CLANNAD - The Past Path-

[clannadman]

CLANNAD -The Past Path-

A town on the coast...
A life not lived...
A lost love...
A lonely child...
A world of lights...
New and fun things...



Sites

Download links - http://clannadppvisualproject.wordpress.com/downloads/
Wordpress - http://clannadppvisualproject.wordpress.com/

Media

Teaser Promo #1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io4kENlFLQo
Teaser Promo #2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcc35GPuMxw

Summary

The year is 1985. Naoyuki hates his unfair life. A high school student, he has been readmitted to Ushinawa High after a year living as a shut-in. His neighbours, his classmates and his teachers all look down on him and he despises them for it. But, on his first day returning, he meets a girl on his way to school and his life changes in ways he never expected it could...

Basic Information

A non-commercial prequel to the popular Clannad series by Key.
Multiple endings based on choices with a non-canon bonus romantic route included.
This is my second time making a game and I'm doing the majority of the work myself.

A Scope Games Production
Current Word Count: 100,000 words
Genre: Drama, Tragedy, Romance, Bildungsroman
Script: 100% Complete
Sprites: 100% Complete
Music: 100% Complete
Backgrounds: 100% Complete
CGs: 100% Complete
Recruitment: Beta-testers

Characters

Okazaki Naoyuki
An 18yr old of average intelligence. After some past troubles, he spent a year living as a shut-in at home. His parents managed to get him back into his high school. Lazy and unhappy with things, his life takes on a new perspective when he meets Nakamura. The protagonist of the story, you play from his perspective...

Nakamura Atsuko
A mysterious girl who's constantly finding new and fun things to occupy herself with. Seemingly calm and enthusiastic at first, she holds a dark secret and a mysterious past...

Inoue Haruka
A girl who's always losing things that you meet one day after school...

Sakamoto Miu
Okazaki's neighbour and a champion on the track and field. A little rough around the edges and a bit of an idiot, she helps Okazaki come to understand some important things about his life and his relationship...

Shige Katsuro
A student representative who won't stop hassling Okazaki about his attendance and behaviour...

Okazaki Shino
Naoyuki's mother, she is loving and caring, embarrassingly so but ultimately extremely important to him...

Fukuda Miwa
She and Naoyuki share a history. Atsuko's best friend and depending on route choices, a confidante for Naoyuki...

[Poketto Kunoichi]

Ah, awesome! I'm glad it's released on a Friday. -downloads-

[Taleweaver]

So this is the beta? Or is this already the final release?

[clannadman]

So this is the beta? Or is this already the final release?

Final release. Or release version 1.0. Although it's unlikely I will spend any further time on this project.

[cosmo]

So this is the beta? Or is this already the final release?

Seems to be:

Finished!
Posted on September 16, 2011 by Clannad -The Past Path-

congrats!

Will download it later (huge file! )

[clannadman]

Will download it later (huge file! )

Yeah, sorry about that

[cosmo]

Sorry?? It makes me curious!!! Definitely looking forward to it!

[Samu-kun]

Ah...... I would really recommend uploading it to somewhere less shady than Megaupload... Especially since you could just have uploaded it for free on renai.us with less hassle than on megaupload.

[ririruetoo]

I'm so happy it was released! I'm going to have to download it the moment I get home! Altough, can you pleeeeeeese upload it somewhere other than megaupload?? I know you wouldn't put virius on it, but just the site in general can be bad for your computer ( or so I've heard). So, can you do this for us fans? ( sorry for being a hassle!!) Also, I'm looking forward to playing Haruki's route again, I can wait to see how you've changed it!!

[clannadman]

I'm so happy it was released! I'm going to have to download it the moment I get home! Altough, can you pleeeeeeese upload it somewhere other than megaupload?? I know you wouldn't put virius on it, but just the site in general can be bad for your computer ( or so I've heard). So, can you do this for us fans? ( sorry for being a hassle!!) Also, I'm looking forward to playing Haruki's route again, I can wait to see how you've changed it!!

I don't know where this urban legend about megaupload has come from :\ I'll try to upload it to renai.us but considering the file size, it may take a few hours and I'm currently in the process of moving so it may be up in a few days at the least.

[Poketto Kunoichi]

Just finished my first playthrough.

I loved it. It had the same atmosphere the original CLANNAD had. A sense of poignant reality, questioning the meaning behind uncontrollable events and circumstances, then slowly finding hope and an objective. And, despite the leaden atmosphere, occasional bursts of introspection, happiness, and fun stupidity glimmering in your life...just to be shot down mercilessly again and again, just like reality. But even if so, we must face our days; running won't solve anything, and sadness is inevitable. Just push forward, find something to make you climb out of that depression. That's what I got out of this game.

The writing was simple and beautiful. I like how unobstructive it was, detailing what needed to be detailed instead of indulging in superficial pleonasm. The style very much matched CLANNAD, with a few nuances here and there for a voice other than Tomoya. The scenes successfully evoked my memories of the key scenes in the original game.

I enjoyed the personalities of the characters as well. I only wish we could see more interaction between everyone, but that can be interpreted as a good thing. Atsuko had something Nagisa didn't have - balls. I disliked Nagisa as a whole, honestly, but there were a few traits that I liked within her. Atsuko lacked that extreme dormat purity Sue side that annoyed me so. Your other characters were entertaining too, poor Katsuro. xD

Anyhow, excellent, excellent job. I will hopefully be doing a more intensive review for this game on my blog since I want other people to experience this unofficial prologue for themselves. I hope to see more games from you in the future.

Oh yeah, loved the mastering sleeping in class thing. That came as a veritable surprise. xD I only intended to play the game for a few minutes then pick up later, but heh, you successfully had me hooked!

[Samu-kun]

Got completion through the true arc. I haven't seen the side arc yet.

I've always been tsundere for Clannad. The source material is a great story and has some really promising ideas, but I thought the execution was bungled in After Story. Granted though, After Story had an ambitious goal and it would have taken something really amazing to have fulfilled it in just 24 episodes. I'm one of the few people who think it's been heavily overrated. Still, I'm a loyal Key fan and I think Kyoto Animation is the greatest thing in this world.

My impression was that The Past Path shares many of the same problems as its source material. I think its biggest problem lies in pacing issues cased by surgical storytelling.

By surgical, I mean that the story jumps time frames too frequently. The creator has surgically sliced out pieces of a larger story and is presenting us with only its fragments. I thought that the frequent time skips in the After Story caused loss of immersion because it took the viewer outside of the action and reminded him that he was being told a story by a narrator. I never really felt like I was the main character, but that I was being led through a series of exhibits detailing key moments of the main character's life by him.

I think The Past Path has the same problem. The first half of the story avoids this problem, but the second half is a whirlwind tour of various scenes from Naoyuki's life. It felt like a museum tour where the reader is led by a guide through exhibit A, which shows Naoyuki and Atsuko moving into their house, exhibit B, his job, exhibit C, Atsuko giving birth, etc. It would have been preferable if it felt more as if the reader was the character than if the reader was a spectator who was being led by the creator.

The surgical storytelling presents some pacing problems in the second half of the story. I thought Tomoya's birth was rushed through too quickly. Considering its emotional significance, I thought that scene would have lasted twice as long. Furthermore, there is not enough space between Tomoya's birth and Atsuko's death. Considering how opposite the moods were in those scenes, I thought the story was being rushed. There's not much time in between the scenes for a lot of contemplation.

I also found Atsuko's death scene to be faulted. It just occurs randomly without any significance. There's no greater meaning to her death aside from the factual observation of "she was hit by a car and she died." If I didn't know all along that Atsuko was going to die, I'd have felt betrayed by the author for killing a character for no reason or purpose. In the real world, accidents occur and they're factually meaningless. But humans add meaning to them. "She died because I didn't care enough, or she died because of my sins." It's the job of a writer to add meaning to tragic events. I thought there was no extra meaning to be gleamed from Atsuko's death, aside from that bad luck happens to good people.

The other problem I found was the writing style. It relies heavily on short, to the point sentences. I thought the prose was rather dry and lacking in emotional colour. There's not much descriptive detail. The lack of descriptive detail is problematic because the character sprites also lacked descriptive detail as well. It was difficult to view the girls as breathing, flesh and blood human beings because both the sprites and narrative did not make them very mobile characters.

On the other hand, I found the UI customization to be quite impressive. The dango mouse was pretty nice and the menu design was very clean and elegant. Furthermore, the first half of the story didn't have the pacing problems and was a good read.

Above everything though, I think the fundamental reason why I didn't get as much enjoyment from The Past Path as I would have from a visual novel of equivalent effort was because it was a story that I already knew. I already knew from the beginning what was going to happen to Naoyuki and Atsuko. Maybe if Clannad did not exist, I would have been surprised when they started going out or when Atsuko dies. But since it's all been written already, it was like re-reading a old book.

***As a final note, I think the line "she lives up to her blonde stereotype" near the beginning of the game is a cultural miss. It's doubtful Naoyuki, a Japanese boy, would know the American blonde stereotype.

It was a competent work though. I wish you had made something like Clannad, but still something unique enough to stand on its own. But alas, it's a great expression of your fandom to make an entire fan game for Clannad. I wish I had the time to pay tribute to stories that I've liked by making fan games as well!

[Yonowaaru]

So, I figured I should post something here too after playing this.

I have to say, you did a fairly good job. But there's still a lot of things that could be a lot better, and I don't think this deserves to be called a prequel to the great game CLANNAD is just yet.

-First of all; the grammar errors. Throughout the game, I really got angry at how many times you said 'thankyou' as one word. 'Thank you' is spelled in two words. There were also some other small things like that, so you should really have a native English speaker or just someone who speaks it well enough take a good look at it. Right now, it's just disturbing the atmosphere of the game which is really a shame.

-Second; try using a lot more different words. It really seemed like you were using a set vocabulary and just using the same words over and over, which is not what I think a writer should do. Writing stuff myself, I really think it's important you broaden your horizons as well as your vocabulary to get a more varied, less 'boring' story.

-Third and most importantly; the story itself. While it isn't really bad per say, the story is just a bit too rushed. It makes it feel like it's shallow, and isn't realistic at all. In my opinion, the original handled that aspect a lot better. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to be blunt here and say it like this; people may say quality goes over quantity, but if the quality itself isn't very good in the first place and the quantity is lacking too, the only place it will end up going is downwards. I've realized that most of the games made here are quite shallow, but that, I think, is even more of a drive for writers to make a better story which is more realistic. Even more so since you're making a most ambitious story, this being a prequel to a great game. Atsuko's story wasn't that bad, but it was just way too short in comparison to any of CLANNAD's routes. It probably wasn't even longer than the main game. I can't say I understand your decision to skip so many days, because it just makes the game look half-assed, which is never a good thing. Haruka's route.. well, I don't agree with the decision of making it that short either.

Putting all that together; it's not a bad game at all, but the grammar errors and small vocabulary really take it down a notch from what it could be.
The story persay isn't bad, and I'm not saying you should completely rewrite it, but you should at least add some more depth to the story by basically lengthening it by a lot. If you do this, even though it might take you another year, I think this could really be a worthy prequel to CLANNAD.

(Note: I haven't played the third path yet, if there is one. I'm sorry if that's the path that turns everything all around, but honestly, I doubt it. Another thing: Please do not think I hated this project. It was really nice, and it gave me some lasting shivers down my spine, but that's all the more reason for me to write this review so passionately so I will be able to enjoy an even better version in a year or 2. I hope you don't hate me or anything for writing like this.)

Yonowaaru

[Taleweaver]

So this is the beta? Or is this already the final release?

Final release. Or release version 1.0. Although it's unlikely I will spend any further time on this project.

I wasn't quite sure because of this:

Script: 98% Complete

Downloading now.

[Samu-kun]

Now that you've made a fan game for Okazaki's dad, I think you should make one for Nagisa's dad. THAT WOULD BE SO EPIC. "SANAE, I LOVE YOU!!!!" (*smourfs bread down throat*)

Also, one of the possible alternative end girls in that game should be Nayuki's mom from Kanon. JAM AND BREAD GATTAI!!!