Honestly one of the biggest disappointments I've ever had on this site. When the first demo came out in 2020 it was promising and the art quality was higher than 90% of games. After that it was one of my most anticipated games, but the dev said it would take longer to make and so I just checked into it every once in a while.
Now, 4 years later, they finally released the FIRST update since the original demo. I thought this was going to be a huge update since they had taken so long to create it. Nope, turns out it's about one scene per character, to get the scene you have to follow the exact correct dialogue tree to get it (where sometimes it's not even obvious which is the correct answer), and all scenes aren't even animated. If it wasn't for a guide in the thread for what path to take in dialogue, I would've given up way earlier in the game. With the correct path, the game takes less than an hour, probably less than half an hour if you skip the dialogue (which is not worth reading at all, just a bunch of surface-level nonsense).
Generally, I feel like I'm pretty lenient on developers but this game has no excuse. Just speaking on the code side, even though the dev wasn't experienced at all and is mostly an artist, this amount of content should not have taken 4 years and is a huge disappointment. A beginner at Ren'Py could've made something better in a month of learning from scratch. Also for whatever reason the optimization is terrible, the game is way too bloated for its amount of content and runs so slowly that I can't even remember the last time I played a Ren'Py game that ran so poorly.
As for the art, there's no doubt that they are a great artist but not even having every scene animated is another thing that they surely could've accomplished in 4 YEARS for less than 10 scenes.
Overall, I probably would've been more satisfied if Toto had just canceled the game instead of stringing us along for all this time just to release a half-baked mess of a game that falls in the pile of mediocrity that 90% of games here sit in. I honestly couldn't recommend this game to anyone and would just wait for the scenes to go up on a gallery site or on a playthrough if you like the art.
Now, 4 years later, they finally released the FIRST update since the original demo. I thought this was going to be a huge update since they had taken so long to create it. Nope, turns out it's about one scene per character, to get the scene you have to follow the exact correct dialogue tree to get it (where sometimes it's not even obvious which is the correct answer), and all scenes aren't even animated. If it wasn't for a guide in the thread for what path to take in dialogue, I would've given up way earlier in the game. With the correct path, the game takes less than an hour, probably less than half an hour if you skip the dialogue (which is not worth reading at all, just a bunch of surface-level nonsense).
Generally, I feel like I'm pretty lenient on developers but this game has no excuse. Just speaking on the code side, even though the dev wasn't experienced at all and is mostly an artist, this amount of content should not have taken 4 years and is a huge disappointment. A beginner at Ren'Py could've made something better in a month of learning from scratch. Also for whatever reason the optimization is terrible, the game is way too bloated for its amount of content and runs so slowly that I can't even remember the last time I played a Ren'Py game that ran so poorly.
As for the art, there's no doubt that they are a great artist but not even having every scene animated is another thing that they surely could've accomplished in 4 YEARS for less than 10 scenes.
Overall, I probably would've been more satisfied if Toto had just canceled the game instead of stringing us along for all this time just to release a half-baked mess of a game that falls in the pile of mediocrity that 90% of games here sit in. I honestly couldn't recommend this game to anyone and would just wait for the scenes to go up on a gallery site or on a playthrough if you like the art.
Love the art style! I hope the "abandoned" tag is only temporary and that Toto is still working on this visual novel n.nU there's not many of these animal crossing parodies, and here's hoping that this doesnt get struck down by Nintendo's Fun Police -_-
