ooooh what a good twist, and what good use of the assets as well! I think we did skip perhaps some of the parts that could've built a bit more suspense, the panic, a bit more time between murders... but honestly it was really a banger. I think when you have such a small cast and such a short time frame for a murder, you need more than just the reveal of who it is, and you did that really well. The most delicious part of any mystery is always the why, and it delivered. Also props for having the mc (at the end at least) react a lot more realistically. Not giving the choice to accept Xeth, and sticking to his guns. A really strong entry, and great use of the music. Short sweet and to the point. Great work!

This was a banger of a vn. I was so immersed throughout the entire story, trying to figure out why he had done it (I already suspected it was going to be them >:)). I didn't expect what the real cause of it was though.

Now I have some gripes I should probably mention. While I liked the story I felt as if there were some key emotions that were left out of it. Say the panic and grief that would have consumed skipper and the MC. To the MC not having more of a breakdown after having major events happen back to back that trigger very different responses. And then some of the plots of the story that seem important, aren't really. For example, if you take the branch in the story where you take the flashdrive from the envelope, and then keep it, and from what I understand in the story it would essentially fuck the antagonists whole plan up. I say that because when they are explaining how they did it they said that they used that flashdrive to take over the electrical system. And yet, they didn't need it.

But again these are some very minor complaints and I really enjoyed it. Really well done!

As one of the few fans of Mass Effect Andromeda, I'm very glad to be reading another cryosleep-ark sci fi story. The characters were all interesting and likeable, but I especially liked that this VN used a lot of the default sprites, many of which would have gone entirely unused otherwise. Particularly the hyrax! Poor guy. Anyways, I think this VN especially excelled at having multiple characters on screen at the same time, placing and animating them to ensure it wouldn't feel crowded. That aside, this was a decent story overall, blending comedy, drama, and romance. I liked the dramatic arc of all the revelations and whatnot, but I feel like a lot of it was too quick. People were dying left and right, particularly the cryosleepers, and there wasn't a lot of time given for us to grieve or adjust to their deaths. Maybe I'm just accustomed to murder investigation games usually having one murder on each day. Still, the resolution was shocking, intriguing, tragic, and creative. There was a lot of thought put into the alien race, yet I wanted to see more, I think. But what we saw was enough to service the story itself. So, like, good VN! Not a lot of flaws.

this one was a banger

A murder mystery... in SPACE!

This was a fun concept, and I enjoyed how you gave the provided sprites such eclectic personalities, suitable for this type of story.  

Ironically, one of the things that removed me from the story a bit is how the backgrounds and cutscenes sometimes felt more like a victorian dinner party, and peeping through the lock made me stop to think, would a spaceship have traditional doorknobs and locks?  Wouldn't it be more, like, computer operated?  Especially the captain's quarters? 😅  

Still, a mish-mash of concepts like that can work well, but feel it perhaps needs a little more integration into the story, just to be a bit less jarring.  I still enjoyed this more than the couple of thematically-similar entries from last year, which I also enjoyed.

I enjoyed streaming this one, and loon forward to what you come up with next!

Alright man, I'm gonna be honest with you. I kinda really loved it. Not 100% perfect, but sweet purple pigeons on an upside-down tricycle I had a fucking blast with this one. 

I'm going to get right into it, big ol' spoilers from this point forward.

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Implementation of Theme:

This is the one part of the VN that I thought was pretty weak, so maybe it's good we're getting it out of the way early. What we're looking for is "a light in the darkness" and I'm... not really seeing it, to be honest. Maybe it's the hope of getting to Azulea? Maybe it's the hope of getting back home when it's clear Azulea is bust? Maybe it's supposed to be Conway serving as that light for Xeth? I could maybe see any of these as plausible, but they're not coming through consistently enough to really stick.

Story:

Maybe my brand of crazy is just similar to your brand of crazy, but I thought this really crushed it. There are a few things I'll get to that didn't quite work, but for the most part I loved it. The characters, while a little exaggerated, all felt very entertaining and I liked all the little side plots and angles going on in the background. I thought all of Ronan's weird behaviors were well-covered by the twist, and I really liked the general aesthetic. 

Things I didn't think were 100% perfect:

1) I feel like even if Khel didn't show up, there was absolutely no way Xeth's plan was going to work. I don't see how Conway's reaction would have been materially different since Xeth would still have had to explain everything and he'd still be just as guilty. On the flip side of this, I do want to point out that Xeth at least partially has a point - all of the observations, especially early on, about Ronan becoming a much better boyfriend recently were all Xeth. It's going to be one hell of an awkward ride back to Earth with a Ronan who is not only being factory reset to the less sensitive original version, but also re-entering reality to find that everyone on the ship except for two people are dead.

2) With the twist, it's easy to see why Ronan/Xeth is unfazed by the murders, but everyone else seems weirdly chill about it? Not Leslie. Leslie's freaking out. But like everyone else just... does not seem to be taking the loss of one of 10 people they know all that hard. Like Jambo is giving you love advice - my guy your boyfriend just died ten minutes ago what is wrong with you.

3) Conway seems especially dumb sometimes. Not in terms of problem solving or anything, but more just like, "oh there's another corpse, better cuddle my boyfriend" kinda stuff. He's not possessed by some kind of fungus or whatever so why is he even entertaining the proposal, especially with Skipper's ring? Way too many red flags for a normal person. Also, some lines like "I've never felt this way about anyone before" come off a little hollow. Like... you've only known less than ten people your whole life and only two of them are roughly your age, and even those two you've only known for the last five years.

4) I actually kind of question the ethics of Conway being born in space to begin with. Like even assuming they had the resources to handle that (even outside of the single parent thing, it's possible someone could have gotten knocked up naturally I guess), you are choosing to bring someone into a world where they are going to spend essentially all of their formative years with literally zero interaction with anyone remotely their age. Just doesn't seem healthy, I don't know. 

5) I will never forgive you for killing off Puxley. Besides just being far and away my favorite character, there was absolutely no need for Xeth to kill her. At that point, Conway's already seen and heard him kill Khel and spill the plan, so Xeth knows he's cooked and that Conway's going to choose to go back. So what's the point in killing Puxley? Just let her go back with Conway and Jambo. 

6) I'm a bit unclear on what khevrans are before they take over a host. Like Xeth is doing research at a university or something, but does he not have a body yet...? Or do they just need to assume a body to live on land?

Lastly, not a gripe, but just an observation: if the planet I'm traveling to turns out to be populated by billions of sapient giant spiders, please go ahead and switch off my cryopod proactively. No thank you.

Presentation:

Really good, especially for a project with stock sprites. Some of the creative ways you use them like Bramford circling the table or Les pacing back and forth are really effective. The elegant, opulent backgrounds are a welcome aesthetic instead of the more conventional generic sci-fi look, and I thought the music and sound effects worked well too. Also props for throwing in accessibility features and a bonus game on top of the project - the extra effort is recognized.

Creativity:

I certainly can't fault you for creativity. Being able to take the stock sprites and create fun characters and a reasonably deep lore out of them is pretty impressive. The production as a whole was a bit unhinged, as some others have suggested, but I was more than happy to be along for the ride. Hope to see more from you!

A very enjoyable read! The character writing in the main part of the story - ie, everything leading up to a surprise introduction of a certain character - perfectly fit the tone of this sci-fi murder mystery where we get light comedy woven in with the tense atmosphere. However, the part after the aforementioned surprise introduction definitely felt weaker to me. That stellar character writing more or less goes away, as does the premise of the murder mystery by throwing in (spoiler) to pretty much replace it. It's not bad, but weakens the primary stretch of the game for me.

Small thing about the writing - nothing about story: I played it with audio description on as I like to see how accessibility options are implemented, if they are present. I was sort of expecting audio captions, mostly as that's how I do it, and was confused where they were until I realized you had implemented it so unobtrusively into the prose I just assumed it would be written like that either way. So I'd say you did well with this accessibility option! 

Presentation-wise, I loved all of it though. You really used the jam sprites well, constantly changing expressions and distances to fit what was happening within the narrative - the animations and scene framing like putting characters behind tables made the game feel more dynamic and visually interesting.

What really stood out was the music you've made. One, it was just really good. Two, it pushed the emotions and atmosphere in the way you wrote the story, so the great music was utilized effectively too. The different variations of the tracks are subtle, and such subtly pushes the player to a variation of emotions. And the layering of music and ocean in a late scene? Chills. What I'm saying is, I'd certainly vote for Your Eyes to win Best Sound Design! 

Been listening to 'Aurora' on loop while writing this :)

This is the May Wolf of all time. This one's hard to review because it's so strange and crazy. Mostly in a good way, I had a lot of fun reading it, but also there are a few things that prevent it from being a perfect experience. Let's start with the positives. I really liked the presentation. It makes a lot of use of the sprites in creative ways and frames them more uniquely than most visual novels. The animations, as well as some of the visual tricks, help make the experience more engaging. I also think the music and sound effects were put to good use. The characters are at least pretty entertaining, with most of them being likable and unique. The twists and revelations hooked me, and I wanted to know what would happen next. But then we get to the problems of the story. The story doesn't have a lot of focus on what exactly it wants to be. It starts as a semi-romance, then becomes a murder mystery, before turning into a sci-fi thriller. Along the way, there are one-on-one conversations with various characters, which, while nice, don't flow well with the current pace of the story. It just feels like there should have been more cohesion with the plot points, and it would have benefited the story a lot if it were tighter. I also don't like how much swearing is in the dialogue. Just comes across as immature to me when it's used too much. Finally, the ending is kinda drawn out. It basically goes into an exposition dump before the antagonist goes on a spiel that I guess is supposed to make him seem sympathetic when he just did a bunch of awful things, and it's pointless anyway, due to how things carry out. All in all, your enjoyment of this VN depends on how seriously you take the individual parts of it. Taken at face value, it's greatly flawed, but looking past that there's a lot to like about this project. If you're not one to mull over small details, I'd recommend a read.

'Your Eyes' is an ambitious story that tries to blend so many genres and settings into one. My highest praise for this game really comes in the presentation of this game. It's very ambitious to use nearly all the different community sprites together in one game, and still have it feel cohesive. All the Ren'py animations, the visual effects, having characters be layered behind tables to show depth, making the inside of a spaceship be a fancy mansion, the way that audio is used to cut in and out, the use of perspective to show looking through a key hole, all really great examples of excellent direction for the visual part of a visual novel. I'll be talking in spoilers, so read the visual novel first before continuing.

It's also very ambitious to want to have so many different genres, from the romance plot of the main character and the captain, the drama plot of the relationships between the crew, the scifi plot of it being a decades long relocation mission, the thriller plot of the unexplained murders, and the mystery plot when only the crew are possible suspects. When it comes to writing the characters, they were all really well characterized, had distinct personalities, and the dialog between them was great.

Unfortunately, once the different genres started to compete for attention, is when the story started to get messy and unwieldy. To me, the best genre plot done is the scifi thriller part, because it was always tense and you didn't know where the story was going to go, and you felt the gravitas of this crew's mission and what was at stake. The murder mystery ends up losing it's focus, since there's usually a 'who-dunnit','how-dunnit', or 'why-dunnit', and for this story, the answers feel somewhat unsatisfying and come too abruptly at the end. As a result of the mystery plot reveal, the romance plot also suffers for this as well.

The reveal at the end of who the culprit is, felt like it under minded the mystery that came before it. The culprit's method for carrying out the sabotage and murders felt contrived and didn't seem to make sense with their motivation. As a result, the romance aspect of the story also feels a bit contrived. The final scene as well, which gives the story it's title, left me with a bit of a gut punch, both unsatisfied with the ending and emotionally drained. Which is a shame since I thought it had such a strong act 1 and 2. If I were to offer my perspective, it needed to pick a lane and either be a scifi thriller survival tale or a scifi murder mystery. The ending lends itself better to a scifi thriller tale with how it's goes into the backstory and explanation, so I feel like that would've been the route to take.

The implementation of the theme, 'the light in the dark', I believe is the planet that they're going too. While I think it informed the initial setting of this story, from a practical standpoint, I don't know how much it contributed to the narrative since it has such a bleak ending. The story itself has a very strong start and characterization, but I think lost focus in the third act. As mentioned, this story was very ambitious in it's scope, and it's evident that the writer has the chops to really immerse the reader. I feel that once this writer hones in on a story's plot, their ability to have the characters come alive will really shine through.

A really interesting read! The story is really well told and use the provided assets really nicely. Of course some of the sprites clash in style, but they’re perfectly animated for the story. (Although, there’s one part of the story I don’t get: if the computer virus is in the flash drive, why is the ship still infected if you take the drive away?) The music is usually good but it’s absent a bit too often, I feel. No idea where the title come from, too. But nice bonus feature!^^

There is a lot of stuff happening in here (romantic drama, murder mystery, science fiction...) and the mashup of genres does yield results, even if it's not always completely smooth. Not to get too deep into spoiler territory, but the murder mystery aspect kind of takes a backseat after some plot beats that reconfigure the stakes dramatically; on the other hand, the final scene does a lot to make the piece feel more cohesive. The prose leans towards simple but nails the rhythm in the tenser moments, and the pacing only slows down in a late-game flashback that comes off as a little strained. 

In general, the game's biggest writing asset is the infectious sense of joy it has to it – it's impossible to not get swept up in the crazy twists and become invested in the fun drama between the characters. It's got that je ne sais quoi of a story that knows exactly what it wants to do and then does it.

Presentation-wise: a couple of neat ideas and some very creative blocking with sprites make Your Eyes punch above its weight in the sense of using stock assets and jam-provided stuff only. It does feel like a story conceived with visuals in mind, and the music is good, too. I have to say that this is definitely the first furry visual novel I've seen that provides Conway's game of life recreated in Ren'py as a bonus feature.