Dere Quartet

Nice! 

I saw some typos here and there in this VN, but I didn’t mind. I preferred the length of this VN over Sweet Science. 

Although, I was disappointed seeing Kurumi’s character be more of a direct ice queen rather than a shy and apathetic character. Being a shy girl growing up, I was thinking Kurumi’s personality would have been similar to mine, considering her introduction and appearance. She came across reserved more than she was shy. Her route, albeit rewarding, felt the most unnatural to me in terms of character growth and relationship development. I wished there was more subtlety for her character. Not everything has to be spelled out, but I understand this is a VN meant for all ages too. 

My only other nitpick is that at the end of the pink-haired girl’s route, everyone has a grown-up appearance except for the protagonist who still has the teenager portrait, even in the future. I can understand not wanting to use A.I. to reproduce an adult male, as the results were uncanny at the end of Azuki’s route in Sweet Science when the player sees the father of the protagonist. That honestly looked so bad and out of place. Regardless, you could always have no character portrait for the grown-up protagonist in this VN to give the illusion he grew up without explicitly showing it if creating more art is not feasible. 

All in all, I think the reason your visual novels, as well as other ones I’ve read, can feel slow is because the writer goes on about the character’s thoughts, the writer can info-dump the reader with boring or irrelevant details, or the writer describes the setting too much. 

If that isn’t an issue, then the other issue I find is a lack of conflict, ambiguity in what the conflict is, not enough stakes, no questions to keep readers engaged, or a predictable or boring plot line. 

Yet, if there is stuff going on, knowing the why behind why the protagonist is doing what they’re doing and knowing why it’s important to them can help elevate a story into something more meaningful and interesting, even without the use of action-packed scenes. 

And are my visual novels any better? Nope. It depends which one you read, but a lot of my visual novels focus on dialogue where you read the flow of a conversation. Yet, a lot of my visual novels were made for game jams and are therefore extremely short. In a sense, they may not be considered stories at all.

However, the ones I took my time with, I used a short story plot structure to help guide the story in a logical way that helped build tension gradually over time to maintain good pacing story-wise. 

So, don’t be afraid to cut out the fluff or use a plot outline to help sharpen your storytelling skills! Have a good day!