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Blair is prone to hallucinations, fearlessness (okay, more like carelessness), and bad logic. Which is the cocktail that lands him with... well... whatever Adamo is.

Vividly Strange

So... finally finished up my first visual novel ever, and now that I'm pretty confident it works, I thought it would be a good idea to upload it here.

Vividly Strange is a short (short!), dialogue-only, almost-kinetic visual novel (with one choice only), and one ending.

Through the eyes of Blair, you experience the strangest night of his life - including his new "friend"/hallucination (he's not sure)...





So, uhm... I've got nothing else to say.

I hope you'll like it!

The technical aspects are very nice. The music and sound affects weren't distracting, and added some atmosphere. The art was refreshing, although the sprites were too colorful and detailed compared to the backgrounds. I didn't like Adamo's design, I think a more down to earth look would have helped making the situation more realistic.
Another small thing - when you step on Adamo his face changes to a mange art style. I'm not really fond of changing art styles in the middle of the game, in this case especially since I liked the usual one.

I don't have much to say about the story. MC is crazy, popping pills and talking with imaginary friend. So what? Why should I care?
If this was a serious project, that would have been a major flaw, but given the nature of the project, it's fine.

It's a good first VN.
I'm interested to see what you'll do on a longer game.

Thanks for the feedback! And especially for clearing up that the music isn't distracting
- I'm glad that if something is distracting, it's my art and "story".

Another opinion for you:

I liked the art, and I actually appreciated that the character appearance violently contrasted in color with the drab backgrounds, suggesting a psychedelic hallucination that supplies an escape from the oppressive reality that surrounds the protagonist (which is probably why he's popping pills). I also did not mind the change in drawing style, because the character is wacky, and one is not certain about his reality. If the visual novel was all kinds of serious, it would be more jarring.

The art was nice, and the sound and music helped a lot giving an upbeat and frenetic mood, that runs against the very dark situation that the protagonist is in (at least under my interpretation). This contrast is very nice.

I liked the choice offered, because I could see it as a test for the protagonist to interpret what is happening to him: Is Adamo some hallucination (and so one can step on him), or is there a chance that he's real (go around him). This gives something for the player to chew on. The problem is that there is not much of a reward for thinking about that choice, and by this I mean consequences. You do get to see different artwork, which is a basic reward, but it would have been nice to bring up some slight difference at the end, that validates the player's effort by providing different meanings/consequences to the protagonist actions.

In any case, it was interesting, and I look forward your future projects

Thanks for the feedback!
- And about that slightly different ending; I was actually thinking about that,
but ended up dismissing it as thinking too much - it's good to know that I shouldn't do that the next time

_________________
If anyone should ever feel the compulsive need to translate their game into danish, I'd sooo love to help.

Oh boy, the title sure fits the VN well... it was exactly what I thought of it. On another note, when I first opened the game in full screen, Adamo's face gave me a scare. So much so that I had to close the game down in order to lower my heartbeat. Like iskander had mentioned, I think it would have been good to have a variation of consequences depending on the ending, but as this is a short novel, it probably didn't matter very much. While I would have liked to see more, I think the length of this VN is fine, because it answered one question(i.e why did Adamo want to show Blair the basement), while leaving more unanswered. That means the reader is free to ponder over the bizarre incident. I would have liked to see Fifi, though.

EDIT : Good job for your first VN. I look forward to more~! Oh, I almost forgot... by using bright colors in contrast to the background, you make your characters stand out more, and they become the main focus of the scene.