Cheers for checking this one out! :3
I totally get what you’re saying about it not really being a game, but that’s kind of a debate that’s been raging for years when it comes to certain types of visual novels x3
I dunno if you’ve ever played any or heard of them, but there is a type of VN called kinetic visual novels. They’re still technically games since devs coded and created them, but they have no choices whatsoever, literally none, and so no branching paths either.
They tend not to have any minigames, or even the option to enter a player character’s name. The only interaction players have is clicking to proceed with the story. They’re still marketed and sold as games though, it’s just they’re not interactive and don’t have actual gameplay, haha. I know, it’s a weird one x3
The thing is though, I think VNs with choices and branching narratives are much more popular than kinetic VNs these days, and so a lot of people who play VNs aren’t even aware that kinetic VNs are a thing, so when they play a VN, they’re expecting choices etc. by default.
That’s why I tried to be clear on the page that there is only 1 choice per scenario, cos I didn’t want folks to go in expecting something else and wind up disappointed >.< Though, I did write that waaay at the bottom of the page, so I’ve now added it under the features section too in case that’s of any help to someone checking out the page in the future, haha.
As a gamer, I also struggle to view kinetic VNs as true games, but as a dev, when I know how much work has gone into coding something even if it doesn’t have choices, I’m also more inclined to still see those sorts of things as games. They’re just a really niche type of game, haha.
I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but I remember reading that in Japan, it’s extremely frowned upon for streamers to stream the entirety of a kinetic VN since they don’t have choices and it might impact a game’s sales if potential players just watched a stream knowing that they will see 100% of the content cos there are no choices.
Anyways, I dunno if you saw my notices about this project before playing it (not blaming you at all if you didn’t cos I know many people don’t read game pages these days), but there’s a solid reason for this particular project not having choices :3
Basically, it’s an English fandub of a Japanese drama CD series. So unlike my other projects where the stories and characters are original concepts, this is literally just me localising some CDs and giving them visuals.
I didn’t want to mess with the original story of the CDs since it’s not my story and not my characters, so I only presented the 1 choice that appears in the CDs :3 Of course, with those, it’s just audio so you can’t click anything, but what happens is the track ends on the choice, then the listener just chooses which of 2 tracks to play next to get the love interest/ending that they want for that scenario.
I could have added extra choices, but that just wasn’t my intention with this project, especially when it’s originally in Japanese. I just wanted to share some random CDs that initially got me into yandere stuff with a wider audience :3
The original Japanese CDs were aimed solely at straight women. Making a fandub VN like this made it possible for me to not only open up the shenanigans to non-Japanese speakers but also allowed me to do things that aren’t possible with an audio CD, such as giving players a choice of pronouns or choosing the gender of the love interests they want to pursue :D
I did think about making an audio-only fandub, but in the end, I chose to go the VN route because I thought it would be more fun with some visuals + I kinda always envisioned the CD scenes in my head in a certain way, and I figured it would be amusing to try and pull those images from my mind and put em on a screen xD
Anyways, that was a long ramble, I’m sorry >.< I’m glad that you enjoyed the story and the art anyhow :3 Cheers again for checking it out!
I still think it should be labeled a novel and not a game if it reads like one.
At the very least make a warning for it on the page so the reader knows what they sign up for.
I've bumped into those novels that pretend to be games before, and it pisses me off every time.
Doubly so if I actually have paid for it --so I'm never buying visual novels that doesn't have choices right in the demo anymore.
Ideally choices with impact.
It's not worth it.
I think the problem could be sold if it was clearly marked that there is no choices in the game.
Or no choices that impact the game. And that there is only one ending.
(I'd say the same for puzzles and minigames inside a visual novel. Because it's so unexpected.
Some like them, some don't.)
That way people who like it can get it, and those who don't like it won't be disappointed and angry over it.
And I guess I must have missed that warning on your page somehow. lol
But at least if you had one, that's one me I guess.
Should have read it better.
And yeah... I've only tried to create a Choice of Game style game before, but I've found that the trick with it is to add a balanced amount of 'false choices' and real impactful choices, and then use a loop to stitch things up in a simple way.
Like... check out the game on itch... Perfect Love. (It's on list of games I like on my page.)
That game have relatively few branches, and reuse the majority of their scenes, but somehow manage to make the game feel very different at each play-trough, and have like 6 or 8 different endings.
All without a single false choice.
Done right you can cut down on the work while still giving the reader a feeling of a choice, and give them more ending options.
(Which is nice, because people root for different things to happen in the end. One person's happy ending isn't always the happy end of another person. Same with bad ends.)
But I'll admit I WAS pretty tired when I downloaded this game, so I probably skimped out on a lot of details.
And I see your reason for the lack of choices, even if I'm not a fan of the mentioned lack.
Try put warnings under a big "WARNING" sign.
People read this cuz some have phobias, some use the warning section to check how cool the game will be (blood, gore, sex and whatnot).
Although your game doesn't have much of that, but it does have a yandere. Which will attract more than it repels I think.
And I personally think that a lack of choices should be a warning.
And important info in bullet-points.
If you have a thing like that with the info of how many words, how many endings, puzzle or mini-games, and so on, it's more likely to get read.
People tend to skip to what looks like a easy summary.
It's nice to see a creator who's interesting in improving their game and game-page tho. ^_^
Even that would annoy others though because if they're expecting just a novel, they may be annoyed that it appears more like a game when it has visuals, a soundtrack, and voice acting >.<
I feel like it is about as clearly marked on the page as I could make it at this point though cos it's literally under the ‘Features’ section in a bullet point, which I'd like to hope a majority browsing the page would read :3 It looks like this:
Then again, it seems a significant number of people who have played don't even realise it's a fandub of a drama CD series, and that's practically the first thing on the page, so maybe there is just no hope of most people reading the notice >.<
I used to love the Choice of Games stuff :D And before that, I used to read the old Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own-adventure books :3
I know what you mean anyhow cos in most of my other games, I do tend to use that method of having some choices that are just there for fluff or a sprinkling of lore but don't have any real impact + other choices that either have an immediate impact on a story branch or a cumulative one that's only revealed later on in the story :D
I would check out Perfect Love, but honestly, my VN backlog is a mountain at this point T_T I have over 100 itch games I want to play but haven't managed to yet, haha. Many of which are yandere games x3 The problem is, gaming is awkward for me nowadays cos my setup isn't ideal, and I feel ridiculously guilty when I try to take a break from game dev to actually play games :(
But yeah, I do have bullet points under headers for both features and warnings on most of my game pages, the problem is, a lot of the time, people don't tend to read much of the page before playing >.<
I asked my brother at one point what he's like as a player and also his friends. He said he personally reads all the page details and follows different devs, but he said he's the exception in his friend circle x3 He said his friends tend to only look at YouTube playthroughs, screenshots, or trailers, then download or buy based on that without reading any of the description text at all.
He also said his friends don't follow devs. They get their recommendations purely from YouTubers, so even if they love a game by a certain dev, they have no idea if that dev has released other projects they might like because they don't play stuff unless it's recommended by the YouTubers they follow >.< That seems like insanity to me, but I guess it must be fairly normal if that's how all of his friends find their games!
PS. Apologies in advance for the incoming spam! I'm about to reply to all your comments at once x3
I know I'm weird, but I have trouble switching tasks, so when it comes to responding to comments or replying to things in general, I struggle to just reply to 1 thing, and then go back to another task. So instead, I give myself an entire day of the week dedicated to replying to things, haha. And when it comes to replying to your comments, I've kind of written a LOT >.<
So yeah, sorry about that x3
Please don't feel like you even have to read all of it if you don't want to, let alone respond to it, haha.
