Sorry but the advertisement for New World Symphony was unbearable and sucked all the attention I could muster for this story. It made for a fun stream reading session though.
Playing with cultural subject matter largely unexplored by furry visual novels is appreciated, but beyond that, it's difficult to find a lot to like here. The Halloween mask-esque sprites are, frankly, a bit unnerving in how clearly you can see the use of human references, and it doesn't help how closely the fur colors resemble skin. The CGs suffer from the same "that is a human person" syndrome, too. Meanwhile, the writing strikingly captures the sense of the imminently approaching game jam deadline.
Probably the weirdest and most off-putting part of the package is the gratuitous advertising for the author's other game. Besides the story making a couple of tacky direct shoutouts (I think the centerleft joke would have been fine with some subtlety, no reason to note it's specifically a reference to New World Symphony written and directed by KarlSmith), the backgrounds that tell you to read NWS look like sellable ad space. Is it really necessary to constantly remind readers of other games? This whole thing is just so baffling.
With Thokvam: Mulot apparently being a prequel to another game (?), it's not really clear why this particular story needed to be told as a standalone entry. What do we get here that could not be filled in later on? All the characters boil down to one personality trait, the journey and the founding of the new village go by so fast, and the plot is basically a background element, its climax involving the protagonists finding out what happened by listening to the radio. There are a couple of interesting bits, but they only come off as setup for the visual novel to follow.
I guess the main takeaway here is "read New World Symphony", which is not really what I would like to be thinking about after reading an entirely unrelated VN. Maybe I'm being too mean here, but this whole thing just felt sort of barebones and gaudy.
Comments
Sorry but the advertisement for New World Symphony was unbearable and sucked all the attention I could muster for this story. It made for a fun stream reading session though.
Read New World Symphony! <:ssoacDamianPog:973598165540438036>
The symphony of a new life.
Playing with cultural subject matter largely unexplored by furry visual novels is appreciated, but beyond that, it's difficult to find a lot to like here. The Halloween mask-esque sprites are, frankly, a bit unnerving in how clearly you can see the use of human references, and it doesn't help how closely the fur colors resemble skin. The CGs suffer from the same "that is a human person" syndrome, too. Meanwhile, the writing strikingly captures the sense of the imminently approaching game jam deadline.
Probably the weirdest and most off-putting part of the package is the gratuitous advertising for the author's other game. Besides the story making a couple of tacky direct shoutouts (I think the centerleft joke would have been fine with some subtlety, no reason to note it's specifically a reference to New World Symphony written and directed by KarlSmith), the backgrounds that tell you to read NWS look like sellable ad space. Is it really necessary to constantly remind readers of other games? This whole thing is just so baffling.
With Thokvam: Mulot apparently being a prequel to another game (?), it's not really clear why this particular story needed to be told as a standalone entry. What do we get here that could not be filled in later on? All the characters boil down to one personality trait, the journey and the founding of the new village go by so fast, and the plot is basically a background element, its climax involving the protagonists finding out what happened by listening to the radio. There are a couple of interesting bits, but they only come off as setup for the visual novel to follow.
I guess the main takeaway here is "read New World Symphony", which is not really what I would like to be thinking about after reading an entirely unrelated VN. Maybe I'm being too mean here, but this whole thing just felt sort of barebones and gaudy.