What a shame, truly a pile of shame this is. Such a cool arthouse experience, but that poor old Ren'py, clearly not made for all of it, not sure if it's the size of the images or the constant animation, the game feels like it's running under the water, I never seen that with a visual novel, how in the world did you bottleneck a visual novel. You need to find a different engine, this one can't keep up with what you doing. Unless it is image size, I mean the game is 5 gigs, are they too big maybe, or are you spamming animations too often.
Otherwise it's a pretty cool visual experience if you into excessive arthouse vibes, the characters don't look that unique, but it's really all the psychotic videos and some of the animations, I have seen a similar direction before but not in this medium specifically. I could attempt to say something about this nonsense of a narrative but I have not a slightest idea of what I read, I was mostly along for the vibes anyway.
You can usually tell the quality/effort of a visual novel by how often the characters and the backgrounds are animated, and this game felt like 4x times the effort of most games, there were a lot of videos and short animations, so in that sense you have made a really good game, at least on the surface level. That said, I didn't care too much for the story, the game was very laggy, and as far as I can tell it was linear, one and done kind of ride. 60 minutes or so, check out the extras in the gallery as well.
And the music lol, I almost find it insulting that the game is trying to hurt my ears at every chance it gets, bold choice though, feels like one of those birthday cards when they get wet. Honestly I kinda like it, just a bit strange to listen to it the entire time.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) The game looked unusual in the trailer, but I didn't expect so many arthouse videos, very unusual for the medium. There were a lot of small animations, certainly more than your average visual novel.
(+) Music, well, maybe a little painful, kinda going for white noise and static, cool vibes though, somewhat fun characters.
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
- Yea the ren'py clearly can't handle so much at the same time, the game is laggy, that is the only thing that really holds you back
- Some choices would have been nice, the game also ends somewhat abruptly I feel
[b]Overall Thoughts: 6/10 (8/10 if it didn't run like a snail) [/b]
Clearly very high effort visual novel, as short as it is, lots of cool videos, lots of cool animations and some unusual designs. It's just laggy and not very fun to read because of it, you may want to consider porting it into something else, or switching into another engine if you plan on making more games like this. Big eye candy, so laggy though, ouch.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
