Hello Girl

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!!!