Well, I finally got access to a computer that runs real windows, and was able to run SS, both the demo and the commercial version. So I thought I'd write some of my comments:
First of all, I appreciate the production that went into its game. It has quite a bit of artwork for each character (I'm guessing 4 or 5 images, including 2 or so special cgs), and also a large number of full-color backgrounds, with a mix of cg, drawn, and manipulated images. That's a good thing, IMO.
The focus of this game seems to be more on puzzles, rather than the story focus of many other games. The story serves more as a reward, once you manage to find an sucessfully interact with a character, then as the focus of the game. So this probably falls on the side of something like Heikou, Transfer Teacher, and especially PK girl, perhaps more than some of the more straightforward storytelling games.
The interface was a little strange, with saving sometimes being present and sometimes absent. (But occasionally, you could readback and save from the previous screen.) Also, while the save dialog let one type in any filename, it only showed the single file named "save".
The questionaire that let you choose your roomate was an interesting mechanic, although I've yet to grok how it works. I've been throwing random data at it, and recording the results... a semi-systematic approach let me find combinations that yielded all possible roomates. A way of returning to the main menu would have made this less trying.
The girls stories were interesting, but seemed a little brief to me. I would have liked to have seen them fleshed out a little more. There were some things of interest there, but they went by fairly fast. The amount of ending-specific text seemd small compared to the amount of common text, even in the endgame.
I've managed to find 4 of the endings. In general, what was needed made sense in retrospect, although there is a bit of exploration needed to find who's where when. I'm still missing Beth's ending:
I believe her ending has something to do with the girls in the other dorm who talk about drinking on the 4th, and then come in with a hangover on the 5th. But I have no idea how to exploit this.
I also have no idea about the group ending, if it exists.
I think I was a little disoriented on encountering this game, as most games found here are more story-oriented. Once I realized that as much emphasis is on the puzzle aspect of the game as the story (and the two are intertwined, especially in Sophie's case), I began to appreciate it more.
That said, the game isn't even hentai.
Just took the quiz and it was fun!
