Re: Death Rule:The First Rule [Battle Royal/Various][DEMO]
Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 3:29 am
Ooooh, demo! OwO I'll play right away!
Supporting creators of visual novels and story-based games since 2003.
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Well, looks like you're the first to catch onto that hint. (I think.)Lumen_Astrum wrote:I may start to pair them up now.
That was my co-writer, armornick. His Ep was nice, wasn't it?Lumen_Astrum wrote:Sherry was super cute. Although at first, I was like, "Did she die? What? She died? Nooo!" ;_; Her "last words" sounded very desperate, for lack of a better word. Abigail's motherly attitude to Sherry was very nice too, although gosh, her face when Sherry died. ;_; The explosion was super scary. SUPER SCARY. You're really great at these things.
I'll be sure to go over and fix these things. Tinasa dosen't have a smiling sprite, BTW ;w;Lumen_Astrum wrote:One thing that bugged me was that sometimes the sprites lack emotion to support the text. I do remember reading somewhere in False Execution that Lilly smiled somewhere her conversation with Morgan and Tinasa, but she still wore her usual frown face. And also it as said Tinasa smiled or sorts but her sprite's showing she's still frowning at Morgan.
Adding more save slots won't be too difficult to do, and I'll be sure to add those periods. And I tend to not add a "Return to Menu" button since usually there isn't enough room for one ;w;Lumen_Astrum wrote:If I were to complain about something else again, it's the lack of save slots. I panicked when I saw there's no Previous, auto, next or any numbers on the save screen. I am a save maniac, so in a game I would end up using less than a hundred or so saveslots depending on the length, so it would be hard for me to ... well, "be ready". XD And also, I noticed there were a few sentences I saw that don't have dots in the end, and it kinda bugged me a little. It's only my opinion, but yeah. And there are no such thing as "return to main menu" in the game menu. XD
Lumen_Astrum wrote:Another thing is that the PDA stuff that keeps showing confuses me. The player info, abilities, map stuff, everything. But the player-specific rules are very fun. It adds up to the thrill.
I'm glad my writing was well-receivedHijiri wrote:That was my co-writer, armornick. His Ep was nice, wasn't it?Lumen_Astrum wrote:Sherry was super cute. Although at first, I was like, "Did she die? What? She died? Nooo!" ;_; Her "last words" sounded very desperate, for lack of a better word. Abigail's motherly attitude to Sherry was very nice too, although gosh, her face when Sherry died. ;_; The explosion was super scary. SUPER SCARY. You're really great at these things.
Boo-ya, another Killer Queen fan! *bro-fist*dreamingdaze wrote:Interesting...reminds me strongly of Killer Queen. Not that is a bad thing, since Killer Queen is a good visual novel in terms of story set up (with decent execution, though probably less so based on the story's initial promise).
So, here's some initial thoughts:
Art
It is serviceable--though the anatomy is a bit off. I'm not sure if I like the style or not. Some characters looked fine, but a few had odd body part ratios. Not as bad as a few artists here though and I feel like some characters looked very distinctive/appropriate.
Story wise:
I liked Killer Queen so I wasn't surprise to like this story idea. Especially since it is a rarity for this kind of community. At times I liked the quick pace, at other times I was put off by it. The lack of a back story made me more annoyed than intrigued.Bit random going from the human trafficking to the game. I wasn't really as fond of the introduction as it didn't pull me in. But, the story and writing seemed to pick up after that awkward introduction (especially for character interaction).I would probably say the writing overall works, but it had less impact for me due to the lack of build-up. Even tense moment were a bit deflated when the scene seemed to ignore lingering on the reactions or building up/descriptions of them. It made me feel like things were rushed as though there were certain plot points that had to be hit within a line limit. There was an air of suspense at times, but it could die quickly and with the fizzle of a deflating air balloon rather than a loud pop. I didn't find myself caring that much about any of the characters, except for Abraham. But I did find myself wanting to read more, so that is a plus.
There were scenes where I kept wondering how the characters knew what they knew (but maybe that was the demo part showing?) There were also parts that I thought were interesting, although they read like summaries of what would come rather than having it play out for the enjoyment of the audience. A bit light to nonexistent on mental battles, but I do see interesting story lines popping up.
Music:
Very fitting and good at helping the atmosphere. I like it as much as I like the GUI, so that was nice. I'm hoping there are more tracks for the full game because I was a bit tired of hearing a certain tune after the two stories.
Something I found odd (though perhaps were intentional):Tanya being initially accepting of Abraham rather easy going view of killing Player 9. Considering how she was characterized as a super weakling in the beginning, I would have figured her being uneasy around someone who could so easily take another person's life. She went from a coward to a mindlessly happy girl, which surprised me as I figured her to be..well, dumb but with a normal person's view towards killing. That characterization of Tanya being dumb/naive didn't change after she went up to Tinasa and introduced herself, then checked if they were a threat o_0. I would have thought Abe being a vet and all would have at least thought of checking that out before running up to players of this game.Overall: interesting. I'm not quite sure if I liked it or disliked it, but I am at least interested enough to check out the final version.
Sure, I'll skim through it to see where I can expand some things. I've been practicing a lot lately so I'll probably be able to *enhance* the psychological scenesHijiri wrote:Not really sure if armornick is up to going through and expanding his own section through
I really like it when people are honest with my work.dreamingdaze wrote:Man, thanks for being so accepting about my opinion. That definitely deserves a bro-fist in return.
I should probably admit, I have that love/hate view of Killer Queen as well (so really, I am being as harsh as I could be on your visual novel, which has quite a few positives as well.) I probably had the most issues with the False Execution section, though that may be due to the time jump between that and Death Rule. Since it felt like a lot of payoffs were occurring in that section, I wanted more from that in particular.
Especially when I think of:Sherry's death scene. A young kid like that in this kind of game is a definite heart breaker if used right. The loss of innocence? Man, I'd love to see the character arc in depth (from the first trap/kill to her breakdown). It might be a bit heartless for me to say, but I wasn't as impacted by her ending scene as I expected. Especially considering the level of betrayal and devestation she wrecked.I liked the allusion in the intro to some extent, but it set me up differently. I expected a dark world of characters who automatically distrusted each other, but I was surprised to see:Reasonable levels of trust and doubt, which wasn't what I expected at first.Plus, I have to admit, I liked the few opening lines of your Automaton demo better in terms of pulling in my interest. But, I have to say, the intro picked up sharply with the rules description and I was definitely pleased with that set up.
I really like the potential in this visual novel. Even though my critiques were harsh, I want to see more visual novels like this.