As far as I can tell, I'm not very far into it yet. I'm playing on Debian 9, and installation was as easy as extracting the bz2 and running the shell script.

Aside from the occasional grammatical mistake, the writing is spectacular. Morgan's story in particular is very thoughtful. The thematic undertones of gentrification are tastefully executed. Weber is hilarious, as well. I found him long-winded at first, and I clicked through most of his first lecture without reading much. The introduction of Grace made me slow down, and I'm glad I did. He's an endearing caricature of that one weird prof everyone runs into in their undergrad studies. I don't need to see him on-screen- the exquisite writing brings him to life.

Criticisms and suggestions:

  • Grace "coincidentally" being in Hannah's club feels a little (i.e. extremely) forced. At that stage in the VN, it isn't even necessary for the plot to work. I would suggest having Alex write down her number using Grace's pen. The pen is already an important plot device, and I think this would be a clever use of it. (edit: having progressed a bit more, I can see why you'd want to do it the way you did. Having Alex voluntarily write down her number affects the choice between texting Rea and Grace. Regardless, I think that letting Alex have the choice of writing down her number in the first place could provide another interesting crossroads in the plot.)
  • It reeeeeeaallly needs more art, and I'm not just talking about the parts where there's placeholder art. Show Alex eating, or at least show her holding a big ass plate of food. Show the post-meal bloat. Show her stuffing her fridge full of goodies. You get the idea.
  • Each piece of art on its own is pretty good, though the lack of hands gets pretty obvious as more characters start getting introduced. I am happy to see this is being fixed.
  • A minigame would make it a bit more engaging. That said, it's better to have no minigame than to shoehorn one in where it doesn't belong. DDLC's word-selection minigame is an example of a simple, ren.py-friendly minigame that fits nicely with the various motifs of the VN. It also serves as a transition for skips in time. It feels weird to suggest that anyone seek inspiration from DDLC, but there it is.
  • A couple of wrong spellings: early on, there's a "through" where it should say "threw." Later, Alex says "I outta'..." I haven't seen that spelling before, so I'm assuming that should be "oughta." Slang is subjective though, and I still get the idea. Shortly after that, "lieing" should be "lying."
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Pub: 29 Dec 2019 00:13 UTC
Edit: 29 Dec 2019 00:30 UTC
Views: 1435