Happiness+

@Plk_Lesiak Read my EVN please

@Plk_Lesiak I didn’t even see your response until now. Well since the VN is done, I can tell you everything. It was largely Wolf’s idea our studio director. I didn’t contribute much to the design of her character. The idea of Cheshire was to be a memento. I wanted a memento of Ji-Min like a museum of memories kinda thing, and someone brought up an avatar like Budapest from Watercress’s previous VN Palinarus. But, if you were expecting some meaning behind the story, sorry, the story doesn’t have any meaning outside of Grief. Personally, I don’t like writing stories without an arc or resolution, but the goal of “This was for you”, was for the reader to experience that grief has no resolution or arc, or any motif on it’s own. In your review, you brought up that you didn’t like the interactions with Cheshire and her twist. I agree with your criticism, however, giving her some poetic meaning seemed to antithetical to the whole theme of This Was For You. I thought about it too when we in our writing meeting, because I wanted the relationship to a bit more pronounced with flashbacks of Ji-Min or something however, the goal was for the relationship to be exclusively online. The characters just knew each other online and used Cheshire as a joke. In fact Cheshire is the joke, she was created by Ji-Min to troll MC. That’s why Cheshire is so damn annoying. She was designed for MC not to like her. Even giving her sentience, would’ve taken away from the whole grief theme we were going for. Honestly, our VN has no story. It’s the MC griefing for 30 minutes. Our goal was for the reader to experience that feeling of lost and not be so captured in a narrative arc. That’s why MC has no gender, no identity, etc, they are a self-insert. Imagine if you were there. 
 
It’s funny because as soon as I joined the studio in February, I was like “are going to make another depression simulator?” Everyone laughed on the Discord voice chat. Because This was for you is the quintessential Watercress experience. It’s our most polished VN to date. I contributed 25% of the writing. I did the audio splicing work lol. I did some of the GUI work. So yeah. 
 
Is that why you recommend it vs highly recommended it?

Thank you, I feel like Coco’s route came out of nowhere. 16 year old me was whiplashed because it got meta for some reason. I don’t mind metanarratives like DDLC, but using that as a true end came across as an asspull to me. Like when You said that she wanted to unlock Blick Winkel  I was...just...eh... Personally, I felt like it gotten way too out of hand for a simple story of several teenagers trapped inside a underwater amusement park. (Wow, that sentence is so fucking surreal after reading it lolz).
Another problem, is that once BW is unlocked they are basically God. BW can do anything. So, the last moments of saving Coco’s life is basically going back into a literal previous point in space time to save her from her “inevitable” demise. Sigh....
Despite that, this is one of the reasons I cannot recommend Ever17 to newbies, because unlocking the true route without a walkthrough is hard as hell. I spent days just trying to do that. Plus, you cannot tell which choices lead into certain routes or not. They don’t really seem that consequential like Saya No Uta. 
Finally, metanarratives are really dangerous to rely on because you are literally shattering the immersion by breaking the fourth wall.
Honestly, what’s worse is that I am not even sure how else they could’ve ended it. It’s not a good introductory visual novel because of the length and the ending. 
 
(Full disclosure it’s been 6 years since I’ve read Ever17, so I may gotten some things wrong.)
 
But seriously, thanks again for your post. It’s refreshing to see someone who isn’t drinking the “Ever17 is kamige” kool-aid.
 

Alright nosebleed, you, me, sunday, hell in the cell. Let's do this.