Hello Max Stern! I played your VN about 2 weeks ago. I played through the whole thing in two sittings (first sitting I got to the noose part, and second to the end).
I was hitting PrtScn every time I saw some sort of spelling, or grammar error, because my plan was to pack all the screenshots, and send them to you, but after first day of playing and checking my screenshot folder I noticed the game did not get captured. I do not know if it's a ren'py thing, or the game specific (I played in full screen in a dark room), but I found 12 errors until the noose part. Sorry I cannot be more helpful, than that.
I really like your character art. It reminded me of some 70s anime. If they are placeholders, then I hope you are not going to alter them too much. They are very soulful.
I don't really read VNs. I also don't read detective mysteries. All the "bad choices" take you back to the checkpoint, and it looked like there is only one correct path, so it appeared to be more of a kinetic novel experience, but I looked into your files after playing so it looks like there is more to it. The ending I got with naming yourself broke I believe rule number 4, so that wasn't really right.
I found the story to be depressing for the most part. I am not a fan of stories were introduced characters get killed one after the other, especially when they are likeable. With that said, I found the parts that were meant to be funny, funny and charming. I found it odd how some situations, and conversations were taking place even though there were murders happening. I also don't really understand how, and why other characters were so trusting of the player character.
By the way, I wanted to name the character something really normal, so I went with "John", but my other choice was "Jack", which if the VN allows for would make the whole experience much more confusing.
I wish the VN had a pth with none of the students getting killed, but I guess it is not that kind of story.
If you haven't already, I recommend you try the true ending. The rules are meant to help the player go through it again and solve the mystery, so they can trigger it at the end by naming the true culprit. For people unfamiliar with detective mysteries, it might be easier to first figure out who it is and then work through the solutions to the murders.
Fun game, the beginning was a little rough to get into but it picks up after a bit, the art is very serviceable and the music choice is really on point. Kind of knew I didn't have the "true" ending when I named myself even though everything fit since the rules said that the detective could not be the culprit and you die killed by someone else in the bad endings. I checked the files to be sure and saw who I was supposed to name, I would not have thought about it being her otherwise. I did manage to solve the riddles afterwards by reading the relevant sequences again but honestly the "true" ending felt worse than the normal ending, maybe I was tired at that point but I didn't understand anything about it, seemed completely random.
Interesting, you are the first person I've seen prefer the Normal to the True ending. 1.0 didn't even have the True one implemented, which really pissed people off. If you don't mind elaborating, why did the beginning feel rough? Some felt it was the strongest part.
The switch from the serious "darkness, hiding from a murderer" to talking with Jack being completely random felt pretty jarring to me but it wasn't that long, when I say beginning im talking like the first 15 mins.
i rly feel like it needs a disclaimer at the start saying it turns into some kinda weird impossible guessing game at the end
like wtf none of it makes any sense how am i supposed to know any of this sh1t, using logic and reason flew out the window the moment everyone started to chill out and eat sandwiches while watching movies while everyone is being shot to death.// how tf i supposed to know how they get out the got dayum room??? through the window?? mofucker i have 0 clue if there even is a window, im presented with some ms paint drawing an hour ago with abunch of conflicting facts that dont tell me anything and after 5 minutes of that i've got 30 minutes of sauna time with some tomboy thing. I dont remember if there's a fuckign window let alone what 30 step process some bish randomly carried out to dab on her friends mortality,, it could have been done by fyucking bugs bunny for all i know, superman flew in through the fucking walls and laser beamed flame 2 deth, i dunno??!?
also it didnt let me name myself flame and i liked the boing sound, also who the eff is the bad guy???
Your mouse movement somehow feels floaty. I don't know why tho or if its maybe just me. I'm remembering I forgot to eat anything today just as I'm writing this.
Menu changes seem slow, it kind of blends into the next menu, would like them to be a lot faster.
I like your main menu music, very soothing. Why can I save from the main menu? there shouldn't be a save option there.
Intro has a bunch of missing font character image squares. Might be intended, but doesn't look like it.
Couldn't get a really good look at the protagonist through the computer, as it faded away too soon.
Dialogue with the girl has "there's there's" written in when the basket guy appears. A lot of the Dialogue kind of comes of as pretentious to me, like everyones trying to sound smarter then they are. No Idea if that is how people actually talk tho. Still, it managed to attach me to the characters, I got pretty sad when Flame died. Who writes their Diary in notepad format? And in one without any of the key information the Notes are about aswell. And cutting up sentences? This really sounds more like talking to oneself then writing a diary.
You should've warned me that there was romantic handholding in this. ( just wish it were with Jack, he's cute). And after all that Handholding you're putting me with a basically naked Jack into a Sauna? Are you sure this isn't a lewd Game?
Why are the sandwiches getting cold? Sandwiches are cold to begin with.
Nice that I could poke Jack in the end, but why only then, why not earlier?
Just loaded the nameguess to get all the Endings, not going to bother with the different routes, ending itself was pretty boring, unless I missed an option (tried All the student names, professor, my own, eerie, and various phrases and words)
I had something I wanted to complain about pretty early on, but I forgot through playing the Game, sorry. If I ever remember it, I'll edit this comment, but I doubt it.
Still enjoyable overall tho, had me engaged for multiple Hours, didn't expect to play through it.
Are you using windowed mode? For whatever reason the engine doesn't like it.
>save from the main menu
That's not a thing. Are you talking about the right-click menu?
>missing font, typos
Fixed in next release.
>pretentious dialog
The protagonist and Jack use a purposely limited vocabulary. Everyone else uses big words because they consider themselves to be big-brained.
>Why are the sandwiches getting cold?
that's the joke.jpg
>endings
That's the normal ending - it's supposed to be a purposely lazy solution. You can start the true end by naming the true culprit twice. Next release will all you to bypass that if you start off by naming them. Note that finishing the true end actually requires thinking and solving things if you want to do it legitimately. It's for people care.
When I typed the protags name once, I got the long winded Dialogue and suicide part, then it returned me to the main menu which had a save screen once the credits finished. I couldn't save from there, but the option to go into a save screen shouldn't even be there. It also had a loading screen, but thats fine obviously.
I don't really know how I'm supposed to name the protagonist twice, if I'm returning to the menu after the first Time, but maybe something just bugged out on my end, or I messed something up. I played it drained of every Energy I had, so I probably just did something wrong. As for what I forgot to mention, You get a ton of Hints by investigating, which you can kind of use to give you the better/correct answer in the answer parts of the Game? Thats fine, but I think you get way too many. I could basically use one at every answer.
Just some things to keep in mind I guess if you're making another one of those Games in the future, maybe even a longer one. (Just let me poke Jack from the beginning then, I liked to do that).
Got to the end and I think I got the true ending based on the response to my answer.
I would've liked to have gotten to know the characters a little more before the plot took off, but the characterization that did happen was pretty solid and time-efficient.
Some pretty good tense moments throughout and I enjoyed the manner of detective work involved.
The writing was actually funny when it tried to be and thankfully it tried pretty selectively
Some slight gripes with the inconsistencies between the styles of some of the backgrounds, even though I would've liked either the hand-drawn style and the edited photo styles individually.
I liked the art, although some of the characters looked a little similar to each other (I spent some of the game expecting that to be a plot point of some sort)
Despite the large amount of writing, I only saw a single typo the whole way through ("Some of the entires (entries) seemed to cut off..." when looking through the journal)
I really enjoyed this game and was left wanting to know more about the setting and characters. I was impressed with how much story/world-building/characterization was fit in a relatively short package; a lot of games say less with more words.
Comments
Hello Max Stern! I played your VN about 2 weeks ago. I played through the whole thing in two sittings (first sitting I got to the noose part, and second to the end).
I was hitting PrtScn every time I saw some sort of spelling, or grammar error, because my plan was to pack all the screenshots, and send them to you, but after first day of playing and checking my screenshot folder I noticed the game did not get captured. I do not know if it's a ren'py thing, or the game specific (I played in full screen in a dark room), but I found 12 errors until the noose part. Sorry I cannot be more helpful, than that.
I really like your character art. It reminded me of some 70s anime. If they are placeholders, then I hope you are not going to alter them too much. They are very soulful.
I don't really read VNs. I also don't read detective mysteries. All the "bad choices" take you back to the checkpoint, and it looked like there is only one correct path, so it appeared to be more of a kinetic novel experience, but I looked into your files after playing so it looks like there is more to it. The ending I got with naming yourself broke I believe rule number 4, so that wasn't really right.
I found the story to be depressing for the most part. I am not a fan of stories were introduced characters get killed one after the other, especially when they are likeable. With that said, I found the parts that were meant to be funny, funny and charming. I found it odd how some situations, and conversations were taking place even though there were murders happening. I also don't really understand how, and why other characters were so trusting of the player character.
By the way, I wanted to name the character something really normal, so I went with "John", but my other choice was "Jack", which if the VN allows for would make the whole experience much more confusing.
I wish the VN had a pth with none of the students getting killed, but I guess it is not that kind of story.
If you haven't already, I recommend you try the true ending. The rules are meant to help the player go through it again and solve the mystery, so they can trigger it at the end by naming the true culprit. For people unfamiliar with detective mysteries, it might be easier to first figure out who it is and then work through the solutions to the murders.
Fun game, the beginning was a little rough to get into but it picks up after a bit, the art is very serviceable and the music choice is really on point. Kind of knew I didn't have the "true" ending when I named myself even though everything fit since the rules said that the detective could not be the culprit and you die killed by someone else in the bad endings. I checked the files to be sure and saw who I was supposed to name, I would not have thought about it being her otherwise. I did manage to solve the riddles afterwards by reading the relevant sequences again but honestly the "true" ending felt worse than the normal ending, maybe I was tired at that point but I didn't understand anything about it, seemed completely random.
Interesting, you are the first person I've seen prefer the Normal to the True ending. 1.0 didn't even have the True one implemented, which really pissed people off. If you don't mind elaborating, why did the beginning feel rough? Some felt it was the strongest part.
The switch from the serious "darkness, hiding from a murderer" to talking with Jack being completely random felt pretty jarring to me but it wasn't that long, when I say beginning im talking like the first 15 mins.
i rly feel like it needs a disclaimer at the start saying it turns into some kinda weird impossible guessing game at the end
like wtf none of it makes any sense how am i supposed to know any of this sh1t, using logic and reason flew out the window the moment everyone started to chill out and eat sandwiches while watching movies while everyone is being shot to death.// how tf i supposed to know how they get out the got dayum room??? through the window?? mofucker i have 0 clue if there even is a window, im presented with some ms paint drawing an hour ago with abunch of conflicting facts that dont tell me anything and after 5 minutes of that i've got 30 minutes of sauna time with some tomboy thing. I dont remember if there's a fuckign window let alone what 30 step process some bish randomly carried out to dab on her friends mortality,, it could have been done by fyucking bugs bunny for all i know, superman flew in through the fucking walls and laser beamed flame 2 deth, i dunno??!?
also it didnt let me name myself flame and i liked the boing sound, also who the eff is the bad guy???
Your mouse movement somehow feels floaty. I don't know why tho or if its maybe just me. I'm remembering I forgot to eat anything today just as I'm writing this.
Menu changes seem slow, it kind of blends into the next menu, would like them to be a lot faster.
I like your main menu music, very soothing. Why can I save from the main menu? there shouldn't be a save option there.
Intro has a bunch of missing font character image squares. Might be intended, but doesn't look like it.
Couldn't get a really good look at the protagonist through the computer, as it faded away too soon.
Dialogue with the girl has "there's there's" written in when the basket guy appears. A lot of the Dialogue kind of comes of as pretentious to me, like everyones trying to sound smarter then they are. No Idea if that is how people actually talk tho. Still, it managed to attach me to the characters, I got pretty sad when Flame died. Who writes their Diary in notepad format? And in one without any of the key information the Notes are about aswell. And cutting up sentences? This really sounds more like talking to oneself then writing a diary.
You should've warned me that there was romantic handholding in this. ( just wish it were with Jack, he's cute). And after all that Handholding you're putting me with a basically naked Jack into a Sauna? Are you sure this isn't a lewd Game?
Why are the sandwiches getting cold? Sandwiches are cold to begin with.
Nice that I could poke Jack in the end, but why only then, why not earlier?
Just loaded the nameguess to get all the Endings, not going to bother with the different routes, ending itself was pretty boring, unless I missed an option (tried All the student names, professor, my own, eerie, and various phrases and words)
I had something I wanted to complain about pretty early on, but I forgot through playing the Game, sorry. If I ever remember it, I'll edit this comment, but I doubt it.
Still enjoyable overall tho, had me engaged for multiple Hours, didn't expect to play through it.
>mouse/menu lag
Are you using windowed mode? For whatever reason the engine doesn't like it.
>save from the main menu
That's not a thing. Are you talking about the right-click menu?
>missing font, typos
Fixed in next release.
>pretentious dialog
The protagonist and Jack use a purposely limited vocabulary. Everyone else uses big words because they consider themselves to be big-brained.
>Why are the sandwiches getting cold?
that's the joke.jpg
>endings
That's the normal ending - it's supposed to be a purposely lazy solution. You can start the true end by naming the true culprit twice. Next release will all you to bypass that if you start off by naming them. Note that finishing the true end actually requires thinking and solving things if you want to do it legitimately. It's for people care.
When I typed the protags name once, I got the long winded Dialogue and suicide part, then it returned me to the main menu which had a save screen once the credits finished. I couldn't save from there, but the option to go into a save screen shouldn't even be there. It also had a loading screen, but thats fine obviously.
I don't really know how I'm supposed to name the protagonist twice, if I'm returning to the menu after the first Time, but maybe something just bugged out on my end, or I messed something up. I played it drained of every Energy I had, so I probably just did something wrong. As for what I forgot to mention, You get a ton of Hints by investigating, which you can kind of use to give you the better/correct answer in the answer parts of the Game? Thats fine, but I think you get way too many. I could basically use one at every answer.
Just some things to keep in mind I guess if you're making another one of those Games in the future, maybe even a longer one. (Just let me poke Jack from the beginning then, I liked to do that).
Got to the end and I think I got the true ending based on the response to my answer.
I really enjoyed this game and was left wanting to know more about the setting and characters. I was impressed with how much story/world-building/characterization was fit in a relatively short package; a lot of games say less with more words.
This game was fun to voice act. I have no idea what's going on after ten minutes.