That's.... a heavy one, and one I didn't expect to fall in love with despite it being technically one of my least favorite genres.
Spoilers / 剧透:
This is by definition a slice of life drama. 2 weebs go to a local con and meet people and do con stuff. Very vanilla and wholesome, even when the story gets dark, which it does unexpectedly at a rocket pace, it's firmly grounded in 3 people and in 1 street. These days if I sit down with a piece of media, the author is either my drug dealer or my professor, passive read or active read or into the bin, and for slice of life it's almost always the last. This one though... there's a strange magic that I can't place that makes it walk the line and kept me going. It's either the failboy + charismatic aniki chemistry between the main cast, or the fact that the sprites emote so well and are pleasant to look at, or the well timed music, the vibe of the nostalgic bbq corners... This is a story that I'd disliked in any other form, and somehow it is straight up magical here. Writing wise, it is melodramatic in bold caps, and the game knows this. It quotes anime lines and the characters are self-aware for using them, the parents are cartoonishly evil and the kid is a role model martyr saint with angel wings. No subtly here. Which is fine! Emotional duress turns people into soap opera heads. There are constant flashbacks to the deer friend to recontextualize what our mc is thinking, and are smartly placed and short (thank you!) so they don't cause any pacing hiccups. That final flashback when it cuts to the hug is BRILLIANT, and I get teary eyed thinking about it. Orchestration wise, the choice to separate the flashback deer and our wolf is a strange one? The wolf's literary function seems to be for foil and exposition, and I'm wondering if there's a more efficient way to merge part of the deer's identity and the wolf so wolfy doesn't feel a bit extraneous. The final scene is so so so gorgeous and thematically wolfy is sort of just there wearing a traffic cone and drinking tea. The game left me wanting to read more about the aftermath of bottom cat and the goat, which is a rare thing for a slice of life vn of all things to do. So thank you so much for the story!
On another note, I'm always partial to auteurs who can both write and program and draw so this one is going into a special place in the pocket. I'm also kinda going insane over the fact that it referenced our vn in the about section. Glad you could take something away from 3DTL!
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OMG phwog!! Thank you so much for playing and leaving such an incredibly detailed review! 😭 I actually have a huge confession to make... we've talked in DMs on Discord before! I mentioned I was working on a game back then. Since my Discord ID is different from my Itch handle, and I was honestly too shy and unconfident to share my project with you at the time, I kept it a secret ><!! Seeing you find my game on your own and leaving such high praise makes me unbelievably excited right now 😭!
呜呜呜非常感谢 phwog 老师的游玩和长评！😭 在这里我必须坦白一件事……其实我们之前在 Discord (DC) 上私信聊过天！我当时提过自己在做一部游戏。由于我的 DC ID 和 Itch 上的名字存在差异，加上我当时极度缺乏自信，便一直将这部作品藏在手里不敢展示 ><！！此刻看到老师亲自打通了这部作品并给出了这么高的评价，我真的很激动 😭！
Regarding the slice-of-life aspect, I really thought a lot about how to weave my message into the daily interactions when designing the script. Looking back, I might have relied a bit too much on flashbacks—but luckily, the "failboy + charismatic aniki" dynamic worked its magic! Thank god those two managed to carry the somewhat slow early pacing www. To keep things from getting boring, I also put a lot of effort into the sound effects and sprites. The bouncy sprites and the white outlines were totally inspired by 3DTL! Since both of our games have a convention scene, I was super immersed in 3DTL's amazing art direction while reading it, and I wanted to capture that same vibe. For the audio, I referenced icoe for the text-beeping sounds. Sadly, I had to cut a lot of environmental sound effects I originally planned (like crickets in the park, the wind on the street, and the claw machine's mechanical noises) due to the time crunch—even though I had already downloaded all the audio files!
在日常向剧情上，我也在设计剧本时确实考虑了很多该如何把想表达的东西融入日常剧情之中，目前来看可能有些过分依赖回忆了——但好在“废柴男孩和可靠大哥”的典型人设能发挥作用，感谢他们俩撑起了前期比较平淡的剧情www 同样为了避免平淡的处理也体现在音效和立绘上，立绘弹跳和白边的灵感完全来自于 3DTL，毕竟两边都有逛展的情节嘛！而我在阅读 3DTL 时，也因为其出色的美术演出而沉浸其中，所以就立刻联想到并拿来参考了♥。
音效方面，我有参考 一下ICOE ，添加了文字播放时的嘟嘟声；但可惜很多原本设计的场景交互音效（比如公园的蟋蟀，街道的风声，抓娃娃机的机械臂声）我因为时间原因没能加上（甚至我都下载好音频了！）
On the writing side, I actually personally prefer stories that are restrained, profound, and leave a lingering aftertaste. But once I realized I probably couldn't pull that off on my very first try at writing, I decided to just go all out, lean into the melodrama, and torture my characters—though I guess I'm not the most heartless author out there, since I still gave them a warm ending~ As for the final flashback, my undergrad major is pretty closely related to video editing (even though it's technically a literature degree, who knows how that works lol), so I really, really wanted to use some montage editing techniques for the transitions. I tried to jump between different clips based on visual similarities (even though this similarity is way more obvious in movies than in a visual novel). I applied this method to the memory fragments and the final hugging CG. In fact, that hugging CG was basically "the dipping sauce I made the whole plate of dumplings for" (a Chinese meme meaning it was the core reason I made the game!). I planned that specific sequence right from the initial outline, so I'm incredibly happy that you liked it!
剧本方面，其实我本人是很偏好那种内敛、深沉、回味悠长的质感的，但在我意识到我大概不可能第一次写作就写出那种东西后，我就决定放手一搏，大肆煽情和虐待笔下的角色——不过我想至少我还不是那种最狠心的作者，毕竟我还是以一个温暖的结局结束了这个故事的嘛~ 至于最后的闪回，可能因为我本科专业和视频剪辑的关联程度比较高（虽然它是文学学位，谁知道这是怎么运作的）我就特别特别想用一些蒙太奇手法进行转场，靠相似性在不同片段间跳转（尽管这一相似性在往往电影画面中直观可见却在游戏中“不那么明显”）我试着将这一方法运用在回忆片段和片尾的拥抱CG中，并且CG那处就是“为了一碟醋包了一盘饺子中的那盘醋”，我在大纲设计之初就以设计好了演出，很高兴能得到老师的认可！
You hit the nail on the head regarding Wolfy (Zhou Yan)! His initial setting was exactly that—a rational anchor meant to create conflict between the emotional extremes of the MC and He An, and of course, to add some fun banter to the dialogue overall. I actually realized he was getting a bit sidelined during the outlining phase, so the scene where he warns the MC in the bathroom and his conflict with He An (the cat) in the park were actually added later. But when it came to the very end, I was kind of at a loss and just had him watch from the sidelines by the bridge ><. And to be honest, I imagined a ton of backstory for the deer and the goat, but I literally never thought about what happens with the goat and the cat afterwards... well, I guess I'll just leave that to the readers' imaginations~~
针对周岩（狼）的角色定位，老师的观察非常敏锐！他的初始设定就是理性的锚点，负责在主角和何安的极端情绪之间拉扯出冲突，当然还有在全局增进对话的趣味性。我真的在大纲设计时就意识到了他似乎有些边缘化，甚至洗手间劝阻、公园里和何安（猫）的冲突都是后来补上的，但最后的时候我还是束手无策，只让他在桥边围观。 以及说来惭愧，我设想了很多鹿和羊曾经的故事，但是唯独没想过羊和猫之后的故事，well，就交给观众们自己想象吧~~
In my eyes, you are also an amazing auteur who can juggle writing, programming, and art! As for me, I actually used AI to help with a lot of the programming work. Thankfully, I had learned a bit of Ren'Py before, so I didn't let the AI completely take over my .rpy files lol. I probably need to study harder in the future to take back full control! Anyway, thank you again so much for appreciating my work. Receiving this kind of validation from a creator I admire means the world to me. I'll keep carrying this encouragement with me as I continue to create! ✨
老师在我看来也是一位优秀的，能兼顾写作、程序和美术的独立创作者！我的话，其实用AI辅助了很多程序工作，好在之前有学过Renpy，不至于让AI完全掌控了我的那些rpy文件，或许我以后需要更加努力学习来夺回更多控制权！ 总之，再次感谢老师对我的作品的认可。能得到一直仰慕的创作者的肯定，对我来说意义重大。我会继续带着这份鼓励创作下去的！✨