Katawa Shoujo Act 1

[delta]

http://katawashoujo.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... eased.html

URL pretty much says it all.

[papillon]

Looks good so far, although I'm sure you know that.

(I'm still in-progress playing through, so I have no meaningful comment to make, other than that the hall outside the nurse's office makes me nostalgic for Duke. It doesn't look specifically familiar, just architectural style matching.)

[Guest]

[papillon]

Yeah, that's why I said the hall outside, not the inside of his actual office. That and the library both have a... I think the term is 'Collegiate Gothic'?.... style which I'm sure exists on many university campuses, but particularly reminds me of the one I attended and worked at, but haven't been back to in years. So yeah, just waxing nostalgic.

[Samu-kun]

Holy **** it's released!?

Wait -- just a demo? Damn...

[DaFool]

Wait -- just a demo? Damn...

Code: Select all

Statistics:

The game contains 14215 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 190916 words,
for an average of 13.4 words per screen.
The game contains 34 menus.

This will be way longer than 10 average-length games placed end-to-end!

Surpassing the longest WIP demo in my memory (~80K words):
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =16&t=2144

Already several hours in, I can't imagine what the full version would be like.

The little devils in my head are chiding me already:

You want wordcount? Ya got wordcount!"

So eventually someone's gotta lay down the gauntlet about what counts as a 'complete' game, and I wouldn't know until I play for a few more hours. My suggestion at this point would be to separate the Acts, as even the Prologue in F/SN which has to be replayed was "only" 2 hours long. That way people who played the demo would be able to get on with the game seamlessly. Course, I need to first reach the end to see what the viable saving options are.

[delta]

These screens contain a total of 190916 words,

That's two languages though, so the "real" word count is around 95k words for each. But wordcount doesn't matter anyway. I consider it a somewhat self-contained game with a proper beginning and an ending that provides some sort of closure, even though it's not the "full" story.

[lordcloudx]

So I tried it and guest's post pretty much sums up my sentiments

[Ren]

Playing it now (in Italian).

I think the translation needs a bit of polishing, I did think the site was translated a bit too directly, and had the same impression about the game in a couple of instances, like: "L'ho detto forte? E' solo una sorpresa"("Did I say that out loud? It was just a suprise").
It's a figure of speech in English, but it's perhaps too direct, maybe: "L'ho detto ad alta voce? Ero solo sorpreso." would be better (in my own opinion, that is).

The intro is very nice, I had to watch it a couple of times! The character art is nice as well, although I don't like some things (like Misha's proportions, her arms are a bit short, and her bust a bit too big for her figure, one of Shizune's breasts in her first pose is weirdly positioned...).
The CGs are lovely, it's nice to see so much effort went into the graphics of this game.

I like the writing as well so far, it reads very smoothly (playing it in English again). :3

Edit: I forgot one important thing - I absolutely love the music, it's well placed and very nice to listen to, even when I'm doing something else (like drawing or reading). Bravo to the composers, great job!

[Samu-kun]

Played roughly the first 30 minutes.

Everything's pretty nice so far. The girls are pretty cute. I'm favoring Mishina, although I'm wondering what her disability is. My eroge senses tell me she has a terminal illness.

Also, I see that Haruki and Lulu have become disabled students as well. Tsk, tsk, it's a sad world...

I thought the intro was really nice too. I wonder if that was done with renpy functions or if it's an embedded movie.

Overall, my level of hope for the project went up now that I finally saw something real out of it. How many more arcs are you planning?

[papillon]

Okay, slightly more coherent thoughts, now that I've played through to one ending (Rin).

As you probably already know, there are a few long stretches of silence (no music) here and there. It feels a bit weird when the quiet goes on for a long time, since most of the time there's music, but not a big deal. Also, a few times, when class is over for the day, the carillon and the newly-starting loud music overlap badly. It would sound better to my ear to let the clock ring with the music staying quiet, and turn up the music once it's finished.

I find it difficult to relate to Shizune because of the limitations of the medium. I don't know sign language myself, but where I am a lot of tv programs get repeated late at night with signing, so I *see* a lot of it even if I can't quite understand it, and those signers are generally very expressive... watching them, it's easy to feel that something is being communicated and sometimes even the emotional gist of it.

Since here all we see is a girl standing still or making faces and a bit of "...", followed by statements from Misha which are - within the game text - sometimes given weird inflections, or implied unclearness of who's really saying what she's saying... I feel very disconnected from Shizune, I can't get a good sense of her in my head.

Obviously it's impractical for you guys to animate all of her statements in correct sign - and although accurate descriptions of the signing instead of "..." might help me, it would still be a lot of work and perhaps bore other people.

[IceD]

When I saw the download size, I've almost fallen from my chair. Preety impressive, as for a preview. I'm downloading it now and hope it won't dissapoint me, though I have to admit from what I've seen up to now it looks decent in terms of visuals. hope the story and scenario will be as good as the rest.

Katawa Shoujo might become an important milestone in OELVN community

You guys & gals there! Keep up the good work!

[PyTom]

I feel very disconnected from Shizune, I can't get a good sense of her in my head.

You know, I have a good friend of mine who became deaf a few years ago. And "disconnected" is a real problem. Even though I know a very little bit of ASL, it's still tough to communicate except over IM, which leads to a real wall. While I'm not sure that's it's the best choice in game design (this is a bishoujo game, and the characters are meant to be appealing), it does kinda reflect the problems people have to overcome in real life.

[mikey]

I have to say, when taking into consideration the goals that the dev team outlined they have set for themselves in the post preceding the release, for this demo there is practically no criticism that I could think of.

It's excellently programmed, and does exactly what is expected, which is not a bad thing, it's kind of the point. Bravo on every aspect. I can see how the whole project can feel generic to some people, and it does feel like that to me as well, I have skipped most of the text just to watch the effects, to be honest. But every time I stopped and read a few lines, it always gave the impression of a solid work with pretty much no drawbacks... again, seen in light of the mission statement from a few days ago.

So congratulations on a very professional job with the demo, you have really more than met the goals, and really exceeded expectations. As for me, you know... schoolgirls... But again, that's personal, and not really the point.

[Jake]

While I'm not sure that's it's the best choice in game design (this is a bishoujo game, and the characters are meant to be appealing), it does kinda reflect the problems people have to overcome in real life.

I got a similar thing, though, and the problem wasn't so much that I was getting all her lines through Misha, it was that there was no demonstration to the reader that she was communicating at all in a lot of cases. At one point Misha changes pose quickly between a couple of sprites as she signs, and this worked well for me; it was obvious she was communicating with Shizune, I didn't need to understand sign language for that... and it made it clear she was communicating with Shizune. Most of the time, Shizune seems to just frown or smile and Misha comes up with the sentences on her own... unless she's supposed to be telepathic?

I realise it'd be a little extra work to give Shizune a couple of frames of hands in different positions so she can be dissolved through them in quick succession or something every time she 'says' something, but I think it'd be worth it to consolidate her presence as a character.



On an unrelated note, I also really liked the intro - I'd really like to hear it was done entirely in Ren'Py script, and most of it would be simple enough, but the blur suggests to me it's probably a video... :/ The production all round is good, the snow scenes near the beginning are well done, some of the visual effects - the heart attack, for instance - are nice.

On the other hand, I did only play half an hour or so in, but I wasn't gripped at all... none of the characters I've met so far I really find interesting, nothing's happened that catches my attention. I'll keep going, but mostly because of the hype this project has generated and to see if there's anything else nicely executed later on. Maybe I'm just not the target audience, though...