Hello Girl

how do you pronounce Maillard's name

I love how Courier's theme song is just a guitar cover of "Lazy Day Blues", which is pretty funny to me. I wonder if this is just a coincidence that Courier knows the other Courier from the other game.

HEY THIS IS REALLY GOOD THANKS FOR MAKING IT

a great story for anyone who is a fan of "PHONE"

(Spoiler warning)

Incredible visual novel that kept me engaged throughout the story, with its well written characters and war setting. I am still trying to understand the correlation between Rabbit Zero and the cylindrical fucked-up looking dog. Waiting for the MatPat theory video to drop and dissect the lore.

I grew up using the VoIP system mainly so POTS having actual people is crazy to me so  I looked into it after I recorded. POTS Goes back as far as the 1800s and is still being used today so its Pretty decent technology.

You really do get pulled into the story  within like 5 mins and  The art is on point. so far this is overwhelmingly good :)  

I also can really relate to the boredom waiting for calls ....... Its like a graveyard shift at work. Anyways ill give a full review on the story after I've completed it. Thank you to everyone who put in work creating this visual novel :)

Hello Girl

I read this VN with auto on and fast text speed/advance time across several nights, when it felt like the right time of day that I could experience it. Usually I read VNs by hitting the spacebar myself with instant text speed so that I feel like I'm reading as fast as possible, but for some reason I felt like using auto for this one. This VN put me at peace.

On the second night, I was distracted by some other window and left the game on the title screen for a while.
Hearing those two wonderful notes and expecting the guitar to return for the better part of an hour, I was treated to the gentle rustling of the wind fading in and out.

The presentation of this game is beautiful.

Mentha's art is very calming to look at. I went into Hello Girl knowing this, with high expectations of the drawings she had been working very hard on, and still I had them more than fulfilled.

Seeing the use of transitions, the seamless shifts between ADV and NVL, the text effects, the movement and framing of the character portraits made a strong impression on me. I'd never seen anyone do that with Ren'Py. As I'm helping a friend with their Ren'Py VN right now, it makes these touches all the more impressive to me.

I think the length and the scope of this VN is just right.

The small scope of the small town, of Ana's timid world view, her simple duties... it's very grounded.

The historical-like setting, the details and photos that speak to the research the team did... it draws you in.

Keeping the theme of VNcup 2 in mind all the while, wondering about the dreams I see... it leaves a bit of unanswered mystery for me to think about. I really like that feeling.

Wanting to know more about the setting, but feeling satisfied with what I saw. That's one of the feelings I enjoy after reading a short story.

I was touched. It was good yuri.

I'll tell my friends about this story.

wow! Instantly with this, within the first 5 minutes, I was hooked! The presentation and style of this VN is completely off the charts. It's got so much personality and sleekness in the way it operates on a technical level. Nothing about this feels 'thrown together', this feels like a consistent project that had effort put into it.

This game is so adorable! The sprite transitions, the art, the dialogue and the timing of the lines, the little jokes, everything really fed into something greater and contributed something to make this experience one where I had a smile constantly. The music was amazing too - for VNs I generally feel it'd be hard to listen to the music outside of the games, they're composed for short repetition and ambience, but I feel like this is something I could listen to on my own.

There have been many games for the VN cup where I have thought "yeah, this is a quality submission", but for Hello Girl, I thought "yeah, this is a quality game". To me, it exceeded the boundaries of my expectations for a 3 month game jam. It felt so held together and I could tell there was absolutely vision behind this.

On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly say it's a quality submission. Like, this game is great - I haven't played a ton of visual novels but this is definitely in my top 3, but I just don't see how it met the theme for this cup at all. Maybe I am missing some allegorical meaning or distant metaphor found in the concept of Rabbit Zero, or maybe there is more to this story yet to be told, but in my read of what was here, I didn't find the theme.

I assume there is more yet to be told, because the ending hit me like a brick wall. Or a truck. Or a brick truck. I enjoyed my two hours in this world so much that I was fairly disappointed with how it fizzled out. I really hope there is more, I am invested! Like, if there's a sequel to something I've played, yeah I'll maybe check it out - but rarely am I invested! I want this! I want more. It felt like the drop off here was so quick. Which, I understand, this game was made under a fairly short time constraint which doesn't really give the time for a full world to develop, but it feels like what was built up here was left in the middle of its construction. Which, of course, sometimes you have to do - but it can make a singular piece of something feel less impactful. I hope there's more.

Those two things are my sole criticisms with this game, and they're easier to focus on and talk about because the flaw is always easier to poke at when the product doesn't have a lot of them. This game was so impressive to me on a technical level, it had so much detail put into it you can tell it was loved, it was so cute, I liked all the characters, and I want to see them all flourish in whatever comes next for the world of Hello Girl - WHICH THERE BETTER BE MORE FOR!!! I really really enjoyed this game and I think you should play it too. I don't know why you're fuckin' reading my comment and have gotten to this point in the 'review' if you haven't played it, but if that applies to you, PLAY THIS THANG!!!