EVEning Course (the LSF@5 game)

[mikey]

Hi everyone,

This is our new game. It's based around learning a new language.

I've decided not to even try and disable saving, but I still hope that a few people will try to go through the game the intended way (i.e. not using rollback and as recommended, to actually physically take notes). But if you don't want to, that's fine, trial-and-error works just as well - but I do think the game may lose a bit of atmosphere that way.

Even so, I think this is primarily a ren'ai game and it was never meant otherwise. It has a good and a bad ending, but I'm quite sure that most of the people will get the good one. Only the bad ending is indicated as bad.

As I mentioned before in other threads, many thanks to the LSF@5 participants, as our chat and voice chat inspired me to do this.

That's it, enjoy the game.
http://atp.manga.sk/games/ec/ec.htm

PS: I'm aware there is no audio (a combination of no time and the custom music principle), and most of all that VA would really help a lot. I'm sorry - I did my best to write around it.

PS2: For clarification: J-Language is English, Okian is Slovak.

[Enerccio]

My my, what a great game. I really enjoyed playing it and it's great that now a bit from Slovakia has been written for other nation's players.
It was really great made though. Choices were easy (though hard for anyone without Slovenčina as mother language) and story was interesting too.
Too bad that there was not a music... but other from that it's cool.

Btw, there is a mistake in choices, you have a set "ako, prečo a kedy" as "how, why and when" marked as bad option, though it's correct, or not?

[mikey]

Thanks! I kind of thought you would be the first one to complete it ^_^.

The choices, well, I suppose they are easy for us (and for denzil, I assume as well), but other than that, you're right, they are quite tough - often some of the words are not even explained and you must guess from the context -

especially in the good ending there is this one word... I do hope that people will somehow naturally understand it...

The one choice you mentioned, you were right (it was supposed to be a bad translation, but (as funny as it sounds) I accidentally translated it correctly ^_^ - but the really correct choice was still there anyway), but thank you for noticing - it's now fixed and the new version online.

[Hakura0]

I just wanted to say that I just finished playing, and I really enjoyed it.

I didn't take notes, because I know I would've looked at them during the test to cheat, so I just remembered as best I could.

I had a little bit of trouble on one or two questions, but for the most part I could use process of elimination and get them. I think I understood pretty well about the endings, and time, and I had a little bit of experience with words being gendered thanks to highschool french.

Thanks for making this, it was a blast!

[lordcloudx]

downloading. Gonna try this later tonight.

Edit: Well... I guess I couldn't help trying it a little now. Is this "foreign" language based on your native tongue? Just reading the explanations is making my head spin.

Edit 2: Hah! stupid of me. Didn't see the last part of your first post.

[mikey]

Thanks for playing! I think that taking notes and then using them is actually a good thing, you will still need to figure out a lot - but of course you can do it without "cheating" as well, that's the most honorable way Still, I'd say if you try (in whatever way), it's good, since I think that the only not-so-good thing you can do is trial-and-error with rollback, that may take a lot of the spirit away.

EDIT: lordcloudx >> have fun with it!

[lordcloudx]

Just finished it. It was easy for me because I have a very high IQ lolz!

I loved the twist at the end of the game. I never expected Eve to be related to Livia. (sorry, can't be bothered to spell her name with the right letters) I'm too used to anime stories where the protagonist does follow through with his feelings and starts a complicated affair with a married woman.

All your stories (the ones I've read anyway) have that nostalgic, down-to-earth approach to them despite taking place in fictional worlds. The lack of sound didn't affect my enjoyment of this game.

[denzil]

Interesting idea this game. Of course it was quite easy for me, though I made few mistakes (I tend to overlook things, but at least unlike with tests at school, this wasn't too big problem ).
I liked it and I was also surprised with the ending.

[Ayato Vu]

Holy #&^$!!!!
Another atp game! Must play asap!

[Blue Lemma]

That was sure unique. I'll say right now I was bad and just did the choose at random and rollback if I got the question wrong strategy
I want to see Eva! Something tells me she wears glasses

Fun little game, mikey and crew!

[ShiraiJunichi]

Gyaahh! If I had known the language was a real language, I would've spent more time trying to actually learn it! I saw the game at the archives, and just downloaded it directly from there. Since you always place your games in a fictional world, I thought you were using a fictional language... T_T . So I didn't actually take notes, and I always just rolled back (though, I was a bit leery that you might have convinced Py'Tom to alter the engine to somehow store that the player was rolling back (cheating), and then prevent them from getting the good ending >_< ).
Perhaps a readme, noting the actual languages, would be a nice addition.

All that aside, I enjoyed the game. And the twist at the end was very unexpected.

It was nice to see that the player recognized that Lívia was happily married, and thus resisted all the feelings he was feeling for her. I think more often we see people who selfishly seek after what they want- so this was a nice change. Though it's strange because the choices that lead to the good ending seem like he's going for her (and it's why I initially got the bad ending). Yet, in retrospect the choices seem appropriate. Another thing I liked about the ending was that it was a happy ending for everyone- no one was left out, and you don't wonder to yourself if you really made the right choices. It was a little strange though that you never see nor hear Eva though... It feels like I know my sister-in-law a lot better than my wife, which seems really odd.

All in all, a really nice game- thanks for the great work

Oh, and I assume LSF is LemmaSoft Forums... but what's the @5?

[musical74]

@5 would be because LemmaSoft has been around for 5 years, methinks

[lordcloudx]

Since we never really see Eve, we can speculate can't we? This is my version.

Just a quick sketch.

[mikey]

Thank you for the reviews! And I'm glad you liked the accompanying story as well. The learning part was to make the atmosphere, not really to teach an awful lot - so it's more like I'm happy when people tried, rather than being disappointed when they didn't.

ShiraiJunichi >> Sorry about the language - I explained it in the first post, but not in the readme... it doesn't help now though. I can't disagree with your spoilertagged thoughts either - but I wanted to have this different focus. To be honest, I wanted to do this before as well, but this style never fitted with my previous projects - but now it did, so... I did it.

lordcloudx >> Hmmm, I thought about this picture - it looks to me like the Eva who isn't yet the star. Or the casual "day off" Eva.
And regarding that one word that was never explained (see PM from a week ago) - I'm happy it worked so well.

[Ignosco]

Thanks for this game . As I played this without taking notes, and for the most part avoiding rollback, it came across as more of a language game, than a Ren'Ai VN. The explanations were very clear, and it was interesting to notice how similar much of the grammar seems to be to English. There are quite a few features of Slovak I wouldn't mind in English too, such as the uniform pronunciations. And like other players have suggested, it would have been nice to see Eva in the ending, although lordcloudx's version is very fitting

It might have been interesting if you had voice acted for a male teacher, and turned it into an otome (or even a yaoi) game... something a bit different from the usual ATP style.