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(+1)

(Copy pasted from my review on Steam; thought I would leave this here as it seems you (Scylez) are more active on here than on Steam and I don't want to keep this review unknown to you!)

Decided to grab this game on a whim after going for a year without playing a visual novel. I also wanted to seek out any hidden gems that other people would overlook due to this game featuring anthro characters in spades. Due to me finding pieces of media that depicts these kinds of characters empowering when done correctly I thought I would give this game a shot since there was nothing to lose.

Holy mackerel, I've struck gold! Significantly longer than anticipated along with a rich story line and pretty well written characters that have more than enough intrigue to learn all there is to know about them; made romancing and seeing where they end up very much worth it! I also appreciate that this story is very much western rather than eastern/anime like many other anthro/furry visual novels out there; a very pleasant contrast to what I'm acquainted with.

I thought it's really cool how a number of this game's characters are actually other people's fursonas as well; I think that's a cute detail! The artwork didn't grab me at first based on the screenshots, but I found it quickly grew on me and now I think a lot of love and effort went into this game's visuals, especially for a free product! I suppose the only thing I find lacking is the variety in sprites for the side characters such as Io and Angel, but it's understandable that they don't have as much work put into them since they don't have a lot of screen time to utilize them more than a handful of times.

There are some quirks that I think can be looked into/ironed out to really bring this game to the next level, such as:

1. Saving only working to the start of each ingame "scene" rather than saving right on the current screen like in other visual novels (might be easier said than done since this game is made in Unity, but maybe give a heads up how the save system works in the game?).

2. Skipping dialogue by holding down the left mouse button does not seem to stop at unread dialogue; maybe you could add an option to allow it to only skip only seen dialogue? Also, I don't recall seeing any info in the game or the game's page that you're allowed to do this. I think it would be beneficial to let the player know that this functionality exists as this makes subsequent playthroughs much easier to indulge in.

3. I found the music to be fine personally, but I'm a firm believer that a solid original soundtrack can really improve a video game dramatically by itself so it might be beneficial to look into commissioning someone to do that for you for your future projects. Again, easier said than done, but something worth considering!

4. The game does have some grammatical and spelling mistakes which become a bit more noticeable in the latter half of the game, but nothing that stops you from understanding what the game is telling you. A notable example I found is the game going back and forth with the names Seil/Siel and Skalan/Scalan.

5. This may be due to the mechanics not being fully developed just yet, but the only thing that exploration mode seems to allow you to do is trigger a handful of bonus scenes; all the money and clothing you can pick up doesn't seem to have any use, not even for cosmetics given the anonymity of the main character. The bonus scenes are worth seeing as they provide a good bit of extra lore to the games storyline, though!

Overall, this game was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon that tells a really cool sci-fi crime story with romance thrown in! This feels like a steal being free, but I have a lot of respect for creators that put out real quality work for free! I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for any news regarding the planned sequel as I'm very interested in seeing where the story heads off from here, and I'll be recommending this to my friends that would really enjoy this kind of game since it deserves more publicity! 

You would be correct! I am much more active here than on steam. Seems like the steam version of the game does not generate much attention and also I don't get notified with comments or reviews. But anyway I'm really glad you decided to check out the game! I'd be interested to see what media brought you to the decision :3

I spent a lot of time creating the outline of the story and tbh I didn't know where it'd end up when I started writing it x3 Some of the main characters weren't even part of the story to begin with until it was halfway done being written. But I knew I wanted to include some real fursonas and thought it'd be a fun idea. And still more are being added here and there as new scenes are added. If I could, I'd add a lot more sprites to the game but it just takes me forever to draw x.x that's the biggest bottleneck. But the web version of the game is getting pretty close to max capacity on file size too sadly.

 

Onto Quirks! And I'm glad to hear this feedback!

Since the game is built from the ground up in Unity, this save system was the "easy" way for me to get it working from the start. And I probably should update that and plan to do so. In the next update, I did give the save system a revamp to allow more slots and an autosave feature. The code behind the scenes got rewritten so it will make it easier and less prone to errors if I do implement a save system that works with the exact line being saved at.

I never gave thought to stopping the skip at unread dialogue. I'd have to brainstorm the best way to do this but it's a good idea. Also it's probably a good idea to add in the controls somewhere and let people know what controls are available. The game can be played with keyboard, mouse, touch, and controller, but I'd be willing to bet not everyone knows some of these quality of life features exist.

I would LOVVEEEE a custom soundtrack. If I ever win the lotto I'd hire someone to redo all the music for this game x3 hopefully in the next one I can have a few custom tunes though. That'd be ideal trust me!

The spelling and grammar is the bane of my existence. Being honest, spelling was one of my worst subjects, so why I decided to write a 300k word VN is beyond me. But Slowly the issues are being found by some very helpful people, and being corrected. (the Seil/Siel and Skalan/Scalan things are just me being really dumb though x3). The spelling is I think the most troublesome and obvious flaw with the game.

Glad you enjoyed the extra bonus scenes though! :3 The money in the game was planned to have a much bigger impact on the storyline but got written out in the end and now it's basically an unused relic with no actual function. I'm not quite sure what to do with it but maybe thought about unlocks being bought with it. Not sure what to unlock, but it's an idea. Clothing does have a small impact on the dateable characters, but the game never tells you this and I should try to find a way to make this more known. I've got an idea to try now!

I really really appreciate the long review you gave both here and on steam. I appreciate the feedback, honesty, and suggestions. I'm eager to get more work done on the planned sequel. Still in the planning stages but hopefully will move along quicker soon! At least all the changes and little fixes that go into the code for the first game will carry over to the second game, so improvements I make now will be reflected in the sequel. Thanks for recommending my game too! I created it out of passion and am simply happy when people play and enjoy it! Doing this is something I love and getting  really in depth feedback and comments like yours makes it all worth it! You're awesome and made my day :D

 

-Scylez <3

(+1)

You're welcome, happy to see you take my review in stride! While some of the things I've suggested might be not feasible at this moment in time I do appreciate hearing a creator take them into account all the same. 

As for the media, of course there's the slew of Disney properties, Nintendo, and plenty of indie productions that feature anthro characters in one way or another, but I think what gave me a big push recently was the anime Beastars a year prior and BNA: Brand New Animal, with the former quickly becoming one of my favorite animes and the latter while not quite as good was still great especially if you're a fan of Studio Trigger's other works. 

Even then, I stumbled into this rabbit hole by pure chance on Steam by browsing for visual novels and finding one called Angels with Scaly Wings (dating sim with dragons) that made me think 'you know, I want to play that game!' partly due to both the unorthodox scenario of the game and seeing it has rave reviews, but also due to dragons being one of my favorite fantasy creatures. After that became one of the best VNs I personally played in years I went out of the way to see if other furry visual novels and some very notable ones being Nekojishi (homoerotic VN with anthro cats set in Taipei), Friendship with Benefits (a bizarre/humorous parody of MLP: FiM that's very NSFW, but has a super intriguing story and solid characters that makes it so much more than other Ao rated games), Changed (not a VN, but tells a really interesting I Am Legend type of story with anthro characters thrown in), and of course your game.

You could probably check these out yourself and take some pointers on how to approach your future works if any of these strike your fancy; a decent way to improve at your craft is partaking in the work of others after all. I find the fact that you decided to make a VN while spelling/grammar is your weakest subject to be pretty admirable since it says you're more than willing to improve on different facets of game design rather than sticking with only one part of the game. You certainly seem you have a good head on your shoulders for this subject so I'll have to keep an eye out for any future projects you come out with down the line. Very happy to know I made your day as well; I can never be sure if others will take kindly to my words so I'm glad to hear that's the case! I wish you luck and to have a great day/night!