Wow! Thanks for taking time to play my game and write such a detailed response! There’s a lot to talk about here, so I’ll go over it topic by topic.
Yeah, I agreed that it doesn’t feel as spring-themed as other submissions, cause those themes just didn’t spring (heh) into my mind when I was making this game. I didn't do anything weird either, cause I’ve already done that with one of my previous game jams. This time, I just wanted to write a story and create a cinematic set piece.
Thank you for the kind words about my music! In fact, music is basically the main driving force that pushed me to create all these games. It’s what directs the theme of the game, what motivates me to finish it, and basically the core pillar of each game I made. This time, the core music of this game is One Last Day (Last 4 Days in Heiwa City OST) - Pseudoku. The song is peaceful but somber. That sets the tone for the whole game to be that way and not cheerful or comfy like other spring games. The reason I use this song is because I just happened to create it and wanted to use it right now lol.
Also thank you for the kind words about my art! I’m still pretty new to this compared to making music, but I tried my best and used a minimal art style to match my skill level and also save development time. I don’t have enough time and skill to create beautiful CG backgrounds like most VNs.
About the writing (for those who haven't played the game yet, there will be SPOILER, please skip if you haven’t played yet.)
Yeah, English is not my native language, in fact, it’s quite far from my native language, but I try to write the whole thing anyway as a practice. I did try to write long descriptive prose in my script, but to be honest, I actually prefer scripts that are more direct and on point (like in your game). For the Itsuki part, thank you for approaching this in a respectful way. I’m not sure either if it’s just a cultural thing or my personal experience. I know it feels quite strange that he (and the rest of the family) suddenly changed their attitude when she mentioned that she’s going to chase her dream. Maybe it’s because the story showed how much caring and “chadness” Itsuki had before the meteor thing, but the thing is, I won’t go into too much detail and I’m not even sure if I should discuss this part, you can ignore it, but basically, I... did know some people out there who can be loving, caring, and stuff, but the very moment you mentioned something that goes against their belief, their stance changed suddenly, like what you see in the story about how dismissive Itsuki become, cause it’s not just him, the whole family had that belief, so (according to the family) Kiyomi is actually the outlier here. I still tried to write the story in a way that it can have a happy ending, though. About the theme of “letting go”, it's inspired by a story of a certain award winning game that I can't name because it would be a major spoiler. But I also did have some personal experience with that theme and the story shows it. For the 2 dimensional writing, yes, it’s 2 dimensional, because I try to keep the story simple. I wanted to focus more on the cinematic and emotional story telling with music rolling in the background. Otherwise, the Mom and Dad would have their own point of view, too, and the story would be too complex for me to manage, especially within 14 days. In other words, I want to write something that’s simple enough for me to handle lol. Just my preference, though. The first draft of the story was even worse. The sibling would meet in front of the school, have a quarrel, walk off from each other, the mc sees it, talk to each one of them, and then it’s climax, happy ending! lol.
Still, really, thanks for all the kind words and feedback you gave! Visual Novels basically live or die on their story (and maybe, presentation, too), so the feedback about it is really important. Really glad you gave such a detailed response!