Katawa Shoujo Act 1 Preview feedback thread

[BustRobot]

What can I say, really? This is the first Visual Novel I have ever played/read (my first visual novel, whoo!) and while I was a little concerned about the title, as I'm sure many were, I applaud the efforts of everyone who is working on the project; it's been very tastefully done. Everything worked brilliantly together, I've really got no complaints (I'm not one to spot the little artistic mistakes or whatever), so all I can say is keep up the great work, I now look forward to the full VN, and thanks for a brilliant first experience with Visual Novels!

[Keimako]

I always paid attention whenever someone mentioned the project since way back then. I was just curious about what was going to happen. I've seen several 'projects' in the other boards, but most of them sunk or were pretty much small time. But this was big. And now I got a first taste.
And I love it. Waiting for the full game is going to be painful. I loved the writing, I loved the graphics, the music. It feels "true", it's funny and keeps me interested. It's a very professional job and the team should be thoroughly praised for this.

[Panuru]

Not only is it rare to have disabled characters in any form of entertainment, but having them treated so humanely (in the literal sense) is wonderful. Far too often such characters are either made of glass or are treated as unspeakably heroic just for living. My fiancee is in a wheelchair, and the main character's adjustment to the people in the school was dead-on what I experienced when I first entered the disabled community. Well, except that I was willing to ask if it bothered people if I said "go for a walk" and such. The reactions of the characters themselves were very familiar, too, especially Rin's sense of humor. Honestly, making that kind of humor even more biting and dark would be more in line with my experience, but I suppose you want to keep the tone upbeat.

Of course, even aside form all that, it's a very entertaining and well-written game. I originally came to this forum to see if donations were being accepted, but I'll take your advice and route it to the March of Dimes instead. Keep up the great work.

[Melancholyanon]

There are some scenes that are overwritten. There's no need to describe things we can see just by looking.

Most of the sprites look good, but Emi's main sprite looks kind of flat. Her face need more depth.

I'd prefer drawn background to filtered photographs but I understand the difficulty in finding someone who will draw a bunch of high-quality full-color backgrounds.

[Shockproof Jamo]

This game, even when looked trough just the demo content, is simply adorable. The girls are so moe, and each and every one of them are great, well-written personalities. The story itself is so far pretty professional quality with high attention to detail, and it's attempt to study the love lives of disabled people is a truly respectable, ambitious idea. The artists have also done a good job and I especially must commend the people who did Shizune, the deaf girl. Being unable to speak, the artists did an awesome job in making her facial expressions very expressive indeed to make up for her lack of words.

All of this is made even more remarkable by the fact that the game's creators are just amateur folks out of 4Chan, that A-hole of the Internets with a userbase consisting mostly of good-for-nothing deadbeats. But not so with these guys as they have now proven to us, and they're even doing it all for free. All of this is amazing indeed when you consider how much bang you'll be getting for your buck.

Just about my only gripe with this game came from the tech side, as the Ren'Py engine seems to be a bit of a performance hog with it's strangely high CPU usage, kinda weird considering how seemingly little it has to process.

But so far KS has been a very good show, especially considering where it was conceived. :p I'm left eagerly waiting for the rest.

[Cactuar]

I'm not really sure where to start here, so I'll just start rambling on in the hopes of forming some coherent sentences.

I first learned of this a week or so back, I think I read an article about it on SKC, after a long chain of me randomly going from one article to a related, or otherwise linked article.
Anyways, at first, after reading this came from people inhabiting 4Chan I thought the game would be a series of events like this: "oh hi, I have no arms." Awesome, then I shall rape you! que raep scene and end of game.
And with the setting, I expected something incredibly tactless, but I was most pleasantly surprised

Had I not known this is made by a crew of "amateurs"(I mean that well) I would have taken this as a full commercial product.
Everything just seems so thorough and well made. From the beautiful art to the music.
And all the girls have unique and interesting personalities. It might be because i just the other day finished Clannad, and Clannad: After Story, but I was looking for a game with an intriguing story, but I never expected to find it here.
And on another note about the different girls and their personalities, in most games of this kind I make a straight line for the girl I am most interested in, and then take the other arcs/routes later.
here I had a hard time deciding which route to go for, so on my first run I just rolled a dice on what to answer to the questions. It is rare for me to be this intrigued by the entire cast of a game, for the first couple of minutes i thought it might be related to each characters disability, but they are just...well written? is that a good way to put it?

Now I'm just praying this isn't the largest troll in 4chan history, with you guys producing a awesome preview only to refuse to release the full package.
Also, I know you have not set a release date, but could you give us a rough estimate of how long we have to wait? months or maybe a year?

As a final note, congratulates to everyone involved, for making something this jaded fellow have thoroughly enjoyed, and this is just the preview!

[Bara]

Hi, I just wanted to stop and say how much I liked this Visual Novel. This is the first one I've looked at and I am realy happy I followed the link from the MegaTokyo webpage to discover this delightful gem of a story. As far as constructive feedback for the Dev team I did experience problems with the audio lagging periodicly and distorting the music and sound effects. I can't say if this is something particular to my computer only.

Keep up the excellent work and I'll eagerly be waiting to see more progress in the future.

[Krazy Kannibal]

Well, I just finished the demo and I must say that it still really surprised me. Lurking for a little over a year, I was expecting the game to be something very different from what I got from this demo.
Especially the first scene, it really surprised me on how beautifully done it was. I also really liked the characters and their uniqueness, and there were some choices (the Lilly vs Shizune especially) that made me really sad and angry at myself for being so stupid.
I also really liked the complexity of the paths. None of the choices would affect the ending in an obvious way, so you really have to consider what you do if you want to get a certain girl.

As for criticism, I only have a real problem with the Ren'Py engine. I get a little frustrated that scrolling up didn't go into text history, but actually progressed the story backwards, and scrolling down did nothing. I also didn't like how right-clicking didn't show the image automatically. Other than that, I only spot some grammar and fluidity errors that others have already pointed out, and I think that Shizune (my favorite) wasn't tsundere enough (at least not enough for my tastes).

Anyways, I'll get back to watching your every move in the most creepiest of fashions, and hopefully I don't have to wait too long for more Sicchan goodness.

[Dootsy]

I'm not quite finished with Act 1 yet, but so far I'm really liking it. I wasn't even planning on playing it at first because the random screenshots I had seen posted on /a/ and /jp/ from the game seemed indicative of dubious writing quality, but I was informed that the posters of the images were just trolls picking out the worst written parts (meaning any time Misha speaks) and on second thought decided to give it a chance. In a word, it's awesome. This is the best visual novel I've played since Saya no Uta. I normally hate how Japan handles the hate slice-of-life genre because the characters usually look and act like sparkly-eyed perversions from the minds of socially retarded men who haven't talked to a real woman other than their mother since highschool. For something inspired by the epitome of what I just described, To Heart and the insipidly contrived works of Key, Katawa Shoujo is definitely leagues above the material it is derivative of. The girls are so real, I don't even want to see them in the H-scenes. It'd be like watching my friends have sex. My only gripe is that the perky characters, Emi and Misha, are really annoying. Their speech patterns seem like the writers were trying to make them sound mostly natural with a hint of GENKI KAWAII ANIMES DESS ^_^, and they suffer for that. They seem out of place with the rest of the incredibly human cast. The overuse of the tildes key when Misha talks is particularly groan inducing. It is possible to make them cute and cheerful without falling back on typical moe writing cliches, and I hope their parts will be re-written for the final product.

Keep up the good work, this is really good stuff.

[Miite]

Although this is my first VN, I kinda erm, love it. The best part = the characters and how they break all sorts of stereotypes set by the industry. The underlying Western influence helps a lot I think although it still retains the elements that make it a very "Japanese" game.

On top of all the praises in this thread, just wanna add how this will perhaps help people who play the game see disabled people in a different light in real life. IMO at least. It won't have a huge revolutionary effect but at least when we see someone disfigured by burns, we'd might think "hey, he/she's just like Hanako" instead of "stay away, I dunno how to interact with that person/yikes scary zomg". Or maybe think of Rin every time we see someone armless and go "hmmmm, maybe it's not so bad".

Bug/technical glitch/whatever report: After finishing Hanako's path, Lilly's end scene appeared in the library, together with Hanako's, even though I haven't finished her route. Does anyone else have that problem? Also, on my first play through right after the installation I saved and exited after naked Kenji (WIN!) only to restart the game a few hours later and find all my save files gone. D: I didn't mind restarting but that was pretty annoying.

[cpl_crud]

The "Lilly/Hanako" bug is to do with the way the flow works for the two of them.

Hanako's scene breaks out from Lilly's scene, so the only way to get there is by "unlocking" that scne.

It will be fixed for the full release.

[hir]

I read through Shizune path, and giving the impression so far before I forget the details.

Overall it's way over a person can expect from an amateur game. Decent music, Visual works and effects, lovely characters, etc.
The text presentation is great. It's really exciting to be able to read a well-made English text in VN form.
(From a native Japanese pov, anyways)

I liked how Misha sometimes get confused when she's translating. ("I, I mean She" sort)
And the discreet display of Shizune getting jealous was also impressive. Or from what I understood.
Good Tsundere to say the least.

And I'm quite anxious about what ordeal these three will have ahead...
Not too heavy, hopefully.

----

Also some things to point out.

Someone pointed this out earlier, but it seemed awkward that HIsao was reluctant at helping the two even after he agreed to join the student council to help them. I expected him to be more willing than the day before.

About the Shaghai Tea Store. If you look at the BG photo, there is a lantern with "ラーメン" logo hanging from the eaves.
To a Japanese eye it looks too much like a ra-men(noodles) place rather than a tea store. (Most likely it is...)
My suggestion is just retouch and remove that ラーメン letters.


I once encountered a trace dump when I loaded one scene and started rolling back the history at high speed.
Unfortunately I'm using Vista, and trace.txt was not saved. (Vista won't allow you to modify files/folders under program files) Also I couldn't get a repro on this.
Just letting you know about what happened.

[Fundefined]

While she is my least favorite character, I feel Emi is getting kind of gipped in the game. Her character, plot and lines of dialogue seem to be lacking in comparison with the others. Shizune on the other hand has the most screen development, mainly due to her being an distinct relationship where the only one of the pair of female friends is romancable. I think the conflict and confusion of who is actually speaking Misha or Shizune could be a very good source of dorama. Maybe make it the only harem possible ending? Or end up breaking the close friendship? While the Lilly/Rin pairs intercede at the town run, Shizune gets her own council private meetings without other girl's interfering. Maybe balance the next acts a bit more by giving Hanako/Lilly/Rin/Emi more single character development time?

Overall, it's a great demo and honestly a lot better than I initially expected from the rough idea. I'm really excited for the final release and hope Kenji remains as manly as he is now.

Edit: Is there a way to reset the progress counter and skipped dialogue counter? I'm going through a second replay, or must I just have to reinstall for that to happen?

[DME]

I once encountered a trace dump when I loaded one scene and started rolling back the history at high speed.
Unfortunately I'm using Vista, and trace.txt was not saved. (Vista won't allow you to modify files/folders under program files) Also I couldn't get a repro on this.
Just letting you know about what happened.

Have you tried looking for it in C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)? They should be a KS folder in there, and hopefully you'll find a trace dump.

[ChaosEngine]

I noticed a potential error in "Lunch Evolution Theory", specifically after choosing to speak with Hanako. After Hisao asks to join Lilly and Hanako, this line is read, "I know I'm kinda pushing it, but... Lilly hmms quietly, still smiling."

screenshot0004.png (478.34 KiB) Viewed 6890 times

Is that meant to be "hums" or is it the onomatopoeic sound of "uh-hmm", as in, "yes?"