Ori, Ochi, Onoe.

[monele]

Eh... somehow, I thought the walkthrough was uber spoiling, so I avoided it ^^;... Err... "too late"? ^^;... I think I got all the endings, including #4. Sadly, I had already been slightly spoiled (well... ok, not just slightly ...) so it did make things a lot less surprising.

Of course, now I'm all "ohh, yes, of course, so that's why!" and while I went back and tried all the remaining choices of Part II, I could slowly start knowing which choice would lead to which ending. So... it's really interesting that there is this body/mind concept going on... but I just couldn't guess any of it. It's a bit sad that Part II was so difficult to reach since it's really what makes the game. So many people could just leave the game at the few 6/7/8 endings and think "mmh, yeah... well meh".

Ah well... can I now spoil myself with all the easter egg stuff or is there still some surprise waiting for me?

[mikey]

It's a bit of that tragic link of fate, I guess. I got spoiled with MagBou, and you with O3.

But of course, it's still terrible you had to fight so much with the game. Just PM me next time if you'll have troubles and I'll make a personal hint file or something similar for you. I've done it a few times with Transfer Teacher so...

So anyway, the eternal dilemma. If the game has logical choices, there is no sense of accomplishment or excitement, and if it has non-transparent choices, it's frustrating if you're not lucky enough. It's usually this argument that makes me certain that VNs are not games. They are some kind of whimsical works that require special mindsets, buy-ins and luck. But for all that frustration there will probably come one day when everything fits and then, you just think that nothing can beat this medium. I've had only one, two,... I think three such lucky days, but they were all more than worth it. Hmmm, I'm somewhere else with this paragraph, better make the font smaller.

[monele]

Haha, cursed are we? ^^;. But you're right, I should have taken advantage of the fact I know the author ^^;...

As for the dilemma... I *do* like non-obvious choices, but I also like them to make some sense without needing omniscience . It might not be ultimately possible but, for now, I still have faith there's a way to mix both logic and difficulty

[Ivlivs]

I didn't want to read any spoilers by mistake so I just skipped to this page, but I also played this game a while ago.

I really enjoyed the professional-grade artwork and the finely-tuned story. Trust me, I know how long it takes to make an idea this good --- especially if there is art involved. (Not that I can draw...)

I didn't get all of the endings, but I like what I did get.

Just who IS this "ATP Projects" group anyway? They're amazing.

[mikey]

If you haven't gotten the true ending (Nr. 4) yet, you may want to try some day, it's more or less the point of the story (well, the point of its plot, anyway).

Just who IS this "ATP Projects" group anyway?

ATP Projects is for most of the time me and my wife (Kathryn), and if it's a Ren'Py-engined game PyTom, if it's our own it's Jet. Usually Renesis (aka EVO) makes original music for bigger titles and the character artists tend to vary - by default it's Kathryn, but we've worked with Magic_Diagram (BP), Glumanda (SoD), BCS (O3) and lordcloudx (TsT). Kathryn also makes the backgrounds, but the last few games I made them in reality (even though she is credited) - it's because I've learned how she processed the backgrounds and wanted to take work off her shoulders - but she is always credited, because it's her basic techniques and her moral support and understanding for this hobby of mine is essential - without that, there would be a lot less games from ATP Projects, if indeed any. This is also the case with engines - Jet's that we used before and PyTom's customized Ren'Py - even though there were cases where in a project it was actually only I who did the "programming" (IIRC - Milk Swim, White Nights), those people are always fully credited, because they did the basic engines. There was also mike.pr who we did Idol/TYPE with and Xenorakis who made the River Trap music. As for ATP Projects, I started the site in 2001 (well 14.2. 2001 to be precise), and it was called ATP - Anime Text Page. I wanted to have information about anime-related things in text form in there - several reviews, some lists of titles and so on. Later, it was specialized in lists of anime titles - these were later reduced to bishoujo games only (not anime, not manga, not games), and even later reduced to English bishoujo games. In late 2003 I started to work on my first project, creatively called "Anime Project 1", which was never finished - upon finding the Lemmasoft forums (which at that time had very little members and about 10 posts a week), I started on a new project from scratch - and in early 2004 I released Black Pencil. The name of my site was still ATP - Anime Titles Page, and since the game was my project... well, my creativity knew no boundaries and ATP Projects it was ^_^. Ah, memories.

[Dave the Twisted]

I recently got a hold of this game. I played it through to one of the endings, and I wept MANLY TEARS! Amazing story! (It should be no surprise the ending I got was #7)

[mikey]

I recently got a hold of this game. I played it through to one of the endings, and I wept MANLY TEARS! Amazing story! (It should be no surprise the ending I got was #7)

Thank you! It's nice to hear you liked it.
(... although it's been such a long time, I can't remember what ending 7 was about... All I know is that ending 4 is the true one.)

[Dave the Twisted]

It's one of those "You suck at life" endings

[renkenjutsu]

Better late than never I suppose. I got the true ending without looking at this thread! Yay! Now it all makes sense! Yesss.... Oh and really good game. Now I feel challenged to redo my main menu and the works for my own game (twitch twitch).

[mikey]

Better late than never I suppose. I got the true ending without looking at this thread! Yay! Now it all makes sense! Yesss.... Oh and really good game. Now I feel challenged to redo my main menu and the works for my own game (twitch twitch).

Thanks for playing! Did you get the true ending on your first playthrough? That would be amazing... I don't think that it ever happened (to people who posted their comments). In any case, I'm glad you liked it!

As for the menu, it is kind of a theme for the whole visuals, to have the central elements at the centre - the edges of the graphics are blurred to make people focus on the middle of the screen, the text is in the middle (also, you directly see the character's faces, which usually is a problem when the text is at the bottom and the sprite's head in the upper area). So the circled theme is there to underline the in-game layout philosophy. Actually, originally I never thought about animating the menus, I remember that I got this back from PyTom and saw the menu items moving... it was amazing ^_^.

[renkenjutsu]

Yup, I got the 4th ending on my first playthrough :3 Ochi is like my ex so yeah, I can relate. The entire experience is freakish deja vu for me, to be honest. lol.

[mikey]

In that case, congratulatulations! (on the game playthrough, I mean ^_^)

[Dave the Twisted]

Most of the gameplay seems to be in the character's memory, so it's odd to hear him get out a line like "My only true love was Ori..." without ever actually describing her in detail until later. My initial reaction to lines like this are "Wait. Who's she?" It gets confusing because you have to make choices solely by guessing what his relationship to a character he's known for years but you've only just met is. Was the point to figure out all the details on the first runthrough and then try for a better ending on the second? In short, the game is an extremely well-written headache, but the quality of writing allows me to enjoy the confusing bits.

[mikey]

Most of the gameplay seems to be in the character's memory, so it's odd to hear him get out a line like "My only true love was Ori..." without ever actually describing her in detail until later. My initial reaction to lines like this are "Wait. Who's she?" It gets confusing because you have to make choices solely by guessing what his relationship to a character he's known for years but you've only just met is. Was the point to figure out all the details on the first runthrough and then try for a better ending on the second? In short, the game is an extremely well-written headache, but the quality of writing allows me to enjoy the confusing bits.

Well, Ori is only really introduced in the second part, a kind of a memory of "true love" in contrast to the ongoing problems with your relationship with Ochi, the decision for the player (or rather the protagonist) is between what the two relationships feel like to him (this is best explained in the true ending, I think). But I actually enjoyed writing every girl's endings - there is a different sort of life and love with each of them, and I hope that if you're content with the form of relationship you choose, you can be happy even if your girl isn't perfect. Specifically Ori, of course - she is someone you don't love for a reason, you have to love her despite her faults. And I'm not really asking the players to love her (because looking at it logically, Ori is a very difficult and "unrewarding" relationship"), but maybe the players can find out through the protagonist what it would be like to love a person like that - that it isn't a weakness not to break up and endure the bad times. Well, as I said, it doesn't sound very logical, but it's not about logic.

[ashogo]

damn, two great games I tried to play today, and both give me traceback errors. It's for the mac version..does anyone know how to fix this?