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ECA Games rated The Kid at the Back (DEMO)

ECA Games rated a game 2 years ago
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.

This game has potential, but it needs a lot of polishing. Primarily, the creator may want to tap an actual writer for help. I began wondering if the game was translated from a different language, but I think the creator must just be very young and not particularly practiced at storytelling or professional writing. In addition to the many, many grammatical typos, the tense constantly shifts between present and past, and occasionally from first person to third. 

Additionally, what kind of setting they were going for it unclear. It reads like it has been dreamed up by an American junior high or high school student who has read too many manga or played too many Japanese video games (i.e. the Persona series. Seriously? Off-limits rooftops?) and has no idea how higher education actually works. The talk of student council and class reps, not to mention the class structure, is clearly stolen from the Japanese education system, however, the characters are apparently in their early to mid-twenties. They would be on the old side for traditional college students, let alone high school students. The character concepts make it seem like they must be at a community college, but there isn't a set schedule with a specified lunchtime that you share with your entire classroom in college. Not even in Japan, with the possible exception of a tanki-daigaku.

The entire conversation in art class on day one makes little sense. It reads like the characters are talking past one another, rather than having a coherent conversation. And, once again, the tense is continually shifting. A sentence will begin in past tense, shift into present tense, and sometimes make it back to past tense before it ends. I can't tell if the writer simply doesn't know how to write coherently or if English is their second language.

As far as good points, the art is nice overall and shows that some real effort was put into the sprites, and the concept seems interesting. You get very little feel for the overall story in the demo, given how brief it is, but it definitely has potential. If the creators can tighten up their writing and form a clearer picture of what setting they intend to use, The Kid at the Back could end up being a very interesting and engaging game. Just one last question: if Sol is 23, is he really the 'kid' at the back? Perhaps it just sounded better than That Dude in the Back or The Quiet Guy in the Back. Because, yeah, he's sitting 'in' the back of the class, not 'at' the back of the class.