well this is certainly yuri and it's certainly toxic!
thank you for making this VN! It had me physically screaming at Kenzie to get some self respect the entire time and also I've never been SO close to rage quitting a visual novel before after I picked what I deemed the only reasonable ending, but I certainly enjoyed this story. I'll just need a moment...
Oh and I raw dogged the entire thing without sound in one sitting. The renpy emulator I used decided I wouldn't get any music and I complied.
Lol, thanks for giving it a shot! My apologies for the frustration. I went into this with the main aspect of Kenzie's character being that she's tragically passive; she can't ever make a decision for herself, even when the player tries to take the healthier route.
Good end where she gets therapy o7
Also, no sound is totally fair. I oftentimes will mute on purpose to have my own music in the bg, even though I probably shouldn't, lol
Hey, I finished playing this, and I thought it was great! It definitely kept me at the edge of my seat. Although, it was disappointing seeing how nobody in the story called out the explicit power dynamic within the relationship.
Otherwise, there were things I noticed. For example, in the game menu, it doesn't show the labels of the screens in the top-left corner of the overall game menu. As for the game itself, I noticed a few grammatical mistakes here and there and places where the character sprites grew darker around the edges with each new facial expression.
At one point, the old music overlapped with the new music during a scene transition. So, I had to go back and rewind and then go forward to fix that jarring audio. Furthermore, the text would cut off slightly in the history menu for longer sentences at the bottom of the screen. Finally, when the screen was blank with a blue or red screen without the textbox, I would still see the quick menu at the bottom of the screen. These are all minor nitpicks, though, that only hindered my reading experience somewhat.
Otherwise, it would have been nice to see a change of appearance for the characters or to see other rooms when certain things happened in the story or when they moved to certain locations that were not visibly shown on screen. Regardless of all of that, I liked how there were little titles in the save and load section for what chapter the player was on. That was a nice touch.
As for the endings themselves, they were nuanced and bittersweet takes of the same ending. So, although they left me feeling some disappointment, I liked the overall reading experience, I loved the artwork for both the character sprites and the backgrounds, and I liked the humor and dialogue and how the sub dom dynamic played out in subtle but effective ways.
It also would have been interesting to see how the big boss would have reacted to the work he piled onto the main characters, since that was a setup there that didn't seem to have any payoff. Although, I had completely forgotten about that plot thread, as it seemed like they just got the work done and that was that.
The ending, though, for when the choice was made, seemed to have come a little abruptly for me. I kept expecting it to come earlier. So, when it did come up, I wasn't expecting for it to show up when it did. I guess the segue into making a choice didn't feel as natural or as seamless as I expected, and it just felt like I, the player, was making a choice and not the protagonist truly wrestling between two decisions because it seemed in her head that she wanted to go in a particular direction anyway. That's why the other choice felt inauthentic at first. Yet, it quickly felt like a natural progression of events after the fact. I don't know if that makes sense.
Sorry for the vagueness of this all because I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone else reading this. I can get specific if you want. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this visual novel of yours, and the music fitted perfectly with the scenes, too. I give it a solid 4/5. Good job! :D
I will say, Harriet did address the power dynamic, but it might have been vague with how she worded things (ie. the harassment comment, or saying "you don't have to do this just because she's your boss" or something to that effect. I did mean to have Mackenzie have a deeper thought process on that and talk abt it w Harri, but forgot to put it in my outline and so it is lost to the ether.
That being said, I purposely didn't have as much interactions with other characters to make the mc's world feel smaller, or more isolated. I can definitely understand the end choice feeling somewhat abrupt, since I was pushing time to get it finished, lol. BUT, the choice feeling like it's coming from the player rather than the mc was actually on purpose.
As for the technical stuff, I don't know why the music did that. It worked when I did my run through before submitting, but the coding must be a little wonky since I wanted to use a fade affect. They are meant to fade into each other, but definitely not both play at the same time/volume. Whoops! Also, I took out the menu titles due to other coding roadblocks I bumped into. I didn't know if that would be a noticeable preference.
I did notice their acknowledgment of the power dynamic in the beginning. Yet, towards the end, I felt like Harriet blamed Kenzie for her actions instead of realizing that she may have been taken advantage of in that situation. Although, because of that, it may have also contributed to why the endings played out in the way that they did.
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well this is certainly yuri and it's certainly toxic!
thank you for making this VN! It had me physically screaming at Kenzie to get some self respect the entire time and also I've never been SO close to rage quitting a visual novel before after I picked what I deemed the only reasonable ending, but I certainly enjoyed this story. I'll just need a moment...
Oh and I raw dogged the entire thing without sound in one sitting. The renpy emulator I used decided I wouldn't get any music and I complied.
Lol, thanks for giving it a shot! My apologies for the frustration. I went into this with the main aspect of Kenzie's character being that she's tragically passive; she can't ever make a decision for herself, even when the player tries to take the healthier route.
Good end where she gets therapy o7
Also, no sound is totally fair. I oftentimes will mute on purpose to have my own music in the bg, even though I probably shouldn't, lol
Hey, I finished playing this, and I thought it was great! It definitely kept me at the edge of my seat. Although, it was disappointing seeing how nobody in the story called out the explicit power dynamic within the relationship.
Otherwise, there were things I noticed. For example, in the game menu, it doesn't show the labels of the screens in the top-left corner of the overall game menu. As for the game itself, I noticed a few grammatical mistakes here and there and places where the character sprites grew darker around the edges with each new facial expression.
At one point, the old music overlapped with the new music during a scene transition. So, I had to go back and rewind and then go forward to fix that jarring audio. Furthermore, the text would cut off slightly in the history menu for longer sentences at the bottom of the screen. Finally, when the screen was blank with a blue or red screen without the textbox, I would still see the quick menu at the bottom of the screen. These are all minor nitpicks, though, that only hindered my reading experience somewhat.
Otherwise, it would have been nice to see a change of appearance for the characters or to see other rooms when certain things happened in the story or when they moved to certain locations that were not visibly shown on screen. Regardless of all of that, I liked how there were little titles in the save and load section for what chapter the player was on. That was a nice touch.
As for the endings themselves, they were nuanced and bittersweet takes of the same ending. So, although they left me feeling some disappointment, I liked the overall reading experience, I loved the artwork for both the character sprites and the backgrounds, and I liked the humor and dialogue and how the sub dom dynamic played out in subtle but effective ways.
It also would have been interesting to see how the big boss would have reacted to the work he piled onto the main characters, since that was a setup there that didn't seem to have any payoff. Although, I had completely forgotten about that plot thread, as it seemed like they just got the work done and that was that.
The ending, though, for when the choice was made, seemed to have come a little abruptly for me. I kept expecting it to come earlier. So, when it did come up, I wasn't expecting for it to show up when it did. I guess the segue into making a choice didn't feel as natural or as seamless as I expected, and it just felt like I, the player, was making a choice and not the protagonist truly wrestling between two decisions because it seemed in her head that she wanted to go in a particular direction anyway. That's why the other choice felt inauthentic at first. Yet, it quickly felt like a natural progression of events after the fact. I don't know if that makes sense.
Sorry for the vagueness of this all because I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone else reading this. I can get specific if you want. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this visual novel of yours, and the music fitted perfectly with the scenes, too. I give it a solid 4/5. Good job! :D
Glad you enjoyed it!
I will say, Harriet did address the power dynamic, but it might have been vague with how she worded things (ie. the harassment comment, or saying "you don't have to do this just because she's your boss" or something to that effect. I did mean to have Mackenzie have a deeper thought process on that and talk abt it w Harri, but forgot to put it in my outline and so it is lost to the ether.
That being said, I purposely didn't have as much interactions with other characters to make the mc's world feel smaller, or more isolated. I can definitely understand the end choice feeling somewhat abrupt, since I was pushing time to get it finished, lol. BUT, the choice feeling like it's coming from the player rather than the mc was actually on purpose.
As for the technical stuff, I don't know why the music did that. It worked when I did my run through before submitting, but the coding must be a little wonky since I wanted to use a fade affect. They are meant to fade into each other, but definitely not both play at the same time/volume. Whoops! Also, I took out the menu titles due to other coding roadblocks I bumped into. I didn't know if that would be a noticeable preference.
I did notice their acknowledgment of the power dynamic in the beginning. Yet, towards the end, I felt like Harriet blamed Kenzie for her actions instead of realizing that she may have been taken advantage of in that situation. Although, because of that, it may have also contributed to why the endings played out in the way that they did.
Ah, yeah that's fair. Harriet was kind of her only lifeline, but she's messy too and felt abandoned. Definitely not the right way to handle things.