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congratulations, my friend. it is a banger. there are many visual novels this jam  but this one is by far the meatiest. you coulda told me any of those chapters were an entire entry and i would believe you and still rate them well

and first lemme just say: silent protagonists in video games? very overdone. in fact kind of annoying by this point unless there is a very good in-story reason. but in a visual novel? stupid bold. thats a crazy thing to manage when you are doing much more conversing than jrpging or shooting. respect

the art is consistently very clean throughout and i absolutely appreciate even the slightest changes to the default ren'py aesthetics and the font you chose is very nice

speaking of aesthetics one thing you have probably heard about is the choice of real photos for backgrounds. and you know what: i totally get it (had to do the same thing)

i ended up putting some filters on mine before slapping them in and making some tweaks so first when i saw em here i was like "lame" but upon further consideration? ya know? kinda interesting

normally settings in gensokyo are idyllic or mystical or have some really heavy theme or something as goes anime-lookin environments but the very grounded aesthetics make gensokyo seem like a real place you could go to and then get arrested for trespassing. would not have fit my game but with what you are doing here (wandering around and talking to people) it is not even a problem at all and kinda cool

i got aya good ending. haven't gone for the others at the moment but i may very well do so later

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Aeon, thank you so much for the wonderful feedback! It's incredibly validating to read what you've had to say about this project. (Especially as I really enjoyed your Pride Jam 4 project and what it did so much.)

I am personally delighted that the art direction really made an impression on you. The BGs were a product of necessity, but when I was researching them, I put a lot of care into it. (Fun fact: all the Misty Lake locations are of one state park in Michigan, since the Scarlet Devil Mansion is "western" in origin and we wanted to make sure the area surrounding the lake reflected that feeling.)

I'm happy you reached the Aya good ending, and I hope you're able to experience all of the endings whenever you are ready to return to the game.