I appreciate the advise., will take some in to consideration. Cheers!The story shows promise, but here's a few things you should take care of for the future development:
These are just a few things off the top of my head. In either case, I wish you luck on the future development of this one.
- Proofread all text, make sure it fits grammatically, and eliminate spelling/capitalization/punctuation errors. If your grasp on English isn't that good, find someone who can do this for you (either a friend, or someone in the community). This person should also be able to help you with rephrasing some dialogue lines, if they seem too clunky/awkward (when it's not intended to be awkward, that is).
- Like others have mentioned, consider renaming your game. The name IS a good one, but it's already too close to another game. Write down a bunch of alternative name suggestions, and search for each of them in the community threads to see if any game names pop up. It's easier to rename it now, this early in the game development, since save files might not be ready for this yet. Having a similar name to another game/story will only confuse your audience, and those who are fans of the other game will only be angry at you for "capitalizing" on that other game's popularity (even if it was unintentional).
- Reduce your reliance on audio and music. I see that the music library you included contains 708 MB of data already (I unpacked the .rpa file to check this), which is a lot for just a demo or first version. Personally, I prefer muting all audio in preferences before I play, just so I sometimes can watch/listen to something else in the background. I did, however, play through this demo with audio, just to see how this went along, and so far in the story, it doesn't add that much. It's basically just mood music. While we're at it, I noticed that you had a "popup" in the top left corner showing the currently playing music track. This is unnecessary, and detracts from the game/story experience, especially if playing on mute. If you feel you "need" it, make sure you can also hide/disable it in Preferences.
- Also on the note of music, stop forcing audio levels. I tried muting all audio earlier, but as soon as the story progressed to a point where a new music track was being played, the music level was set to 100%, which overrided my previously set preference. If you do this, you'll just annoy your audience.
- Do something about repeatable conversation topics. Either hide previously selected/played conversation topics, or make sure any points awarded only happens on the first time it's selected. Noticable example: When talking to Hannah at the Café, asking her about her hobbies will award you a relation point with Hannah each time you select this dialogue option. Essentially, I could easily boost my relationship with Hannah to 100+ points just by re-selecting this dialogue topic endlessly. There are several methods to resolve this, either by removing the dialogue option once previously selected (which also has several ways to do using code), or by setting a flag to true that this option has already been played, and to only award points if this is the first time the option is selected. Feel free to look into the "menu set" or "menu arguments" part of the
You must be registered to see the links.- Don't rely too heavily on videos and video transitions between scenes. They tend to bloat the game experience. The startup videos were nice, but I'd probably drop the "Powered by Ren'py" logo in that startup sequence. This is information that could instead be put in an "About" section, along with a list of production credits, acknowledgements, and music/audio credits. People who've played other VNs already recognize a Ren'Py-powered game/story when they see one. Feel free to play a few other Ren'Py-powered games/VNs to see how other developers and authors have done this (go to "Latest Updates" in the top menu, and use the "game engine" filter on the side).
- Be sure to have a general outline of your story and possible branches. You may already have this, but this goes for anyone who wants to make a game or VN. Basically, be fully aware of the backstory for each character, and where they could be heading in the course of your game/VN story - there's no need to flesh this out completely, but have keywords on hand as a general overview. I've seen a lot of games/VNs on here that don't seem to know what they're doing, and get hung up on making plot twists to keep the public interested, no matter what has been previously established. You should at the very least know or be aware of the general outline of the story, especially what has already happened in the past, either through gameplay, or through things that have been mentioned about the time before the story of your game/VN started (i.e. the time before the point where you "give control" to the player for the first time).
Overview:
You are a normal 19 year old guy just living his best life.
But all a sudden, everything just flipped right upside down. You died. But how?
And why am I in college? Who did this to me? and what's going on at this college?
You need to find out how you died to prevent yourself from dying but who will help you?
Are the people you meet trustworthy, What's going on behind the scenes at this so called College...
OK, I'm confused I bet the father is dead alsoYou need to find out how you died to prevent yourself from dying
He should change it to A Third ChanceYeah, as others have suggested, you REALLY need to change the name. There was actually second Chance, that was just completed in June [Maks] Second Chance (Complete). Come up with something more Original. This game deserves it.