itch.io

Spoilers ahead, for those of you reading comments before playing.

I like how you set up the nonlinear storytelling. There’s a feeling of “you can only experience so much before things are over and you can’t go back” that works with the dead sister story, though I think you could’ve leaned into it harder. From what I saw on the two playthroughs during the stream, the story was smooth no matter how you ordered the objects, and you have the relationship that continues to build between the characters as you pick up more things, giving some sense of movement towards a destination.

Toby’s obliviousness concerning his friends is a funny joke, but it overstays its welcome, especially when you go back to read more than three item stories. It comes up every time you pick up something (I think? It’s been some time.), but it doesn’t have the depth to sustain that level of attention like Bart’s story does. The framing of Toby bumping into Bart so he can have an audience for his stories isn’t as well-developed as what Bart has to say about the items and his sister. It’s a romantic fantasy to meet-cute with a bear and then go on a date and have him pick you up and be embarrassed about his condoms, but that plot and the dead sister plot are so unrelated that Toby’s presence is something of a distraction. Would it be a more focused story if Bart just tripped on a rock or something and had to pick up his things while monologuing to himself in his head/to his sister/directly to the reader about what these things mean to him? Hypothetically, I guess. The art does a lot to show Bart and Toby together, and Bart does gain something from having someone listen to all his stories, but I think the story as a standalone could stand to do with either much more or much less of Toby.

The game page says it’s a demo, but I’m a little lost on what would come after. Bart continues to pick items, but it’s at his sister’s funeral? Toby’s and Bart’s relationship gets more focus?

Also the graphic on the game page is pretty, but with the text and the background opacity as they are currently, it’s a little hard to read the description and comments.

You make a very good first impression with the title screen. The music matches the vibe of the graphics, and the animated red string is a nice touch. Reminds me of Adastra with the shading and the city in the distance on the water.

The double outline on the names and narration makes it harder to read. A light text colour with a black outline should be readable over dark, medium, or light backgrounds, so the additional light outline isn’t needed. At the beginning with the narrator telling the story over the CGs, I think it’s fine to have the text in the centre, since it’s a different narrator in a different style, but outside of the opening, it being centred with no background like that doesn’t accomplish enough to take the hit in readability. I will also second the notion that not having periods (or other sentence-ending punctuation) at the ends of your sentences makes it harder to read. Some of the sentences do continue into the next text box, and I don’t know if a sentence is finished or not until I click through.

I like your animations with Nadir’s hand with the phone coming up and fading in at the same time, and the TV turning on and off. It’s a good sound effect for the TV turning on. And you have custom text boxes that change colours with the speaker. They’re little things, but they set your entry apart.

Roberto’s expressions are adorable and I very much want him to approach me in a dark alleyway alone or with friends. You have a finger on the pulse of what the readers want with him taking off his hoodie to keep nadir warm (exposing his tummy and tight tank top), and his putting his contact information in Nadir’s phone at the end is a sweet callback. His name is kind of hard to read in the name box, though, with it being so dark and then having a dark outline and a very soft light outline.

The opening narration, other than its first line, seems pretty omniscient. Combined with the game description and premise to the game setting up the “red string means fated lovers” part, I’m really ready to buy that this is what happens in this fictional world.

So when Nadir is confused by his second red flash, I’m confused at his confusion. If this is the first instance of a second red flash, he’s just made history, but the story doesn’t really treat it this way. If this has happened before, then why doesn’t Nadir know that? He’s a twenty-four-year-old who lives in a city and has access to internet and television, on top of him being really motivated to believe that you can have a second red flash. His friends and sister would also tell him about this kind of thing being able to happen if they knew about it.

The second moment of doubt to the red flash narrative comes when Roberto tells Nadir that he doesn’t believe the flash means soulmate. Nadir treats Roberto as if he’s the first person he’s met who doesn’t believe in the red flash meaning soulmate, and I have trouble buying that this is the first time he’s meeting someone like this. Like I said before, Nadir doesn’t sound like he’s lived a particularly sheltered life.

I wasn’t satisfied with the ending. Or maybe it was how you got to the ending, or that I wanted more in the middle before the two are this happy together.

Sure, I want Nadir to get together with Roberto because Roberto is hot and deserves a boyfriend and a hot cup of coffee at the end of this romance story, but his initial prickliness and years and years of contempt for the red flash get undone really fast. Their relationship moving to be such a smooth ride at the cafe at the end doesn’t match the lingering questions that they have about each other, themselves, and the world. Nadir admits that his decision to save Roberto with the police officer was a selfish one, which I like, but that idea doesn’t get much exploration afterwards, and it feels like both of them aren’t on the same page of if the red flash is real or not. They don’t have to be, but the ending doesn’t linger on it as much I think it should. There’s mention of a rocky start, but we (the audience) don’t see the rockiness, and I’m not sure what that would look like since Roberto is pretty psyched about the date before the scene changes.

I don’t get the feeling that Nadir loved his fiancee. He says “We got along”, and then the next textbox is about how he was physically separated from her when he moved to the city and she didn’t. His heart is pounding as he recollects the story of how he and his dead fiancee got together, so the narration should reflect that emotional intensity, but he remains really detached. We get some emotion from him as he’s being robbed and when he’s restless in jail, but I’d like to see more, even if he’s depressed and his emotions are pretty flat.

I appreciate that you wove in the idea of chance in places that weren’t just romance: the cop happening to be around the corner, the woman happening to be filming, and the video happening to go viral. It’s a world where both of the characters feel tossed around by fate in a bad way, but ultimately make the decision to be happy with each other. Even if Nadir is being selfish in pursuing Roberto, it’s a big step for someone who’s lost their fiancee to start dating again.

It’s hard to pull off having a character whose dialogue is entirely composed of kaomoji, but you really got it to work here. Bake’s animations are cute, as well as its actions described in the text (I liked the part where it ate all the garbage and then spit it up on command). The horror of its appearance sets it apart from other cute mascot characters and helps keep me from experiencing cuteness overload.

I like the idea of Carlos’s behaviour towards Johnny pre-breakup mirroring Bake’s behaviour towards Carlos post-breakup.

I was left with some confusion about the tone of the ending. Carlos does acknowledge that Bake is annoying like Carlos is himself (and Carlos communicates more that he is annoyed than Johnny did), but it’s saddening to see Carlos go back to curling up on the couch being down about himself. Sure, Bake is there with him now, but hanging out with the loneliness spirit that vaguely resembles your ex-boyfriend doesn’t sound like a good thing to be doing long-term. It’s a mixed bag between a sad ending (Carlos is just as depressed after speaking with Johnny and learning why he’s been dumped) and a happy one (he has a friend now and experiences some insight into why his relationship didn’t work out), but those two elements aren’t working together for me as well as they could.

It’s an interesting setting and opening you have here. New Oldport and Tuesday and time not flowing as it usually does. I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but there’s a consistency to its logic. (Have you read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled? I’m reminded of that. Particularly in the way that Sam (Jet? the boar) is a polite guide-butler. I like that he has a distinct way of speaking.) The backgrounds are also good at evoking a dreamy, surreal feeling.

There’s something familiar in the dinner conversations with Sam and Phil. 5G and vaccine conspiracy theories and talk of leaving reviews. It’s grounding in a place that’s so foreign. I like how they flirt, leaving these subtle invitations for Brady. And the line with Phil about tenderly tearing a piece of meat off as he eats. It’s an interesting turn of phrase. And it’s interesting how Sam is ostensibly the guest, but is offering help with the ice machine as if he was the worker and not Brady. These are details that make me want to keep reading.

Unfortunately, I could not keep reading, and I think it’s due to bugs rather than the game not having been written past that point, since the game was hanging on Phil’s “All one of them” or Brady’s “I do” in the post-dinner conversation with Jeremy. I enjoyed what I saw, though.

I appreciate the insight into your development process. (I was also scrambling at the last minute.) I’m new to the whole visual-novel-making process and it helps me to see how others do things. Like with thinking about it as prose vs screenplay, I would think that it’s more screenplay, but a good amount of prose does end up in the finished product, but then there’s that whole thing where reading the script is an incredibly different experience than playing the game, so you can’t look at the script as if it’s just prose. And the difficulty of making character expressions when the script isn’t finished yet (though I wasn’t making my own sprites, I did want to have the script finished before I started anything else, but then I took way too long with the script where maybe I should’ve started programming earlier).

Congratulations on getting as much done as you did.