Love & Life (GxB, BxG, Friendship)

[facades]

Love & Life is a short and light-hearted story about the school life of Kenta/ Hina after he/she transfers to a new school.
He/ She meets new friends and is involved in several fun activities. He/ She also discovers the stories behind his/ her new friends.
There are some references to Japanese culture in the game as it is set in Japan.

You can play as Hina or Kenta and there are 14 endings in total.
If you play as Hina, you can get to know Jun & Takeshi (Romance stories) or Kana & Chiyo (Friendship stories)
If you play as Kenta, you can get to know Kana & Chiyo (Romance stories) or Asami & Shizuko (Romance/ Friendship stories)

Genre : Slice-of-life, Romance comedy, GxB, BxG , Friendship.

Characters:


Fujimoto Asami - Cheerful, lively and optimistic

Yukimura Shizuko - Quiet, shy and reserved

Nakamura Chiyo - Polite, sweet and feminine

Itou Kana - Stubborn, hot-tempered and rebellious

Watanabe Jun - Dreamy and distracted

Yoshida Takeshi - Competitive and confident

Download the game from these links:
For Windows
(sendspace)
For Mac
(sendspace)
For Linux
(sendspace)

4shared users :Windows ; Mac ; Linux

Incomplete CGs, WIP, scrapped ideas and other stuff: Deviantart ; Youtube

Note: If you stumble across a Japanese word that you haven't seen before and would like to know it's meaning, please refer to the the file below.
The file also contains a walkthrough but as this game is relatively simple, you don't really need to read the walkthrough to play the game.
However,you can refer to the walkthrough if you're wondering how to reach a certain ending.

Japanese words and Walkthrough.doc

(42.5 KiB) Downloaded 1036 times

[Tag-]

Congratulations on finishing your game! It's a fantastic effort, and your art has definitely improved by heaps since your last game 8D And wow, a game where there are two perspectives? 14 endings sounds like a lot of work, so I'll definitely play this


Once I've played through it I'll let you know my thoughts <:

[Zatch]

Congrats! I will definitely place this when I get home from school. Why do I have to go to school early today...? ._.

[facades]

@ Zatch: Thanks Zatch! (:

@ Tag - : Thanks! It's a very simple game actually, even though there are 14 endings. I had to finish this game within two weeks ( Due to other commitments in 'real life' ) so the game turned out to be pretty short and simple.. I hope it won't be too disappointing (x

[Aquane]

Congrats on finishing! Well, I loved your last game so of course I'll give this one a go as well. :3 I don't know what it is, but even as simple as your last one was, it was so.. charming and I loved it. Something about it just got me hooked. xD I'm sure I'll enjoy this one too~ *downloads*


...curse my slow connection >:I

[Poketto Kunoichi]

I played as Hina and did Chiyo's path, and played as Kenta and did Kana's path.

There's something about this game that's really charming. I liked how you introduced a little mystery to the characters early on, as I liked their personalities and wanted to see what happened to them. Chiyo was just so darn adorable, and the quibbles on Kana's path were quite amusing. xD Even though the game was short, it didn't really detract my enjoyment from the game, as I really liked it.

Great job, hope to play more soon! ;D

[facades]

@ Aquane : Thanks Aquane! I'm really glad you enjoyed Last Vacation! Thanks for downloading Love & Life!

@ Poketto Kunoichi : Thank you for your comments, Poketto Kunoichi! Yay I'm so happy you like Chiyo!
When I was writing her story I was a lil afraid that she might be a bit boring.. cos she's the goody two-shoes type, unlike Kana..
I'm glad you enjoyed the game! Thanks for playing! ^^

[Elze]

Will you be releasing a version for mac?

[jaypee_1]

Seems like lots of love was put in it downloading ^_^ , was this supposed to be a short novel game?

*edited*
I was really surprised by your download files which is a huge 243mb! I usually dont download this kind of large file so it better be good >.< .

[facades]

@ Elze : (edited) I've uploaded the version for Mac (:

@ jaypee_1 : Thanks for downloading! I had planned to write a longer story but had to finish the game within two weeks because of some stuff that happened in 'real life'. (x
So it became a short romance comedy novel (:

I'm sorry for the large file size I need to learn how to compress files..

[gekiganwing]

Tried your game Love & Life for the first time yesterday. Overall, I enjoyed it. Good grammar, and as more information about the characters was revealed, I thought they became more and more interesting. So far I've managed to get all of Kenta's endings, as well as the Hina and Chiyo friendship ending. Here are a few things which could be improved:

1. Just a couple typos.

The only major one is in the Kenta/Chiyo marriage ending. There's a few screens near the end where Chiyo is called Hina. I assume this is a mistake.

2. The character sprites look hand drawn, while most of the backgrounds look like computer generated images. There's just a handful of backgrounds which seem to be drawn by hand. Would be interesting to see a freeware visual novel with consistent art. If you're done with Love & Life, then think if this can be done in a future project.

3. In my opinion, you could eliminate most of the Japanese words from your script, and it would not lose cultural authenticity. Think carefully about what terms and phrases have natural-sounding, easy-to-understand English equivalents. There are a few which don't... for instance, keep the names of food products intact. And while there are some English words similar to "tsundere," some have different meanings, and others might sound like long-winded explanations. But if you ask me, most of the untranslated words and phrases are distracting, and don't enhance the story.

4. In the Kenta/Kana story, there's a statement about paying "80 dollars" for a dress. I suppose that's a small inconsistency. So I started thinking, "how much would you pay for a dress if you lived in a large city in Japan?" I got some information on major retail stores here: shops.japan-guide.com/shops/categories/7 A few not-very-helpful web searches later, I started browsing sites of stores that sell fashionable clothes for women. One example that was easy to browse was Laforet Harajuku. On their site, you can learn how much you can expect to pay in yen: laforet.ne.jp/in_store_now

5. Was a little surprised that there was no love or friendship ending for Maki. She gets to know Kenta, offers to share her lunch, and gets him to work together on the haunted house. It's not clear if she has other important friends or a significant other. We don't know much more about Maki's life, or what she intends to do after the school festival.

I was wondering for a moment if there would be a path with Imai-sensei. I admit it's unlikely, since she is probably in her 20s. And even assuming she's heterosexual and unattached, I don't think she'd fall in love with one of her students. But there was a scene where Kenta helps her deal with the annoying guys in his class, so I thought there was a slight chance for a friendship ending.

Regardless, thank you for the freeware game!

[facades]

Thanks for your review, gekiganwing (:

1)Thanks for pointing that out! That was a really bad mistake

2) I'm not good at drawing backgrounds ( I could only draw a few simple ones like

the festival stalls and the haunted house)

and I was also a little pressed for time
But it's true that it would have been better if the art was more consistent.

3) Hmm.. Do you mean words such as

itai, nanka daikirai ,ringo ame, daisuki dayo,tadaima and okaerinasai?

Because the rest are mostly names of japanese food/ games/ items that might not have the same 'feel' if english words were used.
But thanks for this comment, I'll take note of it(: I always seem to get into trouble for having Japanese words in my games (x

4) Thanks for pointing that out too! I had completely overlooked that.. I must have been so preoccupied with the story that I forgot I was supposed to be in Japan

5) There's not much development on Maki and Imai-sensei as I was more focused on the 6 playable characters and had intended for them to remain as side characters (Like Hina's mom, Chiyo's mom and the other teacher in Hina's class). But it would have been fun to watch Maki's and Kenta's friendship/ relationship develop..Or to have more scenes with Imai-sensei..I would have written these stories if I had more time (x

I'm relieved that you still enjoyed it despite all these flaws ! Thank you once again for playing this game

[gekiganwing]

I appreciate your reply.

3) Hmm.. Do you mean words such as

itai, nanka daikirai ,ringo ame, daisuki dayo,tadaima and okaerinasai?

Because the rest are mostly names of japanese food/ games/ items that might not have the same 'feel' if english words were used.
But thanks for this comment, I'll take note of it(: I always seem to get into trouble for having Japanese words in my games (x

You shouldn't feel a need to transliterate proper names or pronouns. Unless the item is better known by an English name, you can feel free to use the original term.

But common words and phrases should probably be in English. Words such as "ouch" and phrases such as "I love you" exist in pretty much every language spoken on Earth. They are no more meaningful in English than they are in Japanese, or Hindi, or Catalan, or Urdu, or any other language.

Also, keep in mind that in your story, the characters all grew up in the same place -- they know and speak the same language. Perhaps if they were from different nations and backgrounds, then they might lapse into other languages.

One other thing which I forgot to mention last time -- how formally do the characters talk to each other? If they are not immediate family or close friends, then they probably should not refer to each other by given name alone. I'm sure someone else can explain cultural politeness better than I can. When writing a story, it's probably best not to overemphasize politness...

All things considered, setting is important in any story. But you don't want to focus too much on the unique aspects of the setting. And you definitely don't want to make it into some sort of caricature. Think about how you'd portray your hometown. There's almost certainly a few things about it which are unusual, but it's also a normal place.

[jaypee_1]

I was on the part where I chose chiyo and ask her for a date errr festival and ended up in kinda bad situation >.< .
I love how you draw those sprites and backgrounds those were cute as for my notice since I just started, the introduction feels kinda short. Maybe you should have made it a little bit longer and add some more detail introductions because I was really surprised by the sudden transition to school.

[facades]

@ gekiganwing: I see.. thanks! And noted (: I'll use English next time unless Japanese is absolutely needed.

When you mentioned cultural politeness with relation to names, did you mean the suffixes such as -san, -chan and etc?
But after that comment you also added that "When writing a story, it's probably best not to overemphasize politness..."
Were you referring to the same issue about the names or was it that there were too many words such as 'I'm sorry' and 'thank you' in the story?
If it is the latter, I may have subconsciously transferred a part of my personality into the visual novel

About the setting, I threw in everything I liked because I wasn't sure if I would have another chance to make VNs again
I hope that the overload of Japanese characteristics didn't spoil the game for anyone (x

Once again, Thank you for a 2nd review gekiganwing! Truly grateful for any comments ! (:

@jaypee_1 : Phew~ thanks for your comments! I hope the game was worth the time needed to download it !
After getting through the bad situation, you'll have a happy ending (: (depending on the choices you make)
Yea..I should have made the introduction longer..
There was one thing I was trying to avoid when writing Kenta's story...
And that was monologues. I realised how difficult it is to write from a guy's POV (without sounding too girlish) when making this visual novel. (x
But maybe I could have added some other things in the introduction other than a longer monologue.. -thinks-
I hope you enjoy the rest of the game! My favourite path for Kenta is Asami & Shizuko
Thanks for playing!