Absolutely loved this, from start to finish. I'm not particularly a visual novel guy, but I am a J-horror guy and there's plenty here to enjoy.
The tone and atmosphere is incredible, and hits the same story beats you'd expect in a J-horror movie. Expanded, it truly could be its own feature film. The story moves at a good pace, I don't think it ever felt like it dragged on at any point, and there's plenty of little details in the writing to really make you 'feel' the scene.
Some minor criticisms I had:
- Felt like some parts could use some sort of ambient track, to really make the more tense parts hit harder when its silent (Think I heard Day of Night from SH2 at the end there, a man of good taste I see)
- Possibly a bit of over explanation towards the end, during the basement part with the Doctor's corpse, and ending scene with Yumi. But saying that, it's always better to over explain rather than risk someone not understanding!
- Forgive me if this is a thing and I just didn't notice, but I felt like it needed an auto button to move the text along automatically. It's so cinematic, I almost just wanted to watch and read rather than click at times.
These are minor nitpicks, in what's an otherwise really solid story. I had a feeling I'd love this when I first saw it, and it lived up to expectations!
Had the pleasure of living in Japan for years, working in the porn industry (has shockingly close ties to mainstream movies over there). This might be the best interpretation of Japanese culture/media from a non-Japanese source in a long time.
Thanks a lot man, really glad you liked it! Good points, I’ll add an auto mode in the next update, you’re right it’s missing. And noted for the ambience and the ending, I went a bit heavy on explaining because some people got lost, but I’ll see if I can tone it down. Means a lot coming from a J-horror fan who lived there 🙏