itch.io

Hi there, thanks for the review and the kind words!

I'd like to try and visit the characters more deeply, and there are side stories to be told in the coming update (It'll be known as "Memories" and feature a deeper look into the backstory of each character). So keep an eye out!

Again, thank you for the kind words.

Take care! /G

Innocent until proven guilty

I'm sorry for not responding to this sooner, wanted to take my time to read it when I had a moment.

That said, thanks for the awesome review! I appreciate the insight and I'm happy you enjoy the story.

Take care!

/G

No firstborn required, but I'll consider it once the other routes are done. (Those are getting closer and closer to being done, btw).
It'd be fun with a Bruce route and a Geralt route.
Thanks for the feedback and appreciation! /G

You're welcome! I'm glad it helped.
/G

Hi there, and thanks for the kind words!
I don't think there's any easy way to learn it, other than try and look at existing code and learn from it. 
It's mostly experience and messing around with it for a long time. As a side note, Ren'py (fairly) recently did update their documentation to be more thorough - so if you haven't looked at it recently I'd recommend that!

I think the best advise I have to offer is "how to ask a programming question" - meaning don't ask about your exact problem if you're stuck, ask about what you're trying to achieve, your end goal. This goes for when you get stuck in whatever you're doing for yourself as well, there's likely another angle to achieve the same thing that might make more sense, especially so in Ren'py.

I'll see about uploading some more details about stuff I've done to DT the closer I get to releasing the game. Aside from that, if you get stuck and have any questions - feel free to DM me. Most easily reached through twitter or discord.
/Grunt

Happy to hear! Good luck with your project \o\

Hi,

You may not resell or host any version of the game behind a paywall - as long as you release it for free and don't change any of the credits you may translate it and host it somewhere for redownload.

/Grunt

It is! My goal is to have the entire Mike route out before summer is over. Hopefully I'll make it, if not, I'll just keep working.
/G

Thank you! I appreciate it. If you wish to help donate for more CG art in the game you can do so through ko-fi 
Although just the encouragement is enough, I read and appreciate every comment.

You're welcome! Very glad it helps \o/

Still a while out, life's been... life-y. Sorry.

You're welcome! Happy to help

/G

Still here, working ever so slowly. Life being life though.

I'm alive, I'm alive. Writing on it slowly but surely. Next update will likely be all of Mike's route (to the very end) and part of Charles' route.

I'm doing alright, just almost no time to work on hobby projects at the moment - can only squeeze in a few hours every weekend for now, which mostly goes to writing the rest of the game. Still working on this, sadly no update for now.
Thanks for checking in! /G

Rex's fate is uncertain and depends on a few things, you'll have to see!
As for Nick's intimate scene, it was cut for now. It'll be readded once the rest of the game is done, as I found it too time consuming to write two parallel games (with/without Nick there) and I'm slow enough as it is :')

In a way, yeah! But it's also something that the story touches on eventually x)

Thanks for the kind words! While updates may take a while, this keeps me motivated. 
/G

lol, true!

Thanks for the comments Naxo, I remember you being around from the very very start.

/G

No picture, and now I'm 10x as nervous

*jordan peele sweating gif*

Thank you for the kind words, and the motivation! I'll be doing my best!

Hi,

As it's almost completely a hobby project I've been unable to promise any update times for quite a while now. I do want to launch an update late July or early August though, barring nothing else happens with work etc.

/G

This is one to keep an eye on!

There's more Calbex :eyes

Can't wait!

Thanks for the encouraging words!
I will definitely be finishing Distant Travels, regardless of the time it takes. I'll also be doing my best to do it in a way that keeps me healthy and sane.

Comments like this make me happy and encourages me to keep going, so thank you!

to whomever it concerns please don't brigade me for this one, last time was enough lol

There's a lot to unpack on this one.

First of all, while I get the shitpost value Unagi has gone for, it's overdone and unpolished.



UI and accessibility

The UI has some huge scaling issues. In the main menu there's lines too close to text and the contrast level of the main menu makes it so people with lowered sight literally cannot see it: It's grey text on a grey background. I suggest looking up HTML Webpage contrast guides - they translate very well to VN and game UIs. This also goes for some of the nametags; Wilberto/Haris's nametag are both overlayed with white, this kills the contrast needed for easy reading.

Next up with the actual ingame UI, some parts suffer the same issue. Yellow text on white background, or black spinning text whenever an advanced text-tag is applied. This is fixable by reading the documentation of Wattson's text tags, and definitely within the authors skillset.

Following; The narrator text is underlined, which makes it very difficult to read for me. I read quite fast generally, but the underlining of entire sentences makes it difficult. I'd suggest changing the color of the textbox or so instead.

There are broken links in the about section of the game, throwing errors instead of actual sources. On a side note, for music files: If you're licensing something in a way where you cannot redistribute, you *need* to package em. A .rpa package is fine, but you cannot have the actual tracks available without any kind of obfuscation or pickling.

And to finish off my UI review; It's too large. Some names cover half the screen, and the textbox is more than a third of the screen with white-ish transparency which makes it very brutalist in style - it's hard to take your eyes off it to see the actual game visuals.



Art and in-game visuals

First of all, aside from the pre-made sprites for the Jam, the one added sprite and the CGs are quite good. There are however some issues (most likely due to coding, but art issues in the end nontheless). Mainly with the main character's (Preston) eyes: they overlap whenever he has a shirt on in most expressions.

The transitions are kind of cool, and the twaining visuals are clear.
That said, it'd be interesting to see what it looked like with a clear direction for transitions: A theme. This swaps scenes, this affects characters and so on. Progression, if you will.
It's clear Unagi has had a lot of fun making them, so spend more time polishing the presentation, not just the transitions next time and you'll hit higher!

Story

Right. We're thrown in without a lot of explanation, and there's pronouns to keep track of in a way that's not just character based, but lore based: as well as the entire concept of twaining and what benefits it might give. To put it bluntly: Thrown in to learn it as we go with hints can work, but not when there's this many things to keep track of. It just makes it difficult to follow, paired with the underlined narrator text I had to spend more time trying to understand what the text was, than what it meant. 

What I did appreciate however was the puns. Pro-twain (protein) and citrusy (spelled citrussy pls!) was funny af.

Also, a very arguable note: Being 29 does not make someone a daddy.

Coding
Just took a quick look since your files are unobfuscated, you might want to look into repeat and advanced ATL blocks. I also feel like a screen could have done the transition texts (timeskips etc) more justice than the nvl mode.


All in all, it'd be interesting to see what Unagi could do if he actually tried avoiding the shitpost status and took reference from successful things. He's clearly quite innovative, but it seems to more often than not channel in a downwards direction and then spiral on itself.
All in all, it's a little disappointing because it shoots itself in the foot by going too far in so many ways; Base ideas can be good, but if you don't polish your base enough and mix too many things together it's like mixing too many colors: it just becomes a grey goo.
The thing that stuck out, and could have carried this was the twaining concept - it's a cool one, and Preston's struggles can easily be tied to how many people feel in their lives; and that's not even mentioning being gay. It's all a little undeveloped though; Add more story *details*.

2/5 total.

Thank you! I appreciate it.

That's one of the nicest things someone's ever said about my work!
I don't think I'll open one unless I can guarantee at least bi-monthly updates though.

There has been some of them giving their input, but no discussion out right in the current build.

Max won't have any NSFW Scenes. I've been toying with more personal scenes and make Max a non-romantic route, but if so that's once the rest of the game is finished.

/G

I'll keep that in mind ;)

Hi! It's a lot of art, and there's been a few different artists working with me on the project (Including art I've done myself) over the progress.
Recently Drakes offered to do all the character sprites to keep them consistent, but a rehaul of the backgrounds and CGs would simply be too much work for me to afford. 
Apart from me wanting to keep the CGs different artists have made for the game, I like the charm and it kind of makes me happy to have art from different friends in my game!

/G

Sadly not. I've focused a lot on my health instead of pushing updates etc. I do a lot of background work and thinking I might change directions and release pretty much the full game or so next time instead.

Only thing I can promise is that I'm still working on it!

/G

I'll see about adding a font toggle

I'll create a separate 32 bit download for the next update. The reason I haven't for now is that it often seems to flag a false positive with ren'py

Hi,
If you wish to publish anything then that's a different story, but since it's for personal use go ahead!

They're a bit taller than your average human, but the human's shown on screen are also generally not tall for humans.
John is up there at 7ft, and he's probably the tallest.

Looking into this further it appears I'd flipped the decider for high/low gfx, which in turn loaded a transparent video on LowGFX mode for this scene; this can cause issues if with flashing white lights, especially on phones (which is where the possible flashing lights disclaimer comes from).

I've edited the transparent video for the next update to not ever flash completely white, but rather flash the stars. No way around the flashing, but hoping this will be less impactful. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I really appreciate it!