Omygoodness. No way! I haven't even played this yet but I absolutely ADORE Summer Found Me. One of my absolute favorite otome games! I seriously love loove your writing, your characters. I wonder if you put in more dialogues. If you don't I'm still gonna play it again. Seriously, girl I need another game from you asap. This was perfect tho and don't stop writing! This game will forever be in my laptop. Devlin! Wait for meeeee
Viewing post in Summer Found Me Again comments
Okay I finished playing Devlin's route and I have a lot of thoughts.
First, I do notice that you reworded a lot of things. In my opinion, that did make the sentences more polished but that in turn, take away a lot of MC's personality. Her personality was what made the Summer Found Me so enjoyable to me. It sounds less like something she would say and more of an English essay? Or something like that. Less human and more.. Proper. I hope you understand what I mean lol.
I also notice there are sentences / phrases / wordd you take away completely. Like when Aidan wanted to take her picture and said "please.. For me?" She blushed and gave in to it cuz he said "for me" I thought that was super cute but you took that away. There were a lot of passages you took away that I actually liked and gave the characters more flavor.
Also the MC doesn't have a sprite now. I think in my opinion, that took away more of her personality that I so adore. Her expression, along with her witty responses were what made the game enjoyable to me. It's just all text now. It makes it feel less personal I suppose. I also like that she was more awkward before like when she reluctantly admit Devlin is good looking like "You're good looking.. Hot. I mean no not hot but" something like that. It fits with her personality
god I just realized how much I know about the previous version. It goes to show just how much I loved it
There are quite a lot of lines I actually miss like seth being a savage when MC said "oooh is that a new handbag?" seth: "No, that's Cherri" or him saying "Ugh, pass" instead of just "Pass" I donno. It's my opinion. XD Overall it's safe to say I like the previous version better but maybe I'm biased?
Also Cherri and MC are fantastic characters together. Even tho the MC is kinda like "not like other girls" but you don't undermine girls who do like shopping, who do like "girly" things which is awesome. That makes the MC a great character paired up with a bff like Cherri.
That's all I have to say for now. Hahahaha I still love love your work. Only I prefer the previous version and these are the reasons why.
The reason I rewrote some scenes was because I just wasn't relating to the MC anymore. I wanted Iris to be a bit more mature since it always did feel like she wizened up and changed her mind a little too fast about Alden at the very end. I wanted to show her growth more during the whole story. And yeah, a lot of the things you mentioned I thought were too cheesy and I took them out. I guess MC was too influenced by all the teen dramas I was watching at the time that now I can't stand watching lol. Maybe I took it too far in the opposite direction. I remember receiving criticism at the time that the MC was too annoying lol, so I know nothing will please everyone. But for this very reason I still keep the old version up on my blog. If anyone likes the original more, it will always be there.
The MC not having a sprite was because I noticed I enjoy it more in VNs and makes it easier for the player to insert into the character and makes it more "their story". I feel like this is the kind of story where inserting yourself works since the MC is just a girl, not a certain person in history, or a princess or Alice in wonderland etc. And I'll be honest, I could have given the option to turn the MC sprite off, but I was too lazy to draw it and just wanted to finally release this remake since it was sitting on a shelf for literal years. I was going through a bit of bad time and I wanted some validation to pick me back up. I am thinking of adding back the sprite at some point. That's if I'm going to do CGs, since I don't love the look of the faceless MC in CGs, but yeah, IDK yet.
With the rewrite I also hoped to have toned down some problematic topics. I did suffer from a bit of 'not like other girls' syndrome when I was younger and it showed in my characters. Sorry you didn't enjoy this version more, it wasn't my intention to change the characters too much. I just wanted to make them a bit more grounded in reality. But thanks so much for playing it and sharing your thoughts!
Thank you for listening to my thoughts then. I'm not saying it's a bad game at all. It's not. This is just my opinion. Summer Found me / Summer Found me Again still is a great game. ^^ I played other games you made like Signed X, Out of Sight and also Trapped. I really like them. They have something different that sets them apart, just a little bit. Signed X have great banter between the MC and the boys. I think that's the part where you shine the most; banter. To me, that's an important part of an otome game and why it set your games apart from others. In my opinion. I'm really looking forward to your future games if you're making more!