Hallo,

Thank you for sharing your game.  I’ve already saved its RATING;

1. verified: GAME due to observed you wrote a review for “A Little Bird Told Me”; adds: GAME playable via web browser

2. observed: noticeable use of 2D and 3D drawing techniques; adds: text dialogue where each letter is displayed, instead of immediately the whole text

3. observed: game to have noticeable background music and sound effects

4. verified: GAMEPLAY to be of reading STORY text and doing BATTLES with among others: own rockband as training, a rival school’s rockband;

5. observed: noticeable time used to read the STORY text, which at the start reminded self of deltarune (PC, SteamPowered); remembers: the previous year (Year 2022), re-verifying reading fantasy fiction, e.g. Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth Book#1 (paperback) @20minutes per 4pages (approx); observed: self to opt now to use such TIME for another ACTION; remembers: Bryan Lee O'Malley’s SCOTT PILGRIM manga/comics, with noticeable drawing technique, albeit STORY text after re-verification appears now to be less of self’s focus;

6. admits: self to have NOT yet identified the correct technique to WIN via the BATTLE system (clean-mode); remembers: however, SUIKODEN #1 (PS1), with the Empire vs Revolutionary Army battles classified to use the ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS technique, albeit with additional ACTIONS, e.g. verify opponent’s NEXT ACTION;

Thank you. Health!

I loved the mechanics!  Nice balance, multiple ways to win each battle, nice job!

Nice concept, the blending of mechanics fits well with the rest. I thought the battles were really difficult though.

Brilliant concept. I played the clean version which made it absolutely hilarious.

Hey! You got a really nice concept here!

It is definitely a unique game that blends together two things i love that being RPGs and music! The art is very good on that and i like the fact that you present all of this with a storyline behind it!

Good job overall!

Nice game. Did main hero take shoes to walk a mile in enemy shoes :)?

Good game, maybe the introduction is a bit too long

Story and characters were great, then I got my ass kicked by the first band repeatedly, so I couldn't progress. From what I saw, the game was very polished and well put together. I loved the artwork and the premise. 

Very nice touch allowing everything to be personalized! I was more invested in the story as a result.

Hah, these battles are hard. Or maybe I'm missing something?

There are basically two ways to lose, right? By losing the tug-of-war bar at the top, and by losing all your hearts? This part seemed pretty clear, though it felt like the battles generally boiled down to hearts in the end.

The stars were a bit less clear—they're supposed to add power to your actions, right? Does the effect of stars vary per person? (I feel like I stuffed a bunch of stars into the blonde lady, but realized too late that all of her actions still just showed one star of impact). It took a few rounds before I properly noticed that different people had different stats, and were taking turns—at first it just seemed like the impact of the stars was fluctuating unpredictably. (In retrospect, I think maybe the initial tutorial tried to say something about this, but I lost that battle and the game just moved on so maybe all the data there didn't make it into longer-term memory.)

After starting to understand the rules (I think), I had some trouble following everything—things happen pretty fast and in different sections of the screen, while at the same time I as a new player was trying to look at and learn all the pieces enough to figure out some strategy without getting distracted by how my band is getting pummeled. Some extra animation and redundant visual cues might help here, e.g.  by shining a spotlight on the currently-active member, by tinting the screen (or just overlay a low opacity-color) a bit when getting hit/blocking, or by making the band's bar glow their color (e.g. have a color with an alpha gradient scale out) when hyping the crowd.

On the whole, though, the battles also just seem hard—the odds start stacked against the player (with the opponents having more health), clicking each individual star has to be done quickly so the opponent doesn't get multiple actions off in the meantime, and battles start after reading / clicking around for a few minutes (with the mental mode-shift feeling like it starts me off on the wrong foot, and making it hard to get into a flow state). If you'd like to make the VN the focus over the battles, I would definitely suggest toning the difficulty down by default, if only by reducing the rate that opponents act.

Sorry, I hope this doesn't come off too critical—from the description it sounded like you're looking for all feedback, particularly on the battles, and I definitely struggled with those.

On to the good stuff:

I like the animations during the battles and found the plot pretty engaging.

The text-changing was a nice touch—I customized every name, but the ex-boyfriend's text still worked out perfectly, as far as I noticed. I'm curious to look at the code there and see how that was done.

I'm impressed by all the work put in here. Wish the difficulty ramped up more gradually so I could see more.

Good luck developing this further!

This is incredibly well polished! So many cool touches, like being able to name your band and even draw a little logo! 

I do wish there was a bit more of the gameplay itself though, it felt like the exposition took center stage and the gameplay wasn't as big a part of the game as I was expecting. Maybe that's why it felt like such a jump in difficulty between the two fights - because you're basically going from the tutorial to the final boss? But holy crap, this was really good! 

Also, incredible detail that you steal his shoes at the end, that part got me good! :D 

Hey! I find the theme interpretation quite good ngl haha (even if in my country such college bands don't really exist to this extent i understand the cliché xD)

i got very lost on the combat though, i find the mechanics interesting but needing to click on all stars manually made me lose a lot of time so I didn't even succeed to win the first concert :/ maybe i am just bad lol but the concept is cool! I'd gladly replay with a bit more tutorialization and balancing :)

I do really like the game. Still struggling to be good at it and I like the mechanics and the look. This is fun!