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I did a video of me playing the first 10 minutes of the game. (Which is coincidentally how long it took my first game.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uee7rKTaqfo



The Good: The writing is awesome. The characters are funny and the pacing is good.

The Bad: Add a couple more pictures or maybe some cute chibi water droplet sprites.

Susan

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Gave it a quick playthrough - I cleared all the endings, I think, but I'm not sure it took me more than ten minutes or so.

I think the big win for this is the anthromorphized water droplets. It's almost better that there aren't sprites or anything like that, since I'm not sure that anything one could draw would adequately depict the idea of a little red-haired water droplet. Also, the bit equating hydrogen bonds to holding hands gave me a laugh.

The production values aren't that high - but to be honest, I don't think that matters all that much. I mean, even if you spend years working on it, it's going to be a small absurdist game - and that's a fine thing to be. I think it works better the more abstract it is.

What class was the game for? It's not super-educational - I mean, it's fun enough, but it's not like it's really teaching anything. The educational value might be improved by explicitly incorporating the water cycle into it - like if you get a bad ending, you evaporate, recondense, and jump back to the starting point. Represent the cycle by looping, or something like that.

Anyway, thanks to redeyesblackpanda for making a cute short game, and to Auro for organizing this group play.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

It was supposed to be for Bio. Even with very little content, I managed to get away with it, somehow

@SusanTheCat
Gwa! Thanks for the video! I almost broke out laughing. Your reading was wonderful!

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Not really checking the forums any more due to time constraints, so if you want to contact me, PM. I'll get a notification and log in.
Also, I've been hit and run posting, which means I don't see many replies. If you want to respond to something I've said, also feel free to PM me.

The game was kinda cute, but not amazing. There was nothing that really stood out for me as exciting or impressive. It's an interesting idea, but it seems pretty unexplored. For example, shouldn't there be tons of water droplets everywhere for the PC to talk to, instead of just two?

The true ending was pretty cute, but other than the fact that I was with a companion, I'm not sure what made it a 'better' ending than the rest of them.

I also feel like the 'bad' ends were just added to have bad ends. A couple of them were really abrupt and pointless, and I'm not sure why

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,%,..@@@,.Þ%,.@G,.@@,.% ...What? It makes sense to me.

Well, I just got all the endings (I think), and... I'm not entirely sure whether I like it or not.

The first ending I got was the good ending. I thought it was decent, if a bit predictable. The whole time something was nagging me: why is a water droplet's life short? One of the first things we learn in school is that the water we have now is the same water that we had 10,000 years ago...
Then I got the first bad ending:


After that, going through the other paths sort of just lost their momentum. The bad paths especially were rather boring. I think that if you had made them a bit more sadistic, they would have been more fun. I mean, you have to be a pretty big jerk to get to them, why not punish the main character for it.

I really should have enjoyed the neutral ending a bit more than I did. I think I just read it on a bad night.

All in all, I would say that I didn't waste my time with playing this. I really think that this has a lot of potential, but lack of work put into it kind of pulls it down. I understand that this was just a short school project and wasn't really intended to be read in this atmosphere, but there are some things you can't predict.

EDIT: I just realized I probably shouldn't address RedEyesBlackPanda here since this is a general discussion thread so I copied the last part into the game's thread.

Ngh, I forgot that I had school and damn the timezones :CCCCCCCC This means I actually have to play it myself... I'll get to playing it by the end of this day.

Also, am I the only one who noticed that it was "My Live as A Water Droplet" in the folder? Herp derp :'D

Edit: Played. Oh panda you, what a silly game Le thoughts.

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This was a very good choice to kick off this group play project. Short, accessible. I think it's pretty lucky we got this for the debut.

The game gets a little silly and ridiculous at times, but in some ways, it really works in its favor. The tone is pitch-perfect. There's something very young about the tone of voice the narrator uses, which is perfect for a newly-born water droplet. If you pursue the true end, the droplet keeps an ever-hopeful voice fitting of the route, while if you go other ways, the droplet is rather tactless and immediate about his dismissal or disbelief in things, much like a young kid who doesn't know how what he says affects others. I don't know how deliberate this is, or how much I'm reading into it, but I see this tone there and it really works for personifying an otherwise inanimate protagonist.

One of the biggest omissions for this piece is immediately apparent, however. It's the lack of music. For me especially, this is rather problematic. For a short piece like this, I can make myself stay engaged, but if it ran longer, the silence would prove to be quite the burden on me. I just really can't keep my head in a visual novel that doesn't have audio. I did read that this was for a class project, but for next time (or others who also have class projects they plan to release), you really should take a bit of time to add music to the project before the public release. In many cases, it makes sense why a class project shouldn't have music, but there's nothing forcing you to immediately push the classwork copy out the door the very next second. And there are plenty of free-to-use music sites out there. Your game deserves it.

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The Compendium of Drake :
Starlit Sky ~ Songs of Araiah ~ Mirai Imouto ~ Temple Glen ~ Fuyu no Tabi

Ah, you noticed the folder... yup. It took me about 3 hours to build the distribution, since I was having computer issues, then upload it. I noticed it was messed up then, but I decided that I'd be lazy and leave it wrong, since it wasn't on the game's own screen, although... I'm not sure I would have bothered even if that had happened. It was... very painful trying to build those distributions...

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Not really checking the forums any more due to time constraints, so if you want to contact me, PM. I'll get a notification and log in.
Also, I've been hit and run posting, which means I don't see many replies. If you want to respond to something I've said, also feel free to PM me.

So I keep reading this, but there's not very much I find I can say of it. Considering it's a school project, it touches on what I think is the essence of the project (the water cycle), and its writing is enjoyable. The lack of music seems too obvious to point out. I did find it a bit... dull, I guess, that you had to be nice to a ditz to get the "true end".