Disclaimer:
I will judge this game as if it was to release tomorrow, I do so fully knowing that this is a pre-alpha, I do this for YOUR benefit as having standards early on saves the hassle of enforcing them in late alpha/beta.
User interface:
There is only one word to describe this one: bland.
Why bland?
The colors! There is an overwhelming majority of
PINK everywhere and that awfull tone of
MAGENTA
As a programmer I find it rather dishartening to see someone use magenta as part of their presentation, you do NOT want to use that tone. In some older games you may have noticed that the color magenta is used for alpha:
The reason why they use this is because magenta is the LEAST used color ever more so its almost painful to the eye and staring for long enough will probably make you
scream in agony.
Therefore staring into text like this:
Makes my eyes bleed when I look at it, its like dragging nails across a chalk board!
The dialog box isn't much better either as it looks like a
fancy muffin, so much so that I wanted to eat it.
This trend repeats with the logo design and even on loading screens where purple is used as background that blends in with the already purple logo, the worst choice ever if you plan on making the logo memorable.
Unreadable:
There were some parts of the UI that I couldn't even read, the worst offender being the Log option. I had to finely tune my microscope to read what was said on it and I hope this was not intended:
Other offenders included:
Is there supposed to be text here? :
The UI itself was unresponsive and I felt left in the dark with no indication if the button even knows that my mouse is hovering over it.
Graphics:
Now this is probably where you'd expect to score high, you have the 3D component, but sadly I see its potential being wasted here.
I am not sure if you have played or seen footage of Nekopara but when you play that game the characters are made alive due to their chest movement and their eyes as-well as motion full expressions. This game is a complete opposite of that, the characters are extremely stiff looking and emotionless often left staring at nothing. It pushed me over to the dreaded
uncanny valley and therefore stopped me from being able to relate to the characters and I started to feel alienated by them.
I feel that this was the biggest let down, the broken UI is somewhat excusable for a pre-alpha but the character representations needed to be done right for the 3D to really work in your favor however in this case it ruined it.
There were a few things which actually spooked me:
she blinks.. WITH HER EYES CLOSED!
it sounds like a line in a horror movie, doesn't it?
Oh and the emoticons that were presented turned out to look more like graphical glitches:
Gameplay:
First off: Drop the middle mouse button. I am one of the lucky people on a Desktop PC however there are a number of people on Laptops and other devices which do not have this button, so for the sake of our Lord And Saviour pick another button and do not use the numpad either!
Walking about, this was a large issue for me and put me off straight away, I got lost immediately after I managed to gain control of the character not only is it daunting to move from room to room using WASD keys as a way to switch scenes but it also removes the sense of direction.
I suggest that you add a map for the room instead and some indicators as to where I should be heading would do nicely as-well.
Eventually after a good 30 minutes or so I got lost in the shop/house and eventually decided to call it quits and try to mess with the game in other ways but then horror struck..
Why on earth are you using about 300 mb of ram and why is it so laggy? I get about 15 FPS on VERY LOW QUALITY setting.
Mind you I am running on AMD Radeon 6450 which is a fairly modern card so that shouldn't be an issue as I can run most modern games fairly well at around a decent 60fps.
There is clearly something very wrong here and as a programmer this is a red flag to me and you NEED to fix that ASAP.
if you don't it will come back to bite you and require more daunting hours of witch hunting for the offenders, trust me I suffered through this!
I then changed to VERY HIGH QUALITY which left me with about 13 FPS but the ram usage was at about 500 mb!
Writing:
This is probably the strongest part of the game, it did give me a few red flags though but keep in mind that I only read the first bit of dialog as I couldn't find a way to exit the shop.
The use of "seems" , "pretty" , "Also" and "Okay"
For example this sentence:
"Yes! Okay, I trust you Ni-Chan."
Okay sticks out as a sore thumb here, I'd reword it if possible.
Although Okay is then later used appropriately:
"It's shiny too! Black and shiny, okay?" this Okay adds tone to the text with a well placed ? at the end of it so its use is excusable.
The use of "pretty" and "seems" is a major problem, when used in a sentence such as "that seems pretty unsafe" there is so much wrong with this sentence.. the use of "seems" and "pretty" is annoying enough but when they are used together and coupled with "unsafe" makes it even more irritating! Why not just say "That looks rather dangerous!" instead?
Sound design
There is one minor but yet extremely irritating problem: The sound doesn;t loop properly, if you listen carefully the track stops at the end of it and it takes about 3 or 4 seconds for the track to loop again. You DO NOT want this, it makes the game suddenly feel empty and devoid of anything.
Final thoughts
I will be honest with you, this pre-alpha didn't capture my attention at all were it not for the prospect of 3D cutesy foxes.
Even if furnished this game would suffer major flaws in its inherent base architecture that you can address right now, please take your time and redesign this game.
My suggestions
First of all find what is causing so much lag and the intense ram usage!
Get a graphics programmer, you really need one! It can get you a creative edge by adding things like Fur or eyes that you can move at will.
This will add the necessary depth that makes games like Nekopara so much more engaging.
After note
I know that I have been very critical of this game and it shows, but don't let that keep you down.
There is potential and this piece shows that you and your team are capable of making progress.
What I'd recommend is to make the game FUN! Thats right! make it FUN! Do some prototyping and figure out what works before implementing it, this is clearly a lack of prototyping as I keep getting the feeling that the dev never really played the game or didn't play it enough.
Make sure to often ask yourself: "Am I having fun?" and if the answer is No then change it! You are the dev and you have the power, why not use it?
-Thank you for reading and do your best!
