Well, I finished last night and here are my comments:
Overall, it's an AMAZING piece of work. What absolutely stands out more than anything else is the story. I realize your goal was to present a graphic and interactive novel rather than an adventure game, but the puzzles actually take the complete experience to another level. As far as the story, you've really generated your own world based on the Western genre, but with races, and in-depth characters and really interesting interactions and personalities.
I realize that the characters, backgrounds and music are taken from different sources, but that makes no difference to me. Everything just worked together beautifully.
As far as the puzzles, while most of them were not too difficult, they are on par with many adventure games. I have to confess to getting stuck once and having to consult the walkthrough. I think that what I liked about the puzzles was actually because instead of being bizarre just for the sake of stumping and challenging the player, they seem to add a dimension of reality to the game. They are of the type that you would actually face in the real world: losing items, not knowing where to acquire things, having to persuade people to gain their trust and so on. I think that it actually brought the game to life in a way.
As I noted, the animation style is interesting in the sense that rather than items moving smoothly, they kind of flashed to different points of the screen. I am not sure if I prefer that style over characters moving, but it did work. The "voice acting" of the characters making noises or saying sound bites rather than reading the script was pretty unusual as well.
There are only two things that I would suggest doing differently:
- Once the save was working for the English edition (thank you for that!), the savegame slots are numbered. Most games either store a picture of where you are at or let you choose a name for the game so you know what is what. I accidentally overwrote my save a number of times (I must have been clicking save instead of load after loading a previous game or something) but this can be improved
There really should be a warning that one scene is not appropriate for minors or players who have a problem with adult scenes. Most players would have no problem but a warning for those who do would be a good idea
Overall, an excellent immersive and enjoyable experience. Well done, and I look forward to chapter 3!
