Okay, review time.
First off, loved all of the aesthetics you used in your game. The backgrounds and CG's were beautifully drawn along with the characters who were unique and easy on the eyes. However, the use of sound effects and music were what made me like this game, they created a great sense of atmosphere and the only one I found a problem was the sound effect of breaking glass (it sounded a bit tinny and rather than help immerse me in the game I found it had the opposite effect and jarred me out of it instead).
Now, the story was interesting enough (if a little cliched) however I would really recommend that you get an editor/co-author (there are loads of nice people on the forums who I'm sure would love to help
). You're not a bad writer but I found that the story just didn't flow very well, some of the dialogue felt rushed and there were a ton of grammar mistakes that an editor would've picked up immediately. Also, you've commited the cardinal sin of writing about your sound effects.
For example:
(Sound effect of door closing)
*thunk*
Mathis: I closed the car door and headed towards the building.
You also do it a couple of times with your backgrounds, which isn't so bad but both are kinda redundant. The reason you have sound effects and backgrounds is so you don't have to worry about writing that kind of dialogue.
I'm really not trying to rag on you or your story (which overall, I enjoyed) it just bugs me when simple things like that reduce a VN to
"Meh, it was okay," rather than,
"Hey, that was pretty fun.".
The game itself is short, I'm not sure whether or not this was intended (eg, so people could play it on their lunch breaks) or if that was just the way it turned out, but because it's so short the story feels rushed. You could've used more scenes of actually investigating and a lot more character development. If you had it would've padded the story more and made the flow naturally better.
Despite all this I would play another one of your VN's
Ayways, keep trying and you'll definitely improve.
Overall Score -
6
Art -
7
Writing -
4
Music -
8
Sound Effects -
7
Pros: Nice art, atmospheric music, interesting premise
Cons: Story feels rushed, grammar mistakes ruin immersion, not enough character development, cliched story