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phwoggers
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夜行纪闻 Chronicles of the Night Walk jam comments · Replied to phwoggers in 夜行纪闻 Chronicles of the Night Walk jam comments
夜行纪闻 Chronicles of the Night Walk jam comments · Posted in 夜行纪闻 Chronicles of the Night Walk jam comments
Devs, please please please stop using PNGs! This isn't just aimed at this VN because it has been a consistent problem I've seen in this jam. It's just particularly relevant here cause this VN is 800mb(!!!!!) large when it should be like 100mb.
I'm not an expert on this topic but this is what me and my dev friends figured out to be the most effective. WebP should be the default vn export. If you're using CSP then in the drop down select Prioritize file size with Quality set to 100-75. PNGs should be reserved for printing or files that has special color requirements. 99% of the time this setting will be good enough. If your picture is 1920x1080, then export to 3840x2160 with oversampling enabled and @2 in the name to tell renpy to half its resolution. This is all documented in the renpy documentation in the Oversampling section. You get img that doesn't lag and benefit with x2 resolution or over 10x smaller file sizes for backgrounds and around 2x smaller file sizes for sprites.
Audio wise, it's generally safer to use oggs instead of mp3s because ogg is more optimized for games. In my experience wav and mp3 files lag a bit more, and in this vn I had a few instances where the ambience stopped playing because I hit the 'back' key, not sure if that's a formatting issue or renpy is being renpy. I understand not everyone is an audio engineer, but I'd recommend looking into the bare basics of audio treatment. Some breathing and voice samples are untreated which at times took me out of the experience. A simple Reverb or Delay effect to push these sounds to the back of the room would be immediately effective for the iconic newscast sound space.
With that out of the way, this is a GREAT time! The VN pulls the oldest tricks from the dramatic writing playbook, i.e. high stakes public improvisation and corporate incompetence. The strongest part of the story imo happens around middle when it's just our reporter on stage with the evil exec, the entire crew had an urgent stake and are caught up in the chaos. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat. I wouldn't complain if the story just ended right after, because the villain failed to return in any meaningful compacity by the third act, and because how slow everything moved, it's quite a let down compared to the fantastic first two acts.
As an outsider, this was an especially fun read as it is an exposé into a system that I don't know much about. For one I didn't know unannounced recordings could be admissible in court or is common practice in non state-ran journalism. Also just learning about the brand of corporate lingo in the bathroom while our mc is getting berated is kinda cool. I really hope the VN is a good representation of the current journalistic landscape or the writer is a journalist themself because it is fascinating.
Overall I can see this being one of the most notable entry in the jam art wise. The main cast emote so well. The line and rendering are all top notch, especially our lil Beastars Jack (sorry haha!). The UI is slick, and I think this is one of the 2 entries that has a custom pause menu?! The CGs are killer, obviously. I also really like the duo b&w textbox (everything is so extra in this vn it's great). Overall, even with the slight hiccup in the latter half I am obligated to give this piece an extremely high score. Everything comes together in a slick package that other devs should definitely learn from.
That's.... a heavy one, and one I didn't expect to fall in love with despite it being technically one of my least favorite genres.
Spoilers / 剧透:
This is by definition a slice of life drama. 2 weebs go to a local con and meet people and do con stuff. Very vanilla and wholesome, even when the story gets dark, which it does unexpectedly at a rocket pace, it's firmly grounded in 3 people and in 1 street. These days if I sit down with a piece of media, the author is either my drug dealer or my professor, passive read or active read or into the bin, and for slice of life it's almost always the last. This one though... there's a strange magic that I can't place that makes it walk the line and kept me going. It's either the failboy + charismatic aniki chemistry between the main cast, or the fact that the sprites emote so well and are pleasant to look at, or the well timed music, the vibe of the nostalgic bbq corners... This is a story that I'd disliked in any other form, and somehow it is straight up magical here. Writing wise, it is melodramatic in bold caps, and the game knows this. It quotes anime lines and the characters are self-aware for using them, the parents are cartoonishly evil and the kid is a role model martyr saint with angel wings. No subtly here. Which is fine! Emotional duress turns people into soap opera heads. There are constant flashbacks to the deer friend to recontextualize what our mc is thinking, and are smartly placed and short (thank you!) so they don't cause any pacing hiccups. That final flashback when it cuts to the hug is BRILLIANT, and I get teary eyed thinking about it. Orchestration wise, the choice to separate the flashback deer and our wolf is a strange one? The wolf's literary function seems to be for foil and exposition, and I'm wondering if there's a more efficient way to merge part of the deer's identity and the wolf so wolfy doesn't feel a bit extraneous. The final scene is so so so gorgeous and thematically wolfy is sort of just there wearing a traffic cone and drinking tea. The game left me wanting to read more about the aftermath of bottom cat and the goat, which is a rare thing for a slice of life vn of all things to do. So thank you so much for the story!
On another note, I'm always partial to auteurs who can both write and program and draw so this one is going into a special place in the pocket. I'm also kinda going insane over the fact that it referenced our vn in the about section. Glad you could take something away from 3DTL!
This is PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAM!!!!! This vn has the opposite problem of The Night Chaser that it has terminal PPT syndrome, but a gripping story that has me edging for its 2 hour-ish run time. Special thanks to my friend for recommending this one. Probably one of the highest story score thus far, though not without its faults.
This is what a jam project should be, overly ambitious even though the story trips on itself a few times. Some lore tidbits are discarded a bit too quickly. Ex. by the third act, there's massive non foreshadowed lore dump (that AI will replace the human vessel if 2 existed simultaneously), and the retracing the steps to solve the time loop isn't explained very thoroughly and it's a big ask for the reader to fill in. By the third act, the story also loses steam a bit after revealing all its cards. That being said what the VN gets right, it FUCKING RULES. The async time skip might be one of my favorite iteration in sci-fi media done anywhere!!! (staring at Frieren) The switching of perspective and our bear crying at his helplessness is just *chefs kiss*. The romantic set up is great too, we have our standard nerd vs bleeding heart bimbo archetype, a bit old but ALWAYS a joy to read. I was entranced by their dynamic, cause one of the VN's strong point is the banter dialogue too. Their quips are hilarious. This VN might be my personal fav, I'm giving it my highest rating 5525. I cannot wait to see what this guy cooks in the future and have my fingers cross that they collab with an art / sound director.
I'll be watching that Doctor Who episode to see what the fuss is about.
Ah thank you so much for the reply also!!! I appreciate the engagement with my first language and now I feel kinda bad that I didn't do the same. Regarding your two points... I agree with them??! I think there might be some serious misunderstanding in my comment (and understandable because arrrgh language! If you'd like though I could try and probably fail miserably at conveying what I mean in CN). I am well aware of the fic/non fic blurring of postmodern stuff and I truly appreciate you for being brave enough to put your honest self on stage.
This is directed at the actual CN version and not the GPT lyricism cliche slop. With a /lit intrusive thought description like that, I decided to bite, and I came away agreeing with my friends that we ought to be (just a bit) meaner to MFAs. "Get out of the piazza and back to the typewriter." This is a Purkka thinkpiece that needs to be chased down with some grub and matcha . My intrusive thoughts aside, what the prose really succeeds at is conveying a deep romanticized longing in casual modern CN prose that I didn't know would be such a joy to read. It is extremely stylistic in this regard that dampens the borderline hostile referential habits, but I'm fine with the piece remaining a bit ambiguous towards the end. Art direction wise, I truly think the sprite doesn't need to be there. It's a rare case, but so much of the text depended on the ambiguity of the titular "you" that seeing it manifest in such anime-furry specificity feels like a betrayal. I'd be more interested in a KinGoliard Mr.Big collage subversion. I hope I didn't come across as too mean because this piece definitely deserves the attention, especially those open-book style readers or day 1 curiousmaxxing wordsmiths that the author demands to fully appreciate, and for those who don't there are little nugget phrases to chicken-head pluck out in the brilliantly written opening.
I did thoroughly enjoyed this one! It's an exercise, but the set up is inspired. The opening throws you into this apocalyptic world. There's the terror of a world forever encased in ice and the corporate sci-fi GM which is arguably worse. It's seasonal depression hitting the cn community too. The prose is easy to follow and silly at times. It's trippy and meta which is always a plus. Congrats to the author for completion because it's a short fantastic work!!! On to some crits, which there are a few:
Spoiler warning / 剧透:
Like DFW's Octet, this story is structured like a thematically disjointed pop quiz, the philosophical and moral implications of our protagonist's dilemma is intentionally obfuscated, and then the author coming to apologize for it and calling to its intentionality. It works to a certain extent in Octet, because the pop quiz themselves are set up to be comically complex and neurotic, but in this vn it sort of comes off as a bit jumbled. Judging by how roundabout it is to find the hidden ending I suspect the author intended the primary experience to be about the 3 choices themselves... which by design is the vn's biggest fault. Save a kid? Save an engineer to save yourself? Save someone who doesn't want to be saved? The choice presents itself as a moral dilemma while lacking a thematic center, and this faulty premise takes center stage, but it's called out upon by the author to prove an entirely different premise (and only in a few sentences!) that life's permeance is extended in stories? I hope there is not a second hidden HIDDEN ending to call out on this thematic disconnect of the thematic disconnect. I think the intended argument is that the apocalypse is a stand in for inevitable death, and the three choices are about how we should live instead of who we should kill. This is a fantastic concept, and I wished our protag's internal monologue calls attention to this slightly more, so that there isn't any confusion when it ends.
A fantastic quiet adventure in the flavor of Treasure Planet and Polar Express.
CGs will pop up once every 20 lines or so, making this read like an animatic. There's a strong sense of color, contrast, framing and texture, featuring the same eye candy brush as that Blaidd comic. When there's a candle, the room and the sprites will be draped in orange, and the outside world is a consistent melancholic purple. It's hella moody. Not to mention the prop design, papers piling and aged books and the worst doctor's handwriting documents will decorate every BG. It's a case of an artist leading a vn that could be felt in every frame. There are some play with the transitions too, like the zoom out followed by the sudden shift to snow in the opening, so clever.
There is some take with the narrative style, the protagonist is a total loot goblin, always rpg-style rummaging over our npc's house, this gets funny at times. The story itself is a literal call to adventure fantasy that's been done to bits, and quite a slow one too, but I never once felt impatient with it. No avant-garde character cooking or modern story structures here, and it doesn't need one. A comic creator is exploring this new medium, and it is a joy to experience.
Spoilers section ---
The jam theme is extremely prevalent, the premise of an ever flying ship literally powered by the dead is pretty on the nose for the message of dealing with loss. The climax, featuring the first ray of morning sun is as predictable as it is satisfying.
The lion brothers are HOT. Everyone in this vn is hot. Please please please make more stuff!
A great bad time.
Overall this desperately needs an editorial pass to reshuffle some scenes so the momentary ambiguity of the world building doesn't get in the way of what really shines in the story, which is our protagonist's headspace and mal's relationship to him.
Carrioff has fantastic line work but I feel the hastily plastered on grey multiply layer makes the read a bit too fast. Make our eyes work for it! I'm all for the piss stained parchment aesthetic and I feel the previous game's art direction works slightly better than this one by omitting the mattes.
I enjoyed Purkka's previous works, but unfortunately this one is a hard miss. The one piece I've seen from HSS is Right Now, Wrong Then, which I thoroughly enjoyed., and Purkka was not lying when they said this piece is inspired by their films. I don't think the renpy shenanigans calling attention to itself is a fair substitute for HSS's appeal, and the translated inspiration becomes a detriment as it just reads kinda silly
Chapter 3 Early Release and Statement comments · Posted in Chapter 3 Early Release and Statement comments
On My Science Fiction and Furry Media Problem comments · Posted in On My Science Fiction and Furry Media Problem comments
Genre hopping reader here! I'm definitely one of the described folks who has sci-fi on their rare read list, and gave this a try despite so.
But I ended up loving this! It does have certain genre conventions that take some getting used to, but the relationships between the main cast more than makes up for it. The ocean deep world building and intrigue is something that I don't find anywhere else in the genres I read, and it's giving me inspiration for my own writing too.
And on prose, as an ESL reader, a few prose flourish sections are challenging, but a welcomed one, and not so dense that's inaccessible. I love it when VN devs break out of the Best-Seller grammar conventions. The opening section is beautiful.
That was awesome! From the stylish opening to the satisfying end(s), this vn successfully translates the eerie vibe of modern gothic films. Like Danji I was hooked from start to finish. The only criticism is that I had hoped our protagonist's writing side is less of a wink-nudge and instead played a more prominent role in the narrative. Other than that, this piece completely blew me away. Excellent use of sound, cg, everything. Can't wait to see what you'll make next!
Final Jam version uploaded! comments · Replied to ChellayTiger in Final Jam version uploaded! comments
英王的宝冠 / Coronet of the Sagacious Lord comments · Posted in 英王的宝冠 / Coronet of the Sagacious Lord comments
This is a clever little montage of vignettes that sketch the development of a relationship. I think the prose is the highlight of this piece. The writing is minimalistic, but the writer clearly understands the appeal of good cadence in a conversation. I would be thoroughly entertained just listening to this author write about random stuff in the park. The whole thing is surprisingly easy to follow. The non-linearity starts out strong, but the ends leave me questioning if the out-of-orderness of the latter half really served the narrative. The jam theme is pretty subtle in this one, more so on a metaphorical level than anything visually, which is fine.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this.