You have as much time as you want and can play any branch you like. I would only request that you give feedback, in particular of all errors that you encounter, so that I can correct them...
Thanks for the upload! I'm happy to see my game here.
One suggestion: You've played the game in the browser with slow internet. In this case it's better to simply download the game first, then the graphic transitions are smooth and not as pixelated and the music also works without stops.
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!
Thank you very much for your detailed comments and thoughts. That was very interesting to read!
Your theory with the four temperaments is really original. I haven't thought about it like this, but indeed it fits to some extend. I think the characters will all gain more depth when you finish the game. I used more "stereotypical" characters than in TLS because I wanted the game to start a bit faster. In TLS the character introduction takes quite some time. (Ben is only introduced in Chapter 4!) I had the feeling that more impatient players stop playing the game because of that. That's why I wanted to "jump" into the action this time. For that purpose it's easier when players meet familiar character types they can understand faster. Later on more complexity is added, e.g., we learn why Marie is so shy, we learn about Peril Patti, we learn about the death of Sylvia's mother and the surprising backstory of Azuki (well, maybe less of a surprise if you had played TLS before...). I think at the end of the game you will feel that the characters have gained a lot of uniqueness.
For physics, i really didn't come up with good "educational" tasks, but the player gets involved into the project with Patti and will have to do some jobs (mini-games) for that, so I think, overall, it'll be a funny arc, and learning about physics happens in class, but only during the first days. (By the way: I guess without the science content I would have a few players more, but I don't have to make money with the game, so I'm okay with this as long as there are enough players who learn something new about the world through my games...)
Regarding Go: I am a Go player by myself (not too strong, just good kyu level) and I love it when more people play this beautiful game. That is the motivation to insert Go content into my games. And since I like science as well, I also inserted some of it into "Sweet Science". :)
Regarding the bugs that you've found: That was very valuable, and I have corrected most of them immediately. They should be fixed in the next update. The cat videos I will leave in, as it's not clear whether the player is just talking about how he thinks the future of internet videos will be. (And because it's funny, I think. ;)
Finally, just for curiosity and since you managed the translation issue, may I ask what is your native language?
Hah, yes, regarding Azuki, it will be very interesting what new things will be added there, because when TLS was going on, I did not see such resistance from someone (in this case, I mean Mr. Young, when we play Go with Azuki), yet it's cool. I’ll answer honestly a little earlier, but I really liked that you decided to move away from TLS, creating a completely different game, albeit in the same Universe, I really liked how the main characters were presented in TLS, where each was unique in its own way, and adding co-op to puzzles created a unique style in its genre. Here we see something completely different, as I see it now, the emphasis is more on the characters (I also wanted to note the uniqueness of the dialogue, when I went through the second time, and again praised Azuki's bikini, she answered differently) I also wanted to note that even now the characters are unique in their own way, I like this approach. Honestly, somewhere this winter I read "Love, money, Rock n Roll", and I didn't really like that there the characters work for the plot, creating new conflicts all the time. Here we see that although the characters also go with the plot in some way, it looks more organic, and most importantly, nothing is added that could completely break the whole idea of the characters.
It is difficult to explain, but on the contrary, I like that you have done this and are moving along this path. As I said before, regarding your move away from TLS, I like that you left the main feature, knowledge. Yes, maybe some are very difficult to understand (I always had huge problems in physics, maybe there really isn’t anything complicated there), but, you get it very organized due to the fact that 1. You show how it works . 2. There are alternative links 3. It is written in plain language. Yes, I understand you, that may be less popular because of this, but if you think about it, it's not only because of you. I can’t say for sure for other countries, but in the post-Soviet space - the majority of young people completely discount the importance of knowledge, maybe even I do a little, since I once considered languages useless, since there are translators, after a while, as now very much I greatly regret this. But this is not the main thing - if you are interested, do it, there will always be people who will be happy to pay attention to this. All the same, as I understand it, you are doing this primarily for yourself, and therefore it looks so alive.
I will also add personal thoughts and why I think that not only the fact that the novel is based on knowledge brings less popularity (honestly, sorry for forcing you to read this, maybe you are not interested at all, just, hah, I have my own mini a blog that I create for myself by recording voice messages to throw out energy after reading or playing some game, and sometimes I get completely off topic, in any case, water is the main source of life, so you can pour some of it here :) So, when this winter I decided to look for something to read, I watched short stories on Anivisual (I will talk about short stories that are translated into Russian, I hope it is better in other countries), I noticed that most of them, which were relatively created recently, are for jams. And I have said before that novellas are gradually dying, and this is happening very quickly. Yes, I see different novels that are good, like Loppers (2022), TLS (2022), 9-nine (2019), Koshotengai no Hashihime (2016), Astra's Garden (2022). There are more of them, but now the creation of long 20-30 hour short stories has gone by the wayside. And the rest look like an attempt to create something for the jam, just to make money. And let there be more, much more, but this does not change the fact that it starts to resemble the search for a needle at the bottom of the sea (alas, I'm not Patty, I can't create a magnet ((( ) Now games or social messengers (YouTube, Discord) are more popular It is unlikely that we will see something similar to: VA-11 HALL-A, Everlasting Summer, Dark Nights, Song of Sai, which almost everyone has probably heard of.Therefore, I am glad that I have now come across these 2 short stories, simply, please stay on your own, do it if you like it.(it feels like I'm trying not to support you, but just make you develop novels) Here, something like this, and I will probably ask a question, since it's interesting if you are interested and Do you read how there are other interesting novels outside the post-Soviet countries, or is this also a search for something interesting?
Hah, I got it, honestly I tried to play Go once by clicking on the link that was in TLS, and the person got out :( although I guess I can understand him, since I was able to complete the game with Sylvia only after 5 attempts somewhere , I just, I kind of understand, but I don’t understand, I just don’t know how to explain, it’s like there are already a few places left, and I have an advantage, and then BOOM, and I lost.
Phew, I hope it really helped with the errors, I just don’t know if it’s the case with me, I don’t really like to point out errors, because I’m just afraid, because maybe I did something like that, or maybe it’s in the device itself. In any case, if the truth helped, then next time I will probably add more screenshots and a note, so that you can clearly see.
Hah, regarding cats, I remembered this at the very last moment, just with your novels, I practically do not turn off Google Chrome, because there are a lot of interesting things. Separately, I note that this is cool, because it makes my brain work.
As for languages, it’s easier here, I speak fluent Russian and Ukrainian. But if it’s native, it’s more difficult, I went to school when there was no conflict, and we had a Russian class, but the nationality is Ukrainian, in short, everything is difficult (to be honest, this added a lot of problems in the future, because we the fact that we are a Russian class, added to learn French). And I successfully, like English, completely missed it) Load me into the brain of Melin's knowledge, or take me back 10 years ago so I start learning it. xD
And thank you, albeit in this way, but it's a great pastime. All the best!
P/s: Adding a little later, because just now, yay, I finally got Karina's ending and secret (in particular, thanks for your guide, although it is for Meiling, but it pushed me a little). I hope the last 2 endings (Ben and Hongong) don't take as long as Karina's ending (I probably played the game 10 times, you know, I liked it from the very beginning, because it looks more like me if I knew that she SO SIMILAR, I would go back to Anna). Regarding "secret endings", I'm surprised how it works. It's just that I was going to the secret ending, and accidentally downloaded the walkthrough (very old, as soon as I started) and it still worked as a secret ending. Especially about the information you shared, it was quite funny, in a word, coolly done and maybe a special feature (I want no spoilers, so I just hope you understand) a little outdated, but still works. To be honest, my opinion about the game has changed dramatically for the better that night.
And probably, since I have already touched on this topic, I wanted to personally ask you, because this question arose during the first passage of the novel. Honghong, with his knowledge, shouldn't he know both languages and mathematics, and everything in general? It’s simple, let’s take mathematics for example, he, in theory, may not know exactly how to analyze formulas, but he must know and understand them. It is difficult to explain, probably it would be more correct to ask like this, does he have knowledge only from Wikipedia? Or even all knowledge?
Thank you very much for your response! So many points to answer and so little time... :) I try my best to pick the most important points:
- The co-op puzzles in TLS are missing in Sweet Science, because the story is not really coop... In TLS there were a few friends getting caught in an adventure, here are a few people that slowly become friends, therefore co-op puzzles wouldn't have fit as well. Also, there is no big action here. I got the feedback from TLS that the parts that players most liked where the non-action parts with lots of fun interaction between the characters, that was one reason why I focused on this aspect in Sweet Science.
- I like to promote things that I think might also be important to others. Go is definitely not known enough in the West, and I got feedback from some players of TLS that they encountered it for the first time in the game and were fascinated by it. Same with science topics. I think that in this way, a game can have more positive long-term impact on a player: when it makes them discover a new world outside the game itself.
- Thank you for the suggestions regarding the games you played, I'll take a look at them by myself. I have played some, e.g., Everlasting Summer which definitely had a big influence on Sweet Science. I have also played a bit of its successor ("Love, money, Rock 'n Roll") and was disappointed (similarly as you).
- For your missing endings: For Ben I have written down how to get a good ending in my guide on Steam. For Honghong you need to solve Go related questions well, solve the escape room well, be approachable and flirt well in the romantic scenes and in general be smart here and there (like remembering Li's phone number, the correct song line etc.) Then you should have romantic scenes with him on the date, in the forest and on the "sea". If you play as man in the rainbow mode, in both cases (Ben and Honghong) you will have interesting conversations with your mum, obviously... ;) So while the endings are the same, the story changes a bit between rainbow mode and non-rainbow mode, as well.
- Honghong's knowledge extension: he can basically access Wikipedia in his language (and a bit more), but that does not help him with translating words much. And mathematics is more than knowing things: It won't help you to remember Pythagoras (a^2+b^2=c^2) if you need to solve a math problem where this formula is used somewhere if you don't have a good ability to process information in a logical way. Learning by heart only helps you a bit when you need to solve math problems. It's usually not enough.
Finally, something entirely different: Since I've read that you are Ukrainian: I'm sorry that your country is suffering from this terrible war right now. I don't want to write too much about politics here in this forum, but I sincerely hope that a good peace for your country will end this war!
Thank you for explaining a few things that bothered me, and also thanks for the hints to Honghong and Ben, I will definitely close the game for all achievements soon)
Also a special thanks for discussing more creative things, it's great to hear your thoughts on what influenced the game as well as your motives.
Ahem, yes, sorry to take up so much of your time. (about politics, yes, not exactly the best topic, especially on the forum about the game, especially with me, who tries to ignore this topic)
Anyway, thanks again for all your answers and for your time. Good luck and all the best!
Just now I remembered, the game will be translated into Russian / Ukrainian, when will it be released?
I'm sorry, although I had TLS translated into Ukrainian and Russian, I do not plan to translate Sweet Science. I don't know anybody who would be willing to do the necessary edits of an automatic translation (understandably, since it is a huge work!), and an automatic translation, while being useful for some players, seemed to upset other players (my experience from TLS).
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.
Wow, so many detailed comments and suggestions! I think I'll first see what I can implement there, before coming back to you.
Just briefly: some issues with the web version are Ren'py inherent, some depend on your internet speed (e.g. the pixelated graphics). You made some suggestions how to maybe overcome some, so I will see into it. For the time being I am happy that it works at all! :)
Congrats that you have spotted the tower in the tree! I didn't notice that one by myself for quite a long time, so I thought nobody would. :D Looks like I have to fix that now... ;)
So, I have now implemented most of your suggestions, including the tower in the tree and the key to roll back (but it's not the mousewheel as this caused trouble to some test players who kept accidentally rolling back when using a track pad, instead it's simply the Backspace key). I haven't updated on itch yet, but it's already in the current playtest.
By the way: would you like to playtest the game? The first two days of the story are done already, so there is quite something to explore... :)
I am developing the game first in German language and try to get rid of most bugs before translating (to minimize the need for several rounds of translations), so I would be super happy to have another German language play tester!
If you are interested, please contact me by email: thelastsecret at gmx.ch
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Comments
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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.
❤️❤️❤️
Thank you so much for your feedback! :)
Would you like to try out more of the story? I'm still looking for test players, so just contact me and I'll give you access...
Hi :)
Play testing requires to play one specific path/choices ? how long would I have to have enough time to play ?
You have as much time as you want and can play any branch you like. I would only request that you give feedback, in particular of all errors that you encounter, so that I can correct them...
If there is no short time limit to pressure me then I am alright to do what I can for this :)
(I do not mean to take forever either I just dislike un-necessary pressure)
Great, then just drop me a message at playthelastsecret (at) gmail.com with your email address., then I'll send you the link for the download. :)
Thanks for the upload! I'm happy to see my game here.
One suggestion: You've played the game in the browser with slow internet. In this case it's better to simply download the game first, then the graphic transitions are smooth and not as pixelated and the music also works without stops.
Have fun with "Sweet Science"! :)
No, it's not going to be adult stuff. Age recommendation is around 12 years.
Thank you for your compliments and I'm happy that you liked the game! :)
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!
Hi Clavik!
Thank you very much for your detailed comments and thoughts. That was very interesting to read!
Your theory with the four temperaments is really original. I haven't thought about it like this, but indeed it fits to some extend. I think the characters will all gain more depth when you finish the game. I used more "stereotypical" characters than in TLS because I wanted the game to start a bit faster. In TLS the character introduction takes quite some time. (Ben is only introduced in Chapter 4!) I had the feeling that more impatient players stop playing the game because of that. That's why I wanted to "jump" into the action this time. For that purpose it's easier when players meet familiar character types they can understand faster. Later on more complexity is added, e.g., we learn why Marie is so shy, we learn about Peril Patti, we learn about the death of Sylvia's mother and the surprising backstory of Azuki (well, maybe less of a surprise if you had played TLS before...). I think at the end of the game you will feel that the characters have gained a lot of uniqueness.
For physics, i really didn't come up with good "educational" tasks, but the player gets involved into the project with Patti and will have to do some jobs (mini-games) for that, so I think, overall, it'll be a funny arc, and learning about physics happens in class, but only during the first days. (By the way: I guess without the science content I would have a few players more, but I don't have to make money with the game, so I'm okay with this as long as there are enough players who learn something new about the world through my games...)
Regarding Go: I am a Go player by myself (not too strong, just good kyu level) and I love it when more people play this beautiful game. That is the motivation to insert Go content into my games. And since I like science as well, I also inserted some of it into "Sweet Science". :)
Regarding the bugs that you've found: That was very valuable, and I have corrected most of them immediately. They should be fixed in the next update. The cat videos I will leave in, as it's not clear whether the player is just talking about how he thinks the future of internet videos will be. (And because it's funny, I think. ;)
Finally, just for curiosity and since you managed the translation issue, may I ask what is your native language?
Thanks again very much and all the best!
Hello!
Hah, yes, regarding Azuki, it will be very interesting what new things will be added there, because when TLS was going on, I did not see such resistance from someone (in this case, I mean Mr. Young, when we play Go with Azuki), yet it's cool. I’ll answer honestly a little earlier, but I really liked that you decided to move away from TLS, creating a completely different game, albeit in the same Universe, I really liked how the main characters were presented in TLS, where each was unique in its own way, and adding co-op to puzzles created a unique style in its genre. Here we see something completely different, as I see it now, the emphasis is more on the characters (I also wanted to note the uniqueness of the dialogue, when I went through the second time, and again praised Azuki's bikini, she answered differently)
I also wanted to note that even now the characters are unique in their own way, I like this approach. Honestly, somewhere this winter I read "Love, money, Rock n Roll", and I didn't really like that there the characters work for the plot, creating new conflicts all the time. Here we see that although the characters also go with the plot in some way, it looks more organic, and most importantly, nothing is added that could completely break the whole idea of the characters.
It is difficult to explain, but on the contrary, I like that you have done this and are moving along this path. As I said before, regarding your move away from TLS, I like that you left the main feature, knowledge. Yes, maybe some are very difficult to understand (I always had huge problems in physics, maybe there really isn’t anything complicated there), but, you get it very organized due to the fact that 1. You show how it works . 2. There are alternative links 3. It is written in plain language.
Yes, I understand you, that may be less popular because of this, but if you think about it, it's not only because of you.
I can’t say for sure for other countries, but in the post-Soviet space - the majority of young people completely discount the importance of knowledge, maybe even I do a little, since I once considered languages useless, since there are translators, after a while, as now very much I greatly regret this. But this is not the main thing - if you are interested, do it, there will always be people who will be happy to pay attention to this. All the same, as I understand it, you are doing this primarily for yourself, and therefore it looks so alive.
I will also add personal thoughts and why I think that not only the fact that the novel is based on knowledge brings less popularity (honestly, sorry for forcing you to read this, maybe you are not interested at all, just, hah, I have my own mini a blog that I create for myself by recording voice messages to throw out energy after reading or playing some game, and sometimes I get completely off topic, in any case, water is the main source of life, so you can pour some of it here :)
So, when this winter I decided to look for something to read, I watched short stories on Anivisual (I will talk about short stories that are translated into Russian, I hope it is better in other countries), I noticed that most of them, which were relatively created recently, are for jams. And I have said before that novellas are gradually dying, and this is happening very quickly. Yes, I see different novels that are good, like Loppers (2022), TLS (2022), 9-nine (2019), Koshotengai no Hashihime (2016), Astra's Garden (2022). There are more of them, but now the creation of long 20-30 hour short stories has gone by the wayside. And the rest look like an attempt to create something for the jam, just to make money.
And let there be more, much more, but this does not change the fact that it starts to resemble the search for a needle at the bottom of the sea (alas, I'm not Patty, I can't create a magnet ((( ) Now games or social messengers (YouTube, Discord) are more popular It is unlikely that we will see something similar to: VA-11 HALL-A, Everlasting Summer, Dark Nights, Song of Sai, which almost everyone has probably heard of.Therefore, I am glad that I have now come across these 2 short stories, simply, please stay on your own, do it if you like it.(it feels like I'm trying not to support you, but just make you develop novels) Here, something like this, and I will probably ask a question, since it's interesting if you are interested and Do you read how there are other interesting novels outside the post-Soviet countries, or is this also a search for something interesting?
Hah, I got it, honestly I tried to play Go once by clicking on the link that was in TLS, and the person got out :( although I guess I can understand him, since I was able to complete the game with Sylvia only after 5 attempts somewhere , I just, I kind of understand, but I don’t understand, I just don’t know how to explain, it’s like there are already a few places left, and I have an advantage, and then BOOM, and I lost.
Phew, I hope it really helped with the errors, I just don’t know if it’s the case with me, I don’t really like to point out errors, because I’m just afraid, because maybe I did something like that, or maybe it’s in the device itself. In any case, if the truth helped, then next time I will probably add more screenshots and a note, so that you can clearly see.
Hah, regarding cats, I remembered this at the very last moment, just with your novels, I practically do not turn off Google Chrome, because there are a lot of interesting things. Separately, I note that this is cool, because it makes my brain work.
As for languages, it’s easier here, I speak fluent Russian and Ukrainian. But if it’s native, it’s more difficult, I went to school when there was no conflict, and we had a Russian class, but the nationality is Ukrainian, in short, everything is difficult (to be honest, this added a lot of problems in the future, because we the fact that we are a Russian class, added to learn French). And I successfully, like English, completely missed it) Load me into the brain of Melin's knowledge, or take me back 10 years ago so I start learning it. xD
And thank you, albeit in this way, but it's a great pastime. All the best!
P/s: Adding a little later, because just now, yay, I finally got Karina's ending and secret (in particular, thanks for your guide, although it is for Meiling, but it pushed me a little). I hope the last 2 endings (Ben and Hongong) don't take as long as Karina's ending (I probably played the game 10 times, you know, I liked it from the very beginning, because it looks more like me if I knew that she SO SIMILAR, I would go back to Anna). Regarding "secret endings", I'm surprised how it works. It's just that I was going to the secret ending, and accidentally downloaded the walkthrough (very old, as soon as I started) and it still worked as a secret ending. Especially about the information you shared, it was quite funny, in a word, coolly done and maybe a special feature (I want no spoilers, so I just hope you understand) a little outdated, but still works. To be honest, my opinion about the game has changed dramatically for the better that night.
And probably, since I have already touched on this topic, I wanted to personally ask you, because this question arose during the first passage of the novel. Honghong, with his knowledge, shouldn't he know both languages and mathematics, and everything in general? It’s simple, let’s take mathematics for example, he, in theory, may not know exactly how to analyze formulas, but he must know and understand them. It is difficult to explain, probably it would be more correct to ask like this, does he have knowledge only from Wikipedia? Or even all knowledge?
Thank you very much for your response! So many points to answer and so little time... :) I try my best to pick the most important points:
- The co-op puzzles in TLS are missing in Sweet Science, because the story is not really coop... In TLS there were a few friends getting caught in an adventure, here are a few people that slowly become friends, therefore co-op puzzles wouldn't have fit as well. Also, there is no big action here. I got the feedback from TLS that the parts that players most liked where the non-action parts with lots of fun interaction between the characters, that was one reason why I focused on this aspect in Sweet Science.
- I like to promote things that I think might also be important to others. Go is definitely not known enough in the West, and I got feedback from some players of TLS that they encountered it for the first time in the game and were fascinated by it. Same with science topics. I think that in this way, a game can have more positive long-term impact on a player: when it makes them discover a new world outside the game itself.
- Thank you for the suggestions regarding the games you played, I'll take a look at them by myself. I have played some, e.g., Everlasting Summer which definitely had a big influence on Sweet Science. I have also played a bit of its successor ("Love, money, Rock 'n Roll") and was disappointed (similarly as you).
- For your missing endings: For Ben I have written down how to get a good ending in my guide on Steam. For Honghong you need to solve Go related questions well, solve the escape room well, be approachable and flirt well in the romantic scenes and in general be smart here and there (like remembering Li's phone number, the correct song line etc.) Then you should have romantic scenes with him on the date, in the forest and on the "sea". If you play as man in the rainbow mode, in both cases (Ben and Honghong) you will have interesting conversations with your mum, obviously... ;) So while the endings are the same, the story changes a bit between rainbow mode and non-rainbow mode, as well.
- Honghong's knowledge extension: he can basically access Wikipedia in his language (and a bit more), but that does not help him with translating words much. And mathematics is more than knowing things: It won't help you to remember Pythagoras (a^2+b^2=c^2) if you need to solve a math problem where this formula is used somewhere if you don't have a good ability to process information in a logical way. Learning by heart only helps you a bit when you need to solve math problems. It's usually not enough.
Finally, something entirely different: Since I've read that you are Ukrainian: I'm sorry that your country is suffering from this terrible war right now. I don't want to write too much about politics here in this forum, but I sincerely hope that a good peace for your country will end this war!
And thank you for all the replies!
Thank you for explaining a few things that bothered me, and also thanks for the hints to Honghong and Ben, I will definitely close the game for all achievements soon)
Also a special thanks for discussing more creative things, it's great to hear your thoughts on what influenced the game as well as your motives.
Ahem, yes, sorry to take up so much of your time. (about politics, yes, not exactly the best topic, especially on the forum about the game, especially with me, who tries to ignore this topic)
Anyway, thanks again for all your answers and for your time. Good luck and all the best!
Just now I remembered, the game will be translated into Russian / Ukrainian, when will it be released?
;)
I'm sorry, although I had TLS translated into Ukrainian and Russian, I do not plan to translate Sweet Science. I don't know anybody who would be willing to do the necessary edits of an automatic translation (understandably, since it is a huge work!), and an automatic translation, while being useful for some players, seemed to upset other players (my experience from TLS).
I love it !
10/10 I will choose Peril-Patti again.
Hope you'll survive her perilous experiments... ;)
A good guy should never leave such a cute girl alone. Die like a hero I guess.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
Wow, so many detailed comments and suggestions! I think I'll first see what I can implement there, before coming back to you.
Just briefly: some issues with the web version are Ren'py inherent, some depend on your internet speed (e.g. the pixelated graphics). You made some suggestions how to maybe overcome some, so I will see into it. For the time being I am happy that it works at all! :)
Congrats that you have spotted the tower in the tree! I didn't notice that one by myself for quite a long time, so I thought nobody would. :D Looks like I have to fix that now... ;)
So, I have now implemented most of your suggestions, including the tower in the tree and the key to roll back (but it's not the mousewheel as this caused trouble to some test players who kept accidentally rolling back when using a track pad, instead it's simply the Backspace key). I haven't updated on itch yet, but it's already in the current playtest.
By the way: would you like to playtest the game? The first two days of the story are done already, so there is quite something to explore... :)
I am developing the game first in German language and try to get rid of most bugs before translating (to minimize the need for several rounds of translations), so I would be super happy to have another German language play tester!
If you are interested, please contact me by email: thelastsecret at gmx.ch
not the first ai vn.
hmmm look what the cat (dev) dragged in
that was a joke no offense + demo 9/10
If you liked the first demo, you should check it out now... ;)
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!
Thank you so much! I'll be working on it! :)