Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

[jack_norton]

I finished playing it, and while I agree on some points made by Ren, Ayu was right to put all her effort on presentation. She didn't had much time to do the game, so I'm sure he 2nd episode will be much better in all aspects: but still since this is a commercial product as you say, expectation gets higher and she had to sacrifice something.
And indeed expectations of 99% of people are more satisfied with higher polishing in art, music, voices, presentation. Sorry, you're a minority
I'm not saying that everyone should do a game that is all appearance and no substance (Jisei ISN'T this, of course), but if you want to make money nowadays it's (sadly) more important than having a bullet-proof good plot or interesting character development or similar

So I think Ayu's first step into commercial world is a very good one, much better than what I did back 6-7 years ago, and I don't think she could do better than this as first try.

[sake-bento]

In response to most of your spoilered points, I'd just say that I think the biggest mistake I made was dividing this whole thing up into chapters (Jisei being the first of them). The story was originally written as an ongoing comic, so I had this whole plot mapped out and ready to go, but I realized that the scope of creating the entire story in one fell swoop would be unreasonable considering the size of my team. There's a whole lot of "You'll understand in later chapters and everything will click and it'll be great!" going on. Really cool for a long comic series or a novel. Less cool when you ONLY have the first chapter. I honestly don't know how well I can fix this, so at this point I'm trying to make the best of it. The second chapter is already significantly longer, and there's a lot heavier of a plot going on over "oh noes someone is dead!" and I'm hoping that things'll tie up better at the end of installation number two.

Personally, I don't mind that Jisei is being split into chapters; I actually prefer series like this, as there's the overarching mystery that I get to fiddle with until the story's over and the little mystery that ends with the episode. I was more than a little excited when I learned there was going to be more.

There's really nothing to fix, short of releasing the second chapter. Those who purchased Jisei already know by now that there's more to the story, anyway. It might be of some help to note on the Jisei site (and on affiliate sites selling it) that there will be other installments, though, so new purchasers won't be caught by surprise.

::phew:: Good to know~ ^o^

I’ve held this feedback for quite a while, as I’d like to at least try to make an effort and make it as in-depth as I can. It turns out I have some time today, so here we go.

And I'm very glad you got the time to write this while I'm still not too far into writing the second chapter. Your critique is spot-on, and very, very helpful. For that, I thank you. There are a few bits that fall under the "I swear it'll all make sense one day," category, but truthfully I'm just really grateful that you've written such a thought-out and useful critique of my work, since most of what you've pointed out really is stuff that needs to be improved upon. Also, I'm kicking myself for not thinking of a decoy octopus. The real reason seems so pale in comparison now. : (

[Jake]

I finished playing it, and while I agree on some points made by Ren, Ayu was right to put all her effort on presentation.

(I think it's important to separate business-advice from creative-critique, all the same; while it might be true that Sake-Bento made the right business decisions, it doesn't mean that she made the best product that she could have made, and creative critique is really aiming at that rather than "what could you have done better" in general.)

As it goes, I'd like to note - on a similar note - that I'd also be perfectly happy to forgo voices in return for higher quality elsewhere or a cheaper price. I turned them off very quickly anyway 'cause the lack of a voice for the protagonist annoyed me... having a quick check to listen to different characters' voices, I didn't really like most of them anyway, so I don't feel like I was really missing much.

[kinougames]

I finished playing it, and while I agree on some points made by Ren, Ayu was right to put all her effort on presentation.

(I think it's important to separate business-advice from creative-critique, all the same; while it might be true that Sake-Bento made the right business decisions, it doesn't mean that she made the best product that she could have made, and creative critique is really aiming at that rather than "what could you have done better" in general.)

In my own opinion, it was not a good business decision to sell this before having a solid, logical story.

As it goes, I'd like to note - on a similar note - that I'd also be perfectly happy to forgo voices in return for higher quality elsewhere or a cheaper price. I turned them off very quickly anyway 'cause the lack of a voice for the protagonist annoyed me... having a quick check to listen to different characters' voices, I didn't really like most of them anyway, so I don't feel like I was really missing much.

I had to turn off the voices after a while. They were...poor. I mean, they did the most typical "we're trying to copy the way Japanese people sound, but in English" mistake that many Japanese-based dubs do, and it was hard to listen to. I would be much more interested in a second episode if that money were saved and given to a hardcore beta to run the next set of scripts through the mill and clean up the story.

[jack_norton]

I didn't say that Jisei is the top that Ayu can ever do. I said: "I think Ayu's first step into commercial world is a very good one".
"Very good" doesn't mean "the best ayu will ever make in her life".

[sake-bento]

Regarding voices, obviously it's impossible to pick a cast that will please everyone. As it stands, the feedback on the voices has been largely polarized. I've gotten substantial amounts of "They're wonderful and incredible and they MAKE the game!" and fewer but still countable amounts of "Yeah, I turned the voices off ten seconds in..." I understand there are many reasons for turning off voices including wanting to read faster, not liking the empty spaces, or simply finding the voices to be unappealing. I turn off voices in a lot of games that I play, too. Thankfully, there is a handy voices off option so we all can be happy.

As for where the money goes, I've gotten enough feedback that I know where I want to go with this next chapter and what I want to do differently (not that I'm saying more thoughtful critiques aren't welcome).

[Vatina]

Finally played this. It made a really nice impression. I tried writing some points down that came to mind while playing, since I remember you asking for useful comments somewhere... so I hope they will be. I'm not very good at this, but here we go:

The OP song felt a bit lackluster - like "almost-there-but-not-quite". The video was really nice though.

The visuals are neat in general, I especially like the backgrounds and the pleasing font.
Voices are great too. I was positively surprised, as I don't expect myself to actually like english voices in vn's, heh. Only the voice of... the "voice" sounded a bit weird to me.

The story started a bit abruptly. The introduction is nice, but from the moment ??? sees the body and gets caught by Bergstrom and Gurski, it seems like they all let it slide pretty fast and easy.

At first the mystery reminded me a lot of Ace Attorney xD In the way that it was pretty light. Something happens, and then you walk back and forth, talking to people. This was getting dangerously close to tiresome when the "voice" thankfully appeared and made things more interesting.

Sure takes a long while for the police to arrive at a murder scene... That part kept bothering me. The story works better without them, but I guess it needs some excuse for their absence. Although I can't think of one myself ^^; What is Gurski doing all that time? Just keeping watch? (I like Gurski a lot by the way!)

Some of the dialougues were really good. Like when ??? and Gurski talk about Chance thinking that Auten is a car company.

Ending comes abruptly. Well, I already knew it was a short game, but still. I liked the entrance of the last two characters though, made a nice change in flow after seeing the same few characters for a long time.

I liked the twist in the epilogue - I did think that there would be something dark hiding behind Chance's stupid exterior

Jisei may be getting a bumpy start, but I hope you'll keep the story going with the next planned chapters. Something really nice could come of it if you stick with it, I think. I'm interested in the main character.

[TheGreyWarlock]

Great game, loved playing it.

[Linky]

Hopefully the work so far on Kansei is coming along well

[Asterisk]

I tried the game, and it's really impressive!
I really enjoyed the voices!

Keep up the great work!!

[Jo'ogn]

There are a couple of (already mentioned) things that put me off the Demo, too:

Chance suddenly being voiced while ??? isn't, didn't work too well with me.
I am an audio person, I'd rather do without music, than w/o sound effects, which are there too few of. So the voices seem to come somehow out of no-where.

Chance's voice acting is also the one which I perceived as most out of place. Esp as she later tells ??? that she feels uneasy with a dead body around. However her ever-happy voice doesn't reflect her emotions at all.

And "Ha ha!" there is an officer right there - but he's off duty - but he'll do some investigation anyway.
His voice acting is a bit "on stage", but it's acceptable for his role.

Then I, too, was wondering what kept the police so long.

Disbelief kicked in as - and I confess I didn't read the lines too closely - Gursky tells [???] that he's a suspect and should ~not~ go on his own investigations. Why would [???] anyway? Oh, right we are the protagonist. But suddenly we ~do~ investigation. I was like o_0;

In fact Gursky wants us to share what we learn, what we as the player do - even though we do not know why?!

And then Gursky interviews all of the 4 present ppl. But apparently none of them told Gursky, what we as [???] learn? That again made me go o_0;; It seems Gursky cannot have ask them all a lot and he's the police guy (or so it seems).

That [???] out of no-where wants to beat Bergstrom seemed pretty random.

I wasn't particularly happy with the steering the player back and forth the main room and the hallway. As this needs to be done fairly often, that clicking sort of became a hassle.

Perhaps you could make the Text box lower (it's only half full at most anyway) and add the available rooms underneath the Talk and Examine option? Grouping them under "move" wasn't the most pleasant experience.

[sake-bento]

I've been toying around a lot with the navigation system. The next game has more than three rooms, so it'll be more important to have a streamlined system. I'm currently thinking of using the "adventure game" style where you click on a door/hallway/whatever and it automatically takes you to that room.

[Jo'ogn]

I'm currently thinking of using the "adventure game" style where you click on a door/hallway/whatever and it automatically takes you to that room.

If you have the resources to do so. I tried that at first in one of my games, but dropped that approach quickly, because it directed my attention too much on graphics: making clickable areas on backgrounds, rather than working on the text content.

It might raise your game's "value" in terms of a commercial product to some ppl.

[Phosis]

I started playing the demo last week. To put it simply, it was an extremely humbling experience, one that absolutely screamed professionalism. The artwork is fantastic, the user interface is clean and well presented, the voice acting is actually very good (which surprised me since it so often isn't.) and the storyline and characters so far and their relationships with each other are compelling enough that I am seriously considering purchasing this and the next chapter when it becomes available.

Absolutely fantastic job. As far as the pricing opinion goes, the quality in my eyes is definitely high enough that it deserves a look. Fifteen dollars is quite pricey for something that is inadequate, but for the quality, it is worth it to me, personally.

[Qookies]

BTW Just noticed the outtakes... Funny.