Letters to strangers
Exchange silly letters with strangers! A light-hearted short relaxing branching game limited to 500 words.
Inspired by the Mysterious Letters art project by Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe.
Created for the Neo-Twiny Jam 2024. All text, images and music by me and created to for the jam.
Comments
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Un grand merci d'avoir soumis ces petits jeux tellement appaisants et positifs. Une grande bouchée d'air frais et chalereux <3
Avec plaisir, merci beaucoup à toi ! Ca fait du bien à créer et très plaisir de voir qu'ils sont appréciés !
Any concept that has to do with sending anonymous messages and getting them back is an immediate hit for me. Like the internet in a nutshell, but a kinder, more benign version. Reminds me of r/benignexistence, actually!
My favorite message is the placeholder one. It technically contains everything, if you think about it.
That's an interesting reddit , thank you! A kinder version of the internet is very needed in my opinion, and sharing what we like and what is positive too. It's quite interesting that you relate to the placeholder message which is indeed the most open to imagination.
Thanks for sharing your feedback!
What a sweet game. I loved the music/writing combo!
Thank you very much! I usually compose once the text is done and try to find if both work well together 😅
You matched the vibe perfectly.
This game was cute! I liked that each letter was different and had a positive message. I had a fun time playing this. :)
Awww thank you very much! My goal is to bring happiness, I'm happy that it worked for you!
Lovely work. Very clever and quite haunting. Much enjoyed it.
Thank you so much! Haunting is a great compliment, I'm super happy that you felt this way!
Just read about Michael and Lenka's art project <=-) It's... thoughtful (I'm not gonna write a review the project ((duh, though I possibly should. Just not here) but I just wanted to note it's amazing how you've picked up a concept from such a project and continue spreading awareness about it. I would have never known this art masterpiece even exist.
You know, I'm probably overthinking a bit, (my thoughts rummage a lot when I type kinds of comments; the bad thing, I can't always make a clear statement because of it) but I HOPE you get my point!))
So, back to the game, music is great as always!!! I tried to make something out of the dots lmaooo, the first thing on my mind was squiggly Little Dipper. Then it looked like a crab? Then spider... T___T
I kinda liked the art out of these symbols. Especially the "artist" one. And I'm not sure how to call this type of technique, HELP??!! ASCII art maybe? But then again, the circle with the "To draw is to observe"... Word cloud? Pictogram? It's definitely not calligram... It's probably called something easy that I just had to forget. Suffering the curse, dudes... >=-G
Anyways, the game is just wonderful! <3
Good job, jsmonzani
Hello! Thank you very much for your feedback, it's always a pleasure to discuss topics that I like!
Discovering great artists and sharing them is one of my joy, so I'm super happy that you liked Lenka and Michael's art.
Seeing you enjoy my music really makes me feel that games are a great way to share it. I occasionally publish short albums online but I like it even more when the music serves a story and mood. Also thanks for trying to make something out of the dots!! :)
The styles I was after for these letters drawing are typewriters drawing and calligrams. You're right about ASCII art, sometimes subgenred as PETSCII for C64 characters for instance (which also include basic geometric shapes). Generally speaking, the "correct" term is textmode art. Great artists for these are Polyducks or MrMo who work with geometric-like characters.
If you'd like to see me exploring this style, I suggest you'd check out my games Nature, Vignette of the ocean and No wizard where I worked with extra constraints.
No matter the choice, as a visual artist, I purposely select such crude representations to suggest rather than show, and let the player's imagination work. That's why graphics are particular in all my text-based games.
Thanks again!
lol, thanks for the infooo! L=-J Kinda shame that I never knew about the textmode art until now; reading about it. So, I'll check out other games in an hour or two.
Thanks for answering my questions I guess! Good luck V[=-5"
This is a pretty sweet idea, and the letters are so cute.
Thank you very much!! I try to bring happiness to the player and I'm very happy that you felt that! :)
This was lovely--gentleness oozes from each letter <3 This reminds me to get back into Postcrossing, and I feel inspired by to write more softer, thoughtful letters--even if the only person I'm writing to is myself :')
Awww thank you very much! I think it's very important to bring some happiness to the world, at least that's my goal. And similarly to take good care of oneself! So I find it great if you write to yourself as well! When typing text for the game, I recalled this project I came across 10 years ago (that is written in my description): Mysterious Letters by Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe. I had great pleasure reading their letters and their tone clearly inspired me (I didn't copy them though! ;)). They are mostly funny and unexpected. If you like this style, I suggest you give an eye to their amazing work, it deserves it and hopefully will bring you a smile! :) Some works of Miranda July also have this feeling.
Maybe (shameless promotion here), you might enjoy playing my other games A cozy space capsule and A changing greenhouse for a cozy vibe (and maybe they won't be your cup of tea at all :) !)