Indie/Free: Project Dualis [BxG]/Romance/Slice of life

[Ekamu]

this looks interesting, I'll be sure to download it.

[Genod]

Was playing this the other night. The technical side of things seems to have been mostly covered already, so I won't bother commenting on that.

I thought it was a little jarring that Reiji had no voice though, considering he's the only sprited character without one and gets a fair few lines in the path that involves him. Also, it looks like there's a few lines in the narration, and a couple in Haru's spoken dialog, that don't trigger the voice for one reason. One example:

"Haru: Uh, I'm going check out what's taking her so long", during the first karaoke scene during Yumi's path.

I thought it was pretty enjoyable. The two story paths are fun enough to play through and zip along at a good pace. The personalities of the main characters come across quite distinctly too. This might not seem like a challenge when your two love interests are the easily-differenced combination of ultra-shy & brash, but I don't always feel like there's enough of a separation between characters when reading a lot of VNs; so I still thought it was worth mentioning.

The voice acting was really unexpected for a free VN, and I liked it for the most part. Christopher Escalante has a nice voice for narration, although I felt there needed to be some distinction made between Haru's inner monologue and his speaking out loud. I don't know. He got Keita's obnoxiousness down pretty well too! Samantha Chan did a sweet job as well, making two roles sound suitably distinct from one another and fun to listen to along with the dialog. I didn't feel the need to skip ahead with the dialog without waiting for the voices to finish playing, so I think that speaks well for its quality (or I'm just really patient like that. I don't know. One of the two).

and a question to everyone who played: Which sister did you end up with the first time? (was it intended?)

Yuki! It was deliberate, because girls with glasses are more my type And I remember thinking at the time that it was obvious which choices early on would lead to her path. Although I think Yumi rubbed off on me more by the time I finished playing.

[desulishor]

I thought it was a little jarring that Reiji had no voice though, considering he's the only sprited character without one and gets a fair few lines in the path that involves him. Also, it looks like there's a few lines in the narration, and a couple in Haru's spoken dialog, that don't trigger the voice for one reason.

While it's hardly an explanation, the story behind these goes that there were some lines which were changed or added in between, but I didn't want to request extras or re-dos, since I was already getting this much for free. And how much time passed, it was also obvious they were busy with plenty of other things. (though the blame would still be on me.) Decisions like leaving Reiji unvoiced stem from the same logic, resources (or what is fair) vs what it should have been.

Still, glad to see someone taking a liking to my charas, like... that's the reward I was looking for all along, even when I started out. (And naturally, my favorite one was always Yumi, I just like the stronger, tsundere-ish girls.)

[suikojay]

Finally got thru the whole game, and overall, though it was a little shorter than I would've liked, I still enjoyed the game.

The storyline was pretty good and kept me engaged for the most part.

I did think it was quite odd (in Yumi's route), though, how Yumi, Yuki and Haru weren't worried at all as to which sister would show up to sing at the end of the school year. As far as I understand, it seemed like it was random as to which sister had "control" over Yumi's body, so at least some drama (or worry on the characters' part) about that, I think, probably should've been shown, but it's not a big deal, though. And to be honest, I was actually expecting Yumi to show up and have to sing for them - it certainly would've made things a bit more interesting, I think, lol.

I thought the personalities of the characters were pretty distinct, and the voices, I thought, helped to really add to that. And speaking of the voices, for the most part, I thought they were done well, but sometimes Keita's voice (and at least one instance with Haru) would get abnormally loud that I thought my ear drums would burst! Keita's voice, too, was as annoyingly obnoxious as they come, lol! Reiji not having a voice, though, seemed a bit out of place, I guess. Since there was no voice actor for him, it would have been nice to have had at least a brief description on what his voice sounded like or something (but it wasn't really all that big of a deal, though). Also, I do want to mention that every once in a while, the voices wouldn't load, and I would have to rollback and then rollforward, and then it would load. Also, I know that some lines were changed/added or whatever to the script, however, as a result of this, or maybe they were just screw-ups, there was at least one time where it was pretty drastic to me. For example (during Yuki's route), when Haru was thinking "There was something infinitely lonely and melancholic about all this. I had to wonder, if there was some deeper meaning with the girl and this bleak, grey world..." - Haru verbally says "lovely" instead of "lonely", and that changes the context a bit since those, to me, are distinctly different descriptive words. And then there was another scene (in Yumi's route) where Keita verbally says "Sooo, I hope you've been practicing properly... C'mon, play with us sometime." - that last part, according to the script, should be "... play us something."; as it is, the verbal part is completely out of context with how the story actually flows since u hear Haru immediately playing something after Keita (according to the script) tells him to play something. Lastly, I'm sure this was by accident, but Haru definitely verbally calls Shimizu-san, "Shizumu-san" at least once, lol (not a big deal, but just funny I thought).

As for the images in the game, I wasn't a big fan, I guess, of some of the real-life looking background images (just a personal thing on my part), but the anime-looking ones were nice and simple, and very pleasant to look at!

As for the music, I thought they were pretty appropriate for each scene and helped set the mood and atmosphere quite well.

With my first play thru, I went after Yuki first, lol, since I do generally feel more attracted to those with similar shy-like personalities.

Unfortunately, I ended with End 03 "Distanced" the 1st play-thru, LOL.

But the 2nd time, I got the best ending with her! ^.^

After I got all the endings, though, I think I felt happiest with Yumi's best ending. I think she shows more emotion than her sister in the game (thus feels a bit more human to me), that it's just easier to feel for her more than Yuki.

Anyway, nice job with the game, and when's the sequel coming out? j/k

[desulishor]

The player's opinion means a lot to me, or maybe I just like attention, so here's some comment on comments again.

For the spoiler, I've got to say I didn't even think of that. I seem to remember that I was too occupied with thinking how to make Yumi's feelings relevant again in the context of the story.

Again, I wasn't too happy with photographic BGs either, they're actually just stock photos that I ran through a filter. (think it was oilify, with GIMP 2) I do hope I never have to go down that route again.

Other than that, I do like side-ends, and odd spins, like the 'extended bad end' on Yuki's arc. I think there's something painful yet interesting writing about things that are not the way they should have been.

I do get the joke, but there actually is another project I'm working on, will post in the 'Work in Progress' board once I feel that I have something real to show.

[desulishor]

Well, Big News time! Project Dualis is finally available on Desura, the indie games store, and will soon be featured on this Friday's Freedom Friday bundle. http://www.desura.com/games/project-dualis

Overall, I think this is a nice tip of a hat to all indie grade visual novels, showing that the bigger stores welcome our works. And not too long ago, Love Sniper was also featured on the same bundle.