Mary Mary [BxG?][Satire][School]

[an-tan-y]

Jeez, I meant to post this a month ago.
This past summer, I went to an arts camp called CSSSA, or California State Summer School for the Arts. I did a writing program there. For my final project, instead of doing something boring like a poem or an artsy commentary on something political, I drank copious amounts of coffee, stayed up all night, and made this VN about Mary Sues.

There's some overly "weeb-y" stuff in this, mostly having to do with one character in particular (whose name I will not speak; you'll just have to read the VN), so if you are triggered by the ironic usage of words such as "sugoi," "kawaii," and "baka," then this VN might not be for you.

A BRIEF INTRO:

Mary Mary is a pretty short (10-20 minutes per route) game about what happens when a Mary Sue* is sent to a rehabilitative school for other like him. Fresh out of a dating sim, so common a genre in VNs these days, Harrison must keep his changing eye color under control, overcome his fear of the ladies, and learn how to use a loofah. On his journey, he'll meet three girls who will "change his life forever," and not necessarily in a good way.

FEATURES

• Lots of words. The complete coding is ~10,000, but that's including all the extra bits that make the game work

• 4 endings wow

• Gratuitous usage of Japanese

• A dream sequence (and in my opinion, the best part of the whole game)

• Download conveniently located at the bottom of this post

THE CHARACTERS:


Star (AKA Stella)
In a VN, there's always three types of love interest: the "cute one," the "cool one," and the "sporty one." Guess which one Star is? Oh, excuse me– Stella. She prefers to be called by her proper name, rather than something her author thought was "edgy." She enjoys lectures, the color blue, and making loud noises.


She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
This is the "cute one." Her last name is Smith, but she doesn't wear that badge proudly. She has a pet wolf. You never see it during this VN because wolves are not allowed on the campus of St. Mary's. So sorry. She enjoys sugar cereal, hugs, and badly dubbed anime.


Blade
Blade was an action hero before her arrival at St. Mary's, and still carries around her old mannerisms. She thinks school is for losers but secretly pulls all-nighters in order to get perfect scores on her midterms- and she pulls it off, too. Her favorite subject is Ancient Cultures. She enjoys reading books, kicking people in the shins, and fried bread.

Harrison
Our imageless hero. Diagnosed with MSS (Mary Sue Syndrome), Harrison travels to St. Mary's in order to escape his romance-riddled past. The question is, will he or won't he? Wears glasses like a nerd**. Enjoys steel-cut oats, singer-songwriters, and other words with hyphens in them.

SCREENSHOTS




CREDITS
Story, writing, coding by an-tan-y (me)
Backgrounds by Google Images
Sprites by tokudaya
Dream Sequence Sprites by rohancest.tumblr.com
Music by kevin macleod

*Mary Sue is a negative term used in fanfiction and literary criticism to describe an original character that is often overly idealized or assumed to be a projection of the author. When used by a male author, the character is referred to as a Gary Stu or Marty Stu.

**Note: I wear glasses.

ok that is it

thank

[PyTom]

I played through this game earlier today.

I found the essential conceit of the game - Mary Sue Syndrome as a treatable disease - to be really interesting, and a nice setup to introduce us to characters that come at MSS from all sorts of different angles. Although related to the Chunibyou meme that's going around, this seems to be an original take on it.

Am I right to think that the choice structure of this game is part of the message it's trying to send?

It seems that pro-MSS sentiments tend to lock out a character's good endings, while anti-MSS sentiments seem to allow for good endings. The harem path (the most MSS for the main character) seems to be the bad ending. And so on.

Is what I'm seeing here what you intended?

I do think the game was kind of short - it felt like Act I of a larger work. As soon as something starts feeling resolved, the game ends. That was a little disappointing, I think.

The game also felt asymmetric.

It seems weird to have endings for two of the girls, but not Sakura.

There's a couple things I didn't like. The font was fairly hard to read, with the massive differences in line weights. I don't think it added much to the game. I also didn't like the art in the dream sequence - which was strictly worse than the game art, rather than just more stylized.


Still, thanks for making it. How did it go over with the people at the camp?

[an-tan-y]

Woah, the creator of Ren'Py played my game? That's super cool!

To address some of your questions / criticisms:

I did have to make it in one night due to some scheduling difficulties, so this is about as much as I could get with roughly 13 hours of work in, since it's my first foray into the system and programming in general! I wanted to go back and write Sakura's route today, since that was something I had to omit due to time constraints, but for some reason, the game's info isn't showing up in Ren'Py :<
The dream sequence art was a necessity, actually, since my collaboration partner turned out to not know what they were really getting into, and they rushed the art. I was still required to use it somehow, though, and this was all I could think of! Again, if I can get access to my source code again, I'm planning on turning it into a CG instead. What would you recommend for a font?

People at camp loved it, simply because it was the only thing out of the entire department that was in this medium.

Thanks for your critique!

[PyTom]

Limited time is certainly a valid excuse.

Just FYI, the source code is in the full game. If you unzip the game, drag it into the projects directory, and restart the Ren'Py launcher, you should be able to edit the game.

I don't know what to recommend for a font - I just don't like that one, since it makes the text hard to read. There are a lot of nice screen fonts out there that don't detract from the game. (DejaVu is the default, Droid, Roboto, etc.)

[desulishor]

Is that just me, or do I see a reference to Katawa Shoujo in that screenshot over there? It's fun to see BxG games come out once in a while though, but it seems like a larger number of them are somehow ironic these days. (no real offence, but I just want to see someone write their own view of what makes a good story, rather than hiding behind the shield of irony.)
By the time I write this, I haven't played this yet, just snooping around the forum. I kinda want to give it an honest review, but... I always tell myself there are real things I should be doing, so I'll have too see about that.

[merdeamour]

I won't go into how much the font hurt my eyes so...

I love your writing. Seriously. There were parts when I actually laughed out loud--it was that funny. I've rarely done that in a VN, so, kudos to you for that!

The premise itself was fascinating enough for me to download this and take some time off from my biology lab review... and I'm glad I did it ((: There was a vague feeling that this is just the intro to the story, but looking back, I think it's better this way. Somehow, not knowing about Harrison's past works for me. I get to imagine all kinds of scenarios about his MSS...

Anyway, great job with this. I'm looking forward to your next VN xD