Journey Against Ouva [Mystery][Adventure] (discontinued)

[verysunshine]

Sorry I took so long to reply.

Ooops. Natalie is not a real thing. Nicole is a visual novel developed by Winter Wolves. Here's the description in question.

Nicole is thrilled that she managed to get into her first choice school and is looking forward to experiencing college life there. However, as soon as she moves into the university dorms, she finds out that there’s been a series of mysterious disappearances going on around the campus! So far, three girls have already gone missing and Nicole could be next if she’s not too careful – not quite the ideal college experience Nicole had in mind.
Nicole is a dating sim that revolves around your day-to-day life as a college student. You can take up part-time jobs to earn money, explore various locations, do recreational and extra-curricular activities, and meet intriguing characters like Darren, Kurt, Jeff and Ted. You might even get to date the culprit!

Just to clarify, do you mean Nicole has her priorities mixed up here? Because she is taking the risk of dating the culprit?

I mean the tone and word choice make it sound as if dating a kidnapper is a good thing.

Here's a video that explains what I find the most important points in pacing for games. It's not visual novel specific, but it's good.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LScL4CWe5E[/youtube]

I love this video!!! BEST VIDEO EVER

[champignonkinoko]

@verysunshine

Ah yes! I remember reading that and got confused. It's the same with X-Note, if you've heard of it...
I've submitted two new main characters!

Will be showing screenshots very, very soon...

[champignonkinoko]

Updates!
22 Nov 14
- Added promo art & Title Screen Art
- Clarified contents of VN in 'The Story' section.

Any feedback/critique/comments welcomed!

[SweetChiel]

Ooooh, yummy *u*

1. Yes! Especially when you mentioned about 'the meaning of our fleeting lives' it hit me straight on and I was like 'wow, I'll definitely play it!'
well... I'm a sucker for morale/motivating quotations you see xD

2. I'm having a hard time to decide >_< all of their personalities looks interesting!
But if I have to choose...either Stanislav or Raphael.
Raphael is a mystery and I think I'll like him more when the story develops. Stanislav looks strong and I like sporty characters xD (especially, Boxing & Baseball! I think that have something to do with my favourite anime) but being dependable is a plus, I don't think he's spoiled even when he grew up with a silver spoon and (do I even have to say it?) both looks hot *u*

3. Hmm I'll say a good story
a good art will make it more pleasing to the eyes and I usually look forward to the events & CGs. I can't say much about the art since you haven't show us some background sample or GUI >.<

anyway good luck with your VN! it looks fantastic and I'll wait patiently for december to come! >.<

[champignonkinoko]

2. I'm having a hard time to decide >_< all of their personalities looks interesting!
But if I have to choose...either Stanislav or Raphael.
Raphael is a mystery and I think I'll like him more when the story develops. Stanislav looks strong and I like sporty characters xD (especially, Boxing & Baseball! I think that have something to do with my favourite anime) but being dependable is a plus, I don't think he's spoiled even when he grew up with a silver spoon and (do I even have to say it?) both looks hot *u*

Thank you for your reply! I can see you've really gone through the stuff I post on Lemmasoft.
Like you said, Stan is far from the spoilt brat and Raphael is a bit of a mystery, but I'll try my best not to spill any beans here

3. Hmm I'll say a good story
a good art will make it more pleasing to the eyes and I usually look forward to the events & CGs. I can't say much about the art since you haven't show us some background sample or GUI >.<

Good point, I'll post some up now!! (to be updated in the first post in five minutes from now...)

[champignonkinoko]

[Post deleted]

[champignonkinoko]

Update 12/12/14:

Finally, a chance to push everything away to write an update for Lemmasoft! Some of you might have already known, I'm currently working on improving character art :] http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 46&t=29503

The progress so far...
Draft of the script is done, and thanks to my wonderful editors I have a lot of corrections to read

So what's left now?
- CG Art
- Two more minor characters
- Two more backgrounds
- Coding + GUI

There are quite a few items that are taking longer than expected, so demo will be pushed to January 2015.

[champignonkinoko]

[Post deleted]

[champignonkinoko]

[Post deleted]

[SweetChiel]

Really sorry for the very late review >.<
I was really busy making new portfolios and CV for my internship training!

But now I'm free! here's my review for your demo in every aspect I can think of (in advance, I'm sorry if any of this offended you in any ways):
- Art : I really like the art you made it has quality and personality in it (it's like you're combining anime with american cartoon style which is pleasing to my eyes).
There's something I found that can be improved though : how Stanislav's left eye (from our side) looks too much to the side (not really looking at us) other than that is OK <3 andGODRaphaellooksreallyhandsomeIcaneathim //slap *ahem*, Aki is really like a perfectionist senior and I would love to see his softer side. Stanislav is very friendly c: I really can't decide which one is my fave now lol.
Btw I like how you use 3D environments for backgrounds :3

- Story: wow thick mystery right from the start xD I'm very curious with the story,

like 'What is this Ouva thing?', 'What happened to Iris's father and mother?',(You don't have to answer the two above, it just means you managed to pique my interest xD) but I think it would be better to give some info about what is this 'response mission' about? What I knew is that Iris will be going to Englora to do 'something' and in the process, Iris will have to expose who's the 'sabotager' and maaaan, Iris, what happened to you so you forget everything you do? this side of her is really interesting

But then again, maybe time will expose things I dont understand :3

- GUIs & BGMs : The GUIs looks good! very clean and the BGMs/sound effects are as clear as a crystal. Just to remind you, when I right-clicked my mouse, 'Load Game' is not there. No issue here! xD

Overall I can see that this VN really go to the side of Mystery and maybe Sci-Fi. It's a good start but the demo is too short for my liking >.< Oh, and please, please don't use too many biological names like panthogens? :') (Oh God, Aki will be so mad at me) or maybe you can make Aki explain biological terms to the readers.

Good luck with this project miss championkinoko! I'm supporting you from the back stage!

[Heiden]

OH HEY! You have a demo out!!!! DD

I played it and here's some general thoughts/impressions. (Also feel free to ignore any of this!)

So first things first, I LOVED this demo. LOVED IT. It had just the right amount of character interaction to let me get to know the characters and a fair bit of mystery that makes me really wanna play the full version!! The writing was really engaging and I thought the lab environment was really refreshing (and reminded me of my days interning in a lab, haha.) and of course the political underpinnings were great!

As for the characters, I really liked Stan, even though I also think he's the most suspicious~ AND ESTELLE IS REALLY CUTE. And Aki was such a grump, I liked him too :'D.

I did spy a couple of places that had a typo or just struck me as a little odd:

1) The sprite for Iris as a child has a little bit of white on the back of her head that you can see on the dark background
2) Iris describes her coffee as having a "redolence", which I've never heard before and it kind of pulled me out of the moment. I looked it up and so I understand it fit the context but I also feel like it felt a little too SAT-word-ish to be used in Iris' internal monologue. This is, of course, is up to you. Maybe Iris has a very rich vocabulary :3
3) Stanislav: "Are you up our trip this evening?" This should be, "Are you up for our trip this evening?"
4) This is a really really REALLY minor thing, but Aki was described as 'extracting samples' from a Petri dish. This works, but at least to me, I felt like "taking swabs from the Petri dishes" would be a more fitting description.

Side question: What exactly is he doing here? Is he working with non-infectious or infectious organisms in this scene? Since you described him as being under the hood, I was assuming he was working with infectious organisms, but usually super infectious organisms are dealt with in separate rooms (at least that's how they deal with certain viruses where I work, but then again different places have different protocols ) and if he was working with like, gene cloning bacteria, you wouldn't have to work underneath a hood for that. (I wouldn't change what he's doing in this scene since I guarantee you I'm probably the only person who will think this when they play your game, haha. I was just curious as to what he was doing.)

5) Aki: "This was the last chance I had with a fully functioning laboratory, but I entrusted to job of checking incubators to you?" This felt a little oddly worded to me. Maybe, "This was my last chance to do my research/experiments/whateverhe'sdoing with a functioning laboratory, and here you ruined it by forgetting to check the incubator! I can't even entrust you with such a simple job?!" ...or something along those lines.

6) This is just a general question, but why isn't Iris herself being suspected? Did they not know she was in the room at the time of the sabotage?

7) During the scene with the director in the car, sometimes the director's sprites moves Left or Right in some of his expressions. I'd double check to make sure that each of your sprites for the director are the same width.

Aaandd that was about all the things I saw. Feel free to ignore any of this, I have a habit of just writing down everything that comes to my head when I'm playing a VN.

I'm seriously looking forward to the full version of this or even just another demo, I JUST WANNA PLAY MORE!!! You've got me hooked!!! :'DD

[Mikaren]

Love your arts ^-^