Belong

[got_quiet]

Name: Belong
Status: Complete
Site: https://aflutter.itch.io/belong
Rating: PG
Pairing: ?/M, ?/F
Description: A first project sort of simple high schoolish dating game.



Belong is straightforward dating game VN. Compared to most of the games in the BLM bundle this one feels more unpolished and amateurish, from the anime art to the writing. The dev has uploaded a pdf explaining a bunch of her decisions and processes, and in it she says that this is her first attempt at a game, so a lot of the stuff I have to say makes sense within that context

The mechanics for this game are extremely straightforward. After getting a couple choices in the very beginning it just straight up asks you who's route you want to take and from then on you're basically in a kinetic novel. In my first runthrough I got I think 3 choices within the route I picked, and if you make what's obviously the wrong one the game ends. So effectively your choices are 0. Reading the comments on the game on itch, it appears that one of the early choices you make (which is to identify a major flaw in your character) has some effect on the story, but I honestly could not tell that it had done anything at all. At no point did I hit a moment and see any connection between what was going on and what choice I had made. The dev's design document explains that certain dialog in the game was changed, depending which of these traits you picked in the beginning. This might make the programming a little easier, but it also makes invisible the effects of player choice. I also never got the sense that my character was "two-faced" in any way. It would have been so much better if players got to pick options at the moment that the divergence appeared in the story, rather than setting the single option that must be followed through the whole game within the first five minutes of play.

Going through a route once unlocks a "POV version" of that same route. If you run the same route again you get new scenes from the LI's point of view and earn "stickers," which are basically little chibi images that you can look at from the main menu. You don't have to do anything to earn them, they just appear after certain points in story. It's an interesting idea, but because there aren't that many choices in the main route it kind of feels like what you needed to do to earn all this extra content was just to read the same story twice. It didn't feel super satisfying, but it did flesh out the LI's route a lot which is important, because the first run feels a little shallow without it.

There's a lot about this that strikes me as the product of someone young or maybe inexperienced, partially because of the writing, like I mentioned, but also from the way this world works feels kind of... not really our world, even though there's no indication that this is anywhere but the mundane world. The design document says Australia was where most of the setting got its inspiration, and I don't know Australia that well, so maybe? But some stuff is also just incorrect. For example one character enjoys mycology and has a mushroom garden. In it he mentions growing truffles. You cannot grow truffles in a backyard garden. It's little stuff like that that made me feel off balance the entire time I was playing and unable to really get interested in the story.


Does Sydney have a Japan town? Sense of place is confused in this game.

The story of the one route I played is very simple and was ok. Out of the three choices for routes to take you get two with names and one that's a "????" There is no reason for the decision to withhold the name that I can see. The LI, (who's name is Flint, btw) isn't hiding his identity or anything, and you learn his name early in his route. He's also not a bonus that you need to unlock by doing something in prior runs. I just went for him my first run without any problems. So it was just weird that the game suggested there was something secret going on when there wasn't. Flint comes from a broken family and is constantly working hard to make a little money. He dreams about being an architect and is involved in the local theater scene because his good friend is an aspiring playwright. You have a couple of meet cutes with him, and then learn that he is helping out at the theater company where you are doing part time work. You end up dating, bring him home for dinner to meet your adopted dad (who is a priest) and then later he tells you he can't be with you cause he'd just drag you down... and then he comes back to you and you have a heart to heart about your future. I may be misremembering a little bit of the details because I played the game a couple weeks back and that has already erased a good portion of it from my mind. It just wasn't memorable at all.

I stopped playing after doing that one route (+ the bonus scenes from the new game + mode). I was just not compelled to play any more than that.

 

The game is free so playing it is 0 risk, but I was very impatient to finish it near the end there. For a first game it's not a bad go. The thing is complete and of decent length, but I'm aware I'm damning it with faint praise by saying as much.