I'M SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO FINALLY PLAY THIS. Between being busy and traveling and sick and generally not being in a great headspace it's been hard to catch up with stuff.
BUT I HAVE PLAYED IT NOW.
And I have to say, this is just gorgeous! I'm in love with the way you handled the NVL format—it really radiates this sort of animated storybook vibe, with the way the illustrations move. And the way you set up the UI with the text on one side and illustrations on the other adds to it even more. It feels like opening up a book and turning each page to see new images come to life. Some of the effects in particularly I found really neat—for instance how you animated the veins on Vanessa's mother neck.
Story-wise, I loved seeing these initial little snippets of each character. Even though they left me with even more questions than when I started LOL But I did start to feel like I felt them more as characters and was slowly getting a vibe of how their stories and arcs would play out. To me, it felt like the biggest takeaway from each different snippet was the overarching feelings and emotions that connected everything to help form each character's path—from the loneliness and heartache of River's, to the panic and guilt of Cyen's, to the happiness turned tragedy of Vanessa's. And then how they all shared a similar purpose towards something because of their past experiences.
I'm very intrigued and looking forward to diving deeper into their stories and seeing how they do all connect in the end heheh.
Also loved the bit where once you played all three you got like a super-sekrit ending sequence of all the chars and illustrations and sneak-peeks for future stuff—that was a nice touch and was a nice sense of completion.
Overall just really lovely! I enjoyed the NVL style a lot, especially with the way you handled it and the use of animation. I think it also could be really cool to add music to it, even if it's just more ambient-type tracks, to really hammer in some of the overarching emotions of the scenes??
At any rate, looking forward to seeing more!!