The Boy Who Loved Crows (Our First Project)

[Fawkes - Feathered Melody]

Finally going to release our first project that we've been working on for a year now.

A story about crows and the theme of human / nature interactions. I hope you enjoy it.

Screenshot:


Development Team and Credits:

Scenario Writer / Programming: Fawkes
Artists: Jamuko, AnimeSenko, LuminMog
Music: General Damian (Hunter V.) and TAM Music Factory
Advisors and Editors: Laogeodritt, Clowezra, and Lady Aurion
Developed in the Renpy Visual Novel Engine

[A22]

Congratulations.

About how long is it?

[Fawkes - Feathered Melody]

Thanks

It's about 10-15 minutes for my reading pace. The intention was for this to be a small project to figure out organization and iron out development problems before we moved on to a bigger project (Noctua). The actual story went about 7 pages double spaced.

[papillon]

Purely personal nitpicky style comment -

I find that with a lot of typical renpy setups, the textbox is so far away from the character's face that my eyes can't see both in focus at once. So if I tune into reading the story, I don't see the facial expressions change - I see there's a change outside of my focus, but I don't really get the effect of the change in expression. This is possibly just my own personal form of blindness though. But I find that I'm often missing out on expressions.

Pretty story!

[Wintermoon]

Nice story, but I feel compelled to point out that blackbirds are not crows.

[Mr. E]

*crawls out of his cave*

Quite an interesting an original KN. It is very short and has almost no conflict, but still managed to touch me in the brief 10 minutes I played it. I was waiting curiously for this project to get done, so congratulations on finishing your first game.
The art is quite good, although I can't tell understand why did you leave the boy's character image all sketchy. I have no problems with the image itself, but the rest of the artwork feels very different and it looks a bit strange for the first time, although it's nothing serious. It feels like a conscious decision, since the CGs were colored, so I'd just like to know... Why? ( And by the way, wonderful title and ending pictures. I admit I'm a sucker for sky artwork/photos but I still think they convey the idea you wanted and are very beautiful. )
The music is wonderful. I could hear muhc more of it without getting tired. Enough said.
And at last, the story. It's quite short actually, and one feels that the game had enough resources and plot material to last much longer, but I won't say too much about that. Length is something pretty personal that the writer has to decide, and I guess it's natural for people to want more if they liked the game.
The whole game has the feel of a poem or a fable ( Aesop comes to mind ). It's very thoughtful and gently paced, with a special view of the world that is farytale-like in its beauty and simplicity (in a good sense). It never pushes too hard and flows well.
If I had to nitpick one thing about the story it's

how Jonas changes his mind about the crows so quickly. After all he was ready to go up that hilltop every evening to frighten the crows, so I think he gave up on it too quickly. The boy barely had to argue, and people rarely change their minds so quickly. Maybe if he was already feeling doubtful before meeting the boy... But I wouldn't worry about that. It doesn't ruin the experience as a whole, and since it's a bit of a fable, it's excusable for the characters to act a bit differently from boring reality.

Hmm, and good luck for your next, and longer project. Best of luck!

[Fawkes - Feathered Melody]

Thank you for the comments. Really value them. ^^;

I really didn't know the distinction between crows and blackbirds. >_< I admit that this wasn't as much of a thoroughly researched project.

I can see where Papillon is saying with the layout elements for textboxes and such. I'll look into making some modifications on the way the graphics are scaled in Noctua. One idea might be to have a close up where the character fills up a greater portion of the screen if there's one person on screen, but smaller versions when two people are on screen. Will require a bit of experimenting.

Which brings me to...

Our artist Jamuko who was working on the profiles ended up becoming really busy with school and life that she didn't have any opportunity to work on the art. Since we didn't know when she would have an opportunity to work on it and with Noctua becoming a significantly larger priority for us, I made the decision to go ahead and show what we had to the world. The CG art was handled by the other two artists, Senko and LuminMog. Jamuko and I have discussed the possibility of updating Crows with new art sometime down the line, but I can't really give a estimate on where that's going to be.

With respect to the nature of the story and it's length, Crows was really a trial run project. We decided that it would be best to keep its scope small, meaning that we would be able to not get a better idea of how the process works. The aim for this project internally was to show that we could get "off the ground." The story itself was something I had written earlier with some intention that I would want to work on this eventually. I was shooting for a fairy-tale like story and it seems like it worked. I am glad that you enjoyed it and I'll work on making the story more consistent in future projects.

Once again, thank you. Please look forward to Noctua sometime (Hopefully *crosses fingers*) in 2008.

[Ignosco]

Sorry for not commenting on this earlier - I played it a little while ago but forgot to post

The most interesting thing about this story for me was the writing style. It almost seems to me that the story could stand by itself, without accompanying images, as it sometimes felt like the descriptions were doubling up on what could be seen in the art and backgrounds. At the same time though, if the writing was more concise, then the story probably would have ended up being too short, so I thought it balanced out somewhat.

But having said that, it's a very nice, and somewhat unusual story, with some evocative CGs and well chosen music. I'm looking forward to Noctua.

[Aeruuli]

I reviewed the game here, on my tumblr. -- http://aeruuli.tumblr.com/post/93576338 ... ows-review

I thought the story was almost dream like but kind of bittersweet almost. I enjoyed the short read, for it's unique little theme and it's thoughtfulness.