al|together 2008 Day 1: From the Bottom of the Heart

[ChocoEd]

Leading off the al|together 2008 festival is "From the Bottom of the Heart", from the circle Persian Blue (original title "願えばきっと…"). It's a short piece, and quite ably translated by Chris St. Louis.

Downloads are available for both Windows and Mac, so enjoy! Note that the accompanying essays on the site can contain spoilers, so you may want to play it through before reading them.

http://altogether.insani.org/2008/1.html

[Blue Lemma]

I like the a|t games usually, but I was a little disappointed by this one. It was very short, and while that doesn't make it innately bad, it stuck out as a deficiency to me that the installation program and essays occupied more time than the VN itself. The thing that struck me as a blown opportunity to add to the emotion was the lack of detail about Ayumi and Shirou's relationship. It was hard to really feel the protagonist's regret when we, as players, had no real connection to Ayumi. A little anecdote about their time together really would have helped a lot and made the story feel more complete to me.

I did like that the story was unique. The graphic style was unique and the characters looked fresh As for the translation, it looked quite well-done. I don't know the original J-text, but I know the a|t people put lots of care into their work and it shows.

[Samu-kun]

I'd have to mirror most of Blue Lemma's sentiments. Even though I thought the quality of the character portraits were pretty well done, the story's pretty much over before it even begins.

But even if it does look rather simplistic from my point of view, I think I would have liked it more if I wasn't making a visual novel right now. XD I just hope somebody else looks at it and gets interested in making visual novels, like I did.