Demo discussions

lordcruxis wrote:"I need to be unconscious now." No one would ever say that. It sounds weird and wrong.

I would totally say this.  

It is simply an odd turn of phrase.
(I speak English as my first language, fluently and reasonably articulately.)

Yeah, the "I should be unconscious now" thing is odd, but not completely unbelievable that someone would say it. :u I for one think the dialogue was great.

Upon finally playing Grisaia no Kajitsu, which I like, I feel the need to reiterate the bit about the No. of choices vs No. of arcs vs Length of the VN.

Grisaia is 50+ hours with 5 arcs and more or less 8 choices. IMO this is too few and the only reason why I don't love the VN. I think a number around 15 would be more appropriate in this situation.

Also when we say Starswirl is slice of life, are we talking Nakige, potential crying, SoL ala Visual Arts Key? Or more happy-go-lucky?

After playing the demo, I must say I'm impressed considering that it's only a demo, though there are a few things I picked up on. Stuff like the music and transitions (i.e. when one character enters or leaves a scene, they suddenly disappear rather than fading in or out) is stuff that's to be expected from a beta so it's not a massive issue. Same with the few typos I found here and there. There are some bigger issues I did have though. Other things have already been picked up on - like the dialogue where Pinkie asks what their names are. It seemed a little unnatural.

One of them is the way the story is structured. You're just thrown into the action rather than being given any sort of introduction or real clue as to why exactly Tom is going to Starswirl academy in the first place. I can understand if it was all going to be revealed in detail later on, then maybe there wouldn't be quite so much cause to give a full explanation early on, but nevertheless it would be nice for there to be something more than there is just so you're not left wondering what exactly is going on. Also, I'm not sure about meeting Derpy/Applejack/Rarity on the train there. It just seems a little, how shall I put this, forced perhaps. Maybe meeting derpy on her own might make sense, and then introduce Applejack and Rarity later (sometime after Pinkie's tour and the meeting with Celestia). I don't mean to sound as though I'm being overly critical but it didn't seem the most natural place to have a meeting with them. Also, I don't quite understand how you go from Derpy saying that only first years need to attend the first day of school to Pinkie having had classes and Derpy appearing to meet Twi and Tom at the gates.

Maybe that's just me being too critical, and I don't want to sound as though I'm saying it's bad or anything. It's not, and I'd not have a clue where to begin on writing something like this. For the most part, the demo was very impressive, it's just those little things that I noticed which I thought I'd give feedback on. Er, so, yeah. It's good though.

I'm no expert on VN's, but i got into them in late 2012 (around this time) and my first VN was Katawa Shoujo as well. It gave me very fond memories.
In the demo, i loved it a lot. It did remind me of Katawa Shoujo, too. Nothing really ruined the experience for me.
What I think is you should come up with some stuff about Tom, I don't like a person whose serious 24/7 so i hope to see him being goofy and part of any shenanigans going on, at times.
As for the other characters, I don't at all mind Fluttershy's chest. I do see her as a character with some feature to do with her breasts, be they super large or super plump.
I also really really like Derpy. I hope we see her all the time, kind of like the character who you can hang out with without worries and can go to  with your problems, similar to a male protagonist's best friend in most other visual novels. The one thing i didn't like it KS was how different route's would restrict time with other characters, so in any route i'd like to be able to hang out with all the other characters and not just the one girl.
The language is not too big a deal. It's a bit too formal, but i'm in  the south-east so my way of speaking is straight to the point. All you'd need to do is shorten some combinations of words. Won't ruin it though.
And for the game, there will be choices. There has to be to choose which of the Mane Six you love. I don't like it for there to only be 2 choices per route (1 to enter route another to select ending). I say you make it one (1) choice to enter a route, and another 2 or even 3 choices to select your ending. But I want there to be choices that don't effect or redirect the route too largely. These choices can be used to flesh out Tom's personality or characteristics to fit the player. These wouldn't have to be too many, but just a few on the side for extra content that can help make it better as a whole.

Big Bad Wolf wrote:I'm no expert on VN's, but i got into them in late 2012 (around this time) and my first VN was Katawa Shoujo as well. It gave me very fond memories.
In the demo, i loved it a lot. It did remind me of Katawa Shoujo, too. Nothing really ruined the experience for me.

Glad I wasn't the only one who thought of Katawa while reading. It might be the very nice school for "special" studies. Nevertheless I enjoyed it and I wanna read Katawa again because I read this