Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

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Counter Arts
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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#46 Post by Counter Arts »

papillon wrote:
But a promise of an interactive story and / or movie where YOU can make the choices should have potential on the casual gamer market...
There's a lot of stigma attached to "interactive movies" as a genre as a result of some adventure games in the past... although Heavy Rain is managing to break that up a bit. Still, that title is generally thrown around as a pejorative and not something that most visual novels would want to remind people of.

Admittedly, truly casual players who aren't immersed in gaming history might not have the same reaction. :)
What I found is that you can sell casual players on the interactive story pitch alone. You can say it's a digital Choose-Your-Own-Adventure on the computer. With video gamers who have heard of the "interactive story", you'll have to give concrete examples of more control. Why? So that they can understand it's not another game where you have choices but don't the choices really change too much of what happens.
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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#47 Post by jack_norton »

Well I was just saying that is NOT impossible that casual players might like VNs, but not that they're "cash-cow". I know this for certain, knowing personally several successful casual developers and the revenues they made :mrgreen:
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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#48 Post by papillon »

What I found is that you can sell casual players on the interactive story pitch alone. You can say it's a digital Choose-Your-Own-Adventure on the computer. With video gamers who have heard of the "interactive story", you'll have to give concrete examples of more control.
"Interactive story" doesn't carry the same negative associations AT ALL in the games community as "interactive movie" - perhaps partly because one of the big problems with 'interactive' filmed/rendered movies is that the scenes were so expensive to produce that the games ended up actually having very little variation. Pure novels, or even standard visual novels, have much more leeway with what they can depict....CYOAs were nothing like interactive movies. :)

My argument is not that visual novels can't sell - I sell them! - but that moving in the direction of full video is not an instant win.

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#49 Post by Krian »

I agree with the last few posts - what I meant is that VNs might be of (potentially huge) interest for the casual gamer market, and might even spark interest in computer games in people who aren't into computer games. I didn't mean to imply that it would be the be-all, end-all of games - the casual market is a whole different animal from the "normal" games market. I would consider myself a gamer, and the last "match 3" game that I sparked my interest was Puzzle Quest - but the match 3 genre seems to be a huge hit for casual gamers, along with hidden object games, which often disguise themselves as adventures (a genre I love since Zork back in the 80s with my C64).

However, I'd suggest that there should be an extra thread for this discussion - this one is for Jisei, after all.

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#50 Post by LVUER »

Interactive Movies is thing from past. The word movie comes from the usage of FMV (since it's already rendered or just a movie, like Papillon said, there is (almost) no interactivity). As far as I know, this genre is not popular in the past. I don't know because of the technology limitation, or simply because the genre isn't that interesting (or the developer that is lazy?)...

Nowadays, we don't need FMV anymore. We have more hardware power to generate/render all those polygons in real-time (hint: Heavy Rain). So interactivity level is boosted to the sky. Still, I don't know if developer will make more games like this.

------------------------------------------
Speaking of Interactive Movies, Japanese developer released lots of game like this, way more than Western developer, though it's not FMV, but rather anime cutscenes. I have, loved, and played lots of those games. The game is simple. You watch the anime. At intervals, you will be given choice, pick one, and the anime will continue.

And Gundam One Year War is another good example of "real" interactive movies. It's a great game! Anyone played it?
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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#51 Post by Counter Arts »

papillon wrote:Interactive story" doesn't carry the same negative associations AT ALL in the games community as "interactive movie" - perhaps partly because one of the big problems with 'interactive' filmed/rendered movies is that the scenes were so expensive to produce that the games ended up actually having very little variation. Pure novels, or even standard visual novels, have much more leeway with what they can depict....CYOAs were nothing like interactive movies. :)

My argument is not that visual novels can't sell - I sell them! - but that moving in the direction of full video is not an instant win.
Ah... my mistake then. I thought it was more about which gaming market you talk to. There is still a younger generation that doesn't have the associations of "interactive movie". I'll stop talking about it here since this isn't the thread for it.

I'll have to get a chance to play Jisei once I do everything else I'm supposed to do.
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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#52 Post by frederic09 »

I like theses kind of games. But it's too short. I'm disappointed. Please make a 5h one for the sequel.
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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#53 Post by Nameraka »

Just went through the demo, and I love what I see so far. I was a bit fearful when I heard that Jisei was going to be commercial, but it looks like I won't be disappointed...

Are physical copies going to be available only at conventions? The possibility of getting this game in pretty packaging is the only thing holding me back from purchasing it right now.

EDIT for additional question: Will future episodes include the previous installment (like Higurashi and Umineko), or will they be separate, stand-alone releases?

Thanks!
Last edited by Nameraka on Wed Jul 13, 2011 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#54 Post by sake-bento »

frederic09 wrote:I like theses kind of games. But it's too short. I'm disappointed. Please make a 5h one for the sequel.
At this point in our production, I can't promise a specific length, but the second chapter will definitely be much longer.

Nameraka wrote:Just went through the demo, and I love what I see so far. I was a bit fearful when I heard that Jisei was going to be commercial, but it looks like I won't be disappointed...

Are physical copies going to be available only at conventions? The possibility of getting this game in pretty packaging is the only thing holding me back from purchasing it right now. XD

EDIT for additional question: Will future episodes include the previous installment (like Higurashi and Umineko), or will they be separate, stand-alone releases?

Thanks!
I don't offer physical copies online right now because shipping can get super expensive, especially to other countries, but if you really do want one, PM me and we can work it out. Each episode will be a stand-alone release.

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#55 Post by Dusk2Dusk »

I played the demo and I loved it ^^

I will definitely buy the full version when I get ahold of some money XD

I really want to draw some Kizaki fanart, he is such a cute character and his voice nearly made me squeal <3 ( and I am NOT the type of girl that gets squealy over guys >w>; )

Also I love, love, LOVE the opening song :D

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#56 Post by Mirage »

Full Review~
Good Part~
- High production quality. The background is jaw dropping. Character designs are very appealing.
- Excellent OP. It's possibly my most favorite part in the game. I like how the lyrics fit the story so well.
- Interface is very nice. I like the way the CG event is shown. Quite unique.
- I like the premise. I like mysterious hero. ^^
- Fully voiced, and it's possibly the best voice acting I have heard from indie game.
- The writing is nice to read and easy to follow. There's some pretty quirky humor that I like. (I laughed when Kizaki blushed at the notion of going to bathroom together with another man.)

Neutral Part~
- With the exception of OP, the music is alright overall. Some of them sound alike and there aren't too many tracks. Though none of them detract from experience, so I am neutral on this.
- Lack of a real CG gallery. Luckily, there is a sketch gallery to compesate that.

Some minor annoyance AkA me being nitpicky~
- Main character's ability was hyped and emphasized in the game summary, and yet he barely used it. He didn't even use it after the demo. And whether he came into the woman bathroom or not doesn't effect the game outcome. The demo gave me a false pretense that something is going to happen, but in the end it didn't.

- I noticed that the better the character design is, the higher chance the character return in the sequel (No pun intended lol) Using that token, I can guess who the murderer is, or at least narrow it down, because the murderer is less likely to return in the sequel. I don't think it's a good idea if people can guess who the murderer is by looking at the character design.

- Detective Gurski plays very little role in the game. He looks like a fodder to me. I also question his competency as detective as he didn't bother to stop people entering man's bathroom even after a crucial evidence was found.

- Last but not least, despite having a strong premise and easy to follow writing, I find the case itself underwhelming. It was too easy to find the proof, and there's no strong alibi. Maybe I read too many detective series, and most of the time there's always clever trick that the murderer used to create alibi. In this case, everything is too easy. I don't think we even need main character's power to solve the case.
Despite some of my personal nitpick, I think this is still some of the best EVN I have ever seen. I recommend it to anyone who like mystery and I am looking forward for the future installment. :)

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#57 Post by sake-bento »

Thank you so much for such a great review! It's a very well thought out critique, and extremely useful to me. I'll work hard to improve on the next installment.

I didn't make a full "CG Gallery" per say because the CGs were all cut-ins, etc. and I didn't think most people would be interested in going back to have a look at the clue in the bathroom. Even though most of the CGs are like that, would you prefer to have a full CG gallery with all the images you've collected over the course of the game?

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#58 Post by Mirage »

I am sure you'll do great. I see lots of potential ^^

About CG gallery, yeah, I figured that you didn't include it in because most of them are cut-ins. It's just that I found quite a lot of them, so I thought there are enough pictures to warrant a gallery or at least be included in sketch gallery. I guess that's the missing feeling I get after finishing the game, aside from the fact the game ended in a cliff hanger. ^^;

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#59 Post by Cain0425 »

i cant wait till the next one comes out i hope see more of your games there really good

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Re: Jisei (Supernatural, mystery, commercial)

#60 Post by Starling »

Just wanted to say that I used this game to introduce Visual Novels to my younger brother and he loved it XD He is really picky about these kinds of things (like humor) but he laughed at all the right parts and played the demo till the end. Then he got mad at me for showing him a demo lol.
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