Eyes of a Dead Fish

[Kuroneko]

First of all, happy new years everyone.

This is a game dedicated to my friend Hakuno Eru.
Kind of put this together today, but I got paranoid and went through it every time I changed something in the script and once more after I built it up, so it should work fine.

It's a very short slice of life kinetic novel.

ironically

Short summary: A boy witnesses a car accident involving a young man saving his friend, and he reminisces his past regrets about the best friend he had.

I can't code. Period. So if anyone does decide to try this out, just listen to the beautiful music brought to us by Akiyama-san. xD

Credits here-
Art by Hakuno Eru and Kurose Jun (that be me)
Story by Kurose Jun
Music by Akiyama Hirokazu-sama
http://www.hmix.net/
Sound Effect by gr8sfx
http://www.freesfx.co.uk/users/gr8sfx/

[netravelr]

Would love to check it out... any chance you could compile a mac version?

[Kuroneko]

Thank you for the heads up. I would be very grateful for reviews. =)

[gundestiny]

Hey, read your KN which was quite a nice read ^^

Your writing style is REALLY descriptive and the flow of sentences were good.
I had to re-read some of the longer sentences cause' they're almost too descriptive, but the detail is definitely a good thing!
The art and music mesh well together, and the last scene did make me go "Aaawww"
Storyline wise, the ending was sad yet satisfactory at the same time.
The protagonist kind of jumps back and forth between ideals/moralities of society, but he sorted himself by the end xD
I loved how you related the story to that of a dead fish. Twas pulled off nicely ^^

Overall I enjoyed it! Great job!

[Kuroneko]

Thank you for taking your time to play, gundestiny, and also thank you so much for the nice compliments.
I've been trying my best to create something for a long time, and have another kinetic novel on its way that I was somewhat stuck on.
This does give me a lot of encouragement to keep going. =)

[netravelr]

Keep going for sure, it's a great start and I'm sure your next projects will be even better.

Most of what gundestiny said I agree with. Going from the color images to black and white seemed kind of jarring at first... I know what you're trying to do though... Perhaps doing grayscale rather than black and white may help with that.

The music went together well...

Hope to see more stuff from you in the future!

[Victoria]

I'm not much of a critic, but I enjoyed your little story; deep, and yet it had a touch of a soul. I really liked your writing style, as I love playing with words and long sentences, creating them as long as I can without losing its meaning, and I found that little play in yours. I'm looking forward to your other projects =)

[Applegate]

It wasn't a bad story. I liked the music, and the drawings were nice as well. I don't share the others' observation that it was jarring or anything similar.

I had a few issues with the over-descriptive nature of the writing, though, and you swapped tense once or twice in the story. Where some may praise the long sentences, I'm going to come out and say that sentences should've been kept shorter at times. When a reader has to read your sentence more than once to understand what you mean, the sentence should be rewritten and made shorter.

To point out what I mean by "over-descriptive"; during the first part of the story you highlight that the "tires screeched on the asphalt ground" or something similar, whereas the sketch shown already reveals that it would definitely be asphalt. If the incident happened in the city and there was no image, but you knew that there were a lot of passersby, then one can usually deduce that it happened on an asphalt road. In this case, it's presenting your writing to someone with no knowledge and calling attention to a detail that is neither extra-ordinary nor of any importance. What I mean to say is that if you left it out, everyone would still know it happened on an asphalt road. There'd be no question about it.

The tense switch happened also during the early part: "may or may not", I recall, and then "would" later on. If the sentence starts in present tense, it should logically continue in present tense: "will".

A conflict of writing occured at some point during the early part of the story: the narrator gives a detailed sketch of the situation along with the expression of nearby people, and goes on about personal feelings. Later, the narrator admits that he couldn't process anything but the sounds: the conflict here is the contradiction. If you think about the people you saw on the streets today, you probably can't remember much about them. Even if someone had their shirt worn in a weird way, the exact way in which it was worn would be lost on you unless you paid specific attention to it.

In much the same way, if the narrator really only processed the sounds, he could not remember the looks on the boys' faces, and it would be impossible for him to sketch a detailed picture of what had happened.

Naturally, this is just how I feel, and you cannot please everyone.

The writing is definitely not bad, and I commend your efforts. Keep going.

[Kuroneko]

netravelr- Thank you so much for the feedback!
Hmm, actually I was doing the painting while my friend was doing the sketches so it turned out as going back and forth between our very different images, so I understand what you mean. But I do know what you mean by what you thought I was doing as well, and I think it's interesting so thank you for the suggestion of grayscale. =D I do want to try that out.

Victoria- Aww, >< thank you for trying this out. I am an aspiring writer, and I do get a lot of critiques on my questionable sentences though. But I also intend to experiment with it as far as I can. =) Good luck to you as well.

Applegate- xD ... Oh boy.
First of all,
thank you very much for taking a look at my project. ><
Critiques as well as reviews are extremely appreciated!

Of course, I am glad you found the drawings nice.
I do realize I have issues with tenses. xD; I am working on that as much as I can. I've had problems with tenses as long as I can remember, because I tend to like to jump back and forth from present and future or past a lot in my stories. So thank you for pointing out where I missed them, it does help me for future references. =)

About the description, hmm you're right. I could have just wrote "ground", I guess I just thought it would flow better with my writing. =) And as you say, I can't please everyone, but I do take personal opinions to mind too.
It's a visual novel, albeit a short one, and you seem to know what makes a good one so your opinions are much appreciated. I wrote as if it were just a novel, and you pointed it out that I should be writing as if it were for a visual novel. So I'll greatly rethink on this one. I love visual novels as much as writing, and I would love it if I were able to create writing that would go hand in hand with the art.
But if I were to just point out my opinion, I think that it's a matter of style too. I think at times there are things that doesn't have to be included, but can be to project a sharper image of the background. Since mine was in comparison to his thoughts, I thought about explaining what was around him more.
Though I have been writing for a while, I am really new to first person. I've written it a few times, but I haven't got the hang of one-person world. Where one person will think, observe, and point everything out about everything else. I can't seem to believe that one (normal) person could be so observant, so I narrated observations a little bit separately. Sort of like this and this happened, but I could only see/hear this. I agree though, that it does become contradicting, so I am planning on studying more first person narratives.

Thank you all for hanging out with me through my attempt, though. =) I've really learned a lot. While I can't promise that I won't make mistakes again, I can promise that I will always do my best to fix them. I intend to have fun at least, and if I could bring some sort of entertainment to others, I would be more than happy.

[Applegate]

I'm just part of the school of thought that says "don't describe more than is necessary", so that's where that comes from.

Having a narrator describe things he couldn't see as though he saw them is always a bit awkward in first person narration. Try to avoid it in the future.

There are two ways to narrate first person: past tense or present tense. You chose for past tense. A good way to imagine what to put and what not to put is to think of it as the narrator telling you something that happened and how he felt about it. Think about the keypoints: he wants to tell his story. What kind of person is he? Does he want to sketch a complete picture of the situation, or is he just interested in telling the event? Your narrator seems more interested in painting the picture rather than telling what went on, and that is alright. But you shouldn't add more description than he can possibly give.

Your narrator strikes me as someone who doesn't really care about the accident - I think you did a wonderful job of portraying that, both in his detached stance towards the fiasco, and how he breaks off the story of the accident to talk about his own past.

If you cannot believe your own narrator, then you have a bit of a problem, though. The point of writing is to always make believable characters - or at least characters that suspend the disbelief. If you start out thinking "This kind of person is completely unreal" then you will have difficulty conveying this to other people.

Just keep working at it. You'll do fine.

[Kuroneko]

There are two ways to narrate first person: past tense or present tense. You chose for past tense. A good way to imagine what to put and what not to put is to think of it as the narrator telling you something that happened and how he felt about it. Think about the keypoints: he wants to tell his story. What kind of person is he? Does he want to sketch a complete picture of the situation, or is he just interested in telling the event?

I find this piece of advice very useful.
I'm working on writing another now, because I like to put stuff I learned to use right away. I was stuck on another piece of writing, but I feel like it's going a bit smoother because I was missing this kind of guideline before.

While this project is done for now, I would like to take what I learned (and learning) from it to projects I will be making in the future. =)
So I would very much like to encourage any more critiques or comments.

[Esphirisa]

I liked this piece a lot. Maybe because I feel like I can relate to the character. I think that the images were fine. In fact, I like how the past and present were presented. I think the colors and lack of it helped distinguish the contradicting(okay, maybe that's the wrong word to use...) thoughts of the character. Though perhaps you can add some transition in between such images. The music also really helped set the mood. While I don't mind all the description, I do feel that since this is a VN, you can try to convey your thoughts using images instead. Then again, that's easier said than done. All in all, it was a job well done, and I wish you luck for your next KN.

[Kuroneko]

I liked this piece a lot. Maybe because I feel like I can relate to the character. I think that the images were fine. In fact, I like how the past and present were presented. I think the colors and lack of it helped distinguish the contradicting(okay, maybe that's the wrong word to use...) thoughts of the character. Though perhaps you can add some transition in between such images. The music also really helped set the mood. While I don't mind all the description, I do feel that since this is a VN, you can try to convey your thoughts using images instead. Then again, that's easier said than done. All in all, it was a job well done, and I wish you luck for your next KN.

Thank you for trying it out! =) I'm really glad that you liked it.
Thank you also for the suggestions. I'm experimenting with transitions and other kind of codings, yet I still don't know my lefts from rights about them... xD
This community does help a lot though, and so does the tutorial. I like how you get to see the script for yourself when you open it from the ren'py menu so it's easier to see what functions look like when applied.

[Chrizine]

I just played your KN and I really liked it. It was really touching.

Though I'm not sure if you're still interested in feedback and a lot has been said already, I feel bad to give nothing back to a writer if I liked his work. So I also add my thoughts about your writing:
In the beginning it was a little hard to follow, because the accident is described very slowly though it is a fast thing... I don't know if you understand what I mean, but that was my feeling
I got used to your style during playing I think and didn't have any problems with the style after the first scene. I liked it, you created a great athmosphere. My eyes went wet.

To add something about the art: It is fine and it fits the athmosphere to have it black and the childhood memories colored. Like his world turned more gray by growing up and loosing his dreams.

Thank you a lot for this nice work!

[Kuroneko]

I just played your KN and I really liked it. It was really touching.

Though I'm not sure if you're still interested in feedback and a lot has been said already, I feel bad to give nothing back to a writer if I liked his work. So I also add my thoughts about your writing:
In the beginning it was a little hard to follow, because the accident is described very slowly though it is a fast thing... I don't know if you understand what I mean, but that was my feeling
I got used to your style during playing I think and didn't have any problems with the style after the first scene. I liked it, you created a great athmosphere. My eyes went wet.

To add something about the art: It is fine and it fits the athmosphere to have it black and the childhood memories colored. Like his world turned more gray by growing up and loosing his dreams.

Thank you a lot for this nice work!

Thanks so much for playing. ><
Of course feedback is appreciated, and I am grateful you took the time to tell me what you thought.

I am working on trying to describe things better and easier for others to follow in and out of game, thank you for pointing it out. =) Also, I am glad you liked it.
I am sorry the reply is late. It takes me a while to check back this forum lately due to some events. =( But thanks again for your kind words.