Lemma Soft Forums

- Characters -


- Ife
A veteran bodyguard, used to moving cargo across the deserts. Her newest job involves guiding a certain young teacher...


- Manaem
A young teacher looking to travel to Fabrikum, where he's hoping to start his new job teaching small children about geology.

- Screenshots -



- Where to Play -
You can play this KN online here! http://cloudnovel.net/play?n=a4eac1c1937!

- Questions -
1) Thoughts on Ife or Manaem?
2) At what point of the story did you figure out what a Calikoh was?
3) General comments/suggestions?

Thank you so much for reading!

About -
I've been working on this short little KN for the past two weeks and I'm happy to be finished! It's only 5k, so it will only take you upwards of 30mins to read. I'd love any constructive feedback as I'm always hoping to improve myself!

@Heiden-

Sad to report, I was unable to complete playing this game. When I got to the point where Ife mentioned getting to the caves before dark, the screen went black, and it showed a percentage number - apparently loading - got up to 98% and stopped. Waited . . . . . . . and waited, but the loading never completed. Tried a second time with the same result.

For troubleshooting purposes, I will mention that I am using a mac with Safari browser; as soon as I send this I will go back and try it with Firefox.

I did enjoy what I was able to see!

philip

EDIT: Firefox stops at the same point!

I had the same problem on Firefox on my Mac but Chrome worked.

Uh oh, that's not good.

Also I just tested it out with Internet Explorer and got a "Posting.failed [object Object]" message preventing me from advancing (this message seemingly happened at random), so for right now it looks like Chrome might be the only browser that can run this. :/

Thank you for letting me know! I'll look into it and see what I can do!

Turns out one of the sfx files didn't want to load on macs (and IE), oddly enough. I've taken it out and update the KN, so it should (*crosses fingers*) work now!

@Heiden-

Well, one out of two isn't bad, I suppose: The story still stops at the same spot, using Safari. But I was able to continue through to the end on Firefox. Apparently there is still a minor peculiarity in the code somewhere.

Anyway, the story was very enjoyable, and very professionally done! Thank you.

philip

Now get back to work on Meryl & August! - (just kidding!)

JUST PLAYED THROUGH THIS. Heiden your writing is so good ;____; It's funny how 1) Thoughts on Ife or Manaem? I loved both of them!!! You're really good with characters :O And character design too! Ife's design really goes well with her personality (dat yelling face is so good).
2) At what point of the story did you figure out what a Calikoh was? Hmmmm. Well from the very beginning 3) General comments/suggestions? Playing through with google chrome worked fine for me. I got stuck in FF right before the first oasis O__o (I get the error "Posting failed. [Object, object]" or something like that. Same thing on the Opera browser, but that time right after they left the cave) Also their names are a bit hard to read (esp. if a character is standing at the left edge of the screen) since the colors are rather dark. But other than that I loved it! Would you consider doing some kind of blog post about your experience using CloudNovel? Do you think it's a good platform? Would you recommend it to others? Do you think it's suited for longer works or only short/episodic?

Also

I just finished! I am impressed! I can hardly put one VN together and you got this out in such a short time with such an engaging story and characters!

Ife and Manaem were great- they were pretty solid characters. I liked the relationship between the both of them too. The Calikoh is also a super interesting concept that definitely worked as a subtle story device. I actually didn't catch on until Excellent work!

philip wrote:@Heiden-

Well, one out of two isn't bad, I suppose: The story still stops at the same spot, using Safari. But I was able to continue through to the end on Firefox. Apparently there is still a minor peculiarity in the code somewhere.

Anyway, the story was very enjoyable, and very professionally done! Thank you.

philip

Now get back to work on Meryl & August! - (just kidding!)

Oh drat! I'll try to look into it more. :///

I guess for now, I'd just suggest people to use either Firefox or Chrome to play it, since those are now (hopefully!!) working.

And thank you! Don't worry, I'm still working on M&A, haha! :'D

Reikun wrote: Well from the very beginning

I assumed it was the cloak/cloth they were wearing, but when it was also called 'life thread' later on I didn't really understand how it was connected to life. Is it just symbolic of the life of the wearer? My mind was in between thinking it was purely a status symbol but I was also imagining there might be a literal/magic connection to the person's life (e.g. Calikoh is destroyed > You die??????) Though now that I've read the whole thing maybe it's just a status thing....

...

At what age do people get their Calikoh? :O Manaem seems to have gotten his when he was a child but it's also very long in the beginning. Do they make it long to begin with or extend it as the child grows? Do children wear it differently than adults if it's long from the get-go?

Reikun wrote:Would you consider doing some kind of blog post about your experience using CloudNovel? Do you think it's a good platform? Would you recommend it to others? Do you think it's suited for longer works or only short/episodic?

Absolutely! I got a good feel of the program and I'd like to write up my thoughts about it. (Short answer, it's no Ren'py, but it's really ideal for ppl first starting out wanting to make short works)

Green Glasses Girl wrote:I just finished! I am impressed! I can hardly put one VN together and you got this out in such a short time with such an engaging story and characters!

Ife and Manaem were great- they were pretty solid characters. I liked the relationship between the both of them too. The Calikoh is also a super interesting concept that definitely worked as a subtle story device. I actually didn't catch on until

Ife's Calikoh was strained. Manaem's reaction was surprising, so it was nice to see she cared about her charge so much.

Excellent work!

Thank you!! I actually went over my self-imposed deadline a little bit... (I wanted to make this in 3 days and it ended up being 2 weeks whoops...) But I'm glad to have finished it!

Thank you so much for playing!!! D

Alright, how to begin... °__°; (I'm new at this feedback giving thing, haha :'D)
Um, first of all: I'm impressed you managed to create something like this in such a short time too!
I guess I'll just answer your questions, that should cover most things I wanted to say anyway. ^__^

1) Thoughts on Ife or Manaem?
I liked them both! They were quite an unusual pair, which made them even more interesting. 2) At what point of the story did you figure out what a Calikoh was? 3) General comments/suggestions?
Hmm, let's see...
- I liked your choice of music! :3
- I didn't run into any problems. (Played it on Firefox!) It was a very enjoyable little tale! Good work! ^__^

I had some problems with Firefox too, but thankfully it's fixed now and I could finish reading it.
And I really enjoyed it. The ending certainly did put a smile on my face, and I'd actually like to read about them traveling back to that cave again, haha.
Ife and Manaem were a great pair. I loved both of them, and their conversations were very interesting. Especially in regards to the calikoh, which I also thought was a rather interesting concept. I had it figured out pretty quickly, too.

As for general comments, I really like your artstyle. It's certainly unique, which is always a good thing.
Don't really have any suggestions, though.

I love the character designs, I'll have to try this out soon.

[Edit] I just finished it and it was very cute! I liked the philosophy behind the life threads, and how it ties into their personalities and perspectives. ^_^

ShokumaNatsu wrote:

This whole talk about life threads and what Calikohs represent even got me thinking a bit... about what my Calikoh would look like. I guess it'd be boringly clean, maybe a little bit frayed at most. I don't know if I like that. I should probably find my own Ife and go on an adventure too! （。＞ω＜）。

[...]

- The monster that wanted to munch on Ife and Manaem was... kinda adorable. (´∀｀)♡ I'm sorry, I probably have strange taste. xD

It was a very enjoyable little tale! Good work! ^__^

@ Gospel and daikiraikimi:

AAAHHHHHH THANK YOU so much for the feedback! I'm glad that you enjoyed it!

I played this, like, two weeks ago and have been meaning to comment... oops.

First off, it worked fine on Chrome on a Mac.

Second off, I really like the art style. The use of color in particular is phenomenal.

Aside from the art, I thought the strong point was world-building. The Calikoh was explained well without being over-explained and was an interesting premise.

The one thing I didn't like was the Cloudnovel interface. It felt laggy compared to Renpy or even a Flash game, and seems to be lacking save, back, or skip functions (?).

As far as suggestions for future projects, I'm no expert, but IMO you'd probably benefit the most from working on story and structure. I liked the story of this KN, but thought it was just kind of functional compared to the art, setting, and characters, which were all very strong.

Hope that's helpful. Overall, a fun read!

YossarianIII wrote:I played this, like, two weeks ago and have been meaning to comment... oops.

First off, it worked fine on Chrome on a Mac.

Second off, I really like the art style. The use of color in particular is phenomenal.

Aside from the art, I thought the strong point was world-building. The Calikoh was explained well without being over-explained and was an interesting premise.

The one thing I didn't like was the Cloudnovel interface. It felt laggy compared to Renpy or even a Flash game, and seems to be lacking save, back, or skip functions (?).

As far as suggestions for future projects, I'm no expert, but IMO you'd probably benefit the most from working on story and structure. I liked the story of this KN, but thought it was just kind of functional compared to the art, setting, and characters, which were all very strong.

Hope that's helpful. Overall, a fun read!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

And yes, one of Cloudnovel's biggest drawbacks (to me) is the lack of a save/back feature.(EDIT: This is false. Cloudnovel DOES have a save/back feature, I just wasn't aware of it at the time. Cool!) I've heard that they've implemented a skip feature, so it seems that they're trying to overcome some of these problems. (I've been meaning to do a write up on the strengths/weaknesses of Cloudnovel, I really should get around to that, haha :'D)

And yes, about the plot- I tried something a little different where I tried to write a 'scenery piece' (there's a real name for this I just don't know it), where I wanted to explore a place/culture/environment more-so than a driving plot. And in some ways I'm happy with how it turned out, but I can definitely see that the story as a whole is weaker without said driving plot. Definitely an area in my writing that I can work on .

Thank you so much for your comment!