dreamingdaze wrote:Huh...interesting.
Shame there aren't choices--you could look at a visual novel like Cinders and see how choices can be properly implemented to make a story far richer and better in terms of interactivity/gameplay. To link choices solely to romance is a darn shame because that avoids the tension/excitement that comes within a visual novel that relies on any action relating to the plot. The fact that we can't fail means there is no real suspense, just a guided trip from point A to point B. But to some extent, I like the illusion of choice wasn't put upon because I'm more than a little tired of visual novels that have such poor choice systems in place. Won't name them, but one has quite a long title and a incredibly awful romance in place.
But I digress, that ship has sailed and there is clearly a lot of invested resources here in terms of art. Not a fan of the otome or cat girl sell, I always felt like those were a bit...err, pandering to the audience's taste. But since the audience exist for those bits, I suppose I understand the reasons behind it. Hopefully it won't be a random "Hey there is a catgirl here" but an actual "Hey there is a catgirl here whose backstory gives this story quality because of reason 1/2 and a follow up that actually made it a meaningful reason."
So, I'm basically saying that I'm mildly curious. The genres being thrown around aren't really the ones I'm fond of (I'm assuming slice of life/comedy mainly), but I'm more than curious to see whether I'll like this despite having everything I don't care for in one package. Since I'm not someone who can be won over by art (and care more about the story quality and writing), I don't want the above to reflect against the artist because it is quite nice. But my philosophy on art is the quality is meaningless if the story quality doesn't reach (or exceed) it.
A long title? Would it be perchance one that I am associated with?
Oh, you still have the choices. You're just limited to a single one. You've got to understand my intent behind this. I'm not trying to make a game with pass or fail, I'm writing a play. There is also an overwhelming problem of drawing my rapidly dwindling resources too thin. People have criticized me for dropping several other projects to focus purely on this one, but the fact is that I am operating on very limited time and energy. Ten characters, ten different novel-length stories. I'm going to be hard pressed to survive it already, despite my enthusiasm and commitment. If I double or even triple the length to accommodate multiple routes (2.4 to 3.0 million words, don't even want to think about...), either it will never get done, be much shorter, or I'd have to drop the number of characters. I've looked at trying to add those choices. I still spend a lot of time trying to see if I could pull it off, but if I can't get people to just test it because of this project's history... it is just not feasible to risk so much for such an uncertain future. Everything is being done at my cost so the game can be free, and several hundred CGs aren't cheap.
The main character being a catgirl really wasn't pandering to anyone's tastes other than my own for the first time in history. I saw a cute wolf girl and said, "By gosh, there's my new main character!". Things evolved a lot further than that, even if they started a lot more generic. I spent a loooooong time talking with my assistant about what we wanted to see in a main character who was a lupide. I hope she'll throw your typical expectations of "otome" characters out the window. I hope they all will. I'm not your traditional otome writer.
I've got a feeling you'll prefer certain routes over others based on your tastes. I really didn't want to write similar stories ten times, so I focused on making each story different and unique. Lenna's is a more stereotypical romance route, but others, such as Mana, Jade, and Termin, focus on very different aspects. Kika's is a lot more mystery based, for example, focusing on her pursuit of a criminal terrorizing the campus. Mana's is about as dark and disturbing as I could possibly think of for that psychological horror story. Not running on a traditional styled visual novel is giving me a lot of playing room with making the plots individualized. This could easily backfire in my face by spreading the focus too thin, but I like to think I can pull it off.
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