My thoughts on Nicole

[Camarilla]

Hey Jack,
Thanks for an excellent game! It must be one of my favorite otome games of all time, and that's saying something
I've played only Ted's and Darren's route so far. I chose to go after Ted first, just because he was the most popular in the poll, but he ended up being kinda meh. On the other hand, I ended up loving Darren waaay more than I had thought I would. I don't usually like shy guys, but something about Darren just got to me. I loved how nerdy and smart he was, and I really enjoyed breaking him out of his shell. I also loved how he and Nicole became friends first online, than in real life and then started dating.
I loved the writing of the game - so much that when I was playing the game for the second time, I took the time to read through all of the dialogue I'd already seen. That's something I've never done in a visual novel, I usually skip the previously seen bits The art was also great, I particularly loved the various outfits of the characters. I would have liked to see more CGs though, and maybe a CG gallery separated from the endings gallery. A music gallery (or whatever this is called) would also be great, as the music was very good as well. On an unrelated note - is there any chance I could get piano sheet music for the tracks? I would love to play them for myself!
However, as much as I loved the game, there were still some things that could be better. Like the pacing. I suppose that the scenes that occur are based on your stats and your affection level with a guy - but as I was playing on easy mode and I bought all the gifts for the guy I was pursuing as soon as i could, I ended up running out of scenes by the middle of November, and the last month was really boring as I was just raising stats and there were no scenes happening. I think it would have been better to make the scenes depending on the in-game time as well, to pace the gameplay out more evenly.
Also, in the two special endings I've seen (Ted's and Darren's) the scene in the abandoned building was nearly the same. I would have liked if the scene developed differently for each character. I presume Jeff's special ending would be quite different though, and I'm looking forward to seeing it
Anyways, if you read through all my ramblings, thanks for bearing with me :D I'm really looking forward to seeing Jeff's and Kurt's route, and I'll tune in with some more thoughts as soon as I do
Cheers,
Camarilla

[jack1974]

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked the game.
About the pacing, is really hard (if not impossible) for me to find the right pacing because of people's different skills. You clearly know how to play dating sims, so next time I think is better if you play in normal level. I actually already put limits, each scene must happen every X days. I really thought the game at normal level was already quite simple, but when I heard some players that couldn't win even at EASY level I made it even more easy... maybe too much!

[Camarilla]

Actually, I had a different kind of limit in mind - maybe code the game in a way that a particular scene can't happen before, say, day 90 of the game. When I was pursuing Darren, I got the last scene before the ending (where he stopped talking to me) around mid November, so it was nearly a full month before the ending scene - yet Nicole still mentioned the last scene as something that had happened quite recently. Similarly, on Ted's route, he was upset that he couldn't get the meat to his party booth in time - yet it was nearly a full month between that scene and the party itself, which didn't make much sense. If the last scene was coded so it couldn't happen before the last week of the game, it would have been better paced in my opinion.
Anyways, that's just me nitpicking and trying to come up with ways to make a great game even greater, so don't mind me :D

[jack1974]

Yes I thought about those things, but I can't put a fixed date because it could screw up the other events. It really should depends only on the difficulty, but I see now that I made it definitely too easy. Will need to change it on next update