I just finished reading Highway Blossoms on normal mode, and I just wanted to thank you for creating such an enjoyable experience. This is probably my new favorite visual novel of all time...? I tend to overrate things I've just played and I don't usually pay for visual novels so maybe that had something to do with it but... man was that an amazing 6 hours or so.
It's a pretty simple story when you get down to it, Amber and Marina's dynamic is pretty by-the-numbers, but it's just done so well that I don't care. In fact, I think it'd be much worse off with a bunch of dialogue options and alternate routes (in the main story anyway, can't wait to try out Goofball mode). It does what it needs to and then it ends. And yet despite that, it's still wholly unique; a road trip romance story about searching for buried treasure in the American southwest isn't something I knew I wanted, but I have it now and I'm all the more grateful for it. Any piece of media that has me audibly emoting and commentating over it is doing something right (I lost track of the number of times I went "aww!" or "that's adorable"). Totally gonna play "Next Exit" when that comes out.
I have a few gripes though.
As great as the voice acting is (seriously, I'm going to have trouble adjusting to visual novels that don't have this feature) sometimes I'd accidentally cut off the voices by clicking too fast, and I couldn't configure the auto mode to a point where it scrolled at a comfortable speed. I also feel like there just needs to be a few more clips in there. It feels weird to go from hearing an actor do a great job at selling that a character is drunk or whatever, only to go to dead silence when it describes them muttering under their breath. I also felt disappointed by some of the action scenes. They were good, don't get me wrong, it's just that whenever things got intense, I imagined what it would look like as an animated film or miniseries. And then I'd remember that doesn't exist (yet), and I'd let out a disappointed sigh.
But that's it! Other than those two minor complaints I loved it. The music's great, the writing is great and so is the art. More please!