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(5 edits) (+2)

Interestingly enough, I got the true ending on my first try. I really enjoyed reading and playing through this visual novel. I loved the contrast between the characters and the backgrounds, too! I did notice there was no apostrophe for Valentine's Day in the beginning, and the word anticipating was misspelled. 

I also felt like I read a bunch of dependent clauses where they should have been connected to the starting sentences with a colon, comma, or em dash, or the sentences could have been turned into independent clauses with linking verbs or connected together with coordinating conjunctions. 

These sentences wouldn't need a comma and should be worded as such below:

"But the thought of him spending time with anyone else makes my skin crawl."

"All of his favorite songs are my favorites, too."

This sentence here below could use an extra comma for added clarity:

"He keeps occupying my thoughts... all morning, afternoon, and night."

Otherwise, everything else seemed fine to me. The narration and story actually flowed well. 

The dialogue between various characters and the characterization of the main character was well done, too, highlighting their different personalities and the different kinds of banters between them. Good job! 

The story was evenly paced, too. The only thing that caught me off guard story-wise was when I chose how to deal with the antagonist of the story, and then it skips that interaction and jumps to Nyli's day with her crush. It had all of this build-up and rising action, and I felt like I missed the climax of the story somehow. Otherwise, I really enjoyed it. 

Although, the way crush slides across the screen at the park could look more smooth or less abrupt. I don't know if it needs a hpunch or a vpunch after it or if the original sprite should have been hidden with a dissolve. It just didn't look quite right to me for whatever reason, but that's a minor nitpick. 

You can also hide the quick menu with $ quick_menu = False during the moments when a player can choose a choice. You can equate it back to true afterwards to bring it back up on the screen. 

Finally, the window icon can be changed from its default look. You can find it in the GUI folder. You can also remove the 1.0 from the main menu in the code where it states text "[config.version}": style "main_menu_version underneath screen main_menu() in screens.rpy. You would put two hashtags (#) in front of each of those two lines. 

This is a wonderful reply! Thank you so much, I'll get to working on making a few updates on the game to fix these specific issues!

My grammar and overall writing ended up being very lacking because of time restrictions, but I'll get these fixed to the best of my ability now that the main video is finished!

I really appreciate that you took the time to leave such a long and detailed review of my work. It really helps me walk towards improvement!( •̀ ω •́ )✧

The story was still very easy to read and follow along. The way you write can be considered a stylistic choice, and I saw your devlog first, which is how I came across this VN. So, I understand that English isn’t your first language. I hope I didn’t come across too harshly on that front. Plus, you can always update it with more content or fixes. 

I say just work on fleshing out the second half of your story to make it feel more fleshed out. Otherwise, it’s great the way it is. 

Think about story structure and what the protagonist’s goals and wants are. This is because even though the story ended with the protagonist going on a date with her love interest, the story didn’t feel quite complete to me because I didn’t know if the protagonist would end up with her love interest or not officially. What lesson did she learn? That’s not to say you can’t have an open-ended resolution, but a story should feel complete at the same time. 

These are six questions you can ask yourself and answer to guide yourself in telling a short, concise, and complete short story. (I found this information from a YouTube video. I did not come up with these questions myself.)

1. Who is it about?

2. What do they want?

3. What do they do?

4. Why doesn’t that work?

5. What do they finally do?

6. What is the end?

Well, I guess I could answer all of those questions, as it’s about Nyli who wants Vesper. She meets up with him for coffee to do a school project in the hopes of asking him out. It fails because Gigi gets in the way and wants to ask him out for Valentine’s Day instead. In order to combat this, Nyli confronts her, and the story ends with Nyli and Vesper going on a “date” on Valentine’s Day. 

I put “date” in quotes because it wasn’t a real one, as Nyli never confronted her feelings, making the ending feel not as satisfactory as it could have been. Not to say she has to express her feelings. Heck, she could simply acknowledge her feelings and let him go upon seeing Vesper and Gigi together on Valentine’s Day, for example.

The ending may have felt anticlimactic to me because since the confrontation with Gigi was skipped over, it felt like that the encounter at the park with Vesper was the climax instead. 

I didn’t get a sense of the falling action or resolution, and if this was a fake date of sorts, with the main character even questioning things, then it feels like things are still unresolved, with the true ending yet to come until things reach their natural conclusion, which I didn’t get the sense of. 

Again, this is just me. This is also a demo. The story could also simply end with her being happy or vengeful after the date back at her house as she thinks things over from the day. That way, the story ends with the reader knowing her stance and views on things, as this is a character-driven story, and thus the story has a resolution in regards to her feelings and desires. 

Ultimately, a story is a character wanting something, and something is getting in the way of the character’s wants. Thus, looking at your story from that lens, I don’t know if Nyli truly got what she wanted, how she felt about the date, and if she will continue to pursue Vesper or not. I think if you add such information in, an epilogue, if you will, it would go a long way in making the story feel complete and whole. 

Although, that’s just my take. You can take it or leave it. None of what I’m saying is truth, but these are things to consider and ponder nonetheless.

Again, thank you so much for your support! I find your advice really insightful, and it helped me look at the game from a different perspective I hadn't considered when I started working on this!

I'm not sure I can call it a proper "demo", as this isn't related to the characters "canon" story but rather a "one-shot" kind of thing! As I made it mostly for my community, which is very familiar with all the characters and the canon story, it didn't even cross my mind that, to any passerby, the background and intentions of these characters could come off as lacking and not properly fleshed out! I'll keep that in mind when coming up with future games!

Admittedly, there is a problem when it comes to the endings because at the time, and as I'm writing this response, I'm still learning how to properly  code different endings, taking into consideration all of the possible choices a player can make through the story. I ended up not adding a fleshed-out outcome for the "Manipulate subtly" and the "Confront her directly" choices since the endings they supposedly lead to could be the same/or not, and if I wrote it one way, it could clash with another, if that makes sense?

Right now, I plan to study how to code endings properly, as I believe it's one of the most important things, mechanic-wise, to make a visual novel really interesting! As of now, I've released an update on the game's overall UI and fixed a few grammar mistakes and bugs. 

I'll keep on playing many different VN's and study their overall game design and story flow. Again, thank you so much for your comment. I'll definitely take into account everything you mentioned going into future projects!