Sonata Theory

Firstly, for a college project, it was pretty good. Pros: 1) I like the art style of the main cast. 2) The music was pretty nice and relaxing. 3) The characters are likable, I especially enjoyed the clear personalities of the students themselves shining through Cons: 1) I have pretty bad motion sickness and the movement did not help. I think it is a mixture of the plants (making the rooms feel claustrophobic) and the 2D characters in a 3D world. It settled down in the outside areas on floor one though. 2) It was also a bit difficult to navigate the rooms with a fixed camera. I think what would have been better was either inspiration from some of the movement sections of Danganronpa (if you want to keep the 2D and 3D mix) or a minimap at the top right corner.

I thought that this game was very well made. The graphics and art were beautifully made and I love the concept of music being used. I loved how much it reminded me of Ocarina of Time every time I would use the music mechanic. However, I will say that the mechanics and graphics of transport was not my favorite I would have rather had a full game with either 2D or 3D by itself entirely rather than combining them, but that doesn't ruin the fact that the game was very well made and beautiful. I loved the interactions between each character and the interaction of the journal keeping track and helping you throughout your journey.

"Sonata Theory" is less of a game and more of an e-book with a few minigame/puzzles, but you can move around between long tranches of incoherent high school anime club drop-out fan-fiction. The artwork isn't the worst I've seen but it's mostly static, barely animated and pretty janky. So much for that. The graphics aren't great, mostly static, badly animated if well drawn 2D cartoon imagery. That's understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises. On the matter of pricing and value for gamers, most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's often nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. T…

This game was a little frustrating at times, but it was a good experience overall! I liked the blend of 2D characters in a 3D environment. I wish we could move the camera because I got stuck inside of rooms at times. The dialogue was very enjoyable, and the snippets of voice acting added a lot of character to the NPC's reactions to Cadence's choices. Unfortunately, the game was bugged for me, and I wasn't able to complete it since I got stuck at the final song against Silenzio. However, I probably would have went back to the real world because I love how cozy it felt with the warm color palette and comforting music. To add on to that, the music was also really good, and I liked the opening cut scene. My one gripe is that there is no save feature, so you have to play it in one go or you have to restart. For that reason, I really wish that there was a skip feature for the opening cut scene when I had to keep restarting since the final song didn't work for me. Overall, I liked the game even if I couldn't complete it!

It was a very fun game and I really liked the concept. The art was beautiful but I felt like the animation was a bit clunky and could use some more frames in between.

Beat the game, chose to stay in Falsetto. I love the art style. The combination of 2d and 3d was a great choice! The world is super vibrant and I really enjoyed everything to do with music whether it be the background music, using music as magic, or just thematically with silence being the bad guy. The fourth wall jokes were also pretty funny. My only critique is getting used to navigating is a little hard since you can't flip the camera but this didn't detract from my experience.