super polished with a heartwrenching story! really great voice-acting and camera work, too!

Oh my STARS this one hits all my soft spots: I adore stories that feature well-intentioned scientific geniuses who end up lost in the sauce, and later attempt to course-correct when their ideas escape their intended scope (gotta love the hot-house flowers that bloom, and then are horrified to find themselves an invasive species!); and as the parent of a child who best thrives when her unique needs are recognized and met, Pavel's storyline absolutely shattered me. The art is simple but stunning, and the cinematography hits the sweet spot for me in terms of adding to the story with life and motion, without subtracting by being unnecessarily distracting and moving for movement's sake alone: there is never any question whose viewpoint the camera represents, nor does it ever seem to shift unnecessarily or to the detriment of the story itself. An extraordinary achievement, particularly given the constraints of the jam--brilliant, brilliant work!

Incredibly well polished with very cohesive art direction and camera positioning. Absolutely haunting read. I am struggling to put all the things i feel into words, but know that it was Super Effective on me. Kudos to the entire team, that was incredibly harrowing and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Hey yo, wtf. Way to make a great horror entry! None of the other games I've played so far have gotten to me in the way that this one did. It was incredibly well polished, and painful to play. Good work, but also how dare you do that to such a sweet boy. 

I am like. So miserable right now lol <-- (I promise this is a compliment)

I work with children on a daily basis, so this story was pretty much engineered to hit me where it hurts... seeing the conditions that the kids endured, the way they were treated by all of STOP's employees, and watching Pavel's horrific transformation from a bright kid to a person broken by all the trauma piled onto him... uh, I am gonna have to try extra hard to be normal when I go to work in an hour LMAOOOOO. In particular, Dr. Deidre's earlier case study critiquing the rigorous schooling and Dr. Tan's comment about "throwing them snacks just to see if they run harder" mirror some of my real-life experiences (in education, not in a child testing lab, thank god) and sort of got my blood boiling haha.

I liked the art a lot - all of it is very cohesive, not to mention extremely well-presented. The combination of speech bubbles, NVL-style text, textboxes, and records combined with the panning backgrounds and the very dynamic sprites made this such a fun and beautiful game to watch. 

Overall, I'm so so impressed with how polished this game is for something that was made for a 30-day jam; it speaks volumes of both your prior experience and your clear vision for what you wanted this game to be. There are so many other myriad Thoughts (not to mention vague Feelings that haven't yet become Thoughts) that I want to communicate about what an experience this game was, but I fear that if I tried to get them all down this comment would end up very disjointed and rambly, haha.

Thanks very much for sharing this game, and I'll definitely be checking out malViolence after I've finished with this year's Spooktober entries!

(also I will be reposting this comment on the game page for algorithm reasons)

Absolutely outstanding visuals and haunting story. The speech bubbles make it feel like watching animated series while the various phones chats, logs and diaries add some interesting variety and depth to the story. The cinematography is absolutely amazing! Like seriously, that camerawork must have taken ages to do!

The partial VA really drives the emotions home. I grew really attached to Pavel throughout the story, the characters were amazing with very memorable designs. That whole team did an amazing job!

Thank you for making this game!

MalViolence Was a good puzzle visual novel, with a wonderful story. This ties in so beautifully, and its all so heart clenching, Highly recommend you play and experience them both! Developer has a good brain to come up with this stuff
SPOILS:

(I also desperately want a game to play as a villain, the closest i can get is the agent taking over for dr. danger. And i will gladly take it.)

I-I... I don't have words.... As someone who plays Malviolence. I thought i will handle it but... the music, color, voice acting is so goood!!! And its makes me feel so bad.

 wishing a french version of this game and malviolence for my friends. And i really like your work please keep doing what you like. 

(i will not lie i really hope a 3rd game👀)

This game was so, so good; I wish I was a little more eloquent so I could better sing its praises! I loved the creativity in the UI--the computer/diary setup felt very clever and impressive! The setting was portrayed in such a deliciously ominous way throughout the game, with the looming black structure that takes up most of the screen in parts really adding to the sense of dread. The character design was sweet and charming, and everyone felt very fleshed out for something that is (relatively) pretty short! Pavel really is a cutie pie, and watching the events unfold definitely pulled at my heartstrings...  he deserved so much better ;-;

One thing stood out to me above all, and that was the color design. The artists did an excellent job with the palette. For the most part, the colors present as bright, clean, cool tones that really enhance the coldness and sterility of the setting. And then, the warm, fiery red and orange tones that color the darker scenes, leading into the climax as Deidre's plan comes to fruition... ugh, so good. Really well done overall, and I'm impressed at the quality for a month of work. Kudos to everyone!

Is it bad that I wish this were even grimmer than it is? x3 I'm terrible, sorry T_T Feed me moooore despaaaair x3 Honestly though, I do love my horror on the dark side, and I think this is probably the darkest one I've played so far from the jam in terms of the narrative, so thank you for that ^-^ Wonderfully heartwrenching and bittersweet! 

I've been saying this a lot this spooktober (because there are so many incredible games!), so I can only apologise if I sound like a broken record at this point, but this is unbelievably slick and stylish! Probably one of the most stylish ones I've played so far in fact :3 The art & cinematography are beyond gorgeous, especially in some of those scenes towards the end! Just *chef's kiss* :D

I really love the way the whole thing is presented with different UIs and ways of printing the text onto the screen. It means there's always something cool to look at and your eyes are getting a treat the entire way through, haha.

The voice acting was fantastic as well, and as much as I adore and have a preference for full voice acting in stuff, there's no denying that the use of partial VA here absolutely meant that it packed more of a punch at the perfect moments :3

Overall, a fabulous triumph of a VN ^-^ I shall have to check out malViolence someday!!

Beware!!! Slightly spoilery side comments below:



*High five* for having Pavel as a name cos I have a couple of relatives also named that x3

*Double high five* for both of us having dramatic hospital bed reveal scenes in our spooktober games xD Love it!

This hurts a lot, but in the good way, it was really hard to go through this without the emotion taking over at some points. How you people manage with such great art, design, music and writing in such a short time is incredible. I'm very glad to see more out of these characters from malviolence, it's horrifying to see even. Thank you for giving us such quality.

Oh this is excellent, I could tell right off the bat. The UI must have been insane to program.
I love the sprites, it's all very... dynamic and they mesh with the backgrounds well vis a vis tone. And just excellente in terms of art, I'm not sure what you used but it's giving ms paint in a good way.
Very much enjoyed the characters, especially Pavel but I assume that was by design.
My only critisism is that even though the textbox was as opaque as I could make it, the contrast of the text on it was a little disorienting.

One of the most cinematic i've seen so far! It felt like I was experiencing an anime before my eyes! The story had a lot of intrigue, and the characters were compelling and very well designed! 

The dread inducing moments were gut wrenching but definitely supplied my horror fan sensitivities hahaha. 

The sound was also well thought out, the music was on point and the effects really elevated the experience, it is a total package!  

Overall great job! 

What a wild one - Incredibly horrific, but in an expertly crafted way. The storytelling and world-building are well-done, the intermittent voices work well, and the cinematography was well thought out - plus always nice to have a wider variety of accessibility options. Not halloween themed per se, so much as straight-up cyberpunk horror - definitely worth reading the content warnings, to say the least!

Ooh... boy.

I promised Mado on Twitter that I would play protoViolence as soon as it came out. Well, uh, I had to postpone that until today. Partly because assignments and my own game project took over, but also because... I played malViolence already. I loved it, and I also had an idea what the conclusion to its prequel would be like. I knew it would be heavy, and I would need a good mental space for it.

I read protoViolence, and it was exactly what I expected it would be; something that's beautiful and horrifying. Of course, technically it's very impressive! I didn't know Ren'py was capable of all this. The dynamic panning, the smooth switch between dialogue boxes and ADV textboxes, the voiced bits, and the music all come together to create an experience that I feel like I should be paying for.

Story-wise, as a malViolence player I already knew how it was going to end, but even so the way the events unfolded kept me hooked on. I remember one of my small complaints about malViolence was that one of the main characters was kind of under-developed and there was too much tell over show, and protoViolence did a lot of work to justify this and flesh out everyone. Advancing through the gradual buildup and the inevitable end was very satisfying - but that actually doesn't sound like the best way to describe it considering the nature of the plot...

In the end, I highly recommend protoViolence. I've played all three of Mado and their team's VNs (Bad Faith, malViolence, and this), each one has shown improvements and great quality and I would definitely want to see more fantastic works from them.

Full disclosure: While I was reading the setup of the story, I had to stop for a few minutes. I was wondering whether maybe this wasn't the game for me. I wanted to make choices to affect the flow of the plot. I therefore went back to the game's page to double-check the description, only then to realize that there was only one ending. I've enjoyed kinetic novels before, but I have a huge preference for multiple choices and endings. I seriously considered moving on to another game at that point. However, as I was skimming through the comments, I saw highly positive feedback that encouraged me to continue. And I'm eternally grateful that I did! 

The distinct and expressive character designs, especially of Pavel, first drew me to download this game. But the entire project just wows on every level imaginable: the fleshed-out worldbuilding; the overall sci-fi/technological aesthetic and graphics; the way the sprites and camera move; the variety in visuals and storytelling formats, including the epistolary portions and the art style that shifts as the situation steadily grows direr; and the great music, sound design, and voice acting. In short, everything in this game is so meticulously planned to snag the player's attention right off the bat and to ensure that they stay engaged the entire way through. 

I didn't expect to get so attached to the characters! I teared up not once, not twice, but thrice! And I gasped and cursed to myself so many times. Because I haven't played malViolence yet, I was totally in the dark about the fates of these characters and was filled with more and more dread as the story rapidly barreled toward its high-stakes and action-packed conclusion. Then I was super satisfied by the ending and overjoyed upon reading the extras. I can't wait to check out the sequel now. I'm desperate to learn more about these characters, the challenges they face, and the seemingly dystopian world they inhabit. 

This is one of my favorite VNs/KNs in recent memory. Congrats to everybody in the team for delivering such a standout project! You're all incredible! 

i love this vn so much i will leave a comment here just to let you know hahaha
not played too many entries from the jam, but it's one of my favs so far!!!

pavel cute, must protecc...
also the va in that one particular scene was very (clenches fist)
very Moving >_<

Just finished playing and I have to admit that playing this got me the most shaken I've ever been in a while;;  I was glued to the screen the whole time and i was always anticipating what would happen next. The visuals really went perfectly with the story and I loved the moments of rest when we were at the desk. Amazing amazing work!! T_T <3

most haunting and immersive experience ever. felt like i was watching a movie play out in real time in the best way possible. visually and story-wise amazing. and the GASPS at certain story parts that it got out of me omg