Big brain Patchouli breaking her ankle to get out of an awkward social situation is a vibe

Aside from the font and other issues already pointed out, I liked seeing Patchy's thought process and nerves playing out through the whole situation. Thankfully it all turned out alright in the end

every single comment here they say "the font is hard to read" i say it is but thats also based. and awesome. i know about fonts and this is a badass selection. goes well with the fact that i cannot begin to pin down how this game was made. some kinda custom js and css? no idea. its cool. didn't scale to fullscreen. still cool

the backgrounds and teeny art are cool

there were a few text parsing errors but i know how that is

nice video game

This is a cute little story which can be read through in about 15 minutes or so, with very down-to-earth, realistic conversations between its two characters which makes for a nice emotional ground. It certainly captures the nervousness of young love in a way that reads well.

However, it was often confusing to parse what was thought and what was being spoken aloud due to formatting errors. There were also times where there was too much text and I could not scroll down to read it before having to move on. That was a little disappointing, as I hate missing out on story. The font is also rather impossible to read; not so much the black/white nature, but simply in that it was very thin and elaborate, making it difficult to decifer between several letters. This greatly impacted my enjoyment of the game, as I could not help but to be distracted by it. The lack of a true ending also felt, well, not great?

All that said, Marisa and Patchouli's characterizations are on-point, and the ending dialogue is a nice and memorable killer; some of the most clever writing in the whole piece. The music is also lovely, it was perhaps my favorite part of the game and the part I felt had the most polish. Backgrounds were very, *very* DIY VN (complimentary) as well. Not a bad effort all-around, just some things here and there which could use improving. Be proud of what you were able to accomplish and take away some lessons for the next time!

Very sweet story!! I really liked how Marisa is reading one of Patchouli's favorite books, and the little quips between the two. The art is really cute, too. I would echo some of the comments on the font choice and some errors here and there, but it's a really sweet game! I enjoyed it a lot! <3

Characterization was on point; I especially liked the scene where Marisa rescued Patchy and wasn't worried at all. Felt very Marisa. I would like to echo some sentiments in the comments though that the font is very hard to read.

A nice & short “how we started dating” story. I do agree that the font was hard to read, and more so as it’s white text over black, in my opinion. There’s also some things about the text and dialogue that the other commenters already mentioned, but nothing game-breaking. I’d like to highlight the exchange at the end about what Patchouli did the last hundred years and what she’d do the next. She had the perfect reply.

By the time I finished reading, I was quite confused. There are many things I want to say.

It started well enough. Patchouli being her wordy self, until there's text that autoskips. I'm not sure if it's intentional but I'm pretty sure the autoskipped text in this case was important to actually read. I had to watch my recorded footage to see that Patchouli was burning the love letter she just wrote, I think that's a big deal that would be better not skipped.
There are many other instances where the text autoskips. It was annoying not to catch even the first words because the font is a bit hard to read, AND of the second main issue I described below.
(I don't know if the autoskipping happens to other fellow players, it's possible this is just me somehow)

Then the rest of the game becomes really confusing because:
- It's hard to tell what's spoken from what's thought
- And it's even hard to tell at times who's the one speaking
There's little consistency in how the dialog box behaves.

Example with the first lines of the game:
- There's a white box with "Patchouli" written on it. I know it's Patchouli speaking or thinking to herself.
- Then she remembers her letter's words. No white box. I understand it's not "spoken".
- Then later Marisa pops out. But her second dialog box ("I get it it's a stake out!") had no white box, so I read it as Patchouli's thinking. And right after, there's Patchouli's actually speaking ("That's really not what I was thinking") but there's still no white box so there I thought the story was starting to go a bit bonkers.
- And right after this, there's this dialog box with Patchouli's name, and it says "I should have never fallen in love. The chance for me to be with Marisa [...]" complete with quotation marks. Everything pointed to Patchouli audibly speaking this, in front of Marisa. When it actually feels like an inner thought.
It's not that the game doesn't "obey the visual novel standards", it's that it's too hard to actually get a grasp of how you're supposed to make sense of the novel.

And even after realizing all of the above, There are still some things in the writing, the story itself that feel weird. In example, resuming from Patchouli's inner thought just above, that would mean the story goes like this: Marisa first thought she was being staked out, to which Patchouli says it is not the case. And if the next boxes of dialog was just Patchouli's thought process, that means that both of them just stood there without saying anything and the next scene plays.
This kind of transition made very little sense to me, it's just a jump-cut with little explanation or actual reason. And it's not the only one in the game.

The worst of them is definitely the "ending". It's just so abrupt, the game just ends without a proper conclusion. "Years of reading. I'd love to spend them by your side." "Sounds like an incident to me." *goes back to fishing*. Those are really the last words of the novel. The novel about dating just ends on Marisa just flat out resuming her outdoor activity (which doesn't really involve Patchouli).
It's not the fact that it's anti-climactic which makes this feel off (anti-climax can be a tool to subvert expectations), it's the fact that it feels like nothing really came out of it as the last words of the story. She goes back to fishing, so what? It just ends there, it's not exciting, it's not conclusive, it does not give an idea of how the future will play out. The very last thing that happens is just a girl doing a thing unrelated to what the novel presents as the main topic, which is Patchouli dating Marisa.

TLDR: how do I even interpret the dialog boxes? And even taking that into account, the writing has lots of room for improvement.
It's really a shame because the ideas in the story were good and cute.

PS: I forgot to say that I like the painting-style backgrounds, and that I like the artstyle for Marisa and Patchouli's portraits. The artstyle is not fully fleshed out but I see hints of personal charm.

Sweet story, love the innocence. The font did make it hard to read, given the size and amount of text per panel, but I guess that's also part of the aesthetic you're going for.