Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

NaNoRenO is an event where creators make a game from scratch during the month of March.
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Pick_One
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Re: Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

#16 Post by Pick_One »

Just played the demo and so far it's definitely off to a good start. ^^ I'll give my thoughts another time, since unfortunately I can't stay for long. But congrats on completing and releasing a demo! I always want to see more horror visual novels being release, plus for a very long time, I had wondered about seeing a Junji Ito inspired visual novel!

Good luck with the rest of the production. ^^

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Digital Bento
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Re: Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

#17 Post by Digital Bento »

Thanks Pick One, I am very curious to hear your honest opinion. getting a better grasp of what people think will only help me going into the final version.

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Re: Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

#18 Post by IvoryOwl »

I like the vibe of this game, the story manages to grip you and the sound adds a lot of atmosphere to it.
I chose not to open the door and holy cow it scared the living *beep* outta me, it really felt like ethereal presence gasped unto my ear (I was using headphones). Took me a second to realize it was actually in-game.

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Re: Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

#19 Post by Pick_One »

Digital Bento wrote: Sun Apr 01, 2018 8:38 pm Thanks Pick One, I am very curious to hear your honest opinion. getting a better grasp of what people think will only help me going into the final version.
Hey, I finally got around to typing up this post today. For now due to time constraints, I'll type what stood out to me and most of the notes that I took as I was playing the game.

I really like the moving texture, it adds to the atmosphere and I personally like seeing visual novels with as much as, I guess you can say, dynamics as possible (although I think it also kinda depends on what type of visual novel it is). Which also means kudos for that one scene,
making the screen shake with an actual knock at the door. Which I actually think not everyone would had done.
I like the art and how the lines aren't smooth nor very clean, gives personality. I think the art is drawn very well. Love when the freaky eyes appeared and
freaky Dad's mouth. :lol:
I appreciate the effort to animate some of the mouth movements and the variety of expressions these characters have. It's just probably a nitpick but I will admit that Anita's expression
when mentioning the disappearances,
was a little off to me, it looks more wistful than actual like discomfort. If there are other players who doesn't feel the same and it's just me, I'll say just dismiss that bit of nitpick then. xP

As for some of the mistakes that I caught as I was playing...
During the scene of the person/thing at the door there was a mistake of who was talking. It's at where the dialogue says something like "omg, something just called your name", it should have been Anita who says that, but currently it says it's Rachel's dialogue.
At one part, I believe I saw "orphelia", which should had been "Ophelia"?

Things to consider and pay attention to... I usually don't play full screen but when I made it full screen, it wasn't in full resolution. It actually doesn't bother me personally but it might for others? A little tidbit, for awhile I actually found it kinda hard to find the setting button in order to save the game. And because I'm used to playing with ren'py games (I believe I saw this one was a tyrano?), I right clicked a few times to try and save like an idiot. ^^;;

Oh, also your itch.io link doesn't work.

I hope you found this helpful! Again, good luck with the rest of the production! ^^ Can't wait to play more or the full game, I might write a full review for it. :)

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Re: Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

#20 Post by Digital Bento »

Thank you so much for the detailed analysis Pick_One. Really appreciate the feedback.
I'm glad you liked the extra motions in the VN. I too am a fan when there are some motion on screen, just something to keep it from being too static. Admittedly, you are right about Anita's expression during that scene. I made the art assets before assigning them to which scene they can appear and discovered I didn't have a new expression that was suitable for that scene. So out of laziness I just used an existing one and hoped no one would notice :P I'll be sure to assign an appropriate one for the next version. Don't mind nitpicks btw :)
Thanks for catching the errors in the text too.
Yup, this was made in Tyranobuilder. Making the settings button prominent but not too intrusive was a worry of mine, I didn't want to clog up the UI as I liked a clean look but may need to make it clearer. Good feedback on the resolution size too. The window constrains proportion when you resize it, I was a bit worried that stretching the image to fit different resolutions might harm the look of the game but I've heard people mention the fullscreen issue before so I think I'll make it stretch.
Thank you again. I'm looking forward to getting to the juicy part of the game out! Where do you post your reviews?

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Re: Grotesque Beauty - [Junji Ito Inspired] [Horror] [Mystery] [NaNo'18] DEMO AVAILABLE

#21 Post by Pick_One »

I'm glad you found it helpful. :)

:lol: Sneaky. That's good because I do end up having some nitpicks which I kinda worry about whether I should bother mentioning them or not. x)

Well, I had a blog but unfortunately due to time constraints, I dropped that. I tend to post long full reviews/feedback on the threads where the game is release for download, it just could take some time to post it though. I have been considering the possibility of making a thread for like archiving my reviews... I hope in the near future, I will have time to go back to blogging about the games I played or something along that line. And I have been trying to think within my limits, some ways to bring attention to the games I had enjoyed playing. It's not much but I hope it'll help. ^^;

Anyways, I can't wait for those juicy parts! :) Hope more people get to play it!

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