MIRYAFA'S PROFILE

There's a large number of decisions we have to make in the game, but almost none of them mean anything. None of the dialogues matter, except the one per scenario that determines which bad ending you get. You can't actually fail the "minigames," and they never come up again after the first time they appear in a scenario. In fact, every time "hit Z" or similar appears, it only serves to slow down the pacing of the plot, rather than provide meaningful interaction.

Along the same lines, I didn't feel like I was playing a game, so much as traveling from one part of the plot to another. The difference between a story and a game is player interaction, and I felt like this game let me down on that front.

The "use chair on bookcase" puzzle was the only thing that stood out as a puzzle, and it somewhat fails in that department because every time you examine the chair, it references that puzzle, whether you mean to or not. Why not instead make the Z button move the chair?

More egregiously, the "use tape on leaking gas container" puzzle didn't actually do anything. You can pick up the tape from the table, and use it to seal the leaking poison container, but the following scenes play out exactly the same whether you do or not. Why should we have inhaled too much poison if I spent less than 10 seconds in the room/hallway where it was leaking before I sealed it off? And why does nothing change if I don't seal it off?

Most egregiously, the name of the game is "One of You," but the main monster was not one of us. It spent the entire game out of sight/knocked out, and didn't threaten us in the least. I saw "C - clue" in the keyboard bindings at the start of the game and got excited, thinking I would have to put together clues a la the Jedi test in Knights of the Old Republic, and use the C key to view my clues or something (especially once I knew the game revolved around a shapeshifter), and that never happened. So the biggest plot point never mattered!

And even the camera ended up not meaning anything! There was all this static, the hanging video was made very prominent, we were actually filmed in the one room, and none of it ever mattered. That was a big let down.

Along the same lines, the first thing that caught my eye in the game was the book in the basement that outlines the rules/punishments. I thought the Dad would be the main antagonist, but he wasn't, and the book was pointless, except to explain some backstory. Really, you needn't have bothered making the protagonist his son - it made no difference to the plot. Please don't forget about conservation of detail in your games - if something (a fact, a person) isn't absolutely necessary for the plot/game, get rid of it. Obviously backstory and epilogue get some leeway with this, because explanations are great, but in general the tighter a game is, the better it is.

On a different note, scenario B felt very fragmented. It seemed to assume you played scenario A, and just showed you Maria/Mia's side to the story. But it added nothing to the story, because everything in scenario B - including both the beginning and the ending - was already shown (or at least implied) in scenario A, with the exception of the guy shooting Dad and the demon killing him for that reason. In my opinion, those 2 revelations didn't justify the rest of the scenario.

Also in scenario B, I unlocked the storage room in the basement, but I wasn't able to do anything with the gas canisters, even after I read the computer logs that said the Dad used gas to stun the creature. Why not?

Similarly, scenario C felt less like a game and more like an epilogue. There was no real gameplay (adding "search here?" to every square does not a puzzle make) and no ability to change anything. Further, it seems to assume you took the "go with Maria" option from scenario A, because the demoness has the picture from the locked room (that Fred took the key for).

The first sentence only applies to scenario A, and it's only 1 individual. The rest is implied/in scenario B. The trio find the video immediately, not after several failed attempts to escape. And in scenario A at least, the newspaper clipping gave you the same story long before the video.

Not that the newspaper clipping does anything either. Why is it highlighted if there's no point in reading it?

1. Please stop using SRD_SkipTitleScreen. I've only seen it in your games, and I've also had the worst game-startup experiences with your games. Convenience matters more than presentation in a game you have to play multiple times, and is nice to have anyway. The quicker I can get to "Continue", the more fun the game is. And it's especially important to me that when I hit F12, I go back to the title screen so I can restart quickly when I want to do something different.

2. When you finish the game, it autosaves your progress on slot 10. But loading slot 10 sends you back to the title screen. That kind of thing should be in the background and out of sight of the player.

3. In scenario B, Fred goes upstairs. But when I immediately went downstairs, he was already there swinging the hammer. That was jarring, and I accidentally finished the scenario after that. At least put some quest in-between him going upstairs and him being downstairs to trigger the change.

4. In each scenario, the doors that the other person had the key for remained locked even after they would have needed to unlock them. When I played scenario B, Fred had the hammer, meaning he had unlocked the study. But the study was still locked when I went back upstairs. Likewise in scenario A, there's no reason for the door to the basement room to still be locked after Fred gets the hammer, because Maria's already been down there.

On a positive note, I noticed you eschewed the save system of the last game and let us save anywhere in this game. That's great, and it made the game so much better. Thank you for listening to my feedback on that.

I was able to boldly walk through the school without fear of anything, because there was nothing in the school to be afraid of. The only way for me to get hurt or killed was by going to the roof.

And I think there may have been some translation problems, because in English there's a very big difference between what's on the computer screen and the information we need to solve the puzzle. So much so that I couldn't get any clues out of it, except that the vampire was involved in the solution somehow.

In fact, I kept trying "Pumpkin at the top, then ghost-bat-witch in some order, then vampire", because that's the order they appeared in the note.

If I were to leave a hint like that, I would write something more like this:

A girl met death, and he gave her a choice. Holding out his hands, he asked her to put her spirit in one, and her body in the other. Whichever she put in his right hand he would take, but she would keep that which she placed in the left.

"How can I choose between my spirit and my body?" She asked. "My spirit is who I am. But my body is one with my love, and I cannot live without him."

Death flashed a jack-o-lantern smile.

"If you cannot choose, then you must stay here until another chooses for you. To your left creatures will fly through the sky, but you will be unable to join them. To your right you will see your true self, carried by another."

And that was how she stayed.

And then I'd run it past a bunch of other people to make sure they could figure it out. But I'm not terribly good at picking up clues, so that's just me.

On that note, it wasn't clear to me what I was supposed to do in the game. It seemed like the main character gave up on finding an exit door key, but I wasn't sure what motivation was replacing it.

And I never found out what the metal key was for, even though I got the best ending.

Other than that, a well done game!