Fading Hearts Released!

[Counter Arts]

After a long time Fading Hearts is released!

See more info at http://www.sakurariver.ca

Review: http://rpgfan.com/reviews/Fading_Hearts/index.html

[sake-bento]

Congratulations! Is there a demo that we can try out?

[Counter Arts]

I'm working on a demo.

[electric]

Your forum link gives back a 404, just so you know.

http://www.sakurariver.ca/main/forum

[Counter Arts]

Thanks for letting me know about that. Got it fixed.

[Midnighticequeen]

It looks nice and the story seems interesting, but I think it's a good idea to always have the demo ready before you start charging money. People normally like to test things out before they buy it.

[JinzouTamashii]

Seconded.

[Counter Arts]

Demos are up.

[JinzouTamashii]

Awesome. I really like your trailer, can't wait to play the demo now.

[papillon]

You may not want feedback at this point, but it would help if the background for the dialog box were darker. As it is, it's sort of a mix of black and white, and so is the text, and it makes it all a bit hard to read. Ideally the text should stand out clearly.

[DrakeNavarone]

I'm glad the demo was put up so quickly. I was wondering if I'd get a chance to try this or not. Even after my run in with Parallel that I really didn't come away with satisfied, I kept my hopes up a little for Fading Hearts proper. However, there was just no way I could commit to that price tag without a sneak preview. So of course I jumped right into the demo as soon as I heard it was put up.

First off, I ended up liking the OP video quite a bit. There's room for improvements here and there... some of the effects worked, and others looked a little rigid or amateur... but it was certainly a better effort than Enerccio's OP for our game Songs of Araiah, I can say pretty easily. The art is also really nice, perspective issues aside (the big complaint I heard from a friend was Claire appearing so much taller than everyone else...), but it's a shame you don't get to show off any of the event cgs, because the hints in the OP all looked really nice too... And the big improvement over Parallel is the choices... they are much more intuitive this time around. You can take a good guess at what the effect will be of them before you choose them, even if you turn out to be wrong. But Parallel, I didn't even know where to start sometimes, as a few choices would sound so similar. There's a significant difference between making the game difficult to figure out and making it out right humanly impossible. So I'm very glad to see a much needed change here.

But I remain unconvinced and again slightly disappointed. After going through the demo, I'd hesitate to buy it at even half price. The story is haphazard. There feels like there is no sense of continuity from scene to scene. You start a lot of different narrative threads, and while some can easily tie in ( Claire's case and Rina's case is pretty obvious, as rivals for your love... and the pick up artist thread merges with this... well, understandably, but maybe not satisfactorily ), but the introduction of some of them has me scratching my head at how they'd be worked in... ( the very opening scene with the magic knights... I half expected it to be a dream or the hero playing a game... The magical girl Mystica [ as cute as she is, I'm just lost with this plot element ]... the uber-rats?? ). With the rumor about Claire's boyfriend, the story sounds like it'd steer into a serious relationship drama scenario, but I have no idea how the magic and monsters would play into it... I just couldn't bring myself to try and find out how they would all connect in the end...

And I'd have more patience with this if it weren't for the writing itself. Ignoring the fact that it's literally hard to read itself (see comment in post above about the text box), it isn't very interesting overall either. All the scenes with the two girls were just bland in general, the scenes with Alex contain the same overdose of fan-pandering that plagued Parallel, and the scenes with Sophia just seemed a little contrived... the flashback dream about Claire was probably the only scene I could say I liked... If the demo had been any longer, I might not have even gotten all the way through it... so there's just no way I could tackle the full game /and/ pay for it to boot...

I sincerely hope that the full version manages to pull some of these weaker elements together into something better than the demo shows off... I had some hope for this one and I know there's been a good deal of time put into it... But judging from what I saw from the demo, it isn't a game for me, despite me thinking otherwise before trying this out...

[Samu-kun]

I dunno about this. The character graphics are very good, but the UI design is horrible. The message box looks pretty unattractive and makes reading the text difficult. There were obviously two background artists working on this, since three of the backgrounds are good while the others weren't worth putting in a commercial game. The gameplay system has potential, but isn't that important in the demo.

Overall, it felt like the writer was pretty confused through the whole deal. There's a story about a fantasy world, an abusive boyfriend, a sci-fi Y2K meltdown, monsters, and a magical girl all at the same time... Maybe later all of this actually makes sense side by side because in the demo, it didn't.

[Counter Arts]

Hmm... After reading the comments about the story in the demo I got a few ideas on how to fix it.

Those events that don't make sense at first are important to the full game. You guys are right in that they wouldn't be fitting in the demo. I think I can do what TYPE-MOON did in their Fate/Stay Night demo and change things around.

I can change how the window looks like in a small patch. I just need to get one made though.

[JinzouTamashii]

Is it... one of those rare games where your choices change the genre maybe?

I guess I should play it and find out.

[Counter Arts]

The choices change the genre? How were they like?