Angelic Orbs - Broken Memories - ver. 1.1 up!

[Vatina]

OP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OZPgghLUA0


You play as Kevin, whose life changes one day with a chance meeting with a demon hunting for a glass orb. Running for his life he ends up in a nearby town, where he encounters a strange group of people also on the lookout for this strange glass orb.

Soon he is dragged along unwillingly, and may even have to choose what side in this hunt he wishes to take.

Tia:
A young and energetic girl that is a part of the orb-hunting group that Kevin meets in town. Tia is very determined at reaching her goal and won't let anything stand in her way.

Yoko:
Another member of Tia's group. Yoko is a foreign warrior who usually keeps to herself. She acts very cold towards Kevin and obviously dislikes his entry into the group.

Zyra:
A mysterious woman with black wings who appears around Tia's group. It is unclear what her motives are.




Aaand misc notes about the release:

My first visual novel is finally released! I hope you'll enjoy it

Linux and Mac releases are still only for testing purposes - I have not been able to test them, so I can't guarantee that they work. If anyone tries them, please tell me if they work or not.

And about the OP video... being the complete video noob that I am, I was not able to make a video of decent quality without making it take up too much space. In the end I was close to ditching the video completely ;_;
It's still in there though, but the quality is... mediocre. If enough people complain then I might finally take it out and just leave it as a trailer on youtube or something.
*sigh*

Downloads in this thread are attachments. I also have a direct download on my website, but I'm not sure how much download traffic my site can take yet... if you want me to link to the website instead of taking up attachment space here on the forum, feel free to tell me and I'll change it.

And now I'll stop talking for now - hope you'll try my little game and tell me what you think here afterwards


31.05.2009 - ver. 1.1 uploaded. No more bugs!

Windows:

broken_memories_1.1.zip

(52.05 MiB) Downloaded 21273 times

Linux:

broken_memories_1.1-linux-x86.tar.bz2

(50.86 MiB) Downloaded 288 times

Mac:

broken_memories_1.1-mac.zip

(55.05 MiB) Downloaded 302 times

[Ellie]

I'm really glad this it out! (I've been waiting for it in a forum lurker fashion)
I'll be trying out the mac download (it seems to be working so far), and I'll update this with my thoughts afterwards!

EDIT: Maybe I spoke too soon?
The game crashes at the point in Tia's path (you're downstairs with her), Tia just said "You're pissing me off!"
There's a line after when just a 'W' appears, then the game freezes. I'm unable to get a traceback message, because the application stops responding (maybe this is a result of it being on a mac?).
Otherwise the other girl's routes have been enjoyable from what I've played through so far.
EDIT (again):
Just some other small critiques (I'm not doing a full review until I can play Tia's path, because then a chunk of my critique probably won't still exist),
First on the writing:
The Bad:
Mainly in the beginning until the point where the story really starts to go forward, the writing is difficult. I was incredibly confused in regards to whether Kevin knew a heck of a lot about the orbs (mentioning his 'friends' makes one think he is looking for Tia and her crew, and the woman in the red coat throws a stone in that direction too), but later incidents show he doesn't get it...Then other incidents imply that he does...And it ends up being very very confusing for the reader.
I think it might be the large cast throwing things around and making things difficult. Zyra's path was a lot more clear to me in terms of the writing.
On Kiyoshi and Nate; I liked them, but at the same time, it felt like you didn't do anything with them, making me wonder if there was any purpose at all for including them in the story. Nate perhaps opens a possibility for a romantic rival for Yoko, as does Kiyoshi with Tia. Maybe in the original comic they had a bigger role, but just using this game as a reference, they seem very neglected in terms of character development...Which makes me sad. I really liked Kiyoshi. =P
The Good:
Likable characters, who, with the exception of Nate and Kiyoshi were all very distinct. There were a few moments where I felt a bit of a pull at my heart strings as to what choice I should make and had to think about it for a bit; which doesn't often happen while I'm playing visual novels. :]
The story had a very interesting premise, which left me wishing you had explained a lot of points more (this visual novel seemed very much like an introduction to a story; a first few chapters meant to draw you in, that gets cut off before everything is fully explained). So cool story! It makes me want to check out the comic!

And on the bad endings:

I wish you had put more into them, Vatina. They were all pretty much the same 'oh, she killed the protagonist.' I had to try to get them. Generally I like to look at bad endings because they reveal more about the characters. But these bad endings didn't really fill me with any regret or provide any insight as to what I should do to get the good ending (should I have gotten the bad endings by accident); but most importantly they just seemed unnecessary. I've always been a firm believer in that if you have bad endings, you should do something with them to make them...I dunno, motivational to get a good ending? They really seem at this point, to only be inserted for the sake of having more potential endings, and compared to the thought put into the rest of the writing in the game, I really just wish there was more to read. ;~;

Again, overall I really enjoyed the game. I'll give more critique when I'm able to play the Tia endings.

[Samu-kun]

Woah-ha! It's done?

[Alphonse]

The apostrophes which hover over the preceding letters! They are killing me on the inside!

Also, there are a few typos. For instance, in the sentence "Convinced that I'll loose sight of it right away, I continue following its direction", "loose" should be "lose". There was another one, but I can't remember what the word wwas. I haven't finished it yet, but it's good so far, if the writing's not too...hard to read. Not the font, the actual writing style. It's a little cumbersome at points.

Argh. I tried to run the game from Winzip, but I went off to do somethinhg else when I was on Day 3 and the game's files were erased from my Temporary folder. I'm such an idiot. Now I'll have to do that all over again!

[Vatina]

Thank you for the comments so far! I'm happy you like it.

I'm not surprised about the mentions of "difficult writing". English isn't my native language, so I was afraid it would turn out that way. So please keep the grammar and typo reports coming xD I'll do my best to improve the script with these comments.

And I guess it's too obvious that the story was supposed to be much longer after all ^^;; This game suffers from a case of stopping midways and deciding to cut things down by a lot to get to a more reachable size... that didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Deep in my heart I still wish that some day I can make it the way I first thought I would, but maybe that's too ambitious And I know people aren't too fond of remakes.

Zyra's story probably reads the best because that was the one I wrote last - after there were no more structure changes.

On Kiyoshi and Nate; I liked them, but at the same time, it felt like you didn't do anything with them, making me wonder if there was any purpose at all for including them in the story.

Well, about them:

You're right, in the original story they were supposed to be possible romantic rivals. The final script didn't leave much room for them, much to my regret since I like them both a lot.

Bad endings:

Tia is the only character with a somewhat proper "bad ending". The others are more kind of "you lose!" endings. And I see that this is a bad thing to cut down on.

[afu]

First, I love your artwork. ^^ I see that it's based on (or is the exact same story?) your online comic but it is necessary to read the comic to enjoy the game or it is okay to play on it's own?

I'm going to download this and play it tonight~

[Vatina]

First, I love your artwork. ^^ I see that it's based on (or is the exact same story?) your online comic but it is necessary to read the comic to enjoy the game or it is okay to play on it's own?

I'm going to download this and play it tonight~

It's not necessary at all

[DaFool]

Whoa. It's actually done.

[Vatina]

What, you thought it wouldn't get finished? Even after I promised it would "come out really really soon!" for an entire year? xD

[dstarsboy]

Wow, I'm a big fan of Vantina's style, I'll check this out as soon as I get home today.

[Aashtarsrain]

Starting playing now !

[usul]

Yeah I know what you mean, I'm still working on my NanoReno of... 2008!! Oh well I'm glad it's done. And Don't worry about doing a remake, you can just do upgrades

I haven't played through a whole lot yet, and it makes sense now to hear that english isn't your first language. My only remark at this point is that sometimes I find the image and text redundant, nstead of complimenting each other. The example that comes to mind is when you see the woman in red, I think the text reads something like "I saw a woman in red." or something like that. It would add a lot more depth to the experience if the text would tell us about the things we *don't* see.

I'll have more comments when I continue playing, no doubt.

[Guest]

The game crashes at the point in Tia's path (you're downstairs with her), Tia just said "You're pissing me off!"
There's a line after when just a 'W' appears, then the game freezes. I'm unable to get a traceback message, because the application stops responding (maybe this is a result of it being on a mac?).

No, this happens to me as well and I am on windows (Vista to be precise) I'll keep playing but I hope staying downstairs isn't a requirement for Tia's path, I'll comment more once I'm done.

Lovely artwork BTW

[Santander02]

Woops I thought I logged in, the above post was mine and I can't edit it now

Anyway it looks like staying downstairs IS necessary to finish Tia's path and I am stuck now I'll wait until that bug is sorted out, cheers!

[Lyyli]

Played it through and I really liked it! I loved the characters (especially Zyra~) I hope you will consider making more games based on your comic!

But as some others have already said, the game crashes on Tia's path when you are in the mansion and encounter the owner. I hope it will get fixed soon so that I can go through her path too.