Guava Pixel Studios

You play as an "obnoxious" kid who's trying to befriend a prince, who is also your classmate.

With this game, I especially admire how all the art goes together. From the game title, to the environment, to the game menu - it all feels cohesive.

There's fun banter throughout and then it gets really good when the music changes. There's a happy route and a sad route. The happy route is so cute and satisfying!

A short and sweet review for a short and sweet story. Another one I'd recommend.

Learning takeaways:

• Avoid the default UI for dialogue and settings and instead match it to the aesthetic of your game.

You can check out the creator's game on their itch.io page. Make sure to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my game development progress!

So the other day I'm talking about my game idea and someone goes "Hey, have you seen Death Parade?" As a huge anime fan, I was excited to check it out, especially if it might help with inspiration for my game.

Let's start with the opening theme. It's TOP TIER. Not only did I watch it all the way through every time, but I found myself looking up the song on YouTube to rewatch it. I got more into it every episode. If you don't end up watching the show, I recommend just checking out the intro.

As the name of the show hints, it's about death. More specifically, it's about what happens right after you die. There are games involved in this process as you might guess from the intro as well. I won't say much else about the plot so as not to spoil it, but there is a nice amount of comedy (comes up later) alongside the grievous subject matter.

There's a lot I can learn from this show regarding storytelling. There's great use of plot and subplots. There's mystery and satisfying callbacks. There are questions that get answers and ones that leave you wondering.

It has a compelling art style and interesting use of color that helps to communicate the tone. I've even started using it as a reference on how to age up my characters given there's a wide age range represented.

With just twelve 23-minute episodes, you can get through the series fairly quickly.

All that being said, this show is not for everyone. You'll need to check the content advisory to know if you should skip this or not. As of today, you'll need a premium subscription of Crunchyroll to watch the series.

Watch Death Parade and make sure to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my game development progress!

Snowed In is a self described "short, lighthearted, relaxing visual novel about friendship." It consists of a cute plot, fun choices, and making hot pot.

The character design here is really eye-catching. The eye blinking, different facial expressions, and lip movement animation all help to make the character feel alive. It also ties well to the UI (dialogue panel, settings, etc.) of the game. However, I did feel like the character art was disjointed from the background art.

Another issue I noticed myself having was not being able to immediately tell if it was you or the other character, Shiori, who was speaking. I had to keep glancing up at the character name to tell.

The choices throughout this game really made me feel like I was part of the story. I got to choose what I wanted to add to the hot pot and it felt like there would be clear consequences for my choices. The first time I played, I made all the choices I would make in real life - safe choices. On the second playthrough, I purposely tried to make bad choices to see what would happen.

There was also some mystery involved in the story as well. There's a backstory I might be missing, but the writing made me curious enough to do some research on other possible games with the character.

This game can be played in one sitting - about 30 minutes.

Learning takeaways:

• Not only should characters have distinct voices, but there should also be visual elements incorporated to distinguish characters and narration which would make it easier to follow the story.
• A nice middle ground between full on voice acting and no voice acting at all is having character catchphrase vocalizations.

Check out the game on the creator's itch.io page and make sure to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my game development progress!

When I was searching for games to play, the cover art immediately got my attention.

In this dating sim, you play as the girlfriend to a popular streamer.

The character art does a great job of conveying what to expect from the streamer and matches the game well. The voice actor (VA) did such a great job too! I've played some other visual novels with voice acting and I would usually end up skipping through it after reading the text or turning the sound off, but I think the VA really enhanced the story.

A few critiques: I found myself getting a little bogged down by the conversations about streaming tactics after the 2nd playthrough. Also, it was very clear what the impact of certain choices were. However, there were some choices that felt like they would have an impact but I have no idea if they did or not.

One creative aspect of the game is how the UI and dialogue is integrated with the background art. Throughout most of the game, your viewpoint is from your screen as if you were watching a live stream, which I thought was a really cool idea.

Overall, this was a fun game to play and I ended up playing it multiple times to try to see all the different endings.

It takes about 45 minutes to play through. If you end up checking out this game, please note the content warnings.

Learning takeaways:

• There should be clarity on which choices are consequential vs cosmetic and the outcomes of consequential choices should be made clear at some point in the story.
• A great example of changing character expressions frequently to give life to them.

You can Play Going Live! for free on the creator's itch.io page.

Hello World! I'm starting a series where I share my thoughts on visual novels I've played. I'll probably expand to discussing other forms of media at some point. Since I'm making a visual novel, I've started playing a lot more of them to get a sense of what others are doing well and what I should avoid. Research that doubles as entertainment!