specs:
- mac mini m2, 32gb ram, 12 cores
- windows download, played via GameHub emulator
overall:
- beautiful visuals, atmosphere, and very creative use of 2/3D. well rounded with some minor visual/functional jank. would def continue/finish playing.
intro:
- the atmosphere and lore/story/worldbuilding were great, but despite it saying right click is the dialogue/text advance, the scroll button i accidentally hit immediately ended the intro. i appreciate the history factor to go back but this def needs a skip confirm and some tuning/re-factoring for the controls. even the actual FF button you know you're clicking on is instant-end w/o confirmation.
audio:
- LOVE the atmospheric ambience & the music. SFX could've been a bit more varied, only one i encountered was the menu click.
display/presentation:
- absolutely gorgeous artwork here. especially characters and setting, but the UI/menu/etc also deserves praise.
customization/accessibility:
- immediate huge plus here. a bunch of options for audio/visual/acessibility, how to play instructions with controls, settings
- mouse only interaction. makes sense for a visual novel, but since it uses a hyrbid control system i would def add the ability to nav with keyb as well.
- save system! big plus. esp auto save
gameplay:
- talking to sister clara crashed my window the first time, huge delay load second time i tried.
- some REALLY bad jank in the controls/visual load. i have a powerful computer but no matter what settings i was on, layers were constantly popping in and out. maybe due to the hybrid dimensional displays and FX and such, but it was really disruptive.
- interactivity with objects needs a little more scale and rendering/tuning. the backgrounds/environment were amazing but because everything is monochrome and there are no highlights on objects, i had no idea where i was supposed to go or what to do at points. i had to get basically on top of/inside of people/objects to get the E popup, and some things like the doors were not where they should've been (a building column was the "door" to )
- great systems in place: relationship, journal, schedule, map
- nice amount of interactivity in-world, where i could find it. a slight glow/highlight would be beneficial.