itch.io

I've gone through the demo so many times. I'm astonished at how many little (and big) details come out of the woodwork the closer I look at the game. There's so much depth here; I'm so lucky to be able to play a game--a demo, I know, but still--that has this much thought in it. The characters feel so raw compared to the characters I usually encounter in otome. Even though there were definitely tropes and cliches as mentioned in the description (it's said to be a parody, after all), the characters all seemed oddly realistic because of the honest and candid ways in which they reacted to the consequences of the tropes. I was amazed at how little changes in the sprite animations completely changed the tone of the dialogue I was reading, and how I reacted to the changes in tone. It almost didn't feel like I was reading, sometimes; instead, it felt as though I were just experiencing this story firsthand, merely interjecting every once in a while--like a dream, rather than a visual novel. It was a really fascinating experience, and I'm suuuuper glad that you're making such a cool game :D But it also leads me to a question: why is Robin not re-nameable? Is she supposed to have a personality separate from the player's? It feels odd to be able to make decisions that seem to completely change the personality of the main character while her name remains pre-set.

There were a few things that bugged me, but ultimately I think my irritation was caused by my own expectations rather than the demo itself. Sometimes it seemed that the player had to be really mean to some characters in order to open additional favorable dialogues with other characters. For example, when I chose the options that caused Ava to say that Cain was really REALLY interested in Robin, those also happened to be the choices that hurt Akio the most. But maybe that's the point: I have to compromise my own values so that Robin can earn his affection... Was this a conscious design choice? If so, it makes sense, and I respect it because to be honest it's a pretty genuine representation of how some people relate to each other by being mean. However, I'm much less interested in Cain's route now. (Or maybe I'm completely overthinking this and the options I chose didn't affect the game in the way that I thought they did!)

There was also an interesting thing I noticed after I chose which character to ask out to the movies. If your affection with the character is high enough (I think... I'm going by what Ava says when Robin has the chance to ask her opinion before The Choice), then during the date, Robin doesn't actually get to choose some of the options. Instead, the otome proceeds without player input and automatically chooses the options that seem to have the better outcome. Why are the choices taken away if the player has gotten the love interest's affection high enough? Is it so that if you weren't able to get the affection high enough before the date, you have a chance to raise it? Or maybe I just messed the game up somehow... It was an interesting change, but I just felt less involved in the ensuing events as a result.

Thank you so much for releasing this demo! I really appreciate what you're doing, and I look forward to what you'll do in the future!!