itch.io

Okay, so, to rephrase my feedback into something more actionable...

Your writing lacks purpose. Any kind of writing - be it for a book, a show, or a visual novel, - must be purposeful in what it's trying to achieve. Because you don't have an infinite budget.

And you probably just thought "Oh I have spent nothing so the budget is two sandwiches and a coffee", but... No. Your time is a part of your budget as well, you don't want to spend the rest of your life trying to bring one single story to a satisfying conclusion. And to make things worse, the reader's attention is a finite resource too.

So when you're writing a scene - you need to make sure you are not wasting your own time, and the time of the reader. To do that, you must designate the goals for the scene. And everything you write for that scene must pursue that goal. Even the banter.

There's absolutely no need to write characters just shooting the shit with each other, this is not real life, art must be more interesting than real life, especially when pretending to show it honestly. 

If two characters are talking - there has to be a purpose. If two characters are talking - one of them must have a goal and be the "attacker", making the other one "defend".

An easy example would be A asking B: "Hey, so how was your date?" - it instantly puts B on defense, trying to present himself well, trying to protect the image he had built up within this social circle. 

And that creates opportunities - C could ask B the same question in a more private setting and receive a more honest answer, achieving the goals of showing that B and C are good friends, showing B's motivation on several levels, etc, etc.

I hope this helps.

"Go! To snowtown" starts in chinese and there's no obvious language switch, so if you can't read it - you have to blindly poke through hieroglyphics until you manage to switch the game to english. 

Many of the UI elements are not translated.

The entire game has a slightly awkward english translation that has obviously never been proof-read by a native speaker, or even anyone at B2 level. It's not horrible, just awkward, which makes the experience slightly worse. 

The UI animations are distracting and unnecessary.

There's no text speed option, so you have to double-tap forward button/spacebar/LMB if you read faster than a first-grader, which makes the whole experience so much worse. 

The anti-piracy statement makes no sense, claiming that this right here is not a legitimate upload of the game. Is the game asking me to report you to itch for impersonating the developer/publisher?

p.s. unpacked the game files and WHY THE HELL IS THE GAME ICON AN 8K RESOLUTION TEXTURE?! WTF?!!!

Sorry, I should have worded my comment more nicely, but I was sleepy and grumpy.

I still stand by my words, of course, my impressions were genuine, but I didn't need to bite your head off.

Stream of consciousness writing.

The story is monstrously bloated with completely pointless inconsequential things that just happened to spring up in the writer's mind at the moment.

The protagonist is a complete dumbass on every possible level and I don't believe he is earning any awards for the school, so there's disconnect of the backstory with the story.

All characters sound the same, with no hints of personality.

And the writing is trying so hard to be funny, but never manages it.

The cute and consistent art style is the only redeeming quality of this VN.

Someone is still mentally living in the year 2025 I see xD

It's for the best. The writing was horrible - no one acted like a person, the pacing was all over the place.

Sure, it looked pretty, but high production values can't replace good writing.

I'd like to be able to at least turn in down a bit. The balance is so awful you can barely hear anything else.

It's impossible to save yourself by eating your own limbs.

Cutting off your leg and eating it will not compensate for the calories you will lose for your body to deal with the consequences of losing a limb. You will just die faster.

If I have to replace any more fuses in a coordinate radar less than a day after I did it the last time - I am going to get really angry. This is not a fun gameplay loop.

I played it a bit, completed Cedar's route and here are my notes, in no particular order.

The writing comes off as extremely heavy-handed. There's no subtlety. Every detail isn't just shoved in your face, you get beaten over the head with it over and over again. Cedar is shy and troubled, so everyone tells you he's shy and troubled, and so does he. Several times. "Show, don't tell" is not a suggestion, it's the basic rule of good storytelling.

The pacing is way too fast, even for a short VN. You get introduced to Cedar and after two more interactions with him you're in love, and also he bawls his eyes out and tells you everything on his mind, AND it's suddenly the storm. What? But I just got here.

At one point I got a bad ending that felt completely arbitrary and out of nowhere. Zee tried to drag me away while I was chasing Cedar - why would I go with her? Why would I assume that not going with her could possibly trigger a fail state? Nothing happening prior to this ever hinted at that. It felt unsatisfying and annoying.

There's no good way to say this, so I'll just rip the band aid off. The plot is dumb at times. Montegenisha stops you from finding Cedar to tell you to go find Cedar. His appearance was completely unnecessary and it broke the tension of the event for nothing, as did the long boring monologue the storm gives you(forgot the name).

The entire Scene with Cedar trying to sacrifice himself for you is stupid - he has enough time to shove you, but not enough time for you both to run off instead? What a precise amount of time!

And then Theo runs past you and saves him anyway! Theo saves him, not you - MC doesn't do ANYTHING in that entire scene. Someone else called this a book and I can see why. MC has no agency, he just stands there, watching, like a lemon.

Then he tells Cedar that what happened wasn't his fault, but it 100% was his stupid fault and no one else's.

The weird sound of a small metal hatch slamming shut down the hall used for punctuation is annoying and doesn't fit ANYTHING at all. Why is it here?

It's a small issue, but backgrounds sometimes don't fit the story. Like when MC and Cedar are left alone in MC's room the bed is described as narrow, while the king-sized bed is displayed in the background.

Oh, and the GIANT FULL-SCREEN DISCLAIMER warning you that kissing the characters is going to influence your route is completely unnecessary, and just plain silly. Duh, I sure hope it influences the story!

p.s. I'm not trying to insult your work, obviously a lot of effort went into the creation of this VN, and it's very commendable that you actually managed to finish it, but the oversights I just mentioned really kept me from enjoying it, so I thought I'd share. Hope you'll be able to learn something from this.

I'm mostly talking about the meaningful routes - Mikko's and Torulf's, since they are the big branching ones with a lot of deep character exploration, while other routes are more straightforward.

In Torulf's route she inserts herself at the point where I simply don't believe Arvo would let in another pushy stranger and it ruins my suspense of disbelief.

In Mikko's route she comes in at the exact point where Arvo can salvage things and talk to Mikko straight, with the fire of Mikko's decisiveness lit under the tiger's ass, but now it's suddenly a group outing and he doesn't get a moment of intimacy because of her. It's frustrating to the highest degree.

Fuck her, she ruins everything, both times coming in at the worst time with the worst opinions, without anyone asking her. She is a really obnoxious person, in my opinion.

p.s. also she's being a possessive friend in Jorgen's route early on, but I haven't played Jorgen's route for several updates, so idk what she does there yet.

That whole sub-route is so forced. "Hey, a stranger forced their way into your life and you got burned after trusting him - time to throw yourself at yet another stranger forcing themselves into your life!". And Gudrun really forces her way into that route, like omg.

Worst sub-route ever. I already hated Gudrun for being ham-fisted into every route at 11th hour with their opinion nobody asked for, but this is just too much.

The entire THEM conspiracy sideplots branch is unnecessarily edgy.

This is a fun porn world with fun porn logic, serious themes already barely work here, clashing with the tone of the rest of the story and the setting itself. Edgy stuff doesn't work at all and just annoys the reader with zero benefit for the story. 

Like, okay, cool, I already hated Therium and the cat, what did that ending achieve?

Literally nothing would change if the route ended with Therium saying "nah-ah-ah, not how this story goes" and snapping the player back to the choice. The ending we got is literally a bad prank from the author. Just like that shotgun flashback - the scene was done in the most lolrandumb cringe-inducing edgy way possible just to annoy you.

Also the 'teacher?' reveal was super obvious. The plague doctor cosplayer having furless skin was a dead giveaway - I still don't understand what was the point of him even being two characters.

I still don't understand what bug you are talking about, Liquid containers taking on outside liquids when submerged is clearly intended behavior. I'm not talking about that, I'm being baffled why it's a mechanic in the first place, because it works off an insane assumption that you are putting uncapped bottles into your bags.

I was hoping the developer would read this and either disable the mechanic for now, or add a way to close bottles.

People keep finding new ways to say they hate the new sprites.

I haven't tested it, so speaking from my impressions. Liquids containers are not leaking. But all liquids containers that both have something in them and have free space can passively take in liquids from outside if you are submerged deeply enough. I don't know what counts as "deep enough" but it feels overtuned against you, just like many other things in this game.

I don't think it matters where a liquids container is on you - hands, bag, or a worn backpack. Or maybe it does and the bag must physically get submerged, I don't know.

Empty containers you have will never get anything in them from outside, unless you actually drop said container into the liquid, or pour a bit of some liquid into it first. Which suggests that there IS a bottle cap mechanic, but you don't have access to controlling it, it just auto-activates with an empty bottle.

The only container that doesn't seem to take in outside liquids is the one you can wear in the same slot as a fanny pack.

>You can now scavenge dumpsters for trash!

The developer must have played Pathologic 2

Liquids collisions make no sense. 1mm puddle shouldn't freely move the player and giant boxes around and easily throw them off a cliff.

It makes no sense what items can freely roll like they're perfectly spherical balls. Dropped a toolbox that was making me overweight and it just ROLLED AWAY.

Also, did I somehow miss the way to close water bottles or does this game actually take place in a universe where they never invented bottle caps? It makes no sense that I have to hunt down 250ml cups because this way I can make sure all my liquid containers stay full and I can use them one at a time.

Oh, that's right, it could be a slider! Sorry, that's definitely a better option than changing things for everyone, you're right!

Floor tiles blending in with the background even under light is annoying and not fun at all.

Items cluttering on the ground are impossible to sort through with pixel hunting, there should be a proximity inventory.

Rates of all conditions progression, including hunger and thirst, are definitely cranked up way too high.

So are the spaghetti until they get wet.

Also he's really into getting Mikko and Arvo back together. I think the tanuki boy is a fudanshi.

Travis would say no because he wants you to stay with Mikko, duh.

Keo keeps rewriting the axe murder ending, and it just keeps getting weirder because of it.

I don't know what the scene originally was, I only came around patch 0.28, I think. But I caught the tail end of someone giving Keo shit over changing it. I think it might have used to end with the axe sound, or maybe the axe sound was meaty, or maybe there was blood - something gruesome like that.

In 0.35.1, which I have kept, the cuffs were real(screenshots attached)

Now it's 0.51.1 and there's no blood, no axe, no cuffs... And since there's no Mikko - the scene now suggests that it was all purely imaginary, Arvo simply freaked out from being around Mikko and ran.

That feels more anti-climactic than the jumpscare of the worst ending, IMO. That one at least follows the motif of Mikko's repeating monologue about how nothing we do matters, and we're less than dust on the cosmic scale. You're dying, never having made up for your betrayal to your best friend/love, but at least you both happened, no matter how inexplicably unlikely, and managed to enjoy each other's company for a bit. And if it ended poorly - well... None of it mattered in the first place.

p.s. Imagine Travis' face in the morning when he found out that Arvo fucking DIED! 😳How would he try to make amends for his sticky paws? Would he tell Mikko? How would Mikko feel about it? I love exploring the doomed timelines like this, they are so rich for good meaty developments.

p.p.s. The Bad Ending, if read as "it was all a dream", shouldn't really be the end, as it invites a continuation of the story - Mikko going ballistic from Arvo not just leaving the lodge, but straight up dropping out of the university. Running way from him. FUCKING. AGAIN. It could actually lead to a satisfying ending where Mikko actually corners him with cuffs to make sure this time he stays around long enough for them to talk. How it would go from there - imagine for yourself, fanon is bae. ;)

Alright, without spoilers, but you must promise to come back and discuss them with me after you play them.

The Bad Ending - stay with Mikko but ignore him. (I think you only need to ignore his invitation to go outside, but if you're going for a bad ending - might as well ignore him completely, this way the final scene seems more natural).

THE WORST ENDING - Agree to stay with Mikko, but bail on him when you find the key.

Make sure you get all of Mikko's bad endings, otherwise the experience is not complete. Come back and let me know how you like his kinky side >:3

Excuse me, which route is this?

I realized what I like about the old sprites. 

I like how artistically artificial they look. Their expressions, their poses - they are aimed directly at YOU, the viewer, the only real person here, whose act of witnessing the show makes it real.

When it's a one on one dialogue, your companion stands in the middle of the frame, staring right at you, unblinking, like they are a character in a Wes Anderson movie. His works exude the same artistic artificiality as the old Dawn Chorus sprites - everything is not just artificial, but draws attention to its artificial nature.

I always loved works of fiction that are not afraid to make a nod, or better yet, a full bow to their artificial nature. "Pathologic" is a great example - it has main characters, background characters, and then the extras that don't even get a costume, they are just wearing a black bodysuit and a mask to create the sense of scale and numbers.

But back to Dawn Chorus. It's not just the old sprites that have this artistically artificial nature, other aspects of the FVN share that quality.

The background extras are not even black-clad shadows, they straight up don't exist. There's several dozen people in the lodge, you only ever see less than a dozen.

A lot of the writing here is unnatural in an artistic fashion as well. 

Every single OOC dialogue about ships at the sea the characters have is non-diegetic, it doesn't actually happen in the world of the VN. 

Every single perspective change is just the omnipotent storyteller lifting the curtain only to you, the viewer.

Every single monologue is saturated with theatrical pathos, like there's a literal spotlight shining on the speaker. Especially the self-analyzational sermons you shouldn't hear, because they are happening inside another character's head, or even in another time. It's completely fake but also extremely awesome.

And the old sprites really add to that feel - they grasp your attention demanding you witness them.

And the best part is that it's all entirely accidental. The creators of this FVN did not intend this at all, it happened by completely improbable sheer cosmic occurrence. The universe just shuffled the deck of reality 14 billion years ago and a never-ending sequence of happenstances made it just so happen that the people behind Dawn Chorus had created this deeply artistic artificial feel to their work while just trying to tell a story.

I think it's fantastic.

0.50.7, patched from Patreon.

Legacy is missing Dan's sprites, happens in day2_12_fireplace2 sequence of events. It was in Rune's route, though I'm sure this must be an issue in other routes as well.

The exact ones that gave me grief were

images/sprites/misc/dan dark-legacy.webp

images/sprites/misc/dan-legacy.webp

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your honesty and openness.

Came here after dealing with a FVN creator who is a way, way lesser community manager than you, and it's so horribly tiring to deal with them. You're just a breath of fresh air.

Please stay as you are, you're amazing and I hope your project succeeds and becomes popular. I recommend it to people whenever I can.

"Precious space in the options menu"? You mean the one you can expand literally endlessly? "Confuse new players"? There's absolutely nothing confusing about having two options for sprites, the concept of options is very-very clear. And people usually prefer to have them easily available, not hidden behind passwords.

Sigh... Keo, we've been through this.

I know you're just a writer, and a good one, and it's clear that the whole community management thing is hard for you. But resorting to making up excuses like you did before is going to have the exact same result as before. It's just going to give people false hope that they can reason with you. Again. And when they will inevitably fail, their resentment for you will grow. Again. And people will start getting obnoxious about this. AGAIN. And it will be your own fault. AGAIN.

You've taken a stance on this, it's obvious - you are a very resolute person. And I'm not asking you to give up your position - I know better now. But please, please, be direct about it, make it obvious - don't sugarcoat it, don't avoid it, don't pretend there's a good reason for this. Just be honest and say: "I don't want to make it a visible option". It won't make anyone happy, but it will sure as hell keep people from growing unhappier over time.

p.s. Either get better at this or find a community manager that can do this for you, because you're running out of legs to shoot. You can jerk people around between "oh wow, Keo listened!" and "Oh fuck, Keo is lying again" only so many times before they give up on you completely.

p.p.s. You want to see a creator being a great community manager? Look at your fellow FVN creator Xevvy - he too often has to say "no" to people, but he is always direct, always honest, and no one is ever unhappy with him for more than it takes him to respond. I don't even care for his VN, but my god, what an amazing person. I keep recommending people his VN just because I want to see him succeed. This could be you... If you could just be open with us. You have no idea how hard this is for us and how much we want to love you.

I'm yet to check it out, but bringing back the old sprites is a nice gesture.

Though I really don't think they should be locked behind a code. Just make it an option in the settings, please, this is an entirely unnecessary complication.

Haven't played in a while, but I think there's an option in the settings to make your ass not leak for that part. Or maybe a cheat code? Can't recall.

You don't have to thank me, I'm the one grateful for the experience and your reply is a display of gratitude in itself.

That said, my eloquence must be failing me, because I see that you misunderstand the issue I have with that scene. I'll try again if don't mind.

On day 2 the way Mizz speaks about his interest in Rael and his plans to go slow with him, it can be easily read as a declaration of a beginning of a relationship.

And those usually come with an expectation of being an exceptional arrangement, and not a "I'll tell you how special you are to me and then turn around and blow someone else".

So, the way the scene at the observation deck reads after that is that Mizz had consciously betrayed Rael's trust and Rael just did nothing about it. He even apologized about something that wasn't his fault like a lemon - the possibility of getting caught is a big part of having sex in a public place, it was Bromm's and Mizz's fault they got caught, not Rael's fault for catching them. Play stupid games - win stupid prizes. Batman couldn't beat an apology out of me there.

And regardless of that, what Mizz is angry about is irrelevant, because he just lost his right to be angry. He betrayed Rael's trust and he should not be allowed to make this about Bromm or himself. 

Again, I'm not daft, I realize that this is not your intended read, but it's a very possible and obvious read from where I'm standing. Other people will see things this way too.

And replying to your suggestion about playing things differently - no, even if I chose the option to stay quiet and spare Bromm's feelings at the expense of my own, I would NOT want sloppy seconds after him. And yes, the player can choose to not receive a blowjob there, to Mizz's  brief surprise, but you did not put it there for the reasons I would pick it for, so it's irrelevant in the context of our discussion - it's just Rael being shy, not Rael being angry.

So what am I suggesting?

The easiest(and also the worst) way to fix this is to avoid this read completely. Rewrite parts of Mizz's dialogue to make sure he beats the player over the head with the fact that there's no exclusive arrangement between them, and he will lift tail whenever he  wants for whomever he wants while they're flirting and he's telling Rael that he is so special. With a second chance for the player to block Mizz's romance by saying that is not acceptable to him.

The better option(though not for your free time) is to lean into this. You stumbled into this accidentally, but this is good drama, and drama sells - this could be everyone's favorite scene because conflict is memorable. 

(for example, Dawn Chorus fans love-love-LOVE the Axe Murder ending, even though it's a bad and non-canon ending, it's simply exciting and memorable BECAUSE it's a bad experience that's meant to be be a bad experience) 

What I'm saying is that even if it cuts off Mizz's romance option, you should allow the player an option to make Rael be hurt and angry, let him dig his heels in and tank his relationship with Mizz. This is a game about relationships, yet we haven't had any opportunities to lower our scores with anyone yet.

P.S. I'm retracting my notion that Rael is so different from a modern day person that he is allowed a special outlook on the situation - while talking about his Punk years, Rael mentioned people in his gang breaking each other's heart, so an expectation of an exclusive relationship is not something out of the ordinary for their world or him personally.

No, I understand what you mean. From his perspective Mizz isn't doing anything wrong - he already knew Bromm before you, probably intimately too, and he is genuinely putting you on a slow burn because he is actually interested in you, and he made you no promises of a closed relationship even as he admitted his interest. 

But the way things are right now - they ignore the player's perspective on this situation completely and treat him as if he is unequivocally in the wrong for having his own feelings and expectations of Mizz. Not Rael, the player.

Rael might be cool with this, he is not me, he was born and raised in the far-off future of a different world, he does not have my sensibilities and expectations of people.

But I am the one playing the game. I am the one whose feelings are real.

And I do realize the difficulties of creating a vast branching experience like you are creating, and I know you don't have endless resources to iron out every little thing... 

And, honestly, apart from this one particular experience, I've got nothing but praise for you, you're nailing it, truly. I am genuinely in awe at the scale of the story's branching. I tried to see all events for every character as the most obvious background paths, so I think I'm being objective when I say the game's been astonishingly amazing so far.

Which makes this particular event all the more disappointing because of how high the overall experience has been before it hit such a harrowing low. I feel like this is NOT one of those moments where you should just shrug it off and say that you only have two hands and can't cover all bases. I felt this way, and I'm hardly unique, so others will follow and be disappointed.

You must see that this needs at least a way for the player to make Rael be offended and not complicit in his own humiliation.

Call me old-fashioned, but I am rather disappointed that Mizz can play hard to get with you, and then turn around and blow Bromm. Where I'm from it's called leading you on.

And you don't get to call him out on that.

AND he is the one angry if you interrupt.

AND you're forced to apologize without a prompt.

Yeah, that part left a rather sour taste in my mouth.

If he's interested in Rael - maybe don't have Mizz put him on hold and then rush to suck off someone else.

If He's going to do it anyway - maybe let Rael be disappointed.

If he's going to be angry when, after all that, you interrupt Mizz - maybe let me dig in my heels and tank our relationship score even lower.

Because the way it is right now - the game made me lose all interest in Mizz by making him a two-faced whore, and then forced me to apologize to him too. That's just adding insult to injury.

As I am free to give them shit for it.

If the game suddenly turned into a body horror with straight romance - you wouldn't be defending the developer, you would be up in arms, because the game would be ruined for you. I'm exaggerating to make my point obvious, of course, but it doesn't really matter how far off from your expectation the game goes, when it's already out of bounds of acceptable for you.

The original designs were a promise. To change that - is to betray the trust of the community. This is why a good developer includes the community in the decision-making process when it's something that can make or break the entire project for large portions of the fanbase.

Monchi didn't do it, which mean he doesn't respect us. We didn't even get a heads-up, it was just dropped on us - in his eyes we don't even deserve a fucking word of warning from his fucking majesty.

So it's really bizarre that all these people with a para-social relationship with a person who doesn't give a shit about them are defending him.

> he was unrealistically twinky for someone of his background

Debatable. But regardless, it's a porn FVN about magic and ancient ghostly Viziers, this is not and has never been about realism. Please don't try to make this about something irrelevant.

What this IS about is Monchimutt pulling a bait and switch, betraying the trust of his community by changing a character's design in a meaningful way without a discussion. This is a huge middle finger to each and every one of us, including you. This is a message, and it says: "I do what I want and I do not care about your opinions and emotional investments in the slightest".

> John is clearly the embodiment of Twinkness still

John in his next update if we don't rise up against Monchi's tyranny:

Why do VN artists keep doing this to us? Are we not allowed to have any twinks? Thick arms, pecks the size of his head... Who is this? What did you do to my boy? Why?

Where were you when Monchimutt joined the twink genocide?

No art - no advertisement potential.

The shitty busted gramophone sound is beyond annoying and it brought on a bout of tinnitus for me. I hate you so much for this you can't imagine.