Visual novel spotlight - week 1

thanks for this :)

Story: sad and disturbing, but still nice. I liked framing device revealed at the end - protagonist took poison during first lines and waits for it to take effect while retelling events leading to this tragedy. Story starts somewhat weak - at first I thought it's going to be about high school romance, wasn't expecting medieval nobles and peasants. However this also made the death of the girl and "red wedding" even more shocking - don't know if it was the writer's intent from the beginning.

Graphics: Images are nothing special - only five simple pencil drawings. I never wanted to close the program to avoid looking at them so they're good enough. Choice of font is questionable - it fits with overall pencil sketch style, but hard to read. Main menu and settings are just bad design - extremely hard to see light grey items on white background.

Sound: There aren't any. Could be better with some sad tune playing, though.

Thank you, i'll be playing it soon.
I would love to see more of these kind of posts!

downloaded it ~ but for now.. i really have this itch to shoot some cops in the face.. with a shotgun.. while making meth... so hopefully ill get back to it and leave some actual feedback.

Thanks for taking the time to write all the stuff that you do, you are really dedicated.

Will check it at weekend... I've already downloaded it but I can't find time to play it... huh

The game is really short. Graphic is very minimal, just some sketch without any coloring. No music and voice acting.

SPOILER

Tragic story is okay, still some of it doesn't make sense. Why MC didn't ask for a doctor when Celeste in such pain? It's obvious something wrong with her health. Instead just by her side he should be searching for medical help. He have 40 minutes, plenty of times. Noble family should have at least a family doctor. What I mean is the event where Celeste dying is too simple.

Also the event when MC take his revenge could be elaborate more. How exactly he carry his plan, all by himself? Did he really slain everyone, all his family? Why? I mean, the only jerk is his father. Can't he just eliminate his father, took over his family and start a grand campaign to conquer the world?

Overall it's okay game, it's simple but that's to be expected.

Week 2 will come soon,I didn't get the chance to work on it because the site was mostly down.
Edit: up.

Bump for week 2 up!

40 Minutes to Eternity revisited.
Feeling the need to update my impressions after playing newer version of this novel.

First of all, now it has music and graphics, which is great. After all, visual novels should enhance story with sound and images, not just read in silence like ordinary books. Character portarits are not on a pro level, but at least they are in color now – step forward compared with pencil scetches. Backgrounds are some stock images and there is nothing wrong with that. Music choice is quite appropriate, tracks fit the story mood well.

I liked how story was extended, new characters introduced and old received some personality and motivations - there were very little personality and motivations in early version. Now it’s clear from the beginning that this is not another modern high school romance. I liked how court intrigues were added to story in addition to class struggle. Protagonist became much more likeable, because now he kills only his father, who deserved it, instead of murdering both his own family and family of his arranged wife in early version.

But with extended script came many plot holes.
It’s said that Aidan’s father raped the queen – how he managed to do that? I thought queen supposed to live in palace with lots of guards and servants and it would be easy for her to prevent any unwelcome advances or at least have him executed afterwards.
After that Aidan’s father and Aidan himself are said to have claims on the throne. How’s that? Either their country has really weird matrimonial-raping inheritance laws or the father was the king’s relative, but there was no mention of this.

I didn’t feel any empathy to Clair and found her boring compared to mischievous Victoria. Her and Aidan’s written messages exchange started to look hilarious when I imagined how they were sitting under the rain writing long and carefully worded love letters then waiting 30 minutes for other to answer with same. There was even a line in the novel how Aidan kneeled before Claire for what felt to him like eternity while she wrote her answer – no less than two pages of text. Also, Claire belongs in Katawa Shoujo.
Aidan’s final confrontation with father was rather disappointing. If it was some other game genre, I would call it anticlimatic. The father brags that he was watching Aidan and that Aidan can’t kill him, then Aidan reveals that he learned father’s only weakness… to being shot with pistol! Bang!

In conclusion, i liked newer version much better and even found some comedy in this tragedy.