So, I'm going to do what all the cool kids are doing and respond to my reviews! Again, I want to thank everyone who reviewed
Fairy Tales of Innocent Children and I will definitely take all the criticisms into consideration when revising this piece.
First of all, though, I have a technical question that maybe y'all can help me with? It seems that quite a few people had problems with the sprite or dialogue box disappearing whenever I used vpunch and hpunch. I think I had that problem too, but that went away when I switched graphic renderers. And some people didn't seem to have that problem at all.
KimiYoriBaka wrote:about Fairytale for Innocent Children, were those sprites supposed to be blinking? Cause that broke any and all immersion the story could have had.
jw2pfd wrote:
I personally don't recall having any issues with sprites or graphics at all. I think I would remember if there was something on the level of 'immersion-breaking'
Blane Doyle wrote:
The pauses between dialogue where the text box would disappear were also mildly annoying. I didn't know what happened the first time and was worried it was a bug.
Does anybody have any idea what I might be doing wrong?
Other than that, several of you seemed to think that the story might be better if it was expanded on a little more.
Kirroha wrote:
All in all, I liked the story. Though it did leave a gaping hole in my heart due to the many questions I still have regarding everything, especially the spirit's past, and everything that happened to drove her to suicide. If the author wants to make an expansion, I'd love to play it.
rasburn wrote:
I actually feel that this story should be longer (maybe longer than the scope of the contest). Why longer? Because though
the character exploration was great and really defined the spirit and Dani, it might have been a little too much too fast. Having a longer game where this happened more gradually would be welcome
[...]
I'd like to see an extended version of this, but at the same time I feel the story is complete as it is.
Mink wrote:
I think the spirit ("spirit") was kind of inconsistent. Like, she's being a total jerk, but then really nice to the kid. I think if it had been longer, it would have benefited from more characterization and interactions between the two characters.
I'll definitely be expanding the endings slightly, since they're quite abrupt, as PyTom said, and what I have in mind should somewhat ameliorate the inconsistency that Mink mentioned and the rushed feeling that Rasburn got from the story, but is there anything more specific you want to see? Anything you want elaborated on? Specific questions that you want answered?
And, of course, I'll also address the problem with Dani's voice being way too mature for her age.
To all of those who hated the music, I agree that the transitions were jarring. Like I said earlier, I was planning to strip them out completely before I submitted, but then I fell asleep after working on it all night and by the time I woke up I thought I'd already missed the deadline so I just threw it into papillon's letterbox without even checking it one last time OTLlll
The new version won't have music, just ambient noises, so that should make everything better.
@junna: I'm delighted that you cried!
It really means a lot to me that somebody who actually works with children thinks that Dani's characterization is believable. Also, you give me way too much credit; I positioned the sprite the way I did just so I could cut off the cat ears since they didn't fit with my story. But thank you for bringing it to my attention; I'll definitely take the height of the sprite into account when revising this piece!
@jw2pfd:
jw2pfd wrote:KimiYoriBaka wrote:Lastly, it felt like the consequences of the choice at the end were really arbitrary. I couldn't help but think "Now why would that have mattered at all?"
There was only one choice near the end and I played both of them out to see the difference. The idea is that the girl was already in the forest with the intention to hang herself. She talked about some very traumatic experiences. She and her girlfriend were the victim of some attack where she luckily got away with her life, but her girlfriend was not so lucky. The "epilogue" was that more tragedy struck that resulted in death of her mother and grandmother. That is why she was out in the forest feeling like she had nothing left and about to hang herself. The choice for Dani boils down to 'believe the lie' or 'accept reality'. The choice of accepting reality sends the main character Dani into an emotional state that I am sure the nameless "spirit" girl is familiar with having lost her own mom. Maybe seeing Dani like that helps change the girl's mind as she chooses to console Dani and walk her out of the forest. The believe the lie option results in a stubborn Dani insisting that her mom will come back and she leaves the forest with the "spirit" still at the tree. This doesn't give the "spirit" any reason to change her mind as she already had her mind made up before Dani even came into the forest.
That is EXACTLY what I hoped the readers would get! It made me really, really happy to see somebody who understood the story exactly as it was meant to be taken! *squishes you*
@Kirroha:
Kirroha wrote:The caterpillar example she used was surprising too, seeing as how an innocent child like her can use such a gory example, as well as to throw the word "die" so easily when demanding that someone else die.
That's my inner horror writer coming out, oops.
Is it really that jarring and OOC for Dani? I might consider softening it if that's the case... I thought that I'd made it sufficiently childlike though. :<
I chose to believe in Dani's mom, because I played too much Umineko once and thought that maybe escapism may lead to a more magical and less bloody ending.
[...]
So I reloaded my game and went the "Truth" route (I'm calling it that because I played too much Umineko). It was just as short as the first one, but I'm glad to have been able to save that girl from her otherwise eventual suicide by accepting the truth, but living with it. Contrary to what Umineko may say, escapism isn't the answer.
I laughed when I read those comments because I am a HUUUUGE Umineko fan myself and my experiences when playing Episode 8 was probably a huge influence on me when creating that choice. Part of the reason why I wrote this story was to explore the idea of escapism, and whether or not it helps or hurts. I get the feeling from Ryukishi07's interviews the death of his best friend in the middle of creating Episode 5 really impacted the direction he eventually took. The magic ending that Umineko has really fits the mindset of somebody who trying to cope with the death of a loved one. The series as a whole stresses the importance of fantasy and love and escapism in our lives, especially when dealing with traumatic events, and I was trying to explore this issue, like, is escapism the answer and how much escapism is too much and is cynicism really that hurtful? I think it's pretty obvious which side I stand on (even though I was convinced by Umineko and went for the "Magic" route on my first playthrough of Episode
, and that coloured the way the endings were set up. It was never my intention to just diss escapism like that, even though that's the message that seems to be coming through.
@Blane Doyle:
Blane Doyle wrote:I felt the characterization of the little girl made her seem very very young, perhaps 4 or 5 years old.
Is six a believable age for her, do you think?
The spirit was written in... a rather unusual way. Almost as if before she -redacted for spoilers-, her depression drove her to the point of "I don't care anymore, I'm gunna say whatever the hell I want", which was interesting. And a bit entertaining to me, in a morbid curiosity sort of way.
That's exactly the feeling I wanted to convey! YAAAAAAAY!
the text box changing size was a bit... annoying to me. Unless it is part of a gag about the character talking so much, I suppose this is a pet peeve of mine
That one part in the beginning was supposed to be kind of funny, but yeah. I'll fix that in the standalone release.
Aaaand that's all I have for now. Again, thank you very much to everyone who took the time to review my piece, I really appreciate all the comments. If anybody has more suggestions on how I could improve, please don't hesitate to tell me!