Sweet Science – The Girls from Silversee Castle (Demo)

Hi :)

Amazing demo of Sweet Science, looking forward the full visual novel ❤️

A lot of funny moment and beautiful AI art.

Backgrounds and music are great too, my favorite is "back on earth"

I do like also how the soundtrack menu is, old cassette player, that goes far back and suits for the story set in 1992 ❤️

Internet has changed the world a LOT indeed..for those of us who were born before and old enough to remember how life has been without internet.

❤️❤️❤️

Phew, finally I was able to find time with this study and read this visual novel. Perhaps you remember me, I left a comment on the steam for the game "The last secret" on March 15, the nickname is the same. In any case, I remind you, I use a translator, so I apologize if there are any grammatical errors. And I also wanted to congratulate you on the update for "The last secret", I'll see what's new there.

To be honest, I thought for a very long time how to start, because there were a lot of thoughts, and perhaps I'll start with a question, were you by any chance inspired by the ReLIVE anime? At first, it seemed to me that this movement back to the school years was very similar.

And since I started with a story, then perhaps it needs to be revealed: I liked how the school years were conveyed, albeit in this style of learning, even though we are friends, we still devote study time to study. It is also worth noting how everything is presented, that it is difficult for our hero to adapt to what is happening, since he is still from the future and most of these moments manifest themselves in each route in their own way. The narrative is very smooth and measured, which in turn allows the player to focus.

I don’t know how to say it, but I have a small question for the physics class, simply because at the moment the game is short (I completed it in 6 hours to almost the maximum percentage, about 80-90% I saw, except for some choices did not consider, since they do not lead to a dialogue). In general, as I noticed, you liked the mechanics of the desert camp in "TLS", where the choice leads either to dialogue or to skipping to the next lines, which, frankly, looks very good, allowing us to learn more about the characters, as well as "get" points. But let's get back to physics, I was second in Patty's route, so I saw most of the activities outside of school, and due to the almost complete absence of puzzles, it looked like a lecture)), and the topics that were raised there are very difficult for me, also this translator, who translated it as horribly as possible, by the way, I wanted to note the translation, I don’t know how high-quality it is at the moment, but I could always understand the meaning. It’s just that the topics themselves are very far from my understanding, and if in mathematics the topics are simpler, and puzzles (especially where you need to put the numbers, my favorite, and thanks to the variety I will gladly go through again), but in astronomy we are waiting for pictures and complex information not so many, just the best. On the other hand, I understand that it is difficult to come up with tasks for physics, especially without using formulas, since they are very complex there, so I accept what is and do not want to offend you.

Perhaps for the educational process everything is said. It was made very interesting and really cool, especially I liked the reference to Karina and complex numbers) (in general, I also wanted to note that the level of programming has grown? I don’t know, just when I saw that my name was in the hint (hint about the fact that only nerds are engaged in some kind of game) impressed me, I was surprised at this moment, I can’t imagine how you implemented it).

And to make it a little more logical, it's worth noting what makes this plot so alive? Of course, the characters! And in short, they turned out to be moderately open, some more like Marie, Azuki and Sylvia, and some less like Patti (I won’t talk about the teacher, because at the moment, as I see it, he’s not open at all ). By the openness of a character, I mean his plot, why he is the way he is, and how his actions are explained. In particular, I would like to note Sylvia, as she is a very interesting character from the side of psychology and her behavior, which is very cool, in general, the characters turned out really good, except because of the brevity, we can learn little unique about them at the moment. And now I would probably like to voice my thoughts, you do not have to read this, so you can just skip to the next paragraph. Simply, I noticed that in this novel the characters are very similar for each temperament, that is, Sylvia is a choleric, Marie is a melancholic, Azuki is a phlegmatic, and Patty is a sanguine, more precisely, not each of them is so pronounced, they are mixed, yes, but in Basically, they somehow respond with their behavior to these characters. And so I noticed that it has become too common practice to create 4 characters, and from a psychological point of view, I guess that this way is not only easier to describe the characters, but also to make sure that each player has his own favorite. It's just that I didn't notice this when I went through "TLS", each character was unique in some way and it was cool, but here, I have nothing against it, it's just that the uniqueness of the character is lost a little. In particular, again, my favorite character (from the point of view of the plot and psychology, so Azuki is in my heart forever) Sylvia suffered a lot, because taking as the main motive that her behavior is due to (spoiler, I think you understand, what I mean) and another reason that we can find out in her root. It's hard to explain, it's just that usually such characters are depicted in 3 forms: 1. This is just a joke character. 2. The character has a reason. 3. The character also has a reason, but the character does not always behave like this, that is, he knows how to look at things through the prism of anger.  And here, I just really hope that you will pay attention to this character and develop it in such a way that the current second reason is really important. Well, that is, explain why she closed, and also why she behaves this way towards others and so on. And yes, if you did read it, I would be interested to hear your opinion about it, well, that is, it will probably be easier to ask questions, ahah. 1. Will Sylvia be revealed? 2. As for temperaments, did you borrow them, or it just seems to me, I don’t know how to ask this, I’ll just be glad if you read it at all, thanks!

Also worth noting is the music and graphics. Perhaps I'll start with the music, to be honest, I went through "TLS" starting from the middle with my music, due to the fact that she often left me alone with the silence of the laptop), and then I was pleasantly surprised, she became obsessed, although this is slightly noticeably, but in any case, the music has become better, the moonlight sonata is beautiful, the situations for music are beautiful, just my respect, it is worth noting that there are moments when the music also runs away for a smoke break, but they are so rare that I can’t even remember where they were (maybe once?), and yes, the opening track with vocals is just super.
The graphics, again, my respect, the drawings are wonderful, the background also looks perfect with the characters, in short, the game has become better in this part in everything, I don’t even know what to add.

Perhaps I will call this section in this way "Recruiting readers for the game of Go"
1. Thank you for letting me play a full game
2. Thank you for reminding / teaching the players how to play Go
3. Thank you that even thanks to Pati's route tips, we learn more, since initially I thought that the whites (we) would win, since we killed more, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I'm just wondering why Go? Simply, I just can’t think of an explanation for this, just raising the asset and popularizing this game? Or because of its convenience in terms of speed and deliberation? I don't know, just, just asking, what is your rank? And just try to answer that "dan", I will answer as in all ruts))))

Also, I'm a little prepared and would like to point out some bugs that I noticed, probably most of them have already been resolved, since I played the downloaded version, but yes.
1. "Fine. Then we'll just start: Where's the swan, Latin Cygnus" - in the game it is said by the director, an astrology teacher, but in the game itself (English version), it is written - Mr.Young
2. "You didn't even look at the stat chart!" - in the game itself, Azuki says this, and I was interested in this moment, in fact, I checked again, and I already looked, opened it for a second, maybe I had to wait, but here it is.
3. "What do you think" - also a dialogue between Azuki and the main character, the main character asks this, after which Azuki replies that he does not think about anything, in fact, the player's name is simply not written, that is, it is shown as if it was a thought (moment with constellations)
4. It's just a set - a moment with a map and short cuts. At first, when I connected everything, they wrote to me that I did not connect all the cities. Then I connected about 6-7 cities and clicked OK and I was skipped further, believing that I found the best solution? (I tried many attempts, maybe I actually found it, but I missed it just now). I got a little lost and decided to rewind, and there was a text in German asking if I already completed the task, if I want to go through again or skip.

And for sure, in the end, I wanted to add, maybe I'm wrong, but just a video with cats on YouTube appeared in 2005), before that there was a mailing list, and the video is indicated in the game itself, correct me if I'm wrong :)

Conclusion
It's hard to say something honestly at the moment, but the game looks very interesting now (by the way, I just noticed that you have a post on itcho, that you are already at the finish line, congratulations!!)
It is possible that a lot will change, and I will be happy to wait for this mini-adventure of my own in a wonderful castle, according to the assessment, I won’t speak yet, I want to see the entire visual novel, then I’ll write something else, but probably already in Steam. In any case, thank you so much for this adventure and good luck! See you!

10/10 I will choose Peril-Patti again.

I played in English first and in German afterwards. I’ve spent more time playing in English than in German, and I haven’t been checking sentence-for-sentence if the translation was accurate (not that I think I have to).

When it said I had to pick a name for the MC my first thought was “how do I pick a name for a character I initially know nothing about?” but then there was a default. Thanks for that. And if you intended for the MC to be male and want that to be obvious before people even find the game, you can give it the “male protagonist” tag. And another tag you might want to give it is “bishoujo”, which means a game/VN about interacting with cute girls, mainly aimed at guys. I hadn’t played other bishojos before this one, so I can’t really compare it to other such VNs at this point. Also, the demo ends a bit early, so comparing it to longer VNs might be a bit unfair.

Also, sorry if this review is a bit long. And sorry if the writing might be a bit less polished than some VN reviews I’ve written before. I got worried it was taking so long to write it that you’d end up releasing a new version of the demo before I finished, and then I decided to post it in its current form.

Story

The story has been interesting so far. New Year’s Eve of year 2000 seems like a good time to start a story considering how many people were worried about Y2K bugs, and having the MC suddenly be pulled back in time later as if time itself got buggy seemed fun, and the fact that it happens not at the millennium change but at some later time mimics how real world computers store times in binary numbers where the actual overflow will happen at various other times such as 19th of January 2038.

And the main choice aside from the name seems to be which subject I want the MC to learn. I tried all three options. I could say what I thought about each option, but I think that’s kind of an unnecessary spoiler here. And the demo ends shortly after the choice, before you get to see which consequences it has. As for the non-spoiler-free version of what I thought about the options, I might post that in another place where I think you (the developer) might see it.

Art

First, here’s the spoiler-free version of this section. The art looks pretty good, at least in general (there were things that AI did better than others), and I like how it turned out and how there were fun details that could be easy to miss. But in the browser version things might briefly look pixelated at times (this is most noticeable when a character changes poses several times in a short while).

And now for the more complete one (might point out details that not all players are meant to notice):

The AI generally did a good job. But it does seem to struggle with a few things:

• Buildings: it’s hard to generate two images of the same building from different angles. And you have a tower floating in the treetops. Or maybe the tower in the treetops is there for plot reasons.
• Keyboards: I’d try inpainting with “grid keyboard” but I don’t know if it would work.
• Transparent backgrounds: if you look at Petra’s hair in the tutorial, I think you can see what I mean. Some VNs have a border around the borders around characters (to make sure they will contrast well against any background), but another easy solution is to lock the alpha channel and paint a dark colour into the spots that should be dark.
• Are the fonts AI-generated? They look pretty good, but as someone who has made fonts I might as well roast them. (Read this in Sylvia’s voice, I mean whatever you imagine it sounding like.) Just look at the words “Silversee Castle” with the s’s oddly detached from the r and the a. And the main font appears to be designed for lower-resolution screens.

I like how you switch to sepia for some scenes where the MC talks about the past where they were still going to school.

And next to the rotary phone there are pieces of paper that seem to have handwritten text on them, and a “phone number” that reminds me of something I remember learning about in school: pi.

In the browser build, the images pixelate when changing. This is most obvious in the case of Petra/Patti talking to the MC, as her poses change all the time.

Also, on a more amusing note, I don’t know if you did something on purrpose or not, but there’s a cat face in the fireworks CG. It definitely adds some cuteness to the game.

And I might as well mention a fireworks-related suggestion: if you’re able to separate the “year 2000 New Year’s Eve” image into two layers you could make the buildings slide in at a different speed than the fireworks.

UI/UX

The custom UI looks good and the paper background fits the setting. It did make some text a bit harder to read than I’d prefer it though:

• The font might be a little bit small. Maybe you could make it bigger by default. (Or I could press shift-A and increase the size myself. It seems the amount of text you show at a time is small enough that I can do that without causing the text to flow out of the box.)
• Despite the small font size, the Options button in the bottom-right corner in German is partially cut off. I can see the left side of the n but not the right side of it.
• The main menu shows blue text on a semi-transparent bluish background.

I also noticed that in the downloadable version the tutorial only shows the first time you play. Being able to replay it would be nice, especially considering I think I noticed something weird about the English translation in that part.

When asking for the name, maybe show the menu with options while showing the question. I think you can do that with something like:

    menu:
        petra "What should the MC's first name be?"
        "Daniel":
             jump daniel
        "Something else":
             jump other_name

That way the answers would appear at the same time as the question, and seeing the question won’t cause people to attempt to type a name before getting the options.

every time the text stops, you can continue by clicking on the mouse (left button,) or by pressing the space bar

Normally I use the enter key for that. And it works in this game too. But I guess those who have played plenty of VNs before and got used to enter will just use enter and then it doesn’t matter that you aren’t mentioning that key.

And speaking of using the keyboard for things that can be done with the mouse, keyboard navigation of the language menu might be a bit confusing: I can select or unselect English but German never gets “highlighted”. I’m still able to select it though, maybe because it’s what gets selected if nothing is selected.

I might also want to mention that I can’t rollback with the mouse wheel. Neither in-browser nor in the downloadable version.

Another thing, I love that I can choose between text outlines and a background. If I also had a opacity slider for the background I’d probably make it a bit less transparent, but I can read it just fine and I can also easily read the text with the outline.

And while it’s not really a part of the game, some text on the website (I mean the news section) is a bit hard to read on my laptop due to some of the white text flowing into the white margin on the right. My default text size might be larger than most people’s since I tend to read text while a bit far from the screen.

Music

When I viewed the about screen, I could see that most of the art was AI generated, and it didn’t say much about the music. And this section too might contain spoilers (names of specific pieces of music, as well as how I think they relate to the characters that are shown when it plays, I think nothing of it is plot twists though).

Most of the music sounds fun. And then there’s two pieces I knew, well, not the exact versions played here, but I knew the melodies they were based on. One is Liszt’s mourning march which plays when the MC remembers that his father is dead. It sets a sad tone, and its name has to do with mourning. (And if any of the characters in the story had been a music nerd, this is where I’d have imagined that character making a joke about “morning” music.)

And this remix of Pachelbel’s canon sounds friendly: I think the fact that not all the instruments end up playing at the same time helps make it cosy. The instruments leave gaps for each other to shine through. And since it starts playing when a new character first speaks, it might contribute to making her seem friendly.

Other audio

The ambiance does a good job at showing what the weather is like, and I also like the sound that plays when the MC gets pulled back in time.

And the voice audio in the beginning sound good too, although I think for the sake of players with worse hearing than mine you might want to include subtitles. And it seems that in the browser version this audio either doesn’t play or it stops playing too early. I think that’s something that sometimes happens in HTML5 builds of Ren’Py games and sometimes it can be fixed by adding a short delay before playing the audio. But in this case I notice that the music that should play in the background does play when the voice audio should be playing, so I’m guessing it might help to take the music and voice tracks and edit them together to form combined tracks. And it’s not even noticeable that the voice is AI.

Translation

I like that there’s two languages to play in. That way I have a good excuse to play twice. And I think the translation is pretty good. I’m sorta guessing you wrote in German first and then translated into English, or at least that whoever wrote it in English knew German. I’m not sure all speakers of English would know what WV refers to when it comes to cars, and while I think “uncool” is a cool word to use in English and it’s obvious what it means I think those who don’t speak German would probably just have said “not cool”. But I like the word “uncool” and how it looks like it should be a normal English word. It sounds like the kind of word a human would use. Even though it’s translated by AI.

And I notice the name of one of the characters changes. The girl in the physics class gets called “Petra” in German but “Patti” in English. Unlike all the other characters. Yeah, finding names that work in several languages isn’t easy, and English-and-German isn’t even the worst combination in that regard. I think you did a good job with “Daniel” there. I assume the decision to give Petra/Patti a different name in English was yours and not the AI’s.

My thoughts

I think my favourite parts of the demo are the story and the audio. And yeah, I think I the slice-of-life-vibed mystery works well so far. As for the characters, I love that place where one of the girls makes a comment about another one’s favourite subject: it’s a nice way to make a “quiet girl” not seem completely irrelevant.

As for what I’d suggest changing, I’d probably let players roll back (and forward) with the mouse wheel like Ren’Py does by default. But that might be because my laptop keyboard doesn’t have a page-up key, and many VNs have a smaller back button that’s slightly harder to click, which has got me used to just scrolling up when I want to go back.

hmmm look what the cat (dev) dragged in 

that was a joke no offense + demo 9/10

Experiment successful!

I really loved the opening animation with the clocks. The UI looks very nice!

The prologue had me hooked and wanting for more!

All in all, a very stunning demo, and I am looking forward to the full story!