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A VN that’s about embarrassed naked guys!

I really like how Jack taunts the contestants as they get deeper into the sexy punishments in store for them, and how the contestants react to each other. He’s kind of an unassuming dom, but it’s very hot. The passphrase being “I’m young, stupid, and could really use the money” sets the tone for the contestants’ humiliation even before they set foot on stage, and it stays strong throughout the game.

I was a bit intimidated by the word count on this one, but it was a smooth, engaging read. You have a cohesive aesthetic with the sprites, backgrounds, and CGs. I don’t forget that they’re in the apocalypse even when they characters are more upbeat, partially because it’s always lurking in the background. I liked the way you animated Birch’s sprite. It helps convey his cheeriness. Slight quibble: when he bounces around, I can tell that the bottom of his sprite is cut off when I look at the bottom edge of the screen. The music was a good part of the environment/mood, particularly with the jazz radio (which is important because the radio is important). There were a couple of times where the audio fading was absent, or tracks didn’t play how I thought they were supposed to, and there’s one track with a distracting woosh or something that goes between the left and right sides (I hope this is enough description for you tell what I mean).

I like that we get an understanding of why the two stayed behind. It wasn’t just that they were abandoned or unlucky, and they each had something to do with why they were behind. They had agency in how their lives had played out, and experience the consequences of their decisions. And the reasons are understandable/sympathetic, even if they’re a little “stupid”. Judah learns from and regrets his decision. They both have feelings about their decisions without it being didactic, and the scene where they’re talking about their reasons on the roof didn’t come across as clumsy backstory exposition. Their telling each other is an action that they’re doing, and it both moves the story/relationship along and fills in some questions about why it’s just these two here. Plus we get a sweet CG.

I think the ending is a cool mix of sweet and horrific. It isn’t a jump scare to see Birch waiting outside the apartment, though it is surprising and horrifying. It isn’t cheap, is what I guess I mean to say. And romantic. That even though he wanted to leave, his zombie instincts still say to stay with Judah.

I like their relationship. It’s not perfect (I’m thinking about a moment where Judah puts Birch on a bit of a pedestal even though Birch had implied/told him he was suicidal), and it didn’t feel like they got together because that’s what these kinds of characters do in this kind of situation. Their relationship having so much to do with food ties in nicely with the body horror too.

It’s not a unique concept, but you executed it really well.

This jam entry stands out a lot with the implementation of the puzzles. There were some twists and turns in the story as I perceived it as the memory fragments went on, and it was done in a way that I didn’t feel was cheap. I’d thought from the opening that the sleeping pills were on purpose, and that Gabe had died from suicide. I was right on the death part (sort of), but it turned out that he took a normal amount of sleeping pills, which presented another question of “but then how/why did he die?” The picture of them at the hospital was after the accident, but it’s not the one Gabe recovered from his physical injuries at, which is the more obvious conclusion to arrive at. But it never said that that was the case.

When I got through to the end, I thought I was supposed to have divined the wolf’s name from some hint in the text, and then was glad when “life/my wolf” worked to choose that option. I like that there are a bunch of things that work there, including Atma as a kind of “third option”, even if it doesn’t end up producing an ending.

The two obvious endings weren’t wholly satisfactory, and after going through some jam comments, I found out that the wolf’s name was the way to get to the secret ending. I also had some questions about the plot that were left unanswered.

So I went back to look at the memories to find some hints that may have been there. But it wasn’t easy to look at the memories, because I needed to do all the mazes again. I hadn’t saved on all the memories because it hadn’t occurred to me that I would need to if I wanted to view them again without doing the entire game again. But I had my hand-drawn maps out in front of me, so I did. I found that by squinting hard enough at the glitchy text, I was able to see what was hidden there. Except for the wolf’s name. I spent a lot of time looking at the wolf’s name trying to see what it was supposed to say, since the other glitchy text works when you do that, but I wasn’t getting a name (I was getting a headache), so I stopped.

I pieced together the story from all the memories on a second run, and it was satisfying for me to put the plot together. Gabe’s mom really going through it after her friend died made more sense in the context of Dorian’s death. I thought that he and the wolf were at a gay bar, and that was what they were talking about that was glitched out, but it turned out that it was about being in rehab. It was nice to glean additional meaning from a repeat reading. Doing the puzzles all over again was not as nice.

While I had pieced together most of the plot that’s explained in the third ending (the big thing I didn’t get was Dorian’s motivation, which doesn’t show up much elsewhere in the game), I hadn’t gotten closer to the wolf’s name. I thought I was getting taunted when the glitch text letter came up because it wasn’t a consistent letter. I had written down several that it was switching between. I later found in the game’s code that it was supposed to be an M.

I had also thought that the highlighted N in one of the maze’s was an instruction to investigate the panel in the centre of the room. I must have messed up the order the first time, because it didn’t work, then I thought to investigate the panel at that point in the sequence and it did work, so it wasn’t on my radar as much when it came to being a name clue (I found this out from the jam comments). I didn’t find any of the other letters (including the glitchy M), and at that point was tired of looking.

The third ending, when I got to it by opening up the game files and looking for the wolf’s name as Fuze did, let me see the rest of the CGs, but mostly told me things I had already pieced together. I think it’s much easier to piece together the plot than the name. I was expecting more emotion out of that ending, for Gabe and the wolf to have more of a sweet reunion (especially since the other endings don’t have that), but it was mostly recounting the events of the plot.

I spent a lot of time on the puzzles and the maze. Way more of my time was spent on puzzle than text, and while I didn’t find the puzzles generally unpleasant (I felt some challenge and accomplishment, and skipped nothing on my initial playthrough), I was more there for the story than the puzzle.

About the puzzles. The controls were hard to get used to. The maze kind of reminded me of Etrian Odyssey, but in the ones that I played, you could rotate your camera without moving between tiles (I think), and I was having a hard time understanding what it did when you pressed the back arrow. I found the room numbering unhelpful (I initially missed the numbering because I had picked the option to not have them, and then found that I couldn’t scroll back. I then restarted the game.), and opted to not use that feature. All of the maze corridors looking the same also added difficulty, though I expect this was due to the game jam time contraint. It’s still a feat of programming that you were able to code this all.

I don’t have a problem with sliding puzzles. I know some of the tricks to solving them. It’s just that there was a lot of sliding going on, and the blocks slid too slowly for my liking, particularly on the main menu. I think that one’s probably a programming thing to do with the size of the puzzle pieces. (I’d also like to say that I did that puzzle first thing on opening the game and was frustrated when I wasn’t able to view the secrets, and when I had to do it again after finishing the game, and when I wanted to look back at the secrets when I was looking for name clues.). The CGs are nice. They were also done well regarding the ability to put them together as a puzzle. I can only think of two tiles in the bar CG’s background lights where it’s ambiguous as to what could go where.

The music is calming for the puzzles and mazes, which I think is good because it helps people not feel too frustrated as they’re going through them. I was pleasantly surprised when the music changed after I had advanced a maze. My two gripes are that the calm sliding puzzle music doesn’t always fit the urgency/seriousness of the scene around it (the maze music becomes more intense when you approach the end) and that the piano music for the wolf’s ghostly appearances is not the most suited to the short length of time these appearances are. It’s a very sentimental track, and hearing it come on for only a few lines before we’re back to the maze (and so frequently) makes me feel like the game is trying too hard to make me feel something instead of letting the text carry the emotion.

I liked Gabe as a player character. His sass towards Atma and the general situation he finds himself in is entertaining, and his “solve the puzzle for me!” lines are funny and can lighten the mood for players who are feeling down about the tile puzzles. His sprite in the corner is cute and expressive.

The wolf and Gabe’s family are… fine? They serve their purpose in the plot. I would’ve liked to have seen more scenes where Gabe and his wolf are getting along better, since a big part of the third ending is that they’re happy because they’re together again, but so much of the memories are negative ones.

I think Dorian could use some more fleshing out. It was hard for me to understand the particular loopholes he was taking advantage of, and how he had turned from someone who fought for justice in life to what amounts to the main villain in the story. His motivation to try to save people is there, but the memory-erasing is such a huge step towards evil that I’m still left scratching my head about it. He protested for civil rights during his life, but then in death he spends his time blackmailing people/taking advantage of strange and exploitable systems to enforce his will on his friends? I can believe the whole maze afterlife thing, but Dorian’s exploitation of the system (and the system being so exploitable) is a harder thing to buy.

Like with your Novembear entry, there’s a lot of style here. Your art direction is great, and the washed out pastels make for a certain look that doesn’t detract from the apocalypse, but adds to the dreaminess and loneliness of it. The gas station laundromat is interesting to see and matches with the “well everyone got raptured” absurdity.

I found the text lacking, though. The characters’ voices aren’t differentiated from each other very much, and I didn’t find their actions particularly compelling. I saw the payoff of the tree at the end and the continued adventures of the duo who have found each other in a lonely wasteland, but it didn’t feel adequately built up to.

I think there are a lot of interesting things going on in the story, but they don’t all fit together in the way that I’d like them to. Faolan checks a lot of boxes for a “rich man comes to ailing village to offer Faustian deal” story, and Desmond calls him out for essentially exploiting and killing Angus (Faolan even implies that he cheated Angus when he brings up that he needs more power to sustain a larger town), but what comes after that is much more concerned with Iomhar’s disappearance and Faolan’s sadness/helplessness. Desmond is never shown again, and Angus/Iomhar doesn’t think about him. Iomhar’s disappearance and relationship with Faolan are mentioned early in the story, but don’t set up enough for the ending where Iomhar essentially takes over as the main character. Angus and Iomhar are sort of the same person or merged in some way, but the ending sex scene feels much more like Iomhar than Angus, and much of what we know about Iomhar comes only at the very end.

Making a deal with a famine god to bring prosperity has some interest to it since you wouldn’t think that prosperity-giving is really in the purview of the famine god. And then when Faolan says that he was at odds with Iomhar in ideals since he wanted people to enjoy themselves and not work all the time, it gives the impression that maybe the famine god has some good points against the harvest god. There’s some yin-yang balance thing going on here, but then famine seems to just use the “people should enjoy their lives” ideal to isolate Angus from his friends.

I think that Faolan’s characterisation in his introduction is strong, but the rest of his story with his abandoning Angus and feeling sad about being abandoned by Iomhar comes too quickly.

I do like the CG and animation at the end with Faolan and Iomhar. It helps to show Faolan as a sympathetic figure after being condescending and guarded for much of the VN. And the scene where Angus gets Iomhar powers has a lot of drama to it in a good way, with the tree sprouting in the field and all the description of Angus’s feelings and struggles in the moment. I agree with some other commenters here that you did well with the provided jam sprites. Desmond’s character lines up well with his sprite and expressions, and the text acknowledges Faolan’s suit and brooch, and they figure into the story as people view him in a certain way because of it. Plus the whole famine thing.

:)

I like the premise of a story split between a play and its actors, but I’m having some problems with the execution.

The three brothers feel like they’re supposed to be important characters (the ram has things to say about their actors), but I have trouble thinking about them as individual characters except that one of them is strong and stupid and another one is the main one. The one who is supposed to be smart doesn’t really show that much smarts. There’s a lot of direct exposition with them talking about their motivations and plans and the lore of the world compared to the scenes between the demon and the princess/the ram and the fox. When the princess asks the demon about what it means to be a demon, it’s an interaction on a personal level in addition to being a vehicle for delivery of factual information to the reader. There is a layer of familial relationships over the scene where the brothers talk about the layout of the tower, but it isn’t nearly as interesting and doesn’t carry the same plot weight. It tells us something about their relationship, but it doesn’t progress that relationship or tell us much of importance.

The quality of presentation was uneven. The scene with the princess meeting the demon was done nicely with the camera motion and blood and CG of the eyes in the bush, and there are some neat transitions between the play and the actors (both in the writing and the visuals), but there are also some transitions and animations that are missing, with sprites appearing very suddenly on the screen.

We get the contrast between the stage lights and the director in the darkness (in a good way), and the scene outside behind the building is cool (it’s a much more intimate space than the stage), but the background for the scene where the princess drinks the water is strangely bare, and the princess sprite doesn’t have enough contrast with the similarly-coloured gravel behind it. Hopefully these things will be able to be tidied up now that the jam deadline is no longer looming over us.

I like the parallel going between the fox/princess and ram/demon. How both the ram and the demon are helping the fox and princess to live their lives boldly and authentically, and how the transition to the CG where the demon is picking up the limping princess could almost be about the ram picking up the fox. The ram makes an offhand comment about the ending of the play early on, and I’m curious to see what it’s setting up.

I haven’t delved into the workings of draggable Ren’Py objects, but according to the people on the stream, it’s quite the coding feat! This is a very creative way to frame your story, and the fact that we’re looking at the dad’s computer despite him not showing up in most of the clips is an interesting story hook.

Other than the framing of the scenes as the videos on a computer, they’re somewhat lacklustre in presentation. It’s nearly entirely silent, and I think that audio would be a good way to sell the setting (and the low-quality video feel) even more. Shots are mostly static for the duration of a scene (when the video format is more set up than traditional visual novels to take advantage of camera motion), and there isn’t much of the character movement or changes of expression that I’m used to expecting out of visual novels.

There’s so much we don’t get to see between scenes, so I went looking for pointers of the missing parts, which is a way to keep engaged with the story. The big question of “who is the purple text character?” is something that the presentation lends itself to since the camera can obscure the person behind it. The answers aren’t here yet, though, so I can’t say that certain aspects are foreshadowed well or even if they’re meaningful in the context of the whole story.

I found that scenes often were too long for their own good. The vows are really long (particularly with the repetition), and don’t tell us that much about the couple making them. They’re standard wedding vows delivered in an expected way. I think the point of that scene is to contrast the couple’s wedding happiness with the following (offscreen) divorce, but I wasn’t getting that much happiness from the scene, or what makes this wedding happier or different from any other wedding. It’s a missed opportunity for characterisation.

I don’t know how much of the information in the birthday scene is going to come up later, but that one also overstayed its welcome or could have started later in the scene. It’s a pitiful birthday—no one else except Cole’s mother is here, and the presents are all unexciting. It goes on for quite a while, though, before moving onto the subject of his dad and his feelings towards his parents.

The characters are a highlight of the writing. Other than the wedding scene not telling us very much about the people involved, we see a lot of the characters’ personalities and relationships in the video clips. The birthday scene between Maia and Cole isn’t just a loving mother and son, but this particular loving mother and son. Their banter was interesting to read, and Maia, Cole, and the dad all have distinct voices.

I felt like this ended just as it was getting going. Having Free agree to do a favour for Mine without knowing what it is (and without it being revealed to the reader) reads like a setup for a longer story that involves the favour.

What we have instead is a story about Free signing a contract and moving from the mall to the outside. Which can be a fine and complete story. I feel confused about it, though. In signing the contract, has Free traded one form of imprisonment for another? Should we believe that Mine has nefarious intentions? If that’s the case, then what the exact details of the favour are isn’t important. However, it didn’t seem like Free was particularly imprisoned after going with Mine. He feels liberated after leaving the mall, in fact.

The story also doesn’t go into detail about why Free changes his mind. Is it just that he’s horny for Mine? Why is he horny at that point, and not earlier or later? If the focus of the story isn’t on the unrevealed favour, then is the focus meant to be on Mine persuading Free to sign the contract? Is that the central conflict? Mine arranges for protesters to disturb Free’s sleep, but that doesn’t seem to be as much a factor in Free’s change of heart as Free’s sudden horniness, or self-admission of horniness.

It’s an interesting premise that one of the characters is almost inexplicably upside-down, but I feel like the idea remains unexplored. It’s touched upon with how he feels after being cured and the mention of the scientific explanation for his upside-down-ness, but the story doesn’t go deeply enough into either aspect of it for it to be satisfactory for me.

Free does have an interesting narrative voice, and it was funny to see him quickly go from denying Mine’s hotness to being really horny for him, particularly during the stream where it was voiced.

The Sonic fanfiction was funny to listen to on stream, but it makes up quite a bit of the final word count and I can’t help but take off some points from my rating for it since its inclusion hurts the VN overall.

Don’t worry, I also find it funny that I had to include a tutorial for where to find the start button.

I cropped that sprite myself! …I ran out of time.

It’s useful feedback to hear that it feels unfinished. I think I’m getting a better idea of what parts need more to them for when I put out a more finished version.

This is so cute! I like that you added the lighting effects on the sprites based on where they were, and between the visuals, audio, and description, I got a really good feel for the place and tone of the settings. The main characters and their relationship were well-written, and I was really rooting for the two of them over the course of the story, which moved at a good pace.

Some minor gripes: I had some trouble reading Ricky’s name since the blue is so dark against the black text box, especially when there’s a sprite behind it. The abrupt music transitions took me out of the story (though the music selection is nice, as another commenter said). Also I downloaded the PC version by accident since I assumed it would be the first one. I wasn’t paying the most attention, and you don’t have to put the PC version first, I guess, but adding the icons for which system each download is for could help people who aren’t paying the most attention download the right one for their system.

I was thinking at the end of the story that Frank was getting stuck in his “someday”s too much when it came to Ricky. Like he was “supposed” to overcome his trepidation and declare his love in a dramatic moment on the rooftop. But I like it better this way. Only so much can change in a night, and he’s on his way. We get the sweet line from Ricky about being patient.

Good job on your first VN!

I will add myself to the growing chorus of appreciative voices that used your music for a Love + Attraction Jam game. I used Rekindling as menu music, but Failure is Forever an Option and Clr D Lim were really good to make things cinematic. Thanks for making all this music free to use.

https://joelurker.itch.io/a-little-farther

Spoilers ahead, for those of you reading comments before playing.

I like how you set up the nonlinear storytelling. There’s a feeling of “you can only experience so much before things are over and you can’t go back” that works with the dead sister story, though I think you could’ve leaned into it harder. From what I saw on the two playthroughs during the stream, the story was smooth no matter how you ordered the objects, and you have the relationship that continues to build between the characters as you pick up more things, giving some sense of movement towards a destination.

Toby’s obliviousness concerning his friends is a funny joke, but it overstays its welcome, especially when you go back to read more than three item stories. It comes up every time you pick up something (I think? It’s been some time.), but it doesn’t have the depth to sustain that level of attention like Bart’s story does. The framing of Toby bumping into Bart so he can have an audience for his stories isn’t as well-developed as what Bart has to say about the items and his sister. It’s a romantic fantasy to meet-cute with a bear and then go on a date and have him pick you up and be embarrassed about his condoms, but that plot and the dead sister plot are so unrelated that Toby’s presence is something of a distraction. Would it be a more focused story if Bart just tripped on a rock or something and had to pick up his things while monologuing to himself in his head/to his sister/directly to the reader about what these things mean to him? Hypothetically, I guess. The art does a lot to show Bart and Toby together, and Bart does gain something from having someone listen to all his stories, but I think the story as a standalone could stand to do with either much more or much less of Toby.

The game page says it’s a demo, but I’m a little lost on what would come after. Bart continues to pick items, but it’s at his sister’s funeral? Toby’s and Bart’s relationship gets more focus?

Also the graphic on the game page is pretty, but with the text and the background opacity as they are currently, it’s a little hard to read the description and comments.

You make a very good first impression with the title screen. The music matches the vibe of the graphics, and the animated red string is a nice touch. Reminds me of Adastra with the shading and the city in the distance on the water.

The double outline on the names and narration makes it harder to read. A light text colour with a black outline should be readable over dark, medium, or light backgrounds, so the additional light outline isn’t needed. At the beginning with the narrator telling the story over the CGs, I think it’s fine to have the text in the centre, since it’s a different narrator in a different style, but outside of the opening, it being centred with no background like that doesn’t accomplish enough to take the hit in readability. I will also second the notion that not having periods (or other sentence-ending punctuation) at the ends of your sentences makes it harder to read. Some of the sentences do continue into the next text box, and I don’t know if a sentence is finished or not until I click through.

I like your animations with Nadir’s hand with the phone coming up and fading in at the same time, and the TV turning on and off. It’s a good sound effect for the TV turning on. And you have custom text boxes that change colours with the speaker. They’re little things, but they set your entry apart.

Roberto’s expressions are adorable and I very much want him to approach me in a dark alleyway alone or with friends. You have a finger on the pulse of what the readers want with him taking off his hoodie to keep nadir warm (exposing his tummy and tight tank top), and his putting his contact information in Nadir’s phone at the end is a sweet callback. His name is kind of hard to read in the name box, though, with it being so dark and then having a dark outline and a very soft light outline.

The opening narration, other than its first line, seems pretty omniscient. Combined with the game description and premise to the game setting up the “red string means fated lovers” part, I’m really ready to buy that this is what happens in this fictional world.

So when Nadir is confused by his second red flash, I’m confused at his confusion. If this is the first instance of a second red flash, he’s just made history, but the story doesn’t really treat it this way. If this has happened before, then why doesn’t Nadir know that? He’s a twenty-four-year-old who lives in a city and has access to internet and television, on top of him being really motivated to believe that you can have a second red flash. His friends and sister would also tell him about this kind of thing being able to happen if they knew about it.

The second moment of doubt to the red flash narrative comes when Roberto tells Nadir that he doesn’t believe the flash means soulmate. Nadir treats Roberto as if he’s the first person he’s met who doesn’t believe in the red flash meaning soulmate, and I have trouble buying that this is the first time he’s meeting someone like this. Like I said before, Nadir doesn’t sound like he’s lived a particularly sheltered life.

I wasn’t satisfied with the ending. Or maybe it was how you got to the ending, or that I wanted more in the middle before the two are this happy together.

Sure, I want Nadir to get together with Roberto because Roberto is hot and deserves a boyfriend and a hot cup of coffee at the end of this romance story, but his initial prickliness and years and years of contempt for the red flash get undone really fast. Their relationship moving to be such a smooth ride at the cafe at the end doesn’t match the lingering questions that they have about each other, themselves, and the world. Nadir admits that his decision to save Roberto with the police officer was a selfish one, which I like, but that idea doesn’t get much exploration afterwards, and it feels like both of them aren’t on the same page of if the red flash is real or not. They don’t have to be, but the ending doesn’t linger on it as much I think it should. There’s mention of a rocky start, but we (the audience) don’t see the rockiness, and I’m not sure what that would look like since Roberto is pretty psyched about the date before the scene changes.

I don’t get the feeling that Nadir loved his fiancee. He says “We got along”, and then the next textbox is about how he was physically separated from her when he moved to the city and she didn’t. His heart is pounding as he recollects the story of how he and his dead fiancee got together, so the narration should reflect that emotional intensity, but he remains really detached. We get some emotion from him as he’s being robbed and when he’s restless in jail, but I’d like to see more, even if he’s depressed and his emotions are pretty flat.

I appreciate that you wove in the idea of chance in places that weren’t just romance: the cop happening to be around the corner, the woman happening to be filming, and the video happening to go viral. It’s a world where both of the characters feel tossed around by fate in a bad way, but ultimately make the decision to be happy with each other. Even if Nadir is being selfish in pursuing Roberto, it’s a big step for someone who’s lost their fiancee to start dating again.

It’s hard to pull off having a character whose dialogue is entirely composed of kaomoji, but you really got it to work here. Bake’s animations are cute, as well as its actions described in the text (I liked the part where it ate all the garbage and then spit it up on command). The horror of its appearance sets it apart from other cute mascot characters and helps keep me from experiencing cuteness overload.

I like the idea of Carlos’s behaviour towards Johnny pre-breakup mirroring Bake’s behaviour towards Carlos post-breakup.

I was left with some confusion about the tone of the ending. Carlos does acknowledge that Bake is annoying like Carlos is himself (and Carlos communicates more that he is annoyed than Johnny did), but it’s saddening to see Carlos go back to curling up on the couch being down about himself. Sure, Bake is there with him now, but hanging out with the loneliness spirit that vaguely resembles your ex-boyfriend doesn’t sound like a good thing to be doing long-term. It’s a mixed bag between a sad ending (Carlos is just as depressed after speaking with Johnny and learning why he’s been dumped) and a happy one (he has a friend now and experiences some insight into why his relationship didn’t work out), but those two elements aren’t working together for me as well as they could.

It’s an interesting setting and opening you have here. New Oldport and Tuesday and time not flowing as it usually does. I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but there’s a consistency to its logic. (Have you read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled? I’m reminded of that. Particularly in the way that Sam (Jet? the boar) is a polite guide-butler. I like that he has a distinct way of speaking.) The backgrounds are also good at evoking a dreamy, surreal feeling.

There’s something familiar in the dinner conversations with Sam and Phil. 5G and vaccine conspiracy theories and talk of leaving reviews. It’s grounding in a place that’s so foreign. I like how they flirt, leaving these subtle invitations for Brady. And the line with Phil about tenderly tearing a piece of meat off as he eats. It’s an interesting turn of phrase. And it’s interesting how Sam is ostensibly the guest, but is offering help with the ice machine as if he was the worker and not Brady. These are details that make me want to keep reading.

Unfortunately, I could not keep reading, and I think it’s due to bugs rather than the game not having been written past that point, since the game was hanging on Phil’s “All one of them” or Brady’s “I do” in the post-dinner conversation with Jeremy. I enjoyed what I saw, though.

I appreciate the insight into your development process. (I was also scrambling at the last minute.) I’m new to the whole visual-novel-making process and it helps me to see how others do things. Like with thinking about it as prose vs screenplay, I would think that it’s more screenplay, but a good amount of prose does end up in the finished product, but then there’s that whole thing where reading the script is an incredibly different experience than playing the game, so you can’t look at the script as if it’s just prose. And the difficulty of making character expressions when the script isn’t finished yet (though I wasn’t making my own sprites, I did want to have the script finished before I started anything else, but then I took way too long with the script where maybe I should’ve started programming earlier).

Congratulations on getting as much done as you did.