploring of the village would create a dynamic where the workday depends on the off-work period and vice-versa, leading to an aesthetic where the player not only feels like they really care for the village, but also one where the player desires to learn more about the wacky things which may appear (such as a rare bird or a strange note from the company).

Technical Unity Decisions – Hongyi

One of the objectives I wanted to achieve when designing the characters and the map is to make the process somewhat streamlined. I also want to animate the walking loop of the characters to make the map scene look more lively. I started off making individual sprites for the heads, arms, legs, and torsos of the characters, but soon realized that it would be very hard to manage and cumbersome to set up. I later learned that I can set up a sprite import preset to ensure consistent sprite division and pivot point setup across different sprite sheets, which proved to be extremely helpful for applying animation to different characters with different sprites. I was able to set up the animations for all characters this way by reusing the same spritesheet template. 

For the map, I applied a similar technique, this time using the Dual Grid concept most popularly introduced by Oskar Stalberg, creator of Townscaper. Utilizing a package developed by snker, I created tilesets of various map elements, such as roads, grass, and sand, with a minimal tile number of 16. Using these custom tile sets, I quickly made a rough layout for the map. The buildings are then individually drawn and added to the map. The final iteration of the map included the addition of night time recolor, which is done via a custom scriptable render feature in the Unity URP pipeline that first draws a light map from the light sources on the map, then selectively apply a color multiply effect based on the light map, as well as Y sorting of the characters and the map objects, which enabled me to add a fade effect when player walks behind a map object, a nice quality-of-life feature.

Playtest and Iteration History

Playtest #1– Jinhyo (5/12) -> Web App

Our first playtest was conducted in class during week 7 and was conducted by Jinhyo of Team Reithrodon (they were generally super helpful to us throughout our creation of Otowa Blues). Because this was our first playtest, we decided to utilize a Github hosted webapp to provide a general proof of concept of our game (since our team had limited Unity experience aside from Hongyi). You can find the web app here: https://kmj-hamster.github.io/otowa-core/

All early playtests (Playtests 1-4) only contained the Intro, Day 1 Exploration, and Day 2 Exhibition phases. These playtests were much more text-based.

In our first version of the game, we focused less on the walking sim portion and more on the enacting narrative of our game. As a result, we had several questions prepared for our playtest (which are fully linked below in the Appendix), but here were are most important ones

• How is the narrative?
• Is the gameplay for the station work interesting?
• What types of puzzles would work best for our story?

Jinhyo generally liked our narrative and strengths were bolded names in the Webapp which drew her attention, as well as the general style of dialogue. However, the label matching puzzle mechanic was largely confusing and took her a large amount of time, indicating that the puzzle may have been unbalanced, as they were quite difficult originally and contained no hints.. Furthermore, the dynamic between the narrative and puzzles that we aimed for did not quite come across effectively. She sought to know more information about the items in the station (specifically which characters gave Rin which items). Lastly, the mechanics and dynamics we had implemented so far did not match our targeted aesthetics, as even though Jinhyo liked our narrative, she was not very immersed in it. This may have in part been due to the walking sim not being implemented yet.

Intro Page of our web app from Playtest #1

Initial diagram on our stationmaster workflow. Originally it was based much more on intuition than it is now, which will be discussed in playtests #3 and #4.

Iteration #1 -> 2:

We added some new mechanics during ideation between playtests. For instance, we constructed early prototypes for what our inventory (introduced after Playtest #1) and item collection indication would look like.

Digital design of the inventory. We aimed to have this as the player explored each individual location. We hoped this would more clearly elicit our dynamic of intertwining the station work and exploration phase.

Playtest #2– Shuojia (5/19) -> Web App

Before the playtest, we surveyed Shuojia’s gaming preferences: she generally preferred multiplayer online games and suspenseful, thrilling narratives. During the session, we observed that the player read through the content rather superficially. The HTML format allowed her to scroll quickly through the interface, skipping over large portions of text. As a result, during the gameplay section, she showed clear signs of confusion. Notably, she also did not proactively consult the journal (which briefly summarizes earlier information and would have been sufficient for puzzle-solving even if she had forgotten the earlier content). She attributed this to a lack of motivation: the story itself did not engage her enough, and the presentation of the earlier reading sections failed to draw her into the narrative.

Iteration #2 -> 3

Based on this feedback, we have decided to make the following changes in subsequent development: displaying text page by page rather than all at once; presenting the story through richer interactive formats (such as dialogue triggered by walking sim mechanics); and incorporating more art and music, so as to reduce the monotony of sustained reading and create immersion through interaction and cross-sensory stimulation. Additionally, in response to the player’s preference for suspenseful narratives, while we will not alter the cozy, healing tone of the game, we will introduce a degree of dramatic conflict to give the plot more tension and depth, this is also the origin of the inspector character to be added in later development.

Gameplay interface of the webapp. Left: the journal

Playtest #3– Ryan (5/21) -> Web App

We playtested with Ryan during class 8B. Though we were still on the Github web app at this point, he gave us some great feedback that other playtesters did not catch. His main critique of our game was a lack of narrative cohesion (e.g. Hikaru leaving an item in the station [binoculars] when the player actually picks it up in the game later from Rintaro). This won’t be the last time cohesion is mentioned, as we generally had problems with this throughout our process given that we had four people developing different styles asynchronously. This was a valuable lesson we learned about digital games, as an analog game naturally results in cohesion due to it being significantly easier to work on in person.

Other critiques included the puzzle system now feeling too easy given all of the additional UI / hints we described from previous iterations. He noted that “the only real challenge was when a label aligned with multiple items, but even that felt like more of a clarity issue than a puzzle issue”. 

Iteration #3 -> 4

Between classes 8B and 9B, we tried to convert as much as we could to Unity. This included walking sim, narrative, and puzzles work.

On the intro / narrative side, we added cutscenes with the characters PNGs that Hongyi drew, as they were not present at all in the web app. We also worked heavily on narrative cohesion, ensuring that there were no holes or contradictions in the story. 

We additionally finally added in our walking simulator and exploration phase of the game, as in previous iterations on the web app, the player had no control of Rin and just clicked on boxes to explore the map. Though the map in this phase was pretty empty, we hoped this new mechanic of player control would lead to an aesthetic of players feeling more immersed in our game, as this was a previous area of criticism we got.

Left: Web app version; Right: Unity version, early phases of Unity introductory scenes (This is the introduction scene with Junko)

Left: Web app version. This was its previous state… (can’t walk around, can only click the buttons)

Right: Unity version. The player can now walk around the map! This is what the train station looked like during this iteration.

Additionally, for the first time, we added a new character in the Inspector. Previously, because we wanted our game to be more cozy given our target audience, we were at first hesitant to add an antagonist character that directly was planning to shut the Otowa train station down, but we decided to add him to make our game more dynamic. He also contrasts nicely with many of our other characters, as in our narrative, the Inspector is extremely cold and mean. With this addition, we hoped it would drive our target audience to empathize with the other characters– as the Inspector does not care for their culture and only cares for money (It is precisely for this reason that the Inspector’s subtle shift at the ending, that single line “Happy Summer Festival, Rin,” lands with such quiet weight.)

Lastly, we completely overhauled the old puzzles label matching system and instead introduced inspirations, which are clues learned throughout the day 1 exploration phase that help with the items. We now increased our number of items from 5 to 16, and had one inspiration correspond with each item. We additionally, introduced themes, which inspirations would be assigned to. 

The flow rather than being presented with an item and matching labels, would now be:

1. The player is a presented with a theme
2. Match 3 inspirations to that theme
3. Match 1 item to each inspiration

We hoped this would lead to the workday period depending on the exploration like we originally intended, as our previous system relied largely on intuition and common sense, which our playtesters did not like.

Playtest #4– Sabrina (5/28) -> Unity

Our playtest with Sabrina (also Team Reithrodon) in class during 9B was our first playtest fully on Unity!

There were some moments of MDA and fun that Sabrina had, but there were still a large amount of boring moments and confusion during this playtest. While our gameplay experience was certainly more immersive than web app iterations, Sabrina noted many drawbacks:

• “Doesn’t feel like there was a way of solving the puzzle if you forget”: She said that she wished she had paid more attention during the introductory scenes and exploration phase as she was unaware that there would be a puzzle later on. However, even with this, a lot of the puzzles lacked sufficient depth. She still solved most with brute force and a “what am I looking at” approach rather than a “what have I learned” approach. This broke rules 2 and 10 of 12 rules of puzzles (“Don’t make players guess” and “Puzzles should have feedback”), so it felt frustrating to her.
• “It is a LOT of text”: Because most of the game was an interactive fictional narrative rather than a game about challenge, it was a lot of clicking through text boxes in this phase. There were very few instances of player agency throughout the game (game was extremely linear, very few instances of branching dialogues, no “loss” state in exhibition phase). Sabrina also commented on the text being hard to read, as it was extremely small.

Other smaller complaints included a lack of a minimap, confusion with controls, and a pretty empty world map.

Iteration #4 -> 5, 6

During this iteration phase, we implemented the entire game and renamed our game from Otowa to Otowa Blues due to the inclusion of our 16th and final equivalently named item in our narrative, which had its own scene as well with blues playing in the background right before the Summer Festival.

While the entire game was originally planned to be 7 days, this was far too much for the scope of this class and we cut it down to 3. We changed many things about the game during this iteration phase, but the biggest ones include the following:

• Minimap added: Our game had a lack of cognitive anchoring before and there was no way of knowing where certain structures are unless you happen to stumble across it on the map.
• Text size increased and text length condensed: In basically every phase of our game, the text size was increased. Furthermore, we added branching dialogues and overall less click throughs. These changes were aimed to make our game more engaging and increase player agency.

• The puzzle system was reworked again: Sabrina told us that “the connection between items and inspirations is unclear, and the exploration phase lacks a clear objective”. To counteract this, we introduced an inquiry system, giving a more detailed backstory behind an item rather than just having an arbitrary popup with an inspiration. 

• A tutorial was added before the Ryotei scene: This explained the minimap, the journal, and the walking mechanics. We also directly mention the exhibition / puzzle phase in this tutorial as Sabrina complained about that previously. Introducing these mechanics early would create an aesthetic to the player that they should be paying attention during the exploration phase, as it will make their life easier later!

Minimap with live locations of each character and building

The player can now inquire about specific items when interacting with a specific character, which can only be done once per item (e.g. Junko’s Train Ticket)

Highlighted Playtest #5 – Jinhyo (6/2) -> Unity 

Both of playtests #5 and #6 were conducted during our final class (10A) by again, members of Team Reithrodon (Jinhyo again for playtest #5 and Brooke for playtest #6).

Since Playtest #5 was conducted during class, players engaged deeply with the entire experience and provided extensive feedback. We believe it genuinely reflects the players’ overall impression of the MVP, so we treated it as our “highlighted playtest” and uploaded the full video. Subsequent playtests were primarily issue-driven, focusing on tweaking details and verifying the effectiveness of those changes, which is why we didn’t conduct timestamp analysis for them, even though they were the final playtests chronologically.

Playtest #5 is our demonstrated playtest as it is our first playtest of the entire MVP, and it was done with a player who had previously played (albeit a much simpler version) of our game in Playtest #1. She was quite talkative during the playtest and provided a lot of very useful feedback with both pros and cons. Notable timestamps of this playtest are included below, but the main findings are included in this section.

Jinhyo had a lot of positive things to say about Otowa Blues. Firstly, she felt greatly immersed in the story, due to the more polished art, character design, narrative, and sound design– all of which were not present on the Web App version she played earlier. Immersion was one of our main goals; this was the first time we felt like we achieved this, which was great to hear. She really liked the new Inspector character, as well as Rintaro. She cited Rintaro as having a funny dynamic, marking an important moment of MDA, as she found it quite hilarious that even though he was the oldest character, he was also the most technically sound character. She also liked the individual characters’ backstories, specifically Jiro’s relationship with his son Hachi, as well as Mizuki’s story. She also generally liked how cozy the UI felt, which was another design goal of ours given our target audience.

Rintaro, though being extremely old, really cares about his technology

However, there were some aspects that Jinhyo wished were improved. Her biggest critique by far was design cohesiveness. While we had settled many of the previous problems we had with narrative cohesiveness after the playtest with Ryan, there were a lot of clashing UI styles even though the generally cozy vibe still came across. For instance:

• Font type was not consistent
• The exhibition design dispersed from the original exploration design
• The buttons designs were extremely different throughout the game
• It felt weird having Hikaru, Hachi, and Misaki as generic NPC characters (though Butch in playtest #7 cited that this was actually fine).

She also cited that the second half of the narrative felt stronger than the first half, as she cited that she didn’t feel like she really cared about the characters’ stories and helping the town of Otowa until the second day. The writing in the introduction of our narrative was generally worse than on Days 2 and 3 (and a similar concern was shared by Butch), which was something we ironed out in future playtests.

Notable Timestamps:

0:00:47: Jinhyo “admires” the art

0:01:47: “Oh it’s blue… I feel like I can imagine the world”

0:02:27: Thinks Junko’s design is really cute, “lowkey not how I imagined her at all”

0:03:38: Asks for settings for text speed (“Text appears too slow”)

• Note: We have a feature where if you click twice all the text appeared at once to counteract this, but it wasn’t obvious.

0:05:00: Jinhyo asks about design decision of why we picked the character to be “Rin” rather than allowing the player to customize their own character

• Answer: We didn’t really think about that too much in regards to customization. It is talked about in future expansions, but a next step would be to allow the character to be male, female, non-binary, or humanoid! We picked the name “Rin” as it is a gender neutral name.

0:05:53: Likes that the branching dialogue exists, but Jinhyo says that it felt like “her choice didn’t matter at all”. It felt like an illusion of player agency

• Didn’t really have time to address this, but making the branching dialogues more different would be a next step!

0:08:29: “This is very cozy game UI.”

0:10:00: “Inspector looks like me but with sunglasses on”

0:11:00: Critique about text staying in place when reading it

• Fixed after this playtest

0:14:30: Name of character should always be on the left for “better reading”, even if character is positioned on the right

0:16:30: Thinks the Inspector is really funny

• (music change also probably helps with that)

0:19:26: Jinhyo appreciates the new minimap mechanic

0:21:31: Jinhyo likes the NPC animations

0:23:30: Doesn’t like that the NPC just runs away after you interact with them for the first time

• Fixed later, if you need to interact with an NPC multiple times, you don’t have to talk to them multiple times anymore, it will just send you back to the options without exiting out.

0:26:40: “Button UI design has been really different throughout”

0:27:30: Wishes the dream (end of day 1) was a little longer

0:32:00: Conversation about whether or not you would want an onboarding tutorial in the exhibition phase

0:33:47: “You should be able to choose the inspiration first, rather than forcing the item first. Text is more helpful for remembering.”

0:37:28: Appreciated the Inspector back story

0:38:17: Intro for Day 2 Exploration, felt it wasn’t needed

0:42:19: Likes that all the controls are close together

0:44:00: Finds Jiro’s story really sad (saw emotional depth in Jiro being a stoic father whose son ran away, but immediately got an exhibition idea, a weird dichotomy)

0:46:40: Wants more emotional weight in the beginning, whole first day felt a lot less strong emotionally than the second day.

• Fix: Emphasize weight on “last train” more.

0:55:40: Thought the collection of Mizuki’s painting was very powerful

0:57:30: “Wood color is too similar to color of text background”

01:02:26: “Should have more whitespace between lines of text”

01:06:31: “Rintaro is such a fun character”

01:07:39: “I’m gonna cry” when receiving Otowa Blues item, final item

01:09:28: One singular word “round” took Jinhyo out of immersion

01:13:06: Jinhyo was disappointed that Hachi and Misaki were just generic NPC character designs.

• Didn’t have time to draw a character for them

01:14:59 / 01:17:00: Appreciated the “Happy Summer Festival, Rin” line. Thought it was a powerful / touching ending line from the Inspector

01:18:06: “Life gets really busy / you can feel really far from home”

• Lesson emphasized from our game!

01:18:48: “How did it end? She kind of forgot the end.”

• Almost like she wanted the game to end on the inspector’s last line.

Playtest #6– Brooke (6/2) -> Unity

Brooke’s playtest was also pretty successful; she seemed quite engaged in our game the whole time, especially in our narrative, which she cited as sweet and well developed. 

Her biggest critiques involved some design polish (e.g. making the minimap during night also look like it is night, making the shift to a dream less harsh) and the puzzles. She thought that it was “hard to remember how objects were connected to inspirations” and it felt like more of a memory puzzle than a logical one. While having a memory puzzle from the exploration phase did fit our initial values for our target audience more so than a logical one; this was an important lesson of balancing our team’s own values with our playtesters’ values.

Iteration #6 -> 7

Given that we had another playtest about 24 hours after Brooke’s we had little time to iterate, but we made a few changes

• Resolved display issues and optimized the interactive experience (e.g., replaced fonts). We believed this would address some of the design cohesion flaws that Jinhyo and Brooke pointed out.
• Puzzles game loop modified: Added item information pop-ups to provide players with more distributed information (reducing reliance on memory or long blocks of text) and introduced more player agency by allowing players to choose inspiration or items first.
  • Also added a hint system for when the player gets an item wrong. Abides to the “Puzzles should give feedback” rule and makes the puzzles less brute-force reliant.

UI iteration: revised layout, background, and typography

Playtest #7– Butch (6/3) -> Itch.io

This was our first playtest with our game published on Itch.io, allowing our playtester, Butch, to play locally on his own device. For this playtest specifically, we had a multitude of guiding questions, but here were the most important ones:

1. Was there any part of the text display that you found difficult to read?
2. Did you choose inspirations or items first, and why?
3. Did you feel there was a lot of information you couldn’t recall? Did the hints help you remember?

Butch had many positive things to say about Otowa Blues: he appreciated our indicators for a day being completed, he thought the sound design added depth to the game (specifically regarding Jin and the Inspector’s scenes), and he thought that the cacophonous failure sound for when you get an exhibition wrong was funny due to its dynamic with our other more peaceful sounds.

To answer our guiding questions:

1. For the most part, the text was easy to read other than in the dream phase (though Butch said this was less about the text and more about the extremely bright background color).
2. Butch actually did a combination of both! (note from Justin: I’m not sure if this was for grading purposes or for logical ones), but he did value the existence of player agency.
3. Butch wished that there were more adaptive hints, as if you got an exhibition item / inspiration wrong, the exact same hint would appear regardless of how many times you got it wrong.

Other pieces of feedback we got were:

1. Our game did not really have consequences (no way of really “losing” [e.g. you get a puzzle wrong too many times and have to restart])
2. The beginning was not as strong narratively as the middle and the end, a comment which we also got from Jinhyo.

Iteration #7 -> 8

We wanted to conduct one final playtest on June 4th with Butch’s feedback incorporated. Here are the biggest new updates we implemented:

• Narrative Iteration: 
  • Expanded Rin’s backstory (Rin’s hometown suffered from population loss due to industrial pollution; Rin sees echoes of their own hometown in Otowa). We did this due to complaints about the first day not being as strong narratively as days 2 and 3. 
  • Revised the letter’s tone from the railway company due to feedback from Butch. This made the first pages more professional.
  • Polished the emotional delivery of the ending, due to comments from Jinhyo about it being forgettable in Playtest #5.
• Music Update: Replaced all background music with original tracks for Otowa Blues (composed by Tianze’s friend, Xinrui Liu), removing all licensed music.
• Refined gameplay: Added a prompt indicating that “items can be used in multiple exhibitions,” incorporated requirements for Day 1 items in the Day 2 theme, and added intermingling. These were much needed final polishing changes after being critiqued by four separate playtesters.

It is worth noting that we didn’t blindly implement all playtester feedback. For instance, we chose not to add a “perfect first-try reward popup” or “failure penalties.” These mechanics could encourage players to constantly “save and load,” which breaks the game’s flow and immersion.

We consistently adhered to the principle that “puzzles serve the narrative.” If players engage in a small amount of trial and error, we view it as part of their thought-organizing process, and we provide scaffolding to assist them (e.g., correctly placed items are locked in the exhibition area, bypassing future validation to reduce repetitive checking).

On the other hand, if a player resorts to extensive trial and error, it indicates a flaw in the earlier narrative design that failed to properly immerse them. In the puzzle phase, increasing the cost of trial and error would merely “punish” the player without helping them understand the story better. Therefore, our overall design direction was to lower the penalty for trial and error and enhance the fluidity of the gameplay.

Playtest #8– Yupar (6/4) -> Itch.io

Link here

The playtest with Yupar was done on a video call on messenger on June 4th, 2026. Yupar is a Stanford CS senior who doesn’t enjoy interactive fiction games but enjoys cozy games. Here were our guiding questions:

User Profile

• Do you enjoy interactive fiction?
• Do you enjoy cozy games?

Narrative

• Is Rin’s decision to help Otowa sufficiently motivated?
• How do you feel about the letter from the railway company at the end?
• What is your overall impression of the ending? (e.g., touching, thought-provoking?)

Gameplay

• When setting up a new exhibition, do you consider the items used in previous ones?
• Does this mechanic help you better understand the story?
• What were the “pleasure moments” for you while playing?

She took about an hour to play through the entire game. Yupar was very positive about our game and did not really have any critiques. After she finished the whole game, she believes that the motivations and stories presented throughout the game intertwined really well and motivated her as Rin to help Otowa. 

Although she only skimmed over the final letter, her overall impression of the ending was that it was wonderful and touching, especially when many visitors came back for the Summer Festival. She mentioned that she really enjoyed the whole game. When asked about her choices in curating the exhibition, she mentioned that she always tried to use new items first although when she fails, she does consider the old items. She also said they were intuitive enough that for different themes, there were some items she just wouldn’t consider at all. 

Furthermore, the information that appeared when hovering over the items was very helpful for her to recall the dialogues she’s had with the different villagers. She mentioned that some of the most memorable moments of the gameplay were the exhibition curations because she got to connect them back to the dialogues she’s had previously.

Iteration #8 -> ??? (Future Expansions + Accessibility)

Future Expansions

An immediate next step would be more character customization. Playtesters wished they could choose the main character of the story rather than it being defaulted to being Rin, though these concerns may not be as strong anymore given Rin’s more detailed backstory in our final version of the game. With more time, we would have given the option to make Rin male, female, non-binary, or potentially even an animal / humanoid version / character.

Playtesters also wanted more interactive items on the map to make it feel more lively. Perhaps this could be animated birds or other animal creatures. We also received comments about having more items you can interact with that don’t necessarily advance the story, but can just add more moments of pleasure. This would also give more purpose to the “walk around for a bit longer” button at the end of the day so a player doesn’t automatically click the “Rest” option.

Accessibility

We have also thought about accessibility options. Most of the ones implemented have been textual to ensure that all players are able to read the text, but perhaps including a colorblind mode could be beneficial so we do not alienate anyone from our game. In terms of other options which could be implemented in the future, we have thought about new controller options (such as being able to play with an external controller rather than keyboard and mouse), the option to double click instead of click and drag for people who may have motor problems, and the option to decrease music / sound effect volume in game (rather than just using your computer’s volume) as well as an option to increase text display speed in game.

Citations / Appendix

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YNhk8jRKA5yKmIhUiVK6THUY21bJ5HQkaEwWrZzXCsg/edit?usp=sharing

Acknowledgments 

Special thanks to Xinrui Liu (University of Bristol) for creating the original soundtrack, which includes the main Otowa theme, “Otowa Blues,” and its variations. All background music in this game was composed by Xinrui Liu.