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These days I am going through many things (you can call them loose ends) while I am slowly preparing to close my vn-making path, and within that effort, it's really important to me that I share these two VNs here. They are the last two steps before the some-day release of "Aurora Fall", which will be the vn with which I will have said all I wanted and put this part of my life behind me.

But that's the future, and as for the present, you can find all the basic information on Anthridercynantide and Umeda Sky below. I actually feel strongly about keeping them together in this LSF topic, I think it makes sense even from a practical point of view, as they are essentially the same, so should there be a discussion about one, it's pretty much a discussion about the other one as well. Here is the information:

ANTHRIDERCYNANTIDE

A street worker gathers all his savings to go abroad and face a woman who he believes shares a common past with him.

Download: Windows


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UMEDA SKY

A man who has lived his whole life in Japan resolves to bring change into his life by going to Europe, for a vacation.

Note: Umeda Sky cannot be finished. You should realize this at some point, so from there on whenever you feel like ending, just pause the game, go to the main menu and exit the program.

Download: Windows

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I bid you a safe journey then Mikey. You've been a great VN maker and I understand that circumstances in life are so that you change eventually.
I will read your VNs eagerly and archive them for future generations

I also hope you to come and read what the VN makers communities produce from time to time, or simply drop by and say hello.

yummy wrote:I bid you a safe journey then Mikey. You've been a great VN maker and I understand that circumstances in life are so that you change eventually.
I will read your VNs eagerly and archive them for future generations
I also hope you to come and read what the VN makers communities produce from time to time, or simply drop by and say hello.

I am very happy things are coming to an end, actually. Here I explain it in more detail, it's a genuinely positive feeling ("end" always has this sad feel to it, but I didn't know how to say it better). I'm looking forward to everything having its end, perhaps it will even mean I will hang around more than now, as a player rather than a creator - it's hard to tell. But thank you for the encouragement and just as an estimate, it all won't be before 2012 anyway. But it's really great to see the end, finally.

Heh. We all have our reasons for doing what we do. And as a fellow VN writer, I think I can sympathize with many of your sentiments about creating games for a purpose.

To me, making VNs is sharing my stories with other people and bringing them to life. That, and doing things I have never done before. MetBlues was my first VN. TLK was the first VN I made alone. Daemonophilia was my first attempt at romantic comedy. The Dreaming was me telling a story My current project, Adrift, is my first attempt to create the "classic" form of VN with several different "attainable" girls.

I guess I won't be done anytime soon, because there are a great many things I have never tried out. Unlike you, I cannot see the end of my path here. However, I have no doubt I will get to the point where you are now someday, and until then, I thank you for all the wonderful stories you've given me and the great inspiration you have been. I guess we will all remember you as one of the best writers in the OELVN community, and as someone whose hard work attracted many towards the medium in the first place.

As soon as I'm back home today, I'll take a look at your two new releases.

Sad to see you leave VN-making, mikey, but it sounds like you're content. Thanks for all the neat games and for all you've contributed to the community. I'll be looking forward to Aurora Fall!

(I know the real reason is because Misato finally became your mistress )
jk, I know you would never do that even if she were real!

I can understand your feeling, and thanks for your parting gift....

Best regards from Italy, and fair winds,
Dott. Piergiorgio.

Okay, reviewing time.

That... was short. Both of it. Unusually short from my experience with mikey's games, and that concerns both of the titles.

Essentially, both are Kinenos, with the tiniest bit of interaction in the end. That's perfectly alright; Gakuen Redux was a Kineno too, and I loved it. However, there should have been an option to automatically advance the text and the art. I enjoy Kinenos best when they are presented like movies and don't require me to press a button after every line. Removing that option may not have been the best decision.

The stories, of course, easily make up for all of that. From the consciously daydreaming protagonist of Umeda Sky to the two people on their way up to the castle in Anthridercynantide, both paths were written as engrossing as only mikey can do that, and at least for me, it's very easy to relate to the "morale" of the two tales. Not that the stories are easy to swallow; both can potentially affect a reader very deeply.

To me, Umeda Sky (and its very enlightening non-ending) was the better of the two VNs, though I'm almost sure most people will be able to relate to Anthridercynantide more. It feels as though it's more romantic, though I would definitely disagree about that.

*edit* I almost forgot to mention how polished both games look. Technically, they might be nothing special, but they manage to produce an wonderfully engrossing mood with very subtle tools. Beautiful job!

I played ANTHRIDERCYNANTIDE.
The photographs were nice.
I liked the story too but I don't understand why some random words were shown sometimes. Did they have a meaning or they were just shown without reason?

The way TW described his experiences is pretty much how I wanted things to come across. The form isn't the easiest to digest, but it's a good feeling to know that it's understandable what the focus is. It's also OK if people just look at the pictures, because the surroundings are an important component as well - real world photographs are there for that reason. I'm also glad the limited use of special effects is noticeable, I only used overlays and pans, which is a combination I am very fond of and will also be used in the last project.

As for the missing settings, I removed pretty much all of them, kind of as a tribute to the old times when my non-renpy games didn't have any options, just a fullscreen and a windowed version. Though now that I think about it, in those times I actually wished I had such options. So I don't know, it wasn't a logical decision, it just felt right to me.

In any case, thank you everyone for all the responses and your impressions.

Wait, you're (soon) no longer making VNs? I shall miss your awesome VNs once you're done... You better stick around the forums, though

That said: No Mac version?

So, I feel kind of silly reviving a thread that has been dead for about 4 years, but...
I thought I should say, I played through Anthridercynantide, and I loved it! It wasn't even the story so much (though it was interesting), but the presentation. I loved the large volume of photographs that were used, the cut-aways that zoomed in on small details in the enivronment, the words that were juxtaposed against the backgrounds... It gave the story a really great sense of movement, of the characters walking along slowly, appreciating the scenery. And it encouraged the reader to slow down, appreciate the story, and just look at all the beautiful photographs with the characters.

This VN even reminded me of why I like VNs so much to begin with. Because you can do so many interesting things to visually present your story you can't really do in books'. I really enjoyed it!
I want to read all your other works now, and see if they're all as immersive as this one!

Thank you for those kind words!

The style that began with Anthridercynantide (since as you said that's what you enjoyed most) is also used in Umeda Sky, and (to an almost extreme degree) in Aurora Fall as well, so those may be best for that.

My older VNs have a more traditional text to images ratio, if you will.

mikey wrote:Thank you for those kind words!

The style that began with Anthridercynantide (since as you said that's what you enjoyed most) is also used in Umeda Sky, and (to an almost extreme degree) in Aurora Fall as well, so those may be best for that.

My older VNs have a more traditional text to images ratio, if you will.

I played Umeda Sky, too. Ah, it was a really nice and relaxing story. The focus on the main character's interior monologue was really well done... Sometimes, it felt kind of overwhelming. And I'm downloading Aurora Fall at the moment~

I like VNs with high amounts of photographic backgrounds a lot... Since it can be fun to just stare at all the pictures... and make you feel like you can visit a whole other place...
I think the aesthetic experience can be just as, maybe even more, than the actual story itself sometimes.

I played Umeda Sky today and really liked it (enough to feel compelled to comment here!), I felt like it was a good length considering the heavy inner-monologue and very small cast.

The photographs and music added so much to the writing which itself is much more.. truthful (?) that the typical VN - It seemed like instead of escapism it was more a comment on escapism, at the same time as raising a lot of other interesting questions to the reader.

I don't think I have fully wrapped my head around the central theme being 'luck'!

But I guess that feeling of the can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it, borderline-abstract is what draws me to mikey's VNs though I've only finished 2 so far.

If the mediafire links are dead in the future or slow for anyone you can find this game where I got it from, itch.io http://atpprojects.itch.io/umedasky

I am intrigued to play Anthridercynantide soon!