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That was really neat! I think you painted an interesting example of a totally alternate world that still had some cool connections to the original, and the purple statements were quite well synthesized. My friend was able to figure it out on their second try with the help of the system. Sadly, I didn't quite get it and had to end up cheating by reading through the script file eventually, I enjoyed looking through the data though and the eventual solution was fairly ingenious (and very traditional). The minigame was particularly amusing, even if it ended up being what I had to just use a hint for.

I had an alternate theory for the second scenario that I thought made sense, and then ended up with a set up for the third scenario based on the purples, but overall there was just no way to get it to work with the first case without some serious contrivance or wordplay. I'm a bit sad I wasn't able to solve it myself, but I did fill up a good ten or twenty pages with notes and spend a few hours staring at it, so I definitely gave it the good college try. It's the sort of one where even though I'm sad I like how the actual result ends up and I at least guessed at a few parts of it myself. Good job, excellent game board. I might drop my theories on your twitter release post.

I also found it really funny to run into the "goddammit battler" option in the code while I was trawling through it, it was actually really close to a theory I myself had at some point but ran into flaws while trying to execute because I hadn't thought about the potential for jams. Of course, any such theory would probably fall apart in the second case I think, but it was worth a try.

I thought the frame plot was maybe a bit melodramatic, but at the same time, it was quite novel and interesting.  And I mean, this is Umineko we're talking about, we all read Ep 4, melodrama is the name of the game amirite? The stuff in the hints was really cool and a fun little conversation with the author, and the final ending was pretty intriguing. Do not, my friends, become addicted to sugar.

I noticed a few examples of what I'm pretty sure are typos, if you'd like I could send you their specific locations so you can fix them up at your leisure. I'm sure that being a 1.0 version they're quick and dirty stuff you'll get rid of yourself soon enough, but I thought I'd offer nonetheless.

The visual effects were quite good, and I enjoyed a lot of the Ren'py work done to make it function. I've been working on my own Umineko fanwork in Ren'py lately (just a fantasy one because I've always been kinda middling at mysteries, mind you), and it was really cool seeing everything you did. The tiny frame was a really interesting visual choice, I'm a bit curious about why you went with it. It looks great with the bigger effects! As a fellow Umi fan writer, I'm happy to see Yomotsu Hirasaka and Prison STRIP getting more appearances, I hope to use them myself as well.

Overall, quite an awesome little story, it must have taken a lot of effort. Thanks for sharing it!

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Thanks for playing, glad to see you liked it!

The "goddammit Battler" option was implemented two hours before release since my girlfriend suggested is as a theory that I hadn't considered. ^^"

The choice of visuals was ultimately arbitrary on my end. I wanted to visually communicate a different feel of the story from the get-go. My original plan was to have a UI similar to the MGS codec layout, with a rectangle containing the background being in the middle of the screen and character portraits being on the side, but I ultimately decided it against it since it didn't seem that aesthetically great. The final result kind of invokes those old adventure game/visual novel vibes which I think work well in the long run.

It was admittedly also an efficient way of cutting corners. The portrait and background art I had at my disposal wouldn't have managed to fill up the 1280x720 screen, and I wasn't in the mood to go digging and downloading massive files of several GB size. They perfectly fit the little window, though!