Yet Another First Day offers a pretty good package. From its unique presentation and natural dialogue, this project engages readers in a straightforward story that still bears (heh) interesting idiosyncrasies. The biggest sore spot here is how much fat there is in the story (and I don’t mean the large men). Yet Another First Day has an excellent and resonating emotional core that is buried in a lot of meandering and scenes that don’t advance the plot. That said, its strong points are more than worth pushing through the slog. A fun, cute little story that will resonate well with its queer audience.
The art, first of all, is lovely and I think it's very appropriate for the story being told. The characters come across as inviting but vulnerable when they need to be.
I'm not familiar with RPGMaker so I can't really comment on how impressive it was to use that system for a VN. The implementation looked fine to me, even though the commands were not as intuitive as they are on Renpy. The visuals were interesting and not something I've seen before, featuring both traditional characters sprites and a mini-map of the room where the scene is taking place, with simplified models of the same characters. While the idea is interesting, I think it needs to be honed a bit more: I must admit I found myself most of the time ignoring the minimap because the sprites in the foreground just demanded more attention. In the few moments when the scene was not cluttered with sprites though, the minimap did manage to stand out, and the payoff at the end of the story was lovely. Maybe it would have worked better with side sprites?
The music felt appropriate but I'm sorry to say it very quickly became unbearable repetitive.
I appreciated the story, but I must admit I did not find it as engaging as it could have been. I think the main issue is that, for the most part, instead of witnessing the story firsthand, we are mostly told by characters about key story moments that happened in the past. So while there is nothing wrong with the story itself, it is not presented in the most exciting manner.
Comments
Yet Another First Day offers a pretty good package. From its unique presentation and natural dialogue, this project engages readers in a straightforward story that still bears (heh) interesting idiosyncrasies. The biggest sore spot here is how much fat there is in the story (and I don’t mean the large men). Yet Another First Day has an excellent and resonating emotional core that is buried in a lot of meandering and scenes that don’t advance the plot. That said, its strong points are more than worth pushing through the slog. A fun, cute little story that will resonate well with its queer audience.
The art, first of all, is lovely and I think it's very appropriate for the story being told. The characters come across as inviting but vulnerable when they need to be.
I'm not familiar with RPGMaker so I can't really comment on how impressive it was to use that system for a VN. The implementation looked fine to me, even though the commands were not as intuitive as they are on Renpy. The visuals were interesting and not something I've seen before, featuring both traditional characters sprites and a mini-map of the room where the scene is taking place, with simplified models of the same characters. While the idea is interesting, I think it needs to be honed a bit more: I must admit I found myself most of the time ignoring the minimap because the sprites in the foreground just demanded more attention. In the few moments when the scene was not cluttered with sprites though, the minimap did manage to stand out, and the payoff at the end of the story was lovely. Maybe it would have worked better with side sprites?
The music felt appropriate but I'm sorry to say it very quickly became unbearable repetitive.
I appreciated the story, but I must admit I did not find it as engaging as it could have been. I think the main issue is that, for the most part, instead of witnessing the story firsthand, we are mostly told by characters about key story moments that happened in the past. So while there is nothing wrong with the story itself, it is not presented in the most exciting manner.
Still, a very promising debut!