thread can be deleted.

[adelhaid]

thread can be deleted.

[machinist]

this isn't going to be a critique but just a comment lol

just saw one ending
dark story... anyway the art was pretty fresh to me didn't distract me much

[Wintermoon]

The art on the title screen doesn't look bad, but I can't tell what it's supposed to represent, if anything. The "thing" under the menu has a bad case of aliasing which is somewhat distracting.

On the save/load screen, the text on the actual slots is messed up.

On the first screen of the actual story, I counted no less than five errors:

• The first word of each sentence should be capitalized.
• "after the test" should be "since the test".
• "did he came" should be "did he come".
• "diner" should be "dinner".
• The first sentence is in present perfect tense while the others are in past tense.

I stopped reading after that first page. In tolerate some grammatical errors, but not that many.

[Vatina]

I read it, so here is what I have:

1st, the title: it's "A kid lets go of two red balloons".

There are grammar errors in the text as well, but Wintermoon already commented on that. As for the story:

Seems like you went for a dark, mysterious atmosphere here, and that most of the story was leading up to some dark secret of what the kids were doing wherever they were. I must say I got pretty confused several times though - was this supposed to be a dark story of an alternative society? Of kids secluded in a terrifying camp? Or was it a story that was trying to send out a political message?
In some places the writing only helped the confusion further as it became unclear what it was talking about, or whether it was in the past or the present (fx that movie that Daniel must have seen with the other kids).

Making deep and thought-provoking stories in the manner you seem to have gone for can be interesting and effective, but the storytelling needs to be clearer, and the goal should somehow be clearer as well. I still have no idea where those kids were, or what purpose that camp served.

As for your specific questions:

did the choices felt "fair"? was there any menu where an obvious option was missing?
I think they were placed logically, in accordance to whenever the main character had to take decisions. No complaints.

did the choices felt meaningful?
Yes, as much as they could when thinking of how I was pretty much lost in the story itself.

was the art acceptable? by acceptable I mean "it didn't distract me."
It wasn't as bad as I expected when I saw your screenshot in this thread. Some of the screens somehow fitted the odd and surreal atmosphere, while others were a little hard to understand (such as the one in the title menu. The one with the buttons make me think of a burger).
I liked the sketchy drawing where Ziv hands Daniel the knife. It made me think of the drawings that Ziv seemed to make all the time, and gave me the idea that keeping this parallel could be a nice effect. But maybe that's just me!


I'm guessing this is your first finished project. Gongrats on the release!

[lordcloudx]

First of all, I think you might want to fix the title of this VN if you want people to take your plea for harsh critique seriously. Unless the error was intentional, it should be, "A Kid Lets Go of Two Red Balloons."

I read through the story, but I'm not sure what to make of it. In other words, I feel that the storytelling is too vague and the blurry visuals don't really help much in that department. I thought that they were all old men in a concentration camp until some character mentioned that they were all kids. I couldn't feel any sort of empathy for any of the characters because I had a hard time even deciphering who they all were.

That aside, the story seems to be plot-centric, so the approach could have worked. The problem (in my case) is that the plot itself doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to slowly paint a vague picture of the setting of the story. I did find one scene interesting; and this was when it was revealed who this "father" person was.

Story-wise, I felt that the game spent too much time in exposition but did not even succeed in revealing anything concrete. Perhaps there was some literary message hidden beneath the ambiguous narration, but I personally couldn't grasp it.

I'm not sure how the choices even affect the story. I'm not motivated to do another playthrough.

In the ending I got, it seems that everyone burned to death? I'm not even sure if that's the case.

The art was mostly acceptable for this type of story. There were some things I found to be out of place, though.

-The depictions of the "kids" look like old men in concentration camps
-Jagged edges on the window-like thing enclosing the main menu
-The more pronounced lines on some of the art were distracting. I feel that you should have kept all the images you used consistently blurry.

You might also want to add music to enhance the over-all experience.
There are grammatical and spelling errors all across the text, fortunately, I didn't find it particularly distracting because there was a consistent style to the narrative.

Over-all, it wasn't too bad, but it was a bit too artsy for my taste.

[DragoonHP]

The game has many grammatical and formatting errors.
Most of your mistakes have been mentioned by the senior users of this forum, so I won't repeat them.

The choices to me sounded reasonable and they were surely put in the right place.
The ending were the part that disppointed me the most. Except the truck ending [yes, I got every ending] every ending seemed incomplete.

And there's a rule in writing conversation:
"Yes,". He said. {You write like this, but unfortunately it's the wrong way}
"Yes," he said. {That's the right way}

The graphics were fine, though I thought the blood splotch was really out of place.

[adelhaid]

Thanks to all who played and reviewed.
To be honest, I expected a few grammar errors and a typo or two. had I known my English deteriorated this much, I wouldn't have published it, let alone as a finished game.
I suspect some of the confusion is stems from this problem.

I'll re-write, and maybe upload an updated version later on.