Katawa Shoujo Act 1 Preview feedback thread

[evirus]

BUG: After going through the Hanako route to the end, i automatically unlock the Lilly ending as well without having actually went through that ending sequence.

Website Issue: i notice that when a new tab(mozilla) is opened from the dev blog's "Katawa Shoujo Links" clicking on another link will cause the window previously opened to redirect to the new link, i noticed this when clicking on the main site link to check my spelling of the character names above, causing mozilla to navigate off of the page that i was typing up this reply on.

[Hellmouth]

I’m glad this game is far from the typical Main Character archetypes I’ve found in visual novels. Hisao is neither an unnecessary asshole nor a complete moron. That said I’m at odds with how I feel about the general atmosphere and the situations between the characters and themselves in the demo. On one hand you guy can really set up the basis for melodrama without falling off the deep end to drive that sob story a little deeper. The quiet unspoken sadness throughout the backgrounds is haunting my subconscious as I bump into each girl that actually read like someone dealing with their situations and possible social phobias. And yet at the same time, Goddamn what is up with the Gangland level feuds between some of these girls? I mean I know there’s a barrier between people like Lilly and Shizune but you lot are really pulling at my heartstrings by forcing me to abandon someone to pick another in these choices. And I don’t know whether to be disappointed or satisfied that all of these girls have just physical problems and not more mental issues (Although I can certainly argue the latter for some of these characters). All things considered it’s for the best as girl psychology in visual novels has probably become a joke which is already been horrifically beaten to death.

But as everyone else has already stated, kudos /a/ssociates. You made a passing idea into something extraordinary. Of course by setting the bar so high with this demo you may be positioning yourselves for more stress and complications then anyone could imagine. So tread carefully.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

I'm not all that far at all in Act 1 (just made it to the Library) but I already have several things to comment on and point out (also in an attempt to clean out my save list >_>) Please don't yell at me if this seems like I'm too criticizing, it's just the beta tester in me trying to make KS the best it can be. D:

• Some of those effects + transitions at the same time had noticable lag on my Athlon XP 2100+. When I oc'd it @ 2GHz, it was much less noticable but was still maxing out my CPU to 100% in the task manager. Yeah it's an older CPU, but it can even run 720p h.264 quite well when oc'd - making me think the effects are quite unoptimized. I'm also assuming Ren'Py has no OpenGL support, because my Radeon 9600 256MB AGP would've blasted through those effects (yeah it's an older gpu, but it can still run newer things like Portal or Team Fortress 2 quite well with bloom, hdr, etc.) Sure you could just turn the transitions off, but I like eye candy (hence why I have a GPU - yeah an older one, but my whole PC could use an upgrade, so I won't waste money on an AGP card). Unfortunatly this is probably stuff dealing with the engine and things you guys can't do anything about. Guess I'll just have to just live with it.
  
  No scroll wheel support. In the newer VNs I've played you were able to use scroll down to "Advance" (the same as left-click does) and scroll up to read the "text history". (I used the terminology from the gamepad config page) Fate/stay night is the oldest one I've played that had this feature (2004). Interestingly enough, when you have to make a decision, scrolling up DOES show the text history.
  
  Speaking of pad config, when mapping "Select/Advance" in the gamepad config page, the text in the pop-up message runs off of the pop-up window background.
  
  The music volume between different songs isn't equal (or at least close). ReplayGain anyone? (no dynamic range compression, PLEASE no D: That just hurts the audio...) But I don't believe Ren'Py supports ReplayGain, so you'll have to apply it to a FLAC, and use something like Foobar2000 to apply permanent ReplayGain to an exported WAV, and THEN convert to OGG vorbis.

Bah, I'm too lazy right now to go into the actual issues I made save files for >_> It being 02:55 really doesn't help either...

[Tanukki]

It's pure awesMOE!

Really the best part is that although it's Japanese style, it's a lot more pleasurable to read than the VNs that were translated to English. Can't wait for the rest.

[sydwert]

Really the best part is that although it's Japanese style, it's a lot more pleasurable to read than the VNs that were translated to English. Can't wait for the rest.

though the BGs arent. they look like western oil paintings or something. not that its any worse than conventional manga style art

[Mina]

Thank you for sharing.Now I'm playing this game,so I do not finish playing.But I can't resist from writing this....Misha is so cute!! I think I will like to Suzune but Misha is so pretty.She is so blight and kind girl.I really like her!! But I've not met my Emi who is my favorite girl so far....in fact I read this site.Haha so I don't know who is my favorite at last but .....I can say Misha is so lovely.
English is not my first language(I'm Japanese) and it's a bit hard to play this game for me*lol* BUT I CAN'T STOP TO PLAY THIS.Very fun!! These musics in this game are wonderful.
I'm too exciting.Thank you for sharing,again and again!

[Captain_Morgan]

I must say, I really enjoyed the demo.
So far it has a compelling story, great art, great music, and just a very polished feel to it. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product...which should be coming out when? Even a rough estimate would do.

Also, I was kind of getting a vibe that Hanako may be the "main" girl, so to speak. True, I was focusing on her during the demo, but I just had this vibe while I was playing. IDK, maybe when I go through the demo once more, I'll see things differently.

Misha kind of seemed a bit...ditzy I suppose.
Shizune came off as a bit of a bitch.
I didn't see too much of Emi, though she is a likeable character.
Lilly seemed more like an older sister than a potential love interest.
Rin...well, she was awesome, so I suppose she could be in competition with Hanako.
With Hanako, something drew me to her, I guess. Judging from the polls, I would guess that a lot of people would agree. Maybe we all have a thing for someone who is "damaged" (no pun intended).

Seeing as how this was only a demo, I am certain that the characters will be fleshed out more. Hell, I may even come around to liking Misha and Shizune. Thanks again, and I look forward to when the project is finally complete.

[Brasse]

OK, I'm currently on my second playthrough and I'm trying to get Shizune (During my first I simply selected random choices and somehow ended up with Emi) and I have to say that I am impressed. It is obvious that much loved has been put into the characters and the game itself. I really like the art style, especially the backgrounds. You guys have, in my opinion, been quite generous with content and dialog, and I am looking forward to the final release. The only aspect that disappointed me was the music. But I guess it is rather unfair of me to say state such things as I had very large expectations on the music.

Also, I have to add that the use of the English language impressed me. This is probably the first H-game with a wide vocabulary and an intelligent usage of phrases.

Keep up the references by the way! I chuckled when I saw the Kafka and JFK references, and i really wish that anime, manga and VNs would, to a larger degree, make satire of current world events, politics, history et cetera.

[evirus]

i have a question... when i was playing thought the first time i was going for Shizune, thinking that Shizune and Misha might end up being a "package deal" (seeing as how their metaphorically joined at the hip) any possibility of seeing adult scenes with that dynamic actually played out ?

[unkind]

The artwork, writing, presentation and style are all amazing for a non-professional team. It's all way better than MANY paid game releases.

The game is so good I don't even care that there aren't voices, which I thought would bother me. I think you guys are doing a really great job on Katawa Shoujo . Thank you for your work.

[BcDed]

English is not my first language(I'm Japanese) and it's a bit hard to play this game for me*lol* BUT I CAN'T STOP TO PLAY THIS.Very fun!!

I think it's really awesome that this game is so good people whose first language is japanese and who have far more options than english speaking people are choosing to play this game. Thats an obvious sign of how well made this is.

[DME]

Wonderful work so far. Keep it up, I can't wait to see the rest of it. I was really amazed by the intro cinematic, it was very atmospheric.

One niggle I had was with this sentence:

It doesn't make that much sense to me. Should it not be "Lilly never sees how quickly my palm meets my face at her sly accusation"?

[ZettoSan]

The music has this weird thing about when it loops. It's like, there is a definite silence or tic off beat that I can tell "Oh, the track looped itself here."

Maybe that's only because I am an audiophile, but in any case, it's annoying.

[AppreciativeUser]

It doesn't make that much sense to me. Should it not be "Lilly never sees how quickly my palm meets my face at her sly accusation"?

I'm not a big fan of the word 'never' there, since it seems to suggest that this happened in the past when it clearly just happened. I'd change it to this, for what it's worth:

"Lilly doesn't see how quickly my palm meets my face at her sly accusation."

[Guest]

There is one thing that really annoyed me, the constant (over)use of "I guess." The characters seem to guess a lot, I'm starting to wonder if they know anything at all.

When it comes to praise I guess I will just echo everyone else, they all more or less took the words right out of my mouth.

I guess.