Idol/TYPE

[mikey]

Ummm, sorry about that.
About the autosave and typing thing, I actually explained all that in the readme, along with the best typing strategy.

Personally, I wouldn't play the five endings of Idol/TYPE in one breath either, I think it'd be really tiring and completely unrewarding. Many people will think that they have not played a game completely if they don't go through all paths and see all the endings - I am very opposed to that. I think that if you have reached one of IT's two main endings (4 and 3, I think), you've completed the game, regardless of the outcome. There isn't really much more to the story.

Anyway, next up should be a VN, no craziness involved there ^_^

[musical74]

I'm very much against trying to play a game that has multiple endings and trying to get them all in one sitting. Sometimes this is simply a timing issue but usually it's a case of *have to do this and this and this over again* and I don't like that...when playing Idol, for example, I'll play all the way through, get an ending, then take a break from it, coming back later to try for a different ending. To me it makes the game more enjoyable when you take a break from it now and then.

[Cazel]

Well, just finished trying Idol/Type. Got endings 1 and 4. I can see where some people would get annoyed with the typing, but really it isn't too much different from endlessly clicking text, and it oddly felt more like it was the letter of the protagonist being forced to type it out. I don't think I could do that for too long, but for the thirty something minutes I took getting ending 4 was fine.

Technical issue-wise, I also seemed to have some momentary freezes while playing for no explainable reason. I didn't really find them too detrimental to me however, since by watching the screen I knew when the freezes were happening, and no input seemed to carry through the freeze.

[ShiraiJunichi]

Well, I'm glad to say I've finally been able to play this game. I've gotten endings 1-4, and I enjoyed it. It was a nice change of pace, but I'm glad not all ren'ai games are like this- that would be a little too much ^_^;;;

At first, I thought this would be an awesome instrument in helping kids learn how to type. I imagined Mikey licensing games like this to elementary and junior high schools all over the globe, and become filthy stinking rich (honestly, this was a lot more fun than any other typing game I played...) But later I realized that maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea- kids all over the world might commit suicide because of low self esteem. I must've spent about an hour typing the first letter over and over again. I was convinced that I was getting a bad ending because I wasn't typing well enough- so I kept making the same choice. It wasn't until I got down to 1 min 35 sec with 3 mistakes that I decided that maybe I should try the other choice ^_^;;; And well, that sure was a whole lot easier!

I liked the story, and I found it interesting to have such large chunks of uninterrupted dialog (ie letters) by the different characters. And requiring the player to type the responses... it was almost like you were Reijiro. And it was interesting to type the same thing several times... it brought a kind of intimacy...
Personally, I liked the music.
Grammatical mistakes were a bit of a problem. Some of it seemed like some text was misplaced- I think that may already have been mentioned though...
Some other things that bothered me a little, that most likely no one else cares about...

The cohabitation of ending 3 was a little annoying. I just find that kind of thing very unromantic - old school values i guess... Also, Hirae's shirt in the second to last picture of her in ending 3 is... a little too tight >_< . Seriously, it looks like she's not wearing a bra- it looks very unnatural, and so comes off to me as cheap fan service- which seems way out of place. I know, it's no big deal, and I didn't even notice it the first time I watched that ending. The actual image doesn't bother me much- it's just that it seems out of place. I just don't understand why it was drawn like that, especially after all the beautiful previous pictures... Anyway, I'll stop ranting now ^_^;;;

I do have a question about ending three...

In ending 3, it says
"and how I even sensed the difference... when it was her"
Yet, ending 3 doesn't even mention Umeko... It seems as though Hirae never even tells Reijiro about her... And what does it mean, he "sensed the difference"? As far as I could tell, Reijiro had no clue what was going on...

[mikey]

First of all, I'm very happy that it worked like this for you, because it was exactly the intended effect. I was hoping that by re-typing each leter a few times, the player will have more time to work with the concentrated information that was in the letters. If one would just read them (once), they probably wouldn't have time to work, plus the game would be REALLY short.

In response to the other questions:

Those are actually Hirae's promo pictures, not photographs with Reijiro. The bit of fanservice (heck, even I didn't know that one thing was there until you pointed that out ^_^) was something I wanted to show how Hirae was "marketed" - the Hirae Reijiro will know by then is of course different than the idol they made from her in her promo pictures.

Concerning the ending, I put that in to veeeery gently hint that Hirae probably did tell Reijiro after all at some point. I didn't want to elaborate on just how that happened, so I just wanted to show that she wasn't going to keep it secret from Reijiro and that ultimately he would love Hirae regardless. It may not be all too perfectly done, but...

[PyTom]

I wonder, though, if everyone reads the words in the letters while typing them. It's possible to type things without actually reading them, instead typing in the letters one at a time. The time pressure of the game might even contribute to that, as would the fact that a simple mistake (omitting a letter) could lead to disastrous consequences.

It reminds me, in a sense, of the monk-copyists copying bibles in the middle ages. From what I understand, most of them were illiterate, and so only copied sequences of letters, rather than words. So if one made a mistake, it would propogate through all the other bibles copied from the mistaken bible... There are people who try to make phylogenic tree reconstructions of bible ancestry, based on these mistakes.

[Guest]

Great Game thought it could do with a little walk throught so you known how to play it

[mikey]

I don't know about walkthroughs (because there isn't much to figure out, just paths to follow), but a few tips and instructions that don't reveal the story were included in the readme.


It's a typing game. You type letters exactly as they appear.
The story will progress and you'll have to make choices.

A few playing tips:
-------------------
- the game saves automatically after each completed letter
so that you can have a high score for the path you choose.
- the Hall of Records will only register typing speed. The
number of mistakes will make no difference here.
- use ENTER to advance screens
- mouse is supported, but keyboard control is suggested
- the text is case sensitive
- there is a time limit for each letter
- each mistake will shorten the time limit

The best strategy is to try to make as little mistakes as
possible as a priority and then worry about typing speed.

A typing tactic can be typing line by line if you can't
type without looking at the keyboard.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing!

[ShiraiJunichi]

The time pressure of the game might even contribute to that, as would the fact that a simple mistake (omitting a letter) could lead to disastrous consequences.

Perhaps then, a better idea for the game engine is to wait until the user types the spacebar, then check to see if the word is incorrect or not. That way, as long as you hit the space bar for each word, you'll always be on track- and you can only get one error per word.

[mikey]

It's been almost a year and a half since the last post... time sure flies. Hmmm... anyway...

Following an e-mail about this game pointing out once again its difficulty... for the person that sent it to me and for all those who have had troubles with this game before, couldn't finish it because it was too hard and frustrating, we now have the "friendly executable" available for download.

This is basically a debug executable, just drop it into the "data" subdirectory and run it - now you can make as many mistakes as you want and clearing the game shouldn't be a problem. I still encourage people to try to type the text as it appears to get better immersed, since simply reading and having space pressed makes the game too short and doesn't let the words settle.

http://atp.manga.sk/games/it/it.htm
The game still has its quirks at at one point the screen goes black - just wait a few seconds until it shows the following letter, clicking hastily may skip the letter... take your time and it's best played with the keyboard.

Anyway, just enjoy - it's been a very long time, and I don't remember a lot of the game myself, so I don't know how quickly I'm going to be able to answer specific questions...