I really enjoyed this VN for the most part. I liked that it reflects the lesser-shown realities of transitioning from online dating to real dating. I like how I can tell that the writer has been in similar circles to me, based off of the applications and subcultures that are mentioned. It seems like a very "write what you know" tale, and I love and appreciate that a lot. But I'm gonna have to agree with one of the other commenters and say that I got quite frustrated with Nica towards the end, to the point that it sort of soured the whole experience for me.
I feel she went in way too hard on Chun at the end. It reminded me of how my abuser talked to me in the past. Especially because... okay, maybe this is because Nica and I are just very different people, but I just don't think that Chun looking at her online presence to figure out what she would like is creepy. If she had bad intentions, it would be creepy, but Chun was just trying to pick places Nica would like and make sure she had a good time. I think calling this "stalking" is quite possibly the most purposefully uncharitable way you could interpret her actions. And, yes, looking at pick-up stuff would have been bad if Chun had understood the subculture she was looking at, but she moved from Hong Kong in 2019! It makes perfect sense that she wouldn't know the intricacies of niche misogynistic dating subcultures. The game even sort of acknowledges the possibility of the language/culture barrier having an effect on this, with Chun's line, "I'm sorry. What's a pick-up artist?"
Yes, it is understandable for Nica to be uncomfortable with all of this, but the way she goes about it is not it at all, in my opinion. Even if I do try to view Chun as someone creepy, their conversation just... it really, seriously reminded me of my conversations with my abusers.
I selected their dialogue, to hopefully better demonstrate their contrast, and show the issue with this part of their conversation.
Chun's dialogue:
"I don't understand."
"I'm... not following this conversation."
"It's alright to be angry with me. Even though I don't know what I did wrong."
"... It is?"
"I didn't know what was not okay..."
"I think I fucked this up in the worst way possible. I'm so sorry."
"I... didn't know. They're the only things I could find on the subject."
"I'm sorry. What's a pick-up artist?"
"I didn't know I could do that..."
"N-No, I always wanted to-"
"... I didn't know about any of that."
Nica's dialogue:
"I guess, but I didn't expect someone to record everything I said publicly like some kind of stalker."
"Did they tell you to look up every detail about my life and figure out the perfect date scenario to fuck me?"
"I can't believe this is the person I had a crush on for months. Someone who thinks about winning a girl's by doing pick-up artist stuff. And she doesn't even know she's doing it. This is so embarrassing."
"The worst part is that I'm angry and scared of you. You could dox me anytime. You're a monster."
"That's why I can't take you seriously at all. You're so stupid."
"I didn't know who she was. She scared me so bad I couldn't sleep, and after that she just mellowed out. When she showed her true self to me, I learned who she was: a vulnerable person who wanted attention from me, a VTuber coming to London."
"She doesn't know how to distinguish friendship, love, and just being a fan. If I had to put it bluntly, this poor girl doesn't have a life. She clearly doesn't know how to talk to people after a messy relationship, and that's why she feels that she needs to manipulate them into loving them. And without realizing what she did. There was no way she could keep up her disguise in real life, but she kept doing it. I hate her for that. I hate her for making me come here and humiliate me. I hate her for everything." (I'll come back to this set of dialogue in particular in just one moment.)
"Do you remember Ann Radcliff? You should remember, since you did so much homework on me."
"I think you went from terror to horror when we were out in London. But now that all that's done, you're just a comedy."
"You did your research, and you still don't know me. And that's why it's funny. I find it kinda cute that you suck so bad at this."
Finally: I realize this wasn't the intention, but for a story which comes back over and over to leftist theory (and, if I recall correctly, mentioned neurodiversity by name), I find it shocking how they were able to include all of this, seemingly without thinking for a second how it might feel to read for an autistic person. The abusers that Nica reminded me of in this sequence were specifically peers who abused and harassed me for my autistic traits, and this is not a coincidence.
What Chun did was, essentially, overly-prepare for a social interaction she was scared for. She researched it, she scripted it. She misunderstood how Nica was feeling and would feel about certain things, and she misread social situations. Does that make her blameless? No. And I wouldn't say Chun is autistic-coded, either. But her preparation for this social situation is exactly what autistic people tend to do. Script, and research (in this case, from bad sources). In Chun's internal monologue, her putting on a front to be more agreeable is even something touched on earlier.
And what does Nica have to say about this? "You don't have a life. You don't know how to talk to people. You subconsciously mask and script in order to manipulate people into loving you, and the only reason it's subconscious is because you are stupid. You are a monster for this. You are a laughing stock, you are a comedy. You suck so badly at socializing, it's pathetic and amusing to me."
Again. I realize it was not the intention, at all. But that doesn't change the fact that it really really really sucked to read that, as an autistic person who masks and scripts social interactions. I feel the need to emphasize one last time: Nica in this scene reminds me of my abusers who abused me for my autistic traits. Many of her quotes her echo their sentiments extremely closely (especially the idea of "you failed at this social interaction so badly, even though you researched it? that's so funny, you're so pathetic and dumb").
I think the aim here was to make it clear that they are both deeply messed up people. Nica says some really cruel things, and Chun does some things that makes Nica really uncomfortable. I think it's supposed to even out, in theory. But intention does matter. Chun wanted to be make it so Nica would like her time in London, and heal her heart in the process. Nica said all of those things with the purpose of being cruel to Chun and hurting her.
If you want to make it seem less one-sided, you need to either make it so that Chun also has some expressedly bad intentions, or reel back Nica's dialogue with her a lot. As it is, that scene left me feeling so repulsed by Nica's verbal abuse towards Chun that I couldn't even feel happy that they didn't break up in the end.
It's a shame that I feel this way, as I did really enjoy 31st March, Midnight. I know this collective is capable of fantastic games. Hell, even the rest of the game is proof of this! But one particularly bad scene can sour a whole experience.
I hope that, in the future, you may consider how people with different backgrounds and neurotypes may feel reading your works, especially when using such harsh language.
Thank you for playing the game and writing this long review. Our team is pretty neurodiverse and the artist of the game (who is a bit too attached to Nica in particular) is autistic. We recognize that the characters in Spring Gothic behave in ways that are far from fair to each other, but this was part of our intentions with the game.
The way this VN tackles Chun and Nica’s relationship kept me heavily invested in what would follow, and made me think of how much of a leap making a long-distance relationship be physical can be. The visuals and music helped me get immersed in the writing further, making me have a great experience all throughout.
an incredibly topical vn. chun and nica really feel like the sort of young women i've met before in real life, so this felt awfully familiar from the very start. amazingly put together; from the writing, to the music, to the art, to all the editing, to the GUI and programming--it all felt very seamless. i really enjoyed it! :)
Really really great in a way I find hard to describe. I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about their love of queer bookstores before. I went to one once in Vermont and it was probably the best 3 hours and $100 I've ever spent. Just the curiosity and joy of reading about things you've never thought of, seeing all types of people you never see in real life, it's just wonderful. I loved the spider's string thin tension between the two characters, each of them wondering what exactly they messed up, and it all culminates very naturally and heartbreakingly (is that a word?). Chun getting her dating advice from PUAs without knowing was darkly hilarious and also a really sad reflection of how people kind of just fumble around with incomplete and bad knowledge.
was painful how much the subway kiss and 1st night reminded me of when me and my wife 1st met-up.
I saw a lot of myself in Nika but found myself empathizing with Chun more and kind of mad at Nika. Probably cuz i was projecting my own relationship experiences onto them both due to the parallels with the long distance meetup .
Spoilers
The 3rd act made me realize Nika is actually really different from me. the way she cuts through the fantasy and preconceptions and confronts stuff bluntly and honestly and meanly feels like it salvaged what they had and kept them together. i could never
Pretty nice story, I enjoyed reading it. All the different elements blended together really well. As someone who's been in long distance relationships before, there were things I found that I related to and also things that felt extremely different from my own experiences (for better or worse), but they all felt very real. Would recommend to anyone who's interested by the description.
kind of a silly thing to say, but i’m blown away by how enamoured the game is with reality. all the photos and descriptions of london localities. historical figures shaping the characters’ own histories. the characters discussing their thoughts on so many films and books.
it feels like an extension of nica’s opening passage. with all the ugliness in the world, it feels important to recognise and celebrate the beauty. and i love it for that.
I've been binging VNs for the last week and of all of them, this is my favorite. Not one tear shed, but it has touched me most deeply. It feels real. I feel seen. I do not have the words to fully express how this work makes me feel. This is something I will have to recommend to partners so they can better understand who I am. Thank you for making this.
The game is great. I don't usually read visual novels, but I ended up enjoying the story a lot more than I expected. I'm looking forward to your future projects!
i adored the concept, awkward meetup with all the expectations being challenged by the reality was really good. its like just such a relatable struggle. i liked getting one side of the story and then the second and how confusing and challenging navigating this meeting was for both of them. i think especially on the second round ever since the kiss seeing how things really panned out was so exciting. i feel like repeating the same story from a different perspective is a really fun approach i feel like i see surprisingly rarely, but here it was perfect. i also like the narration shifting to an impartial description, i found it thematically fitting the conflict of them both just being clueless together as were just left to watch these girls fumble like a voyeur, since thats what the relationship was built on, both sides
the art is so good and the sprites are so lively and adorable. they sell the cute expressions just as the serious ones. so good job. and the music is so fitting that after completing the game it became my music player for the rest of the day. everyone involved did a superb job. good job thank you for sharing
bigger spoilers onwards:
!!!
!!
!
the whole focus of boundaries and how they can be bent and broken without even knowing was extremely thought provoking. and when things just didnt make sense anymore, when they felt at loss dealing with the same person in the same room that felt so different than the one they had known from online... so what stood out the most to me was how i was very touched by the part when they couldnt talk so they began conversing digitally in the place that was familiar for their relationship. i think that part really sold the shape of their relationship and so when they went back home and could return back to being bold and "normal" it was perfect.
a kiss with tongue is too scary in real life but the same person confessing to stealing your panties makes you suddenly wanna fuck the dork is hilarious. i really get that how when i have my own space and own privacy to interact from its so much safer. big mood.
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THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
I really enjoyed this VN for the most part. I liked that it reflects the lesser-shown realities of transitioning from online dating to real dating. I like how I can tell that the writer has been in similar circles to me, based off of the applications and subcultures that are mentioned. It seems like a very "write what you know" tale, and I love and appreciate that a lot. But I'm gonna have to agree with one of the other commenters and say that I got quite frustrated with Nica towards the end, to the point that it sort of soured the whole experience for me.
I feel she went in way too hard on Chun at the end. It reminded me of how my abuser talked to me in the past. Especially because... okay, maybe this is because Nica and I are just very different people, but I just don't think that Chun looking at her online presence to figure out what she would like is creepy. If she had bad intentions, it would be creepy, but Chun was just trying to pick places Nica would like and make sure she had a good time. I think calling this "stalking" is quite possibly the most purposefully uncharitable way you could interpret her actions. And, yes, looking at pick-up stuff would have been bad if Chun had understood the subculture she was looking at, but she moved from Hong Kong in 2019! It makes perfect sense that she wouldn't know the intricacies of niche misogynistic dating subcultures. The game even sort of acknowledges the possibility of the language/culture barrier having an effect on this, with Chun's line, "I'm sorry. What's a pick-up artist?"
Yes, it is understandable for Nica to be uncomfortable with all of this, but the way she goes about it is not it at all, in my opinion. Even if I do try to view Chun as someone creepy, their conversation just... it really, seriously reminded me of my conversations with my abusers.
I selected their dialogue, to hopefully better demonstrate their contrast, and show the issue with this part of their conversation.
Chun's dialogue:
Nica's dialogue:
Finally: I realize this wasn't the intention, but for a story which comes back over and over to leftist theory (and, if I recall correctly, mentioned neurodiversity by name), I find it shocking how they were able to include all of this, seemingly without thinking for a second how it might feel to read for an autistic person. The abusers that Nica reminded me of in this sequence were specifically peers who abused and harassed me for my autistic traits, and this is not a coincidence.
What Chun did was, essentially, overly-prepare for a social interaction she was scared for. She researched it, she scripted it. She misunderstood how Nica was feeling and would feel about certain things, and she misread social situations. Does that make her blameless? No. And I wouldn't say Chun is autistic-coded, either. But her preparation for this social situation is exactly what autistic people tend to do. Script, and research (in this case, from bad sources). In Chun's internal monologue, her putting on a front to be more agreeable is even something touched on earlier.
And what does Nica have to say about this? "You don't have a life. You don't know how to talk to people. You subconsciously mask and script in order to manipulate people into loving you, and the only reason it's subconscious is because you are stupid. You are a monster for this. You are a laughing stock, you are a comedy. You suck so badly at socializing, it's pathetic and amusing to me."
Again. I realize it was not the intention, at all. But that doesn't change the fact that it really really really sucked to read that, as an autistic person who masks and scripts social interactions. I feel the need to emphasize one last time: Nica in this scene reminds me of my abusers who abused me for my autistic traits. Many of her quotes her echo their sentiments extremely closely (especially the idea of "you failed at this social interaction so badly, even though you researched it? that's so funny, you're so pathetic and dumb").
I think the aim here was to make it clear that they are both deeply messed up people. Nica says some really cruel things, and Chun does some things that makes Nica really uncomfortable. I think it's supposed to even out, in theory. But intention does matter. Chun wanted to be make it so Nica would like her time in London, and heal her heart in the process. Nica said all of those things with the purpose of being cruel to Chun and hurting her.
If you want to make it seem less one-sided, you need to either make it so that Chun also has some expressedly bad intentions, or reel back Nica's dialogue with her a lot. As it is, that scene left me feeling so repulsed by Nica's verbal abuse towards Chun that I couldn't even feel happy that they didn't break up in the end.
It's a shame that I feel this way, as I did really enjoy 31st March, Midnight. I know this collective is capable of fantastic games. Hell, even the rest of the game is proof of this! But one particularly bad scene can sour a whole experience.
I hope that, in the future, you may consider how people with different backgrounds and neurotypes may feel reading your works, especially when using such harsh language.
Thank you for playing the game and writing this long review. Our team is pretty neurodiverse and the artist of the game (who is a bit too attached to Nica in particular) is autistic. We recognize that the characters in Spring Gothic behave in ways that are far from fair to each other, but this was part of our intentions with the game.
The way this VN tackles Chun and Nica’s relationship kept me heavily invested in what would follow, and made me think of how much of a leap making a long-distance relationship be physical can be. The visuals and music helped me get immersed in the writing further, making me have a great experience all throughout.
an incredibly topical vn. chun and nica really feel like the sort of young women i've met before in real life, so this felt awfully familiar from the very start. amazingly put together; from the writing, to the music, to the art, to all the editing, to the GUI and programming--it all felt very seamless. i really enjoyed it! :)
Really really great in a way I find hard to describe. I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about their love of queer bookstores before. I went to one once in Vermont and it was probably the best 3 hours and $100 I've ever spent. Just the curiosity and joy of reading about things you've never thought of, seeing all types of people you never see in real life, it's just wonderful. I loved the spider's string thin tension between the two characters, each of them wondering what exactly they messed up, and it all culminates very naturally and heartbreakingly (is that a word?). Chun getting her dating advice from PUAs without knowing was darkly hilarious and also a really sad reflection of how people kind of just fumble around with incomplete and bad knowledge.
Really solid read.
was painful how much the subway kiss and 1st night reminded me of when me and my wife 1st met-up.
I saw a lot of myself in Nika but found myself empathizing with Chun more and kind of mad at Nika. Probably cuz i was projecting my own relationship experiences onto them both due to the parallels with the long distance meetup .
Spoilers
The 3rd act made me realize Nika is actually really different from me. the way she cuts through the fantasy and preconceptions and confronts stuff bluntly and honestly and meanly feels like it salvaged what they had and kept them together. i could never
Pretty nice story, I enjoyed reading it. All the different elements blended together really well. As someone who's been in long distance relationships before, there were things I found that I related to and also things that felt extremely different from my own experiences (for better or worse), but they all felt very real. Would recommend to anyone who's interested by the description.
kind of a silly thing to say, but i’m blown away by how enamoured the game is with reality. all the photos and descriptions of london localities. historical figures shaping the characters’ own histories. the characters discussing their thoughts on so many films and books.
it feels like an extension of nica’s opening passage. with all the ugliness in the world, it feels important to recognise and celebrate the beauty. and i love it for that.
I've been binging VNs for the last week and of all of them, this is my favorite. Not one tear shed, but it has touched me most deeply. It feels real. I feel seen. I do not have the words to fully express how this work makes me feel. This is something I will have to recommend to partners so they can better understand who I am.
Thank you for making this.
The game is great. I don't usually read visual novels, but I ended up enjoying the story a lot more than I expected. I'm looking forward to your future projects!
slight spoilers:
i adored the concept, awkward meetup with all the expectations being challenged by the reality was really good. its like just such a relatable struggle. i liked getting one side of the story and then the second and how confusing and challenging navigating this meeting was for both of them. i think especially on the second round ever since the kiss seeing how things really panned out was so exciting. i feel like repeating the same story from a different perspective is a really fun approach i feel like i see surprisingly rarely, but here it was perfect. i also like the narration shifting to an impartial description, i found it thematically fitting the conflict of them both just being clueless together as were just left to watch these girls fumble like a voyeur, since thats what the relationship was built on, both sides
the art is so good and the sprites are so lively and adorable. they sell the cute expressions just as the serious ones. so good job. and the music is so fitting that after completing the game it became my music player for the rest of the day. everyone involved did a superb job. good job thank you for sharing
bigger spoilers onwards:
!!!
!!
!
the whole focus of boundaries and how they can be bent and broken without even knowing was extremely thought provoking. and when things just didnt make sense anymore, when they felt at loss dealing with the same person in the same room that felt so different than the one they had known from online... so what stood out the most to me was how i was very touched by the part when they couldnt talk so they began conversing digitally in the place that was familiar for their relationship. i think that part really sold the shape of their relationship and so when they went back home and could return back to being bold and "normal" it was perfect.
a kiss with tongue is too scary in real life but the same person confessing to stealing your panties makes you suddenly wanna fuck the dork is hilarious. i really get that how when i have my own space and own privacy to interact from its so much safer. big mood.