In a way, yeah! But it's also something that the story touches on eventually x)

Thanks for the kind words! While updates may take a while, this keeps me motivated. 
/G

lol, true!

Thanks for the comments Naxo, I remember you being around from the very very start.

/G

No picture, and now I'm 10x as nervous

*jordan peele sweating gif*

Thank you for the kind words, and the motivation! I'll be doing my best!

Hi,

As it's almost completely a hobby project I've been unable to promise any update times for quite a while now. I do want to launch an update late July or early August though, barring nothing else happens with work etc.

/G

This is one to keep an eye on!

There's more Calbex :eyes

Can't wait!

Thanks for the encouraging words!
I will definitely be finishing Distant Travels, regardless of the time it takes. I'll also be doing my best to do it in a way that keeps me healthy and sane.

Comments like this make me happy and encourages me to keep going, so thank you!

to whomever it concerns please don't brigade me for this one, last time was enough lol

There's a lot to unpack on this one.

First of all, while I get the shitpost value Unagi has gone for, it's overdone and unpolished.



UI and accessibility

The UI has some huge scaling issues. In the main menu there's lines too close to text and the contrast level of the main menu makes it so people with lowered sight literally cannot see it: It's grey text on a grey background. I suggest looking up HTML Webpage contrast guides - they translate very well to VN and game UIs. This also goes for some of the nametags; Wilberto/Haris's nametag are both overlayed with white, this kills the contrast needed for easy reading.

Next up with the actual ingame UI, some parts suffer the same issue. Yellow text on white background, or black spinning text whenever an advanced text-tag is applied. This is fixable by reading the documentation of Wattson's text tags, and definitely within the authors skillset.

Following; The narrator text is underlined, which makes it very difficult to read for me. I read quite fast generally, but the underlining of entire sentences makes it difficult. I'd suggest changing the color of the textbox or so instead.

There are broken links in the about section of the game, throwing errors instead of actual sources. On a side note, for music files: If you're licensing something in a way where you cannot redistribute, you *need* to package em. A .rpa package is fine, but you cannot have the actual tracks available without any kind of obfuscation or pickling.

And to finish off my UI review; It's too large. Some names cover half the screen, and the textbox is more than a third of the screen with white-ish transparency which makes it very brutalist in style - it's hard to take your eyes off it to see the actual game visuals.



Art and in-game visuals

First of all, aside from the pre-made sprites for the Jam, the one added sprite and the CGs are quite good. There are however some issues (most likely due to coding, but art issues in the end nontheless). Mainly with the main character's (Preston) eyes: they overlap whenever he has a shirt on in most expressions.

The transitions are kind of cool, and the twaining visuals are clear.
That said, it'd be interesting to see what it looked like with a clear direction for transitions: A theme. This swaps scenes, this affects characters and so on. Progression, if you will.
It's clear Unagi has had a lot of fun making them, so spend more time polishing the presentation, not just the transitions next time and you'll hit higher!

Story

Right. We're thrown in without a lot of explanation, and there's pronouns to keep track of in a way that's not just character based, but lore based: as well as the entire concept of twaining and what benefits it might give. To put it bluntly: Thrown in to learn it as we go with hints can work, but not when there's this many things to keep track of. It just makes it difficult to follow, paired with the underlined narrator text I had to spend more time trying to understand what the text was, than what it meant. 

What I did appreciate however was the puns. Pro-twain (protein) and citrusy (spelled citrussy pls!) was funny af.

Also, a very arguable note: Being 29 does not make someone a daddy.

Coding
Just took a quick look since your files are unobfuscated, you might want to look into repeat and advanced ATL blocks. I also feel like a screen could have done the transition texts (timeskips etc) more justice than the nvl mode.


All in all, it'd be interesting to see what Unagi could do if he actually tried avoiding the shitpost status and took reference from successful things. He's clearly quite innovative, but it seems to more often than not channel in a downwards direction and then spiral on itself.
All in all, it's a little disappointing because it shoots itself in the foot by going too far in so many ways; Base ideas can be good, but if you don't polish your base enough and mix too many things together it's like mixing too many colors: it just becomes a grey goo.
The thing that stuck out, and could have carried this was the twaining concept - it's a cool one, and Preston's struggles can easily be tied to how many people feel in their lives; and that's not even mentioning being gay. It's all a little undeveloped though; Add more story *details*.

2/5 total.

Thank you! I appreciate it.

That's one of the nicest things someone's ever said about my work!
I don't think I'll open one unless I can guarantee at least bi-monthly updates though.

There has been some of them giving their input, but no discussion out right in the current build.

Max won't have any NSFW Scenes. I've been toying with more personal scenes and make Max a non-romantic route, but if so that's once the rest of the game is finished.

/G

I'll keep that in mind ;)

Hi! It's a lot of art, and there's been a few different artists working with me on the project (Including art I've done myself) over the progress.
Recently Drakes offered to do all the character sprites to keep them consistent, but a rehaul of the backgrounds and CGs would simply be too much work for me to afford. 
Apart from me wanting to keep the CGs different artists have made for the game, I like the charm and it kind of makes me happy to have art from different friends in my game!

/G

Sadly not. I've focused a lot on my health instead of pushing updates etc. I do a lot of background work and thinking I might change directions and release pretty much the full game or so next time instead.

Only thing I can promise is that I'm still working on it!

/G

I'll see about adding a font toggle

I'll create a separate 32 bit download for the next update. The reason I haven't for now is that it often seems to flag a false positive with ren'py

Hi,
If you wish to publish anything then that's a different story, but since it's for personal use go ahead!

They're a bit taller than your average human, but the human's shown on screen are also generally not tall for humans.
John is up there at 7ft, and he's probably the tallest.

Looking into this further it appears I'd flipped the decider for high/low gfx, which in turn loaded a transparent video on LowGFX mode for this scene; this can cause issues if with flashing white lights, especially on phones (which is where the possible flashing lights disclaimer comes from).

I've edited the transparent video for the next update to not ever flash completely white, but rather flash the stars. No way around the flashing, but hoping this will be less impactful. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I really appreciate it!

Thanks for the report, I'll take a look! Are you on mobile or PC/MAC? Do you remember if you're on HighGFX or LowGFX (if you open the Preference menu it should say)

Thanks for the bug reports! I've fixed the sprite viewer issue for John's intimate scene, and the minigame.
Charles' route isn't available yet, so it loops back to the selection after the initial sequence on purpose. It'll be available come next update
/G

Yep! There's a dev log that talks more in depth, but it's a code and art update. All sprites are now made by Drakes. There's also a few new songs by Camazule.

I'll put it in the gallery so people can check it out, and barring time I'll put in an option to switch back in the actual game as well. (It will come, I just can't promise it for the next update, at the latest in the one after that.)

Hi there and thanks for checking in. I do appreciate it!

I *want* to release Charles route for Ch3 this month, and then hopefully I've caught up on life enough for bi-monthly releases.  Most of Ch.4 is already done, but I want to make sure it's all set up as I want it with the pure amount of content and updates in it.

I don't want to say 100%, but it's getting there!

/G

Hi!

I'll do another teaser tomorrow.
Other than that, I plan to release the update containing Charles' Ch3 sometime this month. That'll include new sprites for all the characters seen in the VN so far.

Drakes has been working hard to make it all happen, I'm pretty excited to be able to show it all off soon.

/G

We all need more Norman in our lives :')

Haha, and it's the scene where he's got no clothes. Unfortunate!

Awesome!!

Thank you! That's encouraging to hear, I hope to be able to keep up consistent updates once I catch up this time, as well.

Yep! Above is correct! Thanks Ness!
The split has to do with older android OS, most devices will take any of the versions and run just fine. If you're unsure and your phone is from 2018 or later, go with "Newer Devices", otherwise try older devices.

If it doesn't launch, try the Universal one, and if it still doesn't work, try the edge device one.

In the future, I'll just be building two android builds that should fill both spaces.
/G

Thank you for the support! I'm in a great mood for working on the game recently, so there's been a lot of work done the last couple of weeks.
Going to keep it up until the update is out, and hopefully beyond.

Hi there, I know it's a bit annoying with the lack of updates.
I'm still working on DT but I can't promise a release date, however what I can promise is that when the update is out, it'll be back to a bi-monthly update schedule until the VN is done.

Aside from that, there's some massive art additions already done that I think most people will enjoy.

Thanks for sticking in there and expressing interest in the VN, despite my lack of delivery recently.
/G

Hi there, I've been having some personal troubles so I can't give you an ETA. I'm still working on it, but I don't dare promise a time at the moment.
On the bright side, when it does come, it's a big update. And probably the penultimate one.

/G

Thank you!

If you go into Preferences & Enable it, there is some in the Mike route and a bit more in the John route.
Eventually, there'll be NSFW content for all routes (if the option is enabled, of course.)