i have never played a VN before but this picked up my interest since its a murder mystery and i thought: 'a VN is actually a very nice medium for a murder mystery'. i'm not a reader of the genre, but i always liked the detective movie/shows specially those inspired/re-adapted from sherlock holmes. im still struggling to actually figure out how everything happened and get the true ending, but i think ive seen enough to give feedback:
the sfx and music are all very good, and it adds a lot to the tone of the narrative, creating some cool contrasts between fun, spooky, etc. the photo backgrounds and their 'filters/effects' are nice as well. the characters are all very interesting and memorable, which is very good. perhaps getting to know them better would make me care more when they die, but since this is a mystery and not a tearjerker drama then i guess its fine. not sure if i like those tangents where we can lose the game. as far as i could tell, there was no way to REALLY know which path was the correct one. the first time it happens also doesnt not feel right - after you decide to not go outside there are some strange reasoning/assumptions going on as to why that was the right decision.
although i like the experience as a whole, i didn't quite like the normal ending. it does seem to fit, and the killer really convinced me that i was doing the killing somehow, but it feels like a 'cheat', like those cliches mentioned on the rules.
- the game overwrites my mouse sensitivity and acceleration settings and its very annoying - i dont understand how i acquire more 'lightbulb hints', but i finished the game with some of them (around 5 iirc) - characters and photo backgrounds are good, but the drawn backgrounds kinda break the immersion/flow IMO - sometimes single words would get highlights, which is a bit strange because it was not clear if its just a hint/something important or if it was the 'truth' superpower manifestation. for example. someone says: 'the door was closed' and you only highlight 'door' what does that mean? the door is indeed a real door? the door is indeed closed? those single-word highlights also dont appear in the highlights tab - early on, in jack's lab, jack is labeled as Jack instead of Girl, before we know his name - sometimes i found duplicated words. im sure there was a double 'the', so you can ctrl+f your project and look for 'the the' - pretty sure there was one occasion where 'head' or maybe 'hand' was written 'had' - wicker head is refered to as a 'she' early on, then they start calling 'he' sudenly, without really a dialogue that explains this change - when panda goes quiet, she looks to the player? i'm not sure if its intentionally breaking the 4th wall or if just just looking 'away' from the main character, if she is not looking at the player, then perhaps tweak the iris position a bit so it does not look so meta
one big thing is the lack of background variety in some situations... when not in a 'room', it was not clear exactly where they were, its just the standard corridor background but they might be moving somewhere or standing in front of a room, this made it difficult to maintain a mental timeline and in general establish where characters were heading/coming from. the library having 2 backgrounds was kinda strange too, even though they call it a library just seeing a different scene creates some sort of conflict between what you see and what is actually happening. i think it would be cool if you could take pictures of some scenes that you build yourself with a camera, even if the quality is bad, it wont matter after the artistic filters. it was also hard to establish a temporal relation between scenes because of the difference between background and what is implied in the text, i would often ask myself: 'is it night already?', 'how long since launch?' perhaps adding a watch on the game would be helpfull, or maybe it was just me... oh, and another thing kinda hard to follow was which students were following me, and which ones left to do something else. maybe having a small version of all of the ones that are nearby on the UI somewhere could be good, idk
First and foremost I want to say that I really enjoyed this short mystery. Played it over a span of 2 days in two sessions, gave me real nice Umineko vibes with the compressed real life image backgrounds and focus on being a *pure* mystery. Without hopefully delving too much into spoilers for others that might read this comment, the solution and presentation of it felt (at least to me) similar to Umineko, in that I thought of the correct solution early on but was then tricked into believing something else for the majority of the story until the end. Very well done and I love the lighthearted nature of the story, kept it from getting too tense and the few situations that are tense were much more tense because of the contrast. Assuming there isn't some secret ending I missed and the ending I got the real one there are a few things that I think are left unanswered but perhaps those are intentional or that Im too small brained to put two and two together. I also love that you added in a programming socks joke fellow /g/amer. Flame's first run in was a bit too fast, I didn't even notice it, just thought my screen blinked or something so maybe make it a little slower. There also a few typos but I suppose those are bound to happen with something like this. There's a few small things but overall I enjoyed it quite a lot, keep up the good work
went back. seems like I got the normal end. Missed the final title card cause clicking once puts you directly back on the main menu. Seems like I have some more digging to do. Any hints you want give out? :)
Comments
double sunglasses :: )
i have never played a VN before but this picked up my interest since its a murder mystery and i thought: 'a VN is actually a very nice medium for a murder mystery'. i'm not a reader of the genre, but i always liked the detective movie/shows specially those inspired/re-adapted from sherlock holmes. im still struggling to actually figure out how everything happened and get the true ending, but i think ive seen enough to give feedback:
the sfx and music are all very good, and it adds a lot to the tone of the narrative, creating some cool contrasts between fun, spooky, etc. the photo backgrounds and their 'filters/effects' are nice as well. the characters are all very interesting and memorable, which is very good. perhaps getting to know them better would make me care more when they die, but since this is a mystery and not a tearjerker drama then i guess its fine. not sure if i like those tangents where we can lose the game. as far as i could tell, there was no way to REALLY know which path was the correct one. the first time it happens also doesnt not feel right - after you decide to not go outside there are some strange reasoning/assumptions going on as to why that was the right decision.
although i like the experience as a whole, i didn't quite like the normal ending. it does seem to fit, and the killer really convinced me that i was doing the killing somehow, but it feels like a 'cheat', like those cliches mentioned on the rules.
- the game overwrites my mouse sensitivity and acceleration settings and its very annoying
- i dont understand how i acquire more 'lightbulb hints', but i finished the game with some of them (around 5 iirc)
- characters and photo backgrounds are good, but the drawn backgrounds kinda break the immersion/flow IMO
- sometimes single words would get highlights, which is a bit strange because it was not clear if its just a hint/something important or if it was the 'truth' superpower manifestation. for example. someone says: 'the door was closed' and you only highlight 'door' what does that mean? the door is indeed a real door? the door is indeed closed? those single-word highlights also dont appear in the highlights tab
- early on, in jack's lab, jack is labeled as Jack instead of Girl, before we know his name
- sometimes i found duplicated words. im sure there was a double 'the', so you can ctrl+f your project and look for 'the the'
- pretty sure there was one occasion where 'head' or maybe 'hand' was written 'had'
- wicker head is refered to as a 'she' early on, then they start calling 'he' sudenly, without really a dialogue that explains this change
- when panda goes quiet, she looks to the player? i'm not sure if its intentionally breaking the 4th wall or if just just looking 'away' from the main character, if she is not looking at the player, then perhaps tweak the iris position a bit so it does not look so meta
one big thing is the lack of background variety in some situations... when not in a 'room', it was not clear exactly where they were, its just the standard corridor background but they might be moving somewhere or standing in front of a room, this made it difficult to maintain a mental timeline and in general establish where characters were heading/coming from. the library having 2 backgrounds was kinda strange too, even though they call it a library just seeing a different scene creates some sort of conflict between what you see and what is actually happening. i think it would be cool if you could take pictures of some scenes that you build yourself with a camera, even if the quality is bad, it wont matter after the artistic filters. it was also hard to establish a temporal relation between scenes because of the difference between background and what is implied in the text, i would often ask myself: 'is it night already?', 'how long since launch?' perhaps adding a watch on the game would be helpfull, or maybe it was just me... oh, and another thing kinda hard to follow was which students were following me, and which ones left to do something else. maybe having a small version of all of the ones that are nearby on the UI somewhere could be good, idk
Hey. I played your game as part of a Demo Day stream. If you didn't catch the stream live, here's a link to the video:
You can see my other demo day 46 streams as well on my channel.
(Looks like I forgot to post a comment on this game. Sorry!)
First and foremost I want to say that I really enjoyed this short mystery. Played it over a span of 2 days in two sessions, gave me real nice Umineko vibes with the compressed real life image backgrounds and focus on being a *pure* mystery. Without hopefully delving too much into spoilers for others that might read this comment, the solution and presentation of it felt (at least to me) similar to Umineko, in that I thought of the correct solution early on but was then tricked into believing something else for the majority of the story until the end. Very well done and I love the lighthearted nature of the story, kept it from getting too tense and the few situations that are tense were much more tense because of the contrast. Assuming there isn't some secret ending I missed and the ending I got the real one there are a few things that I think are left unanswered but perhaps those are intentional or that Im too small brained to put two and two together. I also love that you added in a programming socks joke fellow /g/amer. Flame's first run in was a bit too fast, I didn't even notice it, just thought my screen blinked or something so maybe make it a little slower. There also a few typos but I suppose those are bound to happen with something like this. There's a few small things but overall I enjoyed it quite a lot, keep up the good work
The true end says "True Ending", and normal end says "Normal End" on the final title card. We don't talk about the secret ending.
went back. seems like I got the normal end. Missed the final title card cause clicking once puts you directly back on the main menu. Seems like I have some more digging to do. Any hints you want give out? :)
To finish the true ending you will have to solve all the mysteries in the story. I hope you've been thinking about it / taking notes.