VNMaker - 【Chapter 1】A Priori

Visual Novel Maker (Live2D plugin already purchased, just in case Live2D artists apply)

A Priori is a visual novel featuring a logic/mathematical game theme (please note that "mathematical" doesn't mean "with numbers": Tic-tac-toe is an example of that).
Story
In order to ensure the overall quality of the dialogues and a reasonable amount of work, the story will follow a nearly linear structure with few branching paths (image below is an example of that). The length of the story itself won't be excessive, but it will contain elements of deep substance, such as depression and interpersonal relationship (see Setting and Character).
Gameplay
Finally, the gameplay: each minigame is a simple mathematical game inherent to the story (such as Tic-tac-toe, Chomp, but also games invented appositely) played against one or more characters controlled by a simple AI. Once the player wins, they will enter the Crack Phase.
In the Crack Phase, the goal is no more the defeat of your opponent, but the one of the game itself: you will have to provide a perfect strategy that guarantees victory from the start. This moment is much like a Danganronpa/Ace Attorney trial: a debate segment with various deductive minigames put in between (see Screenshots).

Even in your everyday japanese high school, having a Game Theory club is pretty unusual. And yet, the club's president seems to manage to keep the place running way to easily despite the lack of new inscriptions. While getting to know your friends better each day that passes, it will be up to you to unravel the club's mysteries. Or to decide it's better not.

Sango Kojima (main character)
Haruto Sato

Kayu Shibata Utamara Wakamatsu Akia Sazama Una Yagi

Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Steam OS

Story - ADV Mode Story - NVL Mode Minigame Crack Phase - Question Crack Phase - Input Number Crack Phase - Deduction race (1) Crack Phase - Deduction race (2) Crack Phase - Mental Hunt Crack Phase - Logic Pong:

A Priori (Main Theme)
Tutorial
So Evil!

Supporter
Developer

...what will Una do to Kayu after she loses to Sango and Haruto :rwink:

Kayu kicked my butt repeatedly at Candy Hunt. The idea behind the minigame is good, but as the first introduction to minigames in the demo it's pretty tough for anyone who's not acquainted with how to solve it (I ended up borrowing the brain of a puzzle-loving friend to win). It didn't help that failure lead to a game over, which I wasn't expecting so I hadn't made a save right before it. To me, it seems like a good idea if you added in a scene where Kayu let you try again instead of just sending the player to the main menu.

Having custom art like a custom message box is a good way to stand out, but I think it needs a bit more work. Often the dialogue goes off the box, which makes it hard to read against the lighter backgrounds, and for some reason the menu options don't properly fit in the smaller box. It may just be that I have bad eyes, but it was kinda hard to tell the difference between the white words when Sango was talking and the light blue when she was thinking. If there was a clearer difference, like a black outline around the spoken words or the thoughts being italicized, then it would be much easier to tell which it was.
There were a couple English spelling mistakes I noticed, such as using 'wander' in the intro instead of 'wonder', so you may want to look into getting a proofreader to double-check things (if you pm me the current script, I'd be willing to take a look). There was an odd mistake where 'Girl' calls Sango 'Haruto' in the beginning of the game (quite confusing since Haruto hadn't even shown up yet). I also had a minor issue clicking on some buttons (like the Confirm one in the candy minigame) where I'd click on it but it wouldn't actually activate. If it's possible to make those buttons clearer with an outline then that could help with miss-clicks.

Overall I can tell you've put a lot of work into this, it just happens to not be for me. :rswt Keep working hard and polishing your minigames, and you could have quite the game! :rwink:

So:

• About Candy's Day... yeah you're right about everything. Like I said, Kayu's AI level is maximum at the moment. I was thinking of waiting how many people can beat her and lower her IQ accordingly (I was fairly impressed when @JapoZero managed to finish the game)
• Yeah, a retry scene is something I definitely need to work on. Unlike other games, where you have an HP bar and can save the game before it's too late, in this first minigame you can lose in a blink without even realizing it.
• About the custom UI, it's probably because you haven't the font used in the game installed (the default font is way larger). You can download it here. I should probably add it to the download page.
• Thanks about the proofreading stuff. I thought I had fixed them but this doesn't seem to be the case.:kaocry:
• The "Confirm" button uses VNM's default UI's API, but I'll try to look into it anyway.
• Also, what about the minigames after the first? Did you continue playing after your friend solved Kayu's one?

• So a thing about most logic puzzles is if you know the basics then the puzzle is easy to solve (like how my puzzle-loving friend recognize the basic 'type' of puzzle so could solve it first try), and AI won't play much of role in the difficulty since you'll know how to respond to win. AI really only affects the players who don't know the puzzle, and in the current case setting it to max is going to be a turn-off. While having it mindlessly easy isn't a great option, your first minigame really should be the easiest as it's introducing players to the game.
• Yep, and if possible you could adjust the AI to be easier if the player fails and needs to retry. It doesn't have to make it an easy win, but the game's difficulty being able to change a bit to suit different players could open the game up to more players. Obviously this wouldn't be easy for you, so it's not something to jump to do, just an idea to keep in mind.
• For the font issue, you should definitely see if there's a way to include that in the game's file. A player shouldn't be expected to go hunt down a font so that the game looks right, and I'm sure vnm has a way to include the font (would be odd if it doesn't).
• There were other errors that I didn't write down, so yeah, definitely double-check the dialogue.
• The button weirdness could be because of the font issue, is there a way to have the button highlight when the mouse is over it? That would make it clear if the player was clicking in the right spot or not.

I did play farther, though I wasn't all that interested in the deduction race or mental hunt. Deduction race boiled down to multiple-choice questions where there was only one correct answer, which was a shame since I thought that I'd be able to make wrong conclusions by following the 'routes' that showed up on the screen. It would've been interesting to be able to come up with a wrong conclusion (which I'm sure Kayu would call Sango out on), or start with a wrong answer but be able to work my way back to the correct conclusion (and have Haruto point out where a mistake was made, but be impressed that Sango still got the right answer in the end).

Mental hunt felt out of place to me, since it was all about quickly responding the the stuff flying across the screen. I'm not sure if I was just unlucky or what, but I didn't see 'max' as an option for a while, so I was trying things like '2+2' or '2x2' to get the right answer (which at that point was still 4)... Of course, once I saw that 'max' was an option it just meant that I'd lost part of my health bar for no good reason. Another minor issue I had with it is mostly how the buttons were arranged, I would think that the center button that's larger than the others would be the most important one to hit, but it was erase instead. Switching erase and hunt's buttons would make more sense to me.

I relied on the 'skip' button a lot since I had to retry things often, but there's something wrong with it since at one point instead of showing the thing I was supposed to do (multiple choice or the number input, I'm not sure which) the game just drained my health bar and gave me a game over... So yeah, I ended up stopping after mental hunt. :rswt

• That thing about the AI is actually pretty doable (and not cuz I'm on VNM, I'm pretty sure it'd be the same with RMMV's eventing system). Guess I'll go with that. I'll just have Kayu humiliate the MC every time the player retries and she has to lower the difficulty level.
• Well, there is a way to make this font thing happen, it just doesn't seem to work since even though I used it you're not the only one having this problem. I'll just ask in the support section.
• Both highlighting and drawing the borders of the button are possible. I'll give it a try if I see other testers are having problems with it even after fixing the font.

About Deductive Race: yeah I can see your point. If you've played some otome games in the past (this is not sexist, I play lots of them as well), though, you may probably know that using branching paths that won't reconnect one to the other later brings an exponential growth of the work to do for the devs. In my case, a deduction race with 3 question would become one with 31 question . A deduction race with 5 question would become one with 781. That's why many minigames in the genre which are basically the same as mine do not support it. (Still, I've seen one where you had to physically drive down to the right route to choose the right question to make it more neat)

About mental hunt: the pieces you get are completely randomized, but I can see how that may be a problem. I'll rearrange the buttons asap, but I'll need some more feedback from the other users before changing more "core" stuff.

The problem with the skip button has been fixed. It occured every time the player has to input a number in skip mode. Doing this would just skip the input answering 0. But since 0 is the wrong answer, you end up in a loop that quickly drains you HP bar and asks you to answer again. Something similar might have happened to you in Kayu's minigame, but since there is no HP bar there...

Is it possible that you answered the question right after loading a save file? If so, that's a VNM bug that I'm conviniently using as anti-cheat method.
Also I'm impressed you managed to get all the way to that point! Not everyone could get past Kayu's Candy Day:kaopride:

that damn candy game DX i actually had to think the strategy XD, but yeah that happened after loading to try again in a question.