The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is a fantastic story that tackles complicated ideas and uncomfortable truths about us all, but can simultaneously be a bit of a hard sell with its massive wordcount and sense of omnipresent mystery making even its hooks feel tentative and vague, requiring a sense of strong commitment that can be tough to ask of new readers from the get-go. Finding a way to ameliorate this without having to cut the story to pieces in an attempt to speed it up is a bit of a dilemma, as its length and sense of continuous, downright obsessive reflection on its own contents is arguably part of the story’s identity, but at the same time part of the problem.
This VN adaptation, fortunately, has managed to find a way forward that I think has put my worries to rest entirely!
In this adaptation of what is roughly the story’s first six chapters, plot elements have been shifted around to feel more cohesive, scenes have been edited for clarity and the medium of the visual novel has been utilized quite well to make dialogue-heavy scenes feel much punchier. The sense of presentation does a lot to ensure that any sense of monotony one might feel from the protagonist’s lengthier introspections is kept at an all-time minimum; suddenly, mere narration has been allowed to take on a cinematic quality that makes Su’s personal perspective on things to feel almost cosmically important, selling you on her philosophy much harder than ever before. It’s quite simply peak!
The only thing I will criticize here is that, aside from improvements in the sound department (ambiences are too harsh and would benefit from proper looping and filtering to reduce distracting noises, certain sound effects like the auditorium applause go into high-frequency ranges that I would consider inadvisable for sfx that are ostensibly set dressing rather than pivotal scene-changers, vocal bleeps are prone to causing click noises when layered on top of each other, music could stand to have fade-in and fade-out transitions by default when beginning to play), the narrative could take advantage of its new format even further.
Right now, the story still uses a lot of narration for small things that could be relegated to character dialogue or simple visual changes— and I think it is generally better to minimize constant switching between the NVL screen and the dialogue screen for small snippets of narration, as constant changes in the UI ultimately still do force readers to constantly shift gears in how they read text. In scene s006oldyru, after Ran talks about not wasting 3 luxury debt, the narration kicks in to tell us that Su snorts, before switching back to regular dialogue. This is not really necessary and could just as easily have been conveyed by a simple sprite change from Su and a dialogue box from her reading something like “pfft.” or just “…” with focus intentionally being put on the visual change of her sprite being amused for a second for once before progressing the text and changing it back to her regular anxious expressions. You have a means to convey character actions and states very directly now— please use it as much as possible to outright replace extraneous text and changes in the UI.
Still, though, I am truly happy to see how excellent this demo is and how much it retains of Flower’s unique identity while adding even more flavor to it through the use of audio and visuals. Please keep it up! I’ll be awaiting whatever comes next with bated breath, as always.