Yeah people who have an understanding of how Japanese words are pronounced will take much longer to get the joke. The Japanese pronunciation is the canonically correct one.
Io's really interesting in that regard. She's the only character of the 20 main girls who I didn't actually have an idea for. I just wanted to challenge myself in making a cute, green-haired girl since that's not normally a hair color I'm into. So when she and Uta won the first new dorm poll, I really started worrying. I went through a lot of different ideas in my head for Io and none of them did what I wanted them to do. It wasn't until the day I started writing this update that I figured out where I want to go with her- and she's now one of my favorite characters in the game to write for.
I was actually asked about this in the Discord yesterday. Around the 3k mark, I realized that there was a big chance for the second dorm room to fill up, so I started theorizing where I could go if that happened long before it actually did. I had time to connect certain characters together, like Nodoka and Futaba's relationship as well as the Yasu thing you mentioned in your post. Overall, the draft of the story hasn't really strayed from where it was always going to go- but it got a hell of a lot bigger. And I don't mean that in just an interpersonal relationship point. The underlying mystery of this world has greatly expanded and I'm now confident I can much-further embellish on why things are the way they are, how they got that way, and what (if anything) can be done to "fix" it. Granted, this also means it will take a lot longer to fully tell the story, but we've now got almost 30 congruent character subplots to focus on as well.
Having this many characters is actually kind of a blessing in that sense because it allows me to throw people into certain situations they'd have never had to deal with if the new characters didn't exist. It's also why I'm not fond of the critique of having "too many characters" or "not focusing on the ones in the game now" because, like I've been saying since the start, everything is connected. All of the characters grow together. And, not to toot my own horn here, but I think the pacing of that has been rather good.
I've kind of derailed from the purpose of this response in saying that and have now gotten myself sidetracked, but this game was never designed to let people just keep spending time with one character they like- it was to display different types of people with different types of issues and force everyone to water all of them. To cultivate a garden of broken or misguided girls that will remain with you long after the game comes to an end. The more girls in this game, the more stories I can tell and the more lessons I can teach.
Final point, long detached from the purpose of this reponse: I'm going to put as many characters into the game as I want and I am going to make you love (or hate) all of them.
Final point 2, back on topic/tldr: The grand plans haven't changed, they've just gotten exponentially more detailed.
I got the joke pretty qquick and I understand Japanese on a basic level, such as how their vowel sounds work, which is the part you were hinting at. I would explain for those that don't know the difference in vowel sounds, but it would ruin the joke, so I'll keep my mouth shut on that.
As for Io, I initially thought she would be some timid character like Sana, but not socially awkward on top of her timidity like Sana is. Then came the surprise, well played, I can't wait for her to start setting verbal traps like her original cast counterpart.
You're missing my point. It's ok that this game is different. But specifically about the "puzzle", it's too unexpected. You're not required to remember anything for almost whole game. For a very long time there's no hint that you should. The first one is way too late, maybe it's even after (but I'm not completely sure about that) you saw and forgot some other parts, because you couldn't have known that they are important.
No, everything is very well timed. The information is fairly obvious that it is important, why would it even come up at all otherwise? It wouldn't be important information without the puzzle, so it would have no use and could be discarded entirely for something of no importance, but equal impact to the story. If the information had been presented at a point where you couldn't find out before the puzzle, I would agree, but it is presented before the puzzle. Even the very last line of dialogue the player ever sees before the puzzle is sufficient as long as said player isn't doing themselves a disservice by skipping text.
As for that last part, a computer program is one running theory as to where the story is going to lead.
Honestly, that puzzle section was just originally going to be the IP address and nothing else. But then some cuck went against the one thing I asked people not to do and ruined it for everyone.
That being said, I actually love how that scene came out and am excited to figure out another way to make people quit next.
Not going to happen. I may have put my part 2 run on hold until I figure out what exactly happened in my original run, the memory issue, but I am not giving up, not even you can get me to. If there's ever only one player left standing, you know who it'll be. I say bring it on, make things harder, even. I'm up for a good challenge.
Also, remind me never to get on your bad side.
Certainly a more prominent character for myself as well, and that has been done from the get go just from the introductory update. Will be interesting to see where you'll take her. I'm seeing a lot of options, one more intriguing than the next. But then again, you've already proven to be more than capable of pulling a rug from under the most seemingly mundane and "normal" characters like Makoto (I'm looking at you, Bluejay) and turning them upside down, not to mention instantly a front and center of attention and interest. So who knows what you can do with already interesting character like Io going forward. Either way, you are certainly making reading the story more and more worth it with each update.
Indeed
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember the game telling you explicitly to remember the IP address...I even took a screenshot of it and backed it up onto cloud cause I thought it would be useful later on...
The other parts about the terminal and stuff were hard though, cause that came out of the blue. Glad selebus made an option to replay every scene so it wasn't a pain in the ass going through the game again
Indeed it does, good call on the screenshot. I didn't make it that far in my ill fated reset, but I was planning on writing it down via Notepad along with any other useful notes.
I can very much understand that from my recent foray into being a writist.
My project basically only has 1 character and I find from time to time the creative juices run out. I'm getting around it by effectively writing in vignettes so I can think about another part of the story. But sometimes I just get a bit bored of writing the character.
I'm also finding by having 1 character that I'm falling into the Tomb Raider reboot problem where it feels like I'm torturing her. Imagine if all the shit you're piling on your characters was all put on the shoulders of one of them - I reckon it would just feel mean.
I could see it, especially with how bad some of the problems in the story are, like with Rin or even Miku. Also, yeah, been there, writer's block is the freaking worst.
Exactly. The reason I’m able to put out content so frequently and not get burned out is because I structured the world in a way where that would never have time to happen. I’m never writing more than 5 events for a character at a time, so jumping to someone else with a different voice reinvigorates me. I’ve worked on other VNs as a scenario writer or editor with far less work and burned out soooo much faster due to lack of variety
Great planning on your part, all you really have to worry about is any health concerns or real life issues that arise since, like you said, you won't get burned out. Doing so few also allows you to focus on those few for a quality over quantity approach to the writing. No wonder you're so good at this.
As I said, I come back with an opinion. About the game: it's interesting, the characters are well done, all girls stories are interesting, the game already has a lot of content.
I saw that many people had something to say about my opinion about breast size.
Well it's strictly about tastes in this case, personally after I played and saw better the characters I prefer the size of Haruka's breasts. And I don't like unreal huge breasts either, as one user said above. I consider round breasts and a little perky to be beautiful and of course without an exaggerated size. When I said "bigger is better" it was a little joke i wasn't referring to some huge unreal breasts...
I understand that the developer has preferences for smaller breasts and I respect his preferences.
After all, you must also like the work you do. And I saw that although most girl have small breasts, there are also characters with larger breasts. So an extra point for the developer because he tried to please everyone. Further success in the development of the game!
Hey, to each their own. I'm actually on the extreme opposite end, a 'flat is justice' type, so the smaller the better, but I will accept any size up to apparent C-cups with average writing or literally any size with good writing. With writing this good, I'm even willing to accept literal blimp sized ones, though Koikatsu isn't exactly equipped to handle them at that size. You can only go so far before clipping and other issues occur.
