Briar

Okay so I stumbled accross this game completely by accident, and I don't know why but something caught my attention, so I decided to give it a shot. First of all, I applaud you for all the efforts you've put into it, the animations, the gameplay and the story are great. Now, here's my problem, I've barely played any of the game because I'm stuck in the first QTE sequence (the one with the eagle), even if I spam the shift key like crazy, it's completely impossible to fill the bar in time. I don't know if it's just a problem with my computer or if it's supposed to be really hard. But it just came out as extremely frustrating, mainly because I can't see the rest of the game, which is something I'm looking forward to

I tried playing through the game. I have to say I cheated a bit and started the last level from the menu, since finishing the swamp level felt impossible. When I press Shift repetitively, I get some Windows prompt which deactivates the game window (often causing the character to fall on spikes). I have Windows 10, I don't know if it's some kind of a local thing.

The story is very heavy but has great moments, and I really love the visual storytelling in the cutscenes! Also, kudos for arranging voice acting for everything! Adds so much to the immersion.

Nice animations too, I was surprised by the rat's attack, lol.

Okay, so I've played through this a few times over the past few days. Now that my mind has had time to process this, I'm confident in saying that this was one of the most fun experiences I've had with a game in a while. To those who haven't played yet, please stop reading and play through it now, since I'm going to go into spoiler territory a bit, so continue reading at your own risk. Firstly, the game opens with a gothic-esque intro scene before doing a complete one-eighty and beginning in a happy little town, which has a completely different feel from the blood and horror shown in the intro. After exploring the town a bit and talking to the residents, a giant bird comes out of nowhere and takes Briar away. After a QTE segment, Briar breaks free and the gameplay begins. It's a pretty simple setup, you get seperated from your hometown, now find your way back. After clearing the first two levels, you are suddenly in a completely different location covered in snow with no context to how you got there. The weird part about this is that there's a secret level hidden in the previous one that actually provides a bit of context to how Briar ends up in the snowy forest. It probably would have made more sense if the second level transitioned into the secret level instead of having it be hidden from the player since the secret level is surprisingly fleshed-out and has a decent amount of depth to it while the normal ending is that you just beat up a frog and move on. Anyways, the boss of the third level. I couldn't for the life of me find a way to lower this thing's health. I eventually found a way to get past it without fighting, though I'm pretty sure that it's intended to be a secret and not the way you're supposed to get past it normally. By climbing the wall to the right of the arena, a jumpscare plays (It actually made me jump when I first found it lmao) before transitioning to a disturbing sequence. Afterwards, a cutscene plays of Briar fighting the boss, which leads me to believe that there was a way to defeat it, so I'm probably just too smol brain to figure it out lol. Anyways, you meet a new character named Jeremy and you get a charming segment where you get to ask him questions (You can also boop his nose and it's friggin adorable :3). Past this point is where the game gets REALLY good, so I refuse to spoil the plot past this point, even with a spoiler warning. Please play the rest for yourself, you'll be doing yourself a favor. I felt genuine emotions during the final sequence, it's so well done. That aside, there's a few more things I want to say. Firstly, the game can be a bit glitchy, though that's to be expected from a dev's first game. The glitches don't make the platforming segments unplayable, but they can bring down the experience at times and make the platforming more frustrating than it needs to be. Secondly, it's clear that a lot of love and effort went into this and I applaud the dev for that. Fully-animated cutscenes, voice acting, and lots of secrets hidden everywhere in both the levels and the main menu? Damn, that's really impressive for a developer's first game. Briar also has a lot of different animations in-game as well to react to different settings, enemies, and events, which gives the experience a lot of charm and character. Thirdly, there's unlockables. Based on how many points you earn, you can unlock a minigame and a secret ending (Oh yeah, there's multiple endings btw). The secret ending is a short continuation of one of the endings from the main game. Speaking of secrets, there's so many around every corner to the point that I'm positive that I haven't found everything despite doing multiple playthroughs to see each ending while also hunting for whatever secrets I could find. Hidden secrets are always fun and add a lot to replayability, and here they're done very well. Finally, there's an optional tutorial that, though very basic, has quite a bit of charm to it. I recommend checking it out on your first playthrough. In conclusion, Briar is a very charming game with an engaging story. It's a shame that this didn't blow up considering how promising it is, but at least I got to experience this gem even if I am two years late. Thanks for reading if you got this far and thank you Raccoonicorn for making this. Even if it does have its problems, Briar was an absolute blast to experience <3

i'm gonna try to download this with my shitty internet, i wanna play this game ;w;

The plot is quite interesting. Waiting for the sequel