if!girl [GxB][Slice of Life][Dramedy][Demo!]

[Fleeples]

Faith can see the future.
(Well, sort of.)

She can see flashes of the consequences of her own actions when she makes decisions. Most of the time, she thinks this is great. It allows her to plan. It keeps her out of trouble. It keeps her life in order, just the way she likes it.

Until she discovers that you can't quite predict everything.



Faith: Our protaganist. Deadpan snarker, likes to plan, keeps herself reserved. Often percieved as snobby because she doesn't go for superficial friendships, and isn't great at mixing in big social situations. Hates taking risks.


Alicia: The best friend, and complete contrast to Faith. Reckless, fun-loving, a bit off the wall. Has a lot of friends, but spends most of her time with Faith. A big part of the plot focuses around the contrast between these two and the problems this causes.


Ezra: The Love Interest. Funny in a self-deprecating way. A weakness for romanticism that leaves him without use of most of his brain, even though he has quite a good one the rest of the time.


Anna: Faith's mother. Kind and well-meaning with good advice, but perhaps too passive in her own life. Very concerned with protecting her daughter, perhaps to both their downfalls.


You can download a demo of the first act of if!girl by clicking this:

If!Girl-1.0-all.zip

(52.9 MiB) Downloaded 104 times

. There should be around ~10 acts in total by the time the game is finished.
If you can leave feedback, it would help me out a lot. The specific things I'd like feedback on are:
- Writing. Really, my strength is as a writer, and that's where I want to make a big impact - but writing VNs is new to me, so I might be missing the mark completely! If you think the writing could be improved, let me know how.
- Poetry references / jokes. I'm aware that these may be kind of obscure to some people. Really, you don't have to understand them: just the tone conveyed by them. So don't worry about getting what they're talking about all the time. However, if it throws you off and alienates you from the story, let me know! I want to make it quirky and fun but I don't want it to be too inaccessible.
- Protaganists. Female protaganists tends to get a lot of hate in VNs, and I'm aware that you've only seen a brief introduction to Faith, so you really don't know her that well yet. But if she's entirely unlikeable off the bat, I'd like to change that.
- Bugs. Are there any? I hope not! I did test it.
- Flash / vision mechanisms. Are you understanding how the visions work? Do they throw you off the gameplay too much?
- Anything else you think is relevant that I haven't mentioned it is totally welcome, too.


28.april.2013// Draft version of Act 1 completed. Demo released.
29.april.2013// New link added of game demo.
02.may.2013// Many of the suggested updates made. Found an artist, Glamary, who's very kindly doing the CGs for this project. <3

[Haze]

I haven't played the demo(I don't really want to make a 4shared account...), but here are my first impressions:

First, the first screenshot makes it look like this game is in a 3rd person p.o.v because the main character is on the right side and you can see her. However, the second screenshot seems to switch to a 1st person p.o.v since the best friend is in the middle of the screen and the main character is no where in sight. If this is a case of varying p.o.v's, then I suggest you choose one p.o.v and stick with it for the entire game(I think 1st person would be better, but that's just me).

Also, in the first screenshot, the textbox is quite small. Does this have something to do with the yminimum?(In case you don't know what that is, yminimum basically makes your textbox be a certain height at all times. You can read more about it here, under the second textbox picture: http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/coo ... appearance).

That's what I can see from this thread anyway. As I mentioned, I haven't played the demo yet. Is there any way you can put in on a site that doesn't require me to make an account?

[Fleeples]

I haven't played the demo(I don't really want to make a 4shared account...), but here are my first impressions:

First, the first screenshot makes it look like this game is in a 3rd person p.o.v because the main character is on the right side and you can see her. However, the second screenshot seems to switch to a 1st person p.o.v since the best friend is in the middle of the screen and the main character is no where in sight. If this is a case of varying p.o.v's, then I suggest you choose one p.o.v and stick with it for the entire game(I think 1st person would be better, but that's just me).

Also, in the first screenshot, the textbox is quite small. Does this have something to do with the yminimum?(In case you don't know what that is, yminimum basically makes your textbox be a certain height at all times. You can read more about it here, under the second textbox picture: http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/coo ... appearance).

That's what I can see from this thread anyway. As I mentioned, I haven't played the demo yet. Is there any way you can put in on a site that doesn't require me to make an account?

Oh, I hadn't realized you needed an account to download. Whoops- sorry. I'll put it up on a new site later. Thanks.

You're probably right about the POV thing - thanks. I was just conscious of the fact that you don't see her reactions to things if it is in 1st person. I might have a headshot of her appear to the side of the text box when she speaks. Idk, it feels weird for a game that is really personally about her to never see her. (especially since I'm not going to be able to afford someone to draw CGs)

In the first screenshot the textbox is quite small because I cut off the second part of the text as it wouldn't make sense without having played the demo, aha. It's the same size as the other one in reality. Sorry to confuse you.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see where else I can upload the demo for you.

[Fleeples]

Added the demo to the post instead of an external site, so hopefully people can download it now. :]

[Anne]

Generally the demo is too short to have much of an opinion. Like I feel too much is said about her friend for her only to say bye and go home, but then she should be more important for the story later.
The calm and rational type is not really the one you (oh, well, at least I) take a liking to instantly, but the protagonist is not dislikeable either. She seemed a bit too interested in the boy though. At least for the sole reason of him being cute...
As for your questions - poetry talks look ok to me (I don't know one bit about English poetry), make the characters look intelligent.
Flashes look good except for the pictures for the choices, maybe they should be bigger and somewhat more specific considering you should get what will happen once you make the choice (then maybe they are more so later in game, when the paths difference becomes significant)
Though I'm a bit confused about how her ability works exactly - like she says that she knows what will happen if, but then says that her friend is unpredictable.
By the way having the heroine's sprite on is fine too, makes it seem more like a conversation (in contrast to the scene with her friend), the 2 sprites seem a bit too far apart though. One the other hand changing views can get confusing and will be probably considered a fault by some people...

[Fleeples]

Generally the demo is too short to have much of an opinion. Like I feel too much is said about her friend for her only to say bye and go home, but then she should be more important for the story later.
The calm and rational type is not really the one you (oh, well, at least I) take a liking to instantly, but the protagonist is not dislikeable either. She seemed a bit too interested in the boy though. At least for the sole reason of him being cute...
As for your questions - poetry talks look ok to me (I don't know one bit about English poetry), make the characters look intelligent.
Flashes look good except for the pictures for the choices, maybe they should be bigger and somewhat more specific considering you should get what will happen once you make the choice (then maybe they are more so later in game, when the paths difference becomes significant)
Though I'm a bit confused about how her ability works exactly - like she says that she knows what will happen if, but then says that her friend is unpredictable.
By the way having the heroine's sprite on is fine too, makes it seem more like a conversation (in contrast to the scene with her friend), the 2 sprites seem a bit too far apart though. One the other hand changing views can get confusing and will be probably considered a fault by some people...

Thanks for the feedback! It's super helpful.
The stuff she says about her friend /is/ super important in the later story, and after the demo ends the plot line pretty much goes straight back to that. I didn't want to do an info dump at the point of conflict that appears after this, but I totally see how it could seem strange if you don't get that. Perhaps I made the wrong dramatic choice telling you that at the start of the story instead of later. I'll have a play around with it and see what seems better.
Ah, yeah, I was trying to get that right. She's sort of attempting to make fun of herself about it the whole time, which is why she goes on about it so much, but I don't think that came across right either. Back to the drawing board on that one.
Ah, thanks for pointing out that it wasn't clear - I see what you mean. The point was that her friend makes her decisions very independent of what Faith does, but again, I see how that wasn't clear & will have to change it.
Hm. I guess I'll have to see what more people think on that one? Thanks.

[Haze]

I played the demo. It was more like a teaser, but whatever. Feedback time!

I liked the flashbacks; they were nicely done.

The one that told the MC that the guy would write his phone number on "The Wasteland" was a little confusing, though. Maybe the CG should show him writing numbers instead of letters?

I found the main character pretty appealing so far. Nice job with her deadpan snarker personality.

I liked the poetry references, too. Walt Whitman, hooray!

For the choices, you show an image for what each choice would look like. Maybe you can make each image clickable so that people can click directly on the images instead of just seeing them? You'd have to add text to each image so people know what each choice does, though, but it might be worth it.

Overall, I liked it. Good luck in making this game!

[Fleeples]

I played the demo. It was more like a teaser, but whatever. Feedback time!

I liked the flashbacks; they were nicely done.

The one that told the MC that the guy would write his phone number on "The Wasteland" was a little confusing, though. Maybe the CG should show him writing numbers instead of letters?

I found the main character pretty appealing so far. Nice job with her deadpan snarker personality.

I liked the poetry references, too. Walt Whitman, hooray!

For the choices, you show an image for what each choice would look like. Maybe you can make each image clickable so that people can click directly on the images instead of just seeing them? You'd have to add text to each image so people know what each choice does, though, but it might be worth it.

Overall, I liked it. Good luck in making this game!

Aha, maybe I'll release a longer version. Perhaps just seems longer in my head than it does to you. :L

Thanks!

Ah, okay. I wanted to, it's just that I'm not an artist and that was the only copyright-free image I could find. I'll have another look if it's that confusing though. Thanks!

Great. I'm aware that she's not usually the type of protaganist featured in most VN's (that I've played, anyways), so I'm super cautious about that. But if I fix some of the stuff that a previous respondent mentioned, hopefully it should work.

I wanted to do that with the choices - that was my original plan, but I don't think Ren'Py works in such a way that you can replace their choice-shorthand boxes with an image. I'm not new to coding in general, but I am to Ren'Py, and it seems like the interface stops you from doing that.

Thank you!

[Nuxill]

You could have the choices be represented with images if you used image maps instead of the choice code.

[Fleeples]

You could have the choices be represented with images if you used image maps instead of the choice code.

Ah, thanks, I'll have a look.

[Fleeples]

Some notable updates:
I now have a wonderful artist doing some CGs for me, which should really make the game work better. I've also polished up the interface a bit as suggested, and redrafted the first scene a bit - though it's still bugging me a tad. I've added music, as well, and a phone system where you can read Faith's texts.