Slumberland Demo[Magic, Mystery, Young Teens Romance]

[meiri]

I love it so far. I can't wait to see the finished produt, it is very polished for a demo.

[Donmai]

Thank you. Who do you think is the boy in her dreams?

[meiri]

Thank you. Who do you think is the boy in her dreams?

Personally, I thought it was

Carrie. From the direction her sprite faced, she had a boyish figure and I was like "It has to be her!" because of her being possessed by the spirits/demons from the ghost book, which to me, had to have something to do with her magic. :0

But my second guess was definitely

Tyler, because he'd been in love with her for so long (until he met Carrie,of course!)

[Donmai]

Wow! Interesting! That's the kind of feedback that is precious to me. I gave several clues along the story, and sometimes I wonder if the solution is too easy or too hard to find.
For now, I can tell you that there's one thing you got right:

the solution to the mystery has something to do with the ghost book

.

[ludeshka]

Magic? Ballet? Count me in!
Your artstyle is very intriguing. (Your banner is super eyecatching)
I'm downloading the demo and I'll find out if I like the writing too!

[ludeshka]

This the most gorgeous looking game I've seen in a long time.

There are a couple of little mistakes in your writing, but any beta reader you get will catch them, don't worry.
Even now, we can understand the story perfectly.

I'm a huge fan of Stephen King, so when I got to the end of the credits I was like "CARRIE! and Christine, too! Cool!"
(But I'm stumped as to Lee, Javier and Tyler. The only Tyler to me is Durden.)

I had a brief moment when I felt sad that the only girl so far was a villain, but I felt super pumped and relieved to see that instead, we are totally going to help her and be friends.
(At least, that's my first priority)

I have to make one critique. Don't think of me as harsh, think of me as believing very strongly in your game's potential.
You can't, can't do this:

Mother: "Hello. Remember me, Alice? I'm Ethel, your mother (..)"

You're selling yourself short! The readers understood she was her mom without her explaining it. NOBODY would say that to her child.
If what you wanted was some sort of self-deprecating humor thing, like, she sees so very little of Alice that she feels she should be introducing herself to her, it should be Alice then who makes the joke, as it's Alice who feels bitter about it.

I'm very interested in your world, as if it seems that it's just as much about helping yourself than it is about helping others. (and then maybe, romancing some cute ballet dancer. ^^)

Other than that, just have to say this is so pretty, so pretty.
I liked what I saw, and I love the possibility to see more, in the dreams and the waking world.
(Javier watching his parents dance on an empty theatre is a really powerful image)

The glitter effect, when Alice falls asleep! It looks so magical. All the little special effects look perfect.

A super interesting story with lots of potential and a positively gorgeous artstyle.
I'll eagerly wait for more.

[Donmai]

Thank you (would never think of you as harsh, but sincere, as I knew you would be ). Yes, the intention on that part was to make a bitter joke. Alice's mother knew it was a long time since she talked to her daughter, so she goes with that "Remember me?". You have a good point. The way I hear people talking ironically around me everyday makes that joke seems possible, but I must remember I'm talking to a different audience. Can't see Alice making jokes at that moment, though. Better jump straight to the "Mom, you came home early tonight..." part.

Ah, the boy's names have nothing to do with the authors I've mentioned. I just picked their names randomly on the Internet...

Yes, Javier's route is my favourite part of the story (and I made a special song for him to dance, too).

Thank you for your kind comments, and for your help .

[shwippie]

I loved the demo. I can't wait to see the finished product. It's very beautiful in story and mood... The music fits perfectly as well. All the routes seemed interesting, so I had to try every one. I just love the feeling in all of your games honestly.

[Donmai]

Thank you, kosetsu. Having this project finished is my main goal for the new year.

[Saltome]

Ah well... It was certainly engaging. In deed has a nice polished look. I don't know why my pc was lagging so much though. Aren't the pictures just normal 2d images?
In any case I made a bit of a list with various lexical corrections. Though I know for a fact at some points I was too engaged in the story to bother writing certain mistakes down. >_>
I guess I'll have to note them down some other time.

[Donmai]

Thank you. Your suggestions will surely make the dialogue and narration so much better. English language is my weak spot (Am I using this expression correctly? )

I don't know why my pc was lagging so much though. Aren't the pictures just normal 2d images?

Yes, but maybe I have overused animation sometimes. The game runs smoothly on my 5 y.o. 4 gig Q8300 Quad Core.
I've included

Code: Select all

config.image_cache_size = 64

on options.rpy, trying to prevent animation lagging. Maybe that's not enough? I will investigate. Thanks for pointing that out. I've already rewritten some parts of that script because on the latest version of Ren'Py some effects turned really weird (for example, on that dream sequence, Alice sprite started to suddenly "light up" like a light bulb for some moments, every time a dissolve transition took place, because the additive blending mode I used on the sparkles was affecting her, for some reason). Now everything is working as intended (at least on my testing machine).

[Saltome]

Don't worry about the language, your mistakes are kinda typical for your area. It must be something fundamental in the structure of the two languages.
Based on the fact that you are mixing up the tenses, I think what you need to do is stop translating, stop applying your native principles to the english language, that's what's causing these mistakes.
In translations I often see sentences that would make sense, given the native language structure and cultural background, but in english they sound odd.

About that expression. Weak point is more common. I'unno, sounds cooler I guess.
A spot is something visible, physical. Like a mark, or an area.
A point on the other hand... Well, we've all studied geometry in school.

The lag problem...
Perhaps you are right. This should work fine even with 1 gb. While I'm currently working with only 450mb.
Still, if I can play Project Touhou on this machine, just fine. It's a bit odd that some sparkly stars on a prerendered image are going to take so much out of the machine... But I guess you shouldn't think about it too much.

[Donmai]

Based on the fact that you are mixing up the tenses [...]

There's something I must warn any proofreaders about (maybe I should warn the readers too, but I'm hoping they will figure it out themselves), and is the fact that there are actually "two Alices" in the story. They were even declared in the script as two different characters. One is the Alice that appears in the dialogues (text written using dark characters), and whose face appears on the side image. She's a girl who's nearly reaching the age of fifteen.
The "other Alice" is the narrator (text written using white letters). This "other" Alice (who happens to be the same person) doesn't have a visible face, but she's already an adult. This Alice narrator is remembering things that happened in her adolescence, and how they've changed her life. She already knows all the things that happened. Because of this, the first Alice speaks in the present tense, and the second Alice narrates using the past tense.
With my English skills, I believe I set up a trap for myself.

Yes, it's possible to see the face of the "narrator" Alice, but only if you

choose the "Alone" route.

[Renmiou]

I've finally managed to play this and I really enjoyed it. :)

I've not read other people's guesses as to who could be the boy in the dreams, but I'd like to try and guess myself: my pick is Tyler. The reason for this is that in the intro there's rain in the dream and he clearly mentions that he once wanted to lend his umbrella to Alice as she might get soaked wet due to the rain, but she got to the bus stop on her own, because he didn't make it in time before she left.

One critique I'd have for the art is Christine's expression at the end of her chat with Alice: her smile looks a bit eerie during the questions, which might be fitting, but she still looks eerie at the end, when she thanks Alice for her time, which looked a bit out of place to me. A kinder smile would probably work better (I think it's because she raises the corners of her mouth too much and doesn't smile with her eyes).

I was quite interested in Lee: I generally have a soft spot for logical men (and my partner is like that, so that explains it) and I think they're often misunderstood to be a bit cold, which doesn't necessarily follow at all.

I thought Javier didn't have much time in the story, at least in my playthroughs, while Tyler is a bit of a peculiar character I can't really figure out. Perhaps that's even on purpose? I do feel quite sorry for Carolyn, I tried to find out more about her but only got to see what I'd already suspected. Hopefully there's a way to help her! This kind of reminds me of the club in TNH, where the protagonist wanted to help people, rather than let himself be blinded by fear and just avoid them even if they hurt him.

I'll be eagerly awaiting for this release, it looks like it's going to be another really interesting story!

[Donmai]

Wow! More feedback, at last. Thank you for commenting on Christine's expressions. I will take a look at it. Yes, Javier is a story apart, because he's not from "Saint Mathew's School world", he's from "Bauza Ballet School world", and that part isn't shown in the demo, although it's my favorite part of the whole story (and Javier's theme "Blame It On The Music" is my favorite song, too). I'm having less time to work on Slumberland, but I'm still working (currently I had day two finished and I am working on "Alone", Tyler and Carrie routes at the same time). Slumberland is my favorite project, and I hope to finish it this year. Ah, and when I created the story, I thought "Nah! It's so easy to find out who's the boy in her dreams... so I made it a little more difficult. Er, maybe I've made it too much difficult...