Post by Furutsu in Kill or Love comments

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SPOILERS FOR ONE OF THE ENDINGS

Heya Andy,

First and foremost i'd like to preface this by saying that this was my first VN. I don't really have much experience in this field and the only reason i downloaded it was because the runtime wasn't very long, i made this account just to make a comment here expressing my thoughts.

But man, did this grip me. From the first time i read "Im going to kill someone, probably." to doing all 4 of the endings, i couldn't stop reading. The consistent good writing and the unique spin on the ~~frankly boring~~ Yandere archetype was very, very refreshing. It made me very tense at moments, with a title like "Kill or Love" i expected the homeboy Jack to get killed at every turn, fearing he fucked up in some way.

Piecing together Grace her past was an interesting endeavor too, i feel like people can have multiple ways of perceiving it, it's cleverly done.

Visually, the game looked great. I'd like to give a shoutout to the artist who drew all the sprites. I know most of the backgrounds are just pictures with a Photoshop filter over them (i think, please correct me if im wrong..) but they fit in well regardless.

Though, my biggest gripe are the endings. Which would you considering the canon one? Is there a canon one at all? I personally felt no satisfaction with any of them, save for the Anna route. Though i do feel all the endings make sense in the context of how the player perceives the characters, and what they ultimately decide is right in this situation after being with Jack, and what Jack would do after remembering what his past was.

How did you come up with the ending where Jack kills the girls, then commits suicide? As i mentioned, it's not unrealistic for the character. I can see why he would do it, but i'm just curious as to how you came up with it.

Overall, i'd definitely give this a glowing approval, not that it means much from some random dude, but i don't think ill be forgetting Kill or Love anytime soon and definitely will be exploring more VNs in the future now that i've seen what the medium can really accomplish.

I'm greatly looking forward to your next VN, don't stop writing, you have real talent!

Andy Church5 years ago (1 edit)

SPOILERS FOR TWO OF THE ENDINGS

Thank you very much. There are many great VNs out there for you to try next, but I should say that, in my opinion, they're generally paced more slowly than Kill or Love. This is not to say that they are better or worse for that, but it's something to keep in mind. For example, Umineko, probably my favorite visual novel (or series of visual novels, I guess), is 80 hours long. Good luck getting through that in one sitting.

Each ending is as valid as you want it to be. There is no canon. As for that one ending, it came to me so effortlessly I can't properly tell you how it happened. Everything about it felt inevitable, after those two choices. The opposite ending, the one where everyone lives, was much harder for me to write. It was difficult to not make it cheesy or forced, especially with the little time I had (I didn't want it to drag on). It is so tonally different from the other endings, and from the rest of the story, too, but I think I handled it decently. Jury's still out on whether I made it cheesy or not, though.

Furutsu5 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hey man, thanks for the reply.

First and foremost, i'll definitely give Umineko a shot. Second of all, i can sort of understand what you mean. Jack, a man who feels deep guilt for murdering 2 innocents, just stabbed 2 more people. As a way to sort of pay for his crimes, he decides to commit suicide instead of living with the burden of the crushing guilt that he must've felt at that point.

It's for sure an interesting wrap-up, and despite how i said i felt no satisfaction with 3 out of 4 of the endings, i feel like you went about it in a very smart way.

Have a good one!

ps, the ending was cheesy as hell

itch.io

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