So, I finally had time to play the game. There are quite a few things I like about it the setup, the music, the funny names (Ribeyrolles! – really?! :), the way information is not only presented, but also summarized in the story.
I have, however, a few ideas how to improve the game:
Story:
- At the start, it was unclear to me who I am. Much later I also noticed that there is background information to all characters in the menu. I did not inspect that to be relevant.
- The story is sometimes a bit lengthy. At the beginning, A gets B then C to get D to finally open the door... That's confusing and strange. There are other places where shortening would be easy. (Why first discuss on the corridor that you want to discuss in the music room, e.g.? Let them meet there immediately!)
- The story also jumps sometimes in weird directions. It's particularly hard to follow at the beginning. It's not clear to me why the protagonist is called to the room by Dr. Adenauer or why Emilia's suspicion towards Dr. Adenauer is not taken up by anybody else, but instead suddenly ignored. Also, the nurses are suspicious (the twin sisters only give each other alibis) which is completely ignored, although plain obvious.
- I think some aspects, like the differences between nobility and "ordinary people" are not quite fitting to the time. There should be way more distance or at least the lack thereof should be a big thing in the story.
- The professor is a bit unrealistic. More like people who have no idea about professors think professors are like... (So in other words it' not worse than 99% of media professors.) It would help if at least it's clearly stated that he is a professor of philosophy/sociology/whatever, but not a mixture that seem to do everything from math to history. Even around 1900 nobody outside novels was like that anymore. Also, why does he have "students" at the sanatorium? He's sick and not teaching. If need to, call him a "mentor". Being a "student" is quite a formal thing (lectures at university etc.).
- There's way too little player interaction. Interaction does not have to lead to completely different branches, it can just add some flavor here and there. Let the protagonist reply something and give alternatives there. Both can essentially, after a few sentences, go back to the main route, but it gives the player the feeling to be connected with the person and the story. The first interaction is after one hour or so. That's way too late!
- Don't force the player to do things, he doesn't want to do! I would have voted either for Dr. Adenauer or abstained. – And why are the votes not anonymous, by the way?
- ??? for a name should be avoided. It's not necessary here where you know the persons anyway. I know you want to keep the tension a bit who says or does what, but that's not worth breaking the atmosphere with the player reading "???" and being reminded that it's a VN. ;)
Graphics:
- It took me a long time to get the logo (skull with sand clock). Good idea, but basically too hard to recognize, I'm afraid. (At least for me.)
- I personally would prefer a better fitting font for the text. Something that looks older, like Times (with serifs if you know what I mean).
- The bg style is consistent and OK, but avoid showing close-ups and then present a person in front of it. That looks weird.
- The sprite style is also consistent and OK, but not great.
- Both styles clash quite a bit, so I'm not sure whether I like this: the bg is dark and gloomy while the sprites are in a cute and cheerful style. I like anime style, so I would rather change the bg, but the bg is probably what is fitting better ti the rather gloomy story.
- The map should look hand-written, as it was indeed hand-made...
- When a person talks, there's this nice bouncy effect, but then the lower boundary of the sprite shows...
Sound:
- Nice music, but overused: there are long passages with the same song repeating. It's totally fine in such a slow paced VN with lots of thinking to pause the music for a while and turn it back on for the emotional or suspenseful scenes. (I turned it completely off eventually, and I'm in general quite tolerant to background music.)
Sorry, for so much criticism. I'm sure you planned to improve many of these things anyway, but thought I'd share them with you anyway!
Good luck with your game! :)
