Ren'Py Lessons in Love [v0.48.0] [Selebus]

[Moonflare]

Times New Roman and Waiting Room, I get. But Sensei Quest? That was just basic old-school JRPG logic.

you don't get why trying to guess sequences of successive random lists of attack patterns that go as high as 11, and only if you had the foresight to farm enough to get all the special attacks in the first place, all in a game that a large percentage of people would agree would be better without any puzzles, might be annoying?

 

[Apollo259]

The game clearly deliberately employs an interpretation of the Verfremdungseffekt. Its not a particularly complex thing to say, I would say everyone that has played the game will have noticed it even if they don't know there is some silly German word for what they have seen. Its probably one of the more clear things you can observe in the game with the amount of blatant 4th wall breaking and other moments such as; the "bread your nice minigame", having to reload a save to go back and get the Alexis event, the stupid reset puzzles, etc.

Speaking of the puzzles. Its kind of interesting to me that all games in general are basically permanently interacting with the idea of the "Verfremdungseffekt" to a far grater degree than most other mediums for telling a story. They require the player to actively ignore all the "video gamey" aspects of a game if they want to become "immersed" in it. If you are someone that plays a lot of games its already ingrained in you to ignore these things. If you ever get someone who has never played a game to play one a lot of the time they will hit various walls that you, as an experienced game player likely never even notice or thought would exist. Everything from controls and game mechanics that seem obvious to you, to things like using their inventory, saving and loading, respawning at the last checkpoint, even various UI elements that you might have an almost instinctual understanding of can create a disconnect for them. All that could be seen as a form of the "Verfremdungseffekt" that you have stared at for so long you are fully desensitized to. So with that in mind how would a game implement Brechtian ideas in a way that would actually be noticed by experienced game players, when we have trained our whole lives to ignore them. And I guess that's how you end up with the insufferable puzzles Sel put in this game and a lot of the other 4th wall stuff some people seem to hate.

Tangent aside, all I'm saying is that to call this game Brechtian is one of the more normal things you can say about it. Compared to some of the theories we manage to come up with. Its based in an established idea rather then our sometimes entirely insane readings of single paragraphs of text and singular images that look like a mad man drew them in MS Paint (he did).

 

[Detective Dc345]

I try to do each reset puzzle once with out the URM. In terms of puzzles I think Times New Roman is probably the easiest one excluding the find the light puzzle. The Waiting Room I don't remember because I was drunk as shit when I did it, but I got past it. Untitled wasn't that bad, but Tsuneyo's Franklin Delaware Roosevelt question almost made me put a hole in my screen. Life of Prizes can eat a bag of dicks. Word of the Day is the rest puzzle stumped me the hardest because I was the skip to the sex player at the time and I skipped the bird number and had to play the entire game over to find it. And the first reset puzzle was pretty straight forward.

 

[barglenarglezous]

you don't get why trying to guess sequences of successive random lists of attack patterns that go as high as 11, and only if you had the foresight to farm enough to get all the special attacks in the first place, all in a game that a large percentage of people would agree would be better without any puzzles, might be annoying?

Nowhere near as annoying as any of the other puzzles in the game.

Old school JRPGs were literally "grind against easy mobs, buy upgrades, use those upgrades to fight harder mobs, buy more upgrades, etc; rinse and repeat until you have all the best items in the game, then go kill Foozle the Evil Wizard."

Hell, Selebus literally gives you a hint by calling it "Sensei Quest" (a callback Dragon Quest) and using the Slime sprite from the Dragon Quest games. An actual hint! He never does those.

We even got a hint about the two junk items that don't do anything -- because Himaraii has told us that "she's not that kind of character," so obviously the two super-expensive "sex scenes" are troll items.

The boss fight is just pattern recognition -- which is also a callback to the old school JRPGs, where boss attacks were usually a set pattern that you had to memorize to counter optimally.

Every other reset puzzle has been painfully obtuse. This one was straightforward with an obvious progression path.

 

[Fire Lord Zuko]

I enjoy the Reset Puzzles for all the weird shit they contain and also because they feel like genuine obstacles you (and Akira) have to overcome.

During Resets, Akira always runs the risk of losing himself, and often blacks out. I enjoy having a sense of agency and feeling more involved in surviving yet another Reset.

Of course, I’m likely in the minority about that, but that’s why I like them.

I definitely will acknowledge that there are certainly some annoying and damn near impossible tasks without looking into the script or using URM, though. Those coffee questions in Times New Roman, man… Just why?

 

[givemeabeer]

To make use of the post for other stuff, here are some other random bits (mostly from the end of chapter 3):

Wait... That was the end of chapter 3?
So all the story about Sensei trauma appear at the beginning of chapter 4?

Fuck... the chapter 4 is really long and dense!
Chapter 5 gonna be truly interesting, if everything escalate that quickly already.

 

[Moonflare]

Nowhere near as annoying as any of the other puzzles in the game.

Old school JRPGs were literally "grind against easy mobs, buy upgrades, use those upgrades to fight harder mobs, buy more upgrades, etc; rinse and repeat until you have all the best items in the game, then go kill Foozle the Evil Wizard."

Hell, Selebus literally gives you a hint by calling it "Sensei Quest" (a callback Dragon Quest) and using the Slime sprite from the Dragon Quest games. An actual hint! He never does those.

We even got a hint about the two junk items that don't do anything -- because Himaraii has told us that "she's not that kind of character," so obviously the two super-expensive "sex scenes" are troll items.

The boss fight is just pattern recognition -- which is also a callback to the old school JRPGs, where boss attacks were usually a set pattern that you had to memorize to counter optimally.

Every other reset puzzle has been painfully obtuse. This one was straightforward with an obvious progression path.

All I'm getting from this is that you either liked it or found it less annoying than the other ones. Which is valid, but also not the point of what you said in the first place. You said you don't get why I'm saying I found them annoying, to which I replied about why I do, and then you further reply with "but that's just the way old j-rpgs work". Well, I'm not playing an old j-rpg, I'm playing a game that I wish didn't have any puzzles.

One does not have to agree with someone's opinion to get them. If you really can't understand why someone would find sensei-quest annoying, then I don't know what to tell you. I get why people like the puzzles, I, however, operate from the notion that I wish this game played like a book that I could just read. There's no right way to feel about things here imo.

 

[hopeisdead6969]

I think it’s pretty clear that the author of this game utilizes a classic form of the hetstinkypoopenmannen approach to writing, while applying the more modernist shittenheaden ideals to his squirtenprose.

But that’s just one man’s opinion.

 

[Moonflare]

Still waiting for the rock mystery to be solved:

Spoiler: Remember to smile

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[hopeisdead6969]

Still waiting for the rock mystery to be solved:

Spoiler: Remember to smile

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Is that actually Ayane in that scene, or is it Himawari? Or do we know for sure?

 

[Moonflare]

Is that actually Ayane in that scene, or is it Himawari? Or do we know for sure?

Hard to say, because it happens before he leaves the room aka during his blackout. That would point to it happening inside of his head, but then "Ayane" says a lot of stuff that he wouldn't know about. I don't know. Our Ayane certainly had nothing to do with it since she goes straight from the karaoke room to the roof, and that "Ayane" was on the roof alone for 35 days. Either Himawari will one day reference it, or I fear it will be just another of those things left forgotten.
------------------------------------
On the other hand, I need about a thousand hugs. Goddamn it, I'm running out of tears again.

Spoiler: Remember to smile

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[hopeisdead6969]

Hard to say, because it happens before he leaves the room aka during his blackout. That would point to it happening inside of his head, but then "Ayane" says a lot of stuff that he wouldn't know about. I don't know. Our Ayane certainly had nothing to do with it since she goes straight from the karaoke room to the roof, and that "Ayane" was on the roof alone for 35 days. Either Himawari will one day reference it, or I fear it will be just another of those things left forgotten.
------------------------------------
On the other hand, I need about a thousand hugs. Goddamn it, I'm running out of tears again.

Spoiler: Remember to smile

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I was thinking that was when that went happened, which is why I thought it might not be the real her. I hope it comes up again, too, because it’s such a strange and specific series of events and lines.

EDIT: Also, HUGS!

 

[givemeabeer]

Hard to say, because it happens before he leaves the room aka during his blackout. That would point to it happening inside of his head, but then "Ayane" says a lot of stuff that he wouldn't know about. I don't know. Our Ayane certainly had nothing to do with it since she goes straight from the karaoke room to the roof, and that "Ayane" was on the roof alone for 35 days. Either Himawari will one day reference it, or I fear it will be just another of those things left forgotten.
------------------------------------
On the other hand, I need about a thousand hugs. Goddamn it, I'm running out of tears again.

Spoiler: Remember to smile

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I have the same 3 screenshots.

Well, I guess we're not alone...

Oh, and, PrayForMaya. Of course.

 

[shmurfer]

Wait... That was the end of chapter 3?
So all the story about Sensei trauma appear at the beginning of chapter 4?

Fuck... the chapter 4 is really long and dense!
Chapter 5 gonna be truly interesting, if everything escalate that quickly already.

Spoiler: This is the final image of Chapter 3 (other than the endcard)

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[Moonflare]

Wait a minute, is this new? I remember reading those words, but I don't recall it being like this (first picture).

Spoiler: On the count of three/not the nightingale

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I think it could also be a case of not showing up in replay, but let's see if someone remembers it.

 

[Apollo259]

Regarding Yumi's tsundere nature. I get the impression that its more of a borderline thing than full on tsundere. Its not that she already likes him at the start of the game. Its that she wants to rely on him. (I'm pretty sure the game outright says this at some point) Not necessarily as a love interest at first, but just a person that wont give up on, or abandon/hurt her. Its a struggle between wanting to rely on him/trust him, but over and over seeing and learning things about him that scream to her that she should not. She learns these things and it upsets her, I don't think its entirely because she learns he might love someone else as you would expect from a jealous tsundere, but more that she learns he is a predator and keeps seeing things that confirm it to her. It's that repeated destruction of what in her mind she wanted him to be. Over and over again she reconciles something he did and he does something else. But in much the same way that she seems to still love her mum despite it all. She still wants to rely on Akira despite everything she learns about who he is. The struggle is the conflict between knowing what he is and that he will inevitably hurt her. The fear of that. But still caring about him despite everything and her having no idea what to do about it. Throw in the teenage hormones to further complicate it, as well as other things I did not mention. Then you end up with a character that I don't think is actually tsundere in the traditional sense.

Perhaps that all still fits under the tsundere umbrella and I'm just holding an umbrella that's been mangled by the wind without realising it. In which case this post is probably strange to read if I have managed to described tsundere while saying its not entirely tsundere. But I guess writing in depth characters makes it harder if not silly to encompass them in single archetypal categories anyway. So maybe it was pointless for me to type this out and post it in the first place?

 

[Moonflare]

Regarding Yumi's tsundere nature. I get the impression that its more of a borderline thing than full on tsundere. Its not that she already likes him at the start of the game. Its that she wants to rely on him. (I'm pretty sure the game outright says this at some point) Not necessarily as a love interest at first, but just a person that wont give up on, or abandon/hurt her. Its a struggle between wanting to rely on him/trust him, but over and over seeing and learning things about him that scream to her that she should not. She learns these things and it upsets her, I don't think its entirely because she learns he might love someone else as you would expect from a jealous tsundere, but more that she learns he is a predator and keeps seeing things that confirm it to her. It's that repeated destruction of what in her mind she wanted him to be. Over and over again she reconciles something he did and he does something else. But in much the same way that she seems to still love her mum despite it all. She still wants to rely on Akira despite everything she learns about who he is. The struggle is the conflict between knowing what he is and that he will inevitably hurt her. The fear of that. But still caring about him despite everything and her having no idea what to do about it. Throw in the teenage hormones to further complicate it, as well as other things I did not mention. Then you end up with a character that I don't think is actually tsundere in the traditional sense.

Perhaps that all still fits under the tsundere umbrella and I'm just holding an umbrella that's been mangled by the wind without realising it. In which case this post is probably strange to read if I have managed to described tsundere while saying its not entirely tsundere. But I guess writing in depth characters makes it harder if not silly to encompass them in single archetypal categories anyway. So maybe it was pointless for me to type this out and post it in the first place?

I think what you're trying to say is that she's a "realistic" tsundere, which means that it's less of an archetype, and more of her having actual legitimate reasons for both wanting to be near Akira and hating that she does. Which leads to the love/hate not out of "charm", or a character she's playing, but an actual fucked up situation of finding yourself desiring someone you really rather didn't.

Spoiler: 3rd dormwars

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Edit: Also, their children would very likely have silver eyes, since both of them do.

 

[Apollo259]

Wait a minute, is this new? I remember reading those words, but I don't recall it being like this (first picture).

Spoiler: On the count of three/not the nightingale

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I think it could also be a case of not showing up in replay, but let's see if someone remembers it.

I'm pretty sure I remember it from when I first played it. Either way it is excluded from the replay. Which explains why I could never find it again, I just assumed I forgot what event it was in.

Spoiler: $ renpy.end_replay

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Edit: I guess you could look in an older version of the game and see if "proboscis.webp/png" is in the files to confirm.

 

[shmurfer]

I've been trying to have saves for each bit of content that is outside of replays but I gotta clue into the fact that something breaks tradition like having affection scores given and then extra scenes appear.

 

[VoidExile]

Day 36 character count 21568.

Spoiler: Day 486-500, some reactions, thoughts and questions

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Spoiler: Tierlist

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