/ksg/ - Katawa Shoujo General #3403

Cripple Sex General #3403

Impostors Released a """Katawa Shoujo 2 Demo""" -- Missing Stars Postmortem Edition

Previous Thread: Official website: katawa-shoujo.com/ (KS is free)
Summer's Clover (Suriko's Non-Canon Miki Route): ks.renai.us/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=9996
Summer's Clover VN: github.com/stanriders/ks-summersclover
KS alpha: steamcommunity.com/groups/KSPreAlpha/discussions/0/1291816880498430072/
Pastebin: pastebin.com/Wp8y08x2
Writebin: pastebin.com/PpGnE3nc
KSG FAQ: pastebin.com/6Z28iW1x
Shimmie: shimmie.katawa-shoujo.com/
Katawa Booru: cripple.booru.org/
Hanako Image Database: hanakoisbestgirl.com
KSG Map: zeemaps.com/map?group=1834162
Flockdraw: skycow.us/whiteboard
3D-Printable Katawa Figurines: ks.renai.us/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=10195.swf
Desktop Katawas: mediafire.com/?ogvo1fh7d5x36j9
"I'm such a failure, I'll never find my Katawa" pastebin.com/B8bLKPz1
Crud's "Where Are 4LS Now?": reddit.com/r/katawashoujo/comments/6v2zkb/the_where_are_they_now_post/
KS fanfics: fourleaffics.miraheze.org/wiki/Category:/ksg/
Halloween 2017 fan content collection: pastebin.com/rcU3M8G7

Skynet's Christmas Contest has concluded. Winners have been announced!
pastebin.com/LL1pSL0J

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=w9AWvi82uDw
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Whyyyyy reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-in.

Lilly!

>left
>hideous clothes
>right
is that fucking copypasted Lilly's?

Irene, both best girl and best music.

For Shizzy

>neither attractive

She's got Lilly's outfit but she's literally useless in terms of plot.

i'd like to jizzy in shizzy's pizzy

It's a copy of her casual outfit, right down to the color.

One for Mish

once an outfit's in style, girls will wear it. they fear being different: look out and see how similarly they dress irl

Emi, we all know you won't fit in Lilly's clothes.

Sounds like a take on the copycats in the film and game genres. KS was in style, and everyone wanted to wear that outfit... but nobody wanted to wear anything else, for the fear of being different. And yet, it's being different that makes you stand out.

And what exactly is that shit in OP anyway?

The thread edition.

those aren't lilly's clotes; emi bought her own. girls are fashion copycats. she's not like hanako who wears rin's panties

>tfw no deafmute singing gf

speedread the Missing Stars demo, music was okay writing too verbose absolutely needs editing. If Lena doesn't bite somebody's dick off in the final cut I'll be sorely disappointed. She is obviously inspired by Rin except might be prone to bouts of violence which is genuinely frightening. Her music needs to be toned way the fuck down, I want to rocket my fist through the screen and punch whoever made that decision.

Too many characters, their writers are going to get lost if they keep this up, I'm feel like more characters were introduced in this demo than exist in all of KS. Good on them for getting some momentum going but I don't see this being nearly as good.


I'd respect them if there were legitimately 2-4 bad endings for every good ending, a minefield of misunderstandings and frustration could be a very mature take.

Same user who posted that pic in the last thread. I was giving my thoughts on the new KS ripoff and how redundant that sentence is, in the picture, because they already have the sprite. For some reason, they took that picture and used it for the new thread. Fuck if I know why, desu.

Hanako as Ryuko when?

Just let me die. I'm so tired of life.

I quite enjoyed the music, and while Lena's was definitely out to left field, I didn't mind it. What I did mind was that you never get a good look into why her music is as it is.

>too verbose
absolutely

>inspired by Rin
I could see elements of Rin in all except Ela, especially No-name (seriously, why wasn't her name disclosed?) Even in Lilly-clone, I could identify the occasional 'bouts of Rin.

>Too many characters
For the scope of the project, yes there are far too many. The ONLY hope is that they all serve as some sort of plot hinge during any of the routes.

My most critical part of it (besides it being verbose to the extreme, and the focus on Katja it seems) is that best girl is not romance-able.

I have seen this horror, now you all must suffer with me

>best girl is not romance-able
Hilda?

Beatrice>Hilda
If she couldn't hold a relationship by her age, why would she even have a somewhat-tolerable route?

hi /ksg/ just downloaded
any advice before I start?

be careful hanging out here because of spoilers. have fun

am I the only one getting akira/lilly vibes out of these 2?
>beatrice dressed like Lilly
>cooked for Hilda
>Hilda is short haired, androgynous.

okay

play first route with the choices YOU would do in the situation.
after first route, keep girl you think seems best for you last, so you finish on a good note.

don't get a bad ending before you go to bed/turn off the game.

The best ending happens if you don’t go for any of the girls. You get to do guy stuff with Kenji

alright thanks for the heads up

alright thanks for the info man

sounds bro tier

He really is. Can’t go wrong with Kenji

Follow your heart.

Why

I didn’t ask for these feels

oh no

...

jfyk, I've asked a Somnova dev why Katja seems to be pushed for the demo. It's supposedly just a coincidence, the demo was just a chunk of the script cut off in full and released, and she happens to be the one with the most scenes in it. Personally I also suspect she might just be the game's Lilly in terms of writing style, so combined with the demo being so short and the other girls they've shown including one that doesn't talk, she'll come off as hoarding all of the screentime.

Which does bring up how insanely stupid it is to just cut a bit of the game and call it a "demo" rather than something like "proof of concept". A demo has to be a self contained narrative with a beginning and and end. This just comes off as exposition and buildup with no payoff, and now we know why. It's the exposition and buildup of the full story, but they didn't think they needed to show us the payoff so far.

I'd buy that excuse more if the demo didn't end on a Katja scene, it seemed cherry picked.

imho they spent so much time on real life drama they wanted to show people they still exist as a dev group, even if it meant rushing out a short, broken demo. Awful decision, but what's done is done.

Remember back when the Katawa Shoujo demo was out and people thought they were selecting Shizune as the main heroine since her demo ending was the most obviously dramatic? This is like the one thing about this traffic accident of a demo I don't think we need to worry about.

I'm not done with it yet but so far it just seems to go chronologically, does it not? So the scenes just happen when they happen...
Meaning, if you took the first half hour of KS most of the scenes would be Shizune/Misha, you'd see some Lilly, very little Hanako, next to no Emi and Rin.

^ If the Katawa Shoujo demo has been cut so short, it'd have looked like Shizune was the canon heroine too.

Regardless of the truth behind the length of the demo, there are only two possible outcomes. Either Katja is the main character and the devs have no idea how a route-based story should work, or Katja isn't the main character and it just comes off that way because they're incompetent and cared more about rushing a sloppy piece of trash out the door than actually considering things like this.

...

for Rin

Honest and objective review of MS demo:

The keywords are "quality varies". The Somnova team is obviously extremely disorganized and nobody seems to be coordinating it. This could be because their team is a mess after 5+ years' worth of drama or just them being amateurs, but it shows constantly.

Writing: Quality varies. Style and mood change completely from scene to scene, general quality ranges from "bad KS fanfic" to "mediocre KS fanfic". I will honestly give it to Somnova that some isolated parts are good, sometimes great, but that doesn't make up for the rest. I don't mind longwindedness in visual novels, what I do think is bad is:
a - redundancy, obviously caused by poor writer coordination. I bet each one thought they were the only ones to bring up "broken people" angst, in the end the reader has to go through the same monologue four times.
Terrible pacig - you can't just cut the first 10% off a story and call it a demo. It doesn't work like that. The demo feels like it's 90% prelude with no payoff for anything.

Music: Quality varies. Better than most OELVN music, definitely a strong point, but when it fucks up boy does it fuck up. The music playing in Lena's route feels like it's from a completely different project, jarring transitions stand out and music choice for some scenes feels random.

Art: Quality varies. The backgrounds are for the most part not worse than in Katawa Shoujo but a few very blatantly are, like when there are people in the frame. Assuming they took them themselves, I don't get why they couldn't wait for them to leave or something. The sprites range from My First NaNoWriMo level to frankly excellent, but it's so random and chaotic you can't enjoy the good ones.

Conclusions: don't rush out games, always have someone calling the shots when making a VN. Missing Stars had a lot of potential and the demo still shows it has some, but if they keep in the same direction it's going to squander all of it.

OP is a shill. Calling it.

>Releasing something like this after 6 years and getting this kind of reception

Do you think they'll ever recover?

Were they even planning to recover?

This reception will likely be exclusive to these threads. Quality standards for EVNS are low and people will take anything that's roughly Lemmasoft level or above. Overall reception for Missing Stars will be positive, even if it isn't necessarily deserved.

Second has been all but confirmed. I don't know what happened that after so many years of taking their time Somnova suddenly felt the need to rush out a demo at any cost, but it's obvious they made a mistake and for the concept's sake (which I like) I seriously hope they learn from it.

For a moment i thought i mistaken the generals and this wasn't /ksg/

Time for bed /ksg/ I have to get up early tomorrow to go to court. I'm a witness!

if you don't hear from me again I'm murdered

Missing Stars demo turned out to be to short to deserve its own general.

Goodnight user, we wish you luck in the court !
Wait, it's not only a demo but it's also so short they didn't even get a general ? that's kinda sad :c

...

What the fuck is this

>Wait, it's not only a demo but it's also so short they didn't even get a general ?
It's barely even a demo, it's a misnamed proof of concept they rushed out of the door to prove they weren't dead, possibly killing themselves in the process.

tvtropes, my f.am

>Which does bring up how insanely stupid it is to just cut a bit of the game and call it a "demo" rather than something like "proof of concept".
My bad

I want cyber-punk katawas with laser prosthetics.

>Rin has bionic skull crusher arms
>Emi has laser blade legs
>Hanako has minimalist powered body armor to make her feel safe and strong
>Lily has bionic super eyes that x-ray through walls and clothes
>Shizune is the same with a post-modern attitude of "Yeah? What is there to hear?"
>Mishas hair actually has drills in it.

>laser blade legs
how would that work also wouldn't that be like ksg mansion pic ?

well i'll be goddamned. i may not have been giving ddlc enough credit youtube.com/watch?v=w9AWvi82uDw

>Matpat
>doki doki on /ksg/
>analizing a fucking advert
That's an abstract kind of cancer

...

I hope nobody gives you credit. I actually expected something half decent when I hovered over that. Fucking hell, dude.

>Tell me about Lena.
She is an outdoorsy girl so naturally the MS devs called her Lens FOREST, oh wait I mean Forst*
>Why does she wear the mask
She's a big girl

this. look at the reception DDLC got, and it's a fucking spoopy meta meme game with paper thin characters.
and some people (of the autistic variety) like it not even for the meme shit, but for the "waifus".

standards are low as fuck.

>If Lena doesn't bite somebody's dick off in the final cut I'll be sorely disappointed
Would a bj scene be the bad or good ending?

Good night man, hope no one kills you in your sleep (or at any other time before/after your testimony )

>What the fuck is this
a mary sue

yawn. watched about 14 seconds of it.
they focus too much on the wrong thing in this game (and in this vid apparently).

Way I see it is...
Things DDLC did right/wrong :
Horror/shocking stuff : 7/10
Girls : 3/10
Meme shit : 2/10 (most of it was boring/cringy)

What DDLC (and DDLCg) are focusing on most?
90% girls
9% meme shit
1% horror

Not my fault lilly switched on everything in me when i first seen her in game

Once I realised tjat Game Theory was never made to be good, only a money maker, I embraced that it was awful. A lot like Hanako's route, now that I think about it

That opening was a literal abomination. How do you guys put up with that level of cringe? The whole just Monika repeats in Mat's voice was purely awful, but as soon as the deep computer voice came in, I bailed hard. Fucking hell was that bad, I couldn't even start the review. Yikes.

Still not done with MS' demo but damn, some of the scenes looks just adapted from KS...
The gate, he can't turn back now this is his new life...
The boys sitting on the couch watching tv and shit, barely paying attention to him
the extremely shy girl who doesn't talk (unless she's mute), leaving the room early. The MC wonders why the teacher doesn't say anything...

I don't remember them all, but there was a dozen more things that were straight up from KS.
And yes, most of these are things that would happen in such a school/setting so it's not out of place, but there could be a thousand different things happening the same way but they took these things that happens almost the same way in KS.
If all you got for your game is "Ok, now we're at the 'KS gate scene', how do we do it in our game?" it's not gonna be very original. Can't you think of your own drama? Your own thoughts? Your own situations (important or random unimportant) and not just copy&paste KS' ones?

At this poitn I wouldn't be surprised if the MC got into pillow fights/wrestles with the athletic girl, and stuff like that.

Also when we meet that retard who climbs on trees and shit, kinda make me fear what I expected, i.e. the mental illness would be more like funny quirks.
2nd girl/rest of the girls might not be like that, but still.

Another month gone, another collection of uploads done.

>the extremely shy girl who doesn't talk (unless she's mute), leaving the room early
To be fair, Moeblobs aren't exclusive to KS

Got any favourites?
I wonder how SHG is getting on.

Just rename it "Rtil booru" already

Can you be more specific?

Given that KS artwork makes up ~25% of all rtil's publically available artwork renaming it that fails in both the aspect that it covers too many artists that aren't rtil and doesn't have enough of rtil's work.

>Can you be more specific?
Do you, Cripple Booru, runner of cripple.booru.org, have any cripple photos you specifically enjoy?

Yeah. For a variety of reasons.
Some were gifts, some were commissions and some are just really damn good.

I think the top would be this one for me, not sure why though.
Also haven't gotten around to uploading it because I prefer to be a bit more thorough with my uploads and I have no idea who the artist is.

>To be fair, Moeblobs aren't exclusive to KS
Yeah, I agree about the rest, but shy moeblobs who run off when you talk to them aren't exactly rare.

I think that what happens here is that since MS has never been able to shake off the "KS ripoff" label in the first place, and because some parts in the beginning ARE extremely similar, the reader's mind is basically primed to begin seeing every similarity from that point as a ripoff.

Example: opening with the panic attack. It actually fits the story, it's one of the better written scenes, and it isn't the first VN to do open with an intense out of context crisis, but due to the whole presentation it's impossible not to see it as a ripoff of Hisao's heart attack.

>teapot lilly
If Kiwi wasn't banned I'd say you should ask him for a source

>ywn put the lid back on and drown lilly in tea

Nice

>I wonder how SHG is getting on.
What do you mean?

'Night /ksg/
stay comfy

>writing too verbose absolutely needs editing
I don't know why people keep saying that. The writing was repetitive and the pacing was slow, but I've seen visual novels way more verbose than this.

>What do you mean?
With the site

>I've seen visual novels way more verbose than this
Mediocrity is worde than being bad because it shows MS's best is still middling whereas if they were truly amateurs they could significantly improve

Fate, Grisaia, and Saya no Uta, off the top of my head, are incredibly verbose and are still considered good visual novels. Don't think for a moment that I'm saying Missing Stars is good, or that it can be compared to them, all I'm saying is that the verbosity isn't what's going to kill it. There are plenty of other things.

a. Japanese and English VN have different writing standards. OELVN thrive on conciseness.
b. People will forgive a VN a relatively minor sin like verbosity if it's on the level of Grisaia or Fate. When everything else is bad, it will simply be seen as bad writing.

Came here to say just that. It has SOME good art, SOME good music, and SOME good writing but always overshadowed by the bad. It feels like it was put together in a month. Unless Somnova types really slowly, I'd wager they spent five years and eleven months of the past six years barely holding together then rushed it out when they realized how long it's been without them releasing anything.

Fatal mistake. Nobody remembered they existed, they could've safely kept working slowly and releasing something passable (if maybe not on Katawa Shoujo's level) eventually. Now they'll forever be associated with this junkpile.

>Now they'll forever be associated with this junkpile.
Well, the KS alpha was hardly good either

It wasn't released to the public either
I'm trying to wrap my head around what might cause a team that was content with radio silence for seven fucking years to suddenly release something that was obviously unfinished. It's just bizarre.

The truth

Just do a crossover with deus ex.
>tfw fanfic discontinued

What was the last thing you Did For Her, ksg?