itch.io

"the game is much less focused on crafting after the first chapter ..."

That's good to know. Again -- I like the game very much, otherwise I wouldn't care and simply move on.

I think the story can't develop properly when every tiny piece of dialogue is followed by 45 minutes of collecting and crafting (and yes, I visited every location each day in order to find characters to whom I could talk).

At the end of chapter 1, I'm surrounded by a dozen notepads, all of them covered with my tiny handwriting, just to be able to do the crafing. It's exhausing. I'd love to replay to explore Britt's feminine side, but the sheer thought of doing all that collecting and crafting again is enough to refrain from it.

About the bug I mentioned -- I remember at least one of them in detail:

For the birthday, I bought the cake first, but hadn't enough money for the bike, so I waited to earn enough to be able to buy the jam and the bike. When I saved enough for the 2 items, the cake had disappeared from my inventory and as far as I know, there's no crafting recipy that needs cake.

Honestly, I really loved the game in the beginning, but the extreme grind becomes rather annoying, especially when it becomes complicated and confusing due to heavy backtracking.

But even worse is that often resources simply disappear, the ones that you craft and also the ones that you buy.

I love crafting, but when it becomes grindy and buggy, it is a real turn-off.

The characters, story, world-building -- everything is great, thus makes it even sadder.

Nothing lasts forever. And just like that, I finished your game today after playing it for almost one and a half months, almost on a daily basis.

I don’t know where to start. Maybe with this: Thank you so much.

The life of your protagonist have become part of my life over time. It was comforting to spend time with them, laugh, cry, smile and grow with them.

To learn from them.

I deeply hope many young people play your game and get the chance to avoid the mistakes that I’ve made during my life. Mistakes, that I wouldn’t have made had I played your game at a young age. I’m over 50 years old. I know there are things in life that each of us regrets and yes, we grow and learn by making mistakes, but human beings can also learn from others, heck, otherwise we wouldn’t need any kind of education.

What I want to say is, that during the story, I often wished I could go back in time with this knowledge and act and react differently in certain situations in my life.

Who is to say if it’d make my life better – or worse – but that’s not even the point. There are at least a handful of decisions that you made and you later regret. It doesn’t mean that they were objectively wrong or right and there’s no way to ever know it. But it doesn’t matter. You regret them, that matters. You regret them, because making them was unnecessary. With a little bit more knowledge from people with more experience or wiser or older people, you might have done things differently. If not for your own benefit, than at least for the one of the people around you, especially the most important ones – friends.

It took me 29 years to stop living in fear, to stop living a lie. And so much longer to catch up. Your game would’ve given me strength and with that strength I wouldn’t have wasted so much time.

That’s why I hope your game will help others not to do the same.

Thank you for allowing me to dive into the world that you’ve created and to teach me something new along the way. You’re never to old to learn new stuff.

On a lighter note, each night when I played the game, I listened to the score of ‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button’ by Alexandre Desplat. For me, the music is from now on and forever entangled with the story of Zack and Braden and not with the movie anymore.

And one of the tracks is even named ‘Nothing lasts’.

Wow, I just gave it a try and boy, is it great 🤩 Thank you once again.

Thank you very much for the answer and the quick reply.

Could you also tell me which 'text to speech' software or service you used? The voices are really good and spot on.

I'm happy to see that you and the patrons like my figures so much.

Believe it or not, but I've had the same idea as Ezekiel in the patreon comments -- I'd love to create a LEGO dream sequence for the game. That's why I left you my email address on DeviantArt so we could talk about such a possibility and show you other designs.

I think it would be a lot of fun. Please drop me a line if you're interested.

Hi Ranli,

here's a new WIP rendering. I found a better hair pice for the MC, gave him a new face (that fits the situation), worked on the torso front and back and added the sides, made a face for Sam and added him to the scene.

There's still a lot of work left. As you can see, there's a skin colour difference between Sam's hips and torso. But I'm far from being finished and it's a lot of fun to create this LEGO versions.

I also have some nice first ideas for Ayewn already.

Btw, I've sent you a message on DeviantArt. If you have time, it would be nice to have a look at it.

Cheers, Xenomurphy

Haha, glad you enjoyed it. Feel free to post it wherever you like, and if you want to mention me, you can do it with my usual nickname Xenomurphy.

I'll put some more work into his suit and his hair and when that's done, I'll make some more minifigs (starting with Sam) and maybe build some of the backgrounds out of LEGO.

Such a cool game.

This is the best visual novel I've played in ages. The characters are fantasic, the humor is great and the story is captivating. The MC is so lovable, I had to make a  LEGO minifigure version of him (needs some work, it's only the first design).
More to come.