MetaWare High School (Demo)

This is genuinely one of my favourite visual novels ever made, I've replayed it a couple times, bought the DLC and soundtrack, and even decompiled it to search for every secret it may have. It's a very rewarding experience to see a developer put so much thought into a game, especially one that I have such high regard for. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience playing it, and it has definitively inspired some aspects of my own stories.

MetaWare High School (Demo) is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This isn't even a complete e-book, it's just a "demo" for an e-book. Since when do books need demos? Oh yeah, they don't. It's a Ren'Py job, so just like no professional writing took place, no professional development took place either, they just filled out the basic Ren'Py markup with their incomplete high school anime club dropout fan-fiction and called it a day. Oh, they're also begging for $15 worth of "special edition" content for their demo for an incomplete E-book. What a joke. Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage. Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book. One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent readers, and now there's basically nobody reading it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. While this E-book is "free", you can get better quality, professionally written books and comics for free online (from places like Project Gutenberg) or from public libraries. Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

it is good

If Hope has a million fans, then I am one of them. If Hope has ten fans, then I am one of them. If Hope has only one fan then that is me. If Hope has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world is against Hope, then I am against the world.

(Эмо стих) Не делай мне больно, мне хочется счастья, ползком по окопу к звездому небу Запутанным в корне берёзовых мыслей Слушая звуки обрывистых песен Холодные нервы кончаются в ружья И нечему больше резать сердца Но старые раны всё ещё больше И кровь на рубашке как вестник конца Пустые полотна художников смерти Понятнее чем разукрашенный холст Так больно смотреть на ступени сомнений Ведь это последний сгорающий мост Сопливых людей бесконечный конвой Противно и тошно шагает вперед Хочется просто закончить свой день Чтоб утренний свет не прошел за порог. Тонуть в пучине пессимизма Я улыбаться разучился

too short to be a game. jam game made in a hurry. not worth your time.

i love this game and the characters sm!!! even though its just a rlly short demo i love it sm, just got to spend ages tryna get all the endings now, haha edit: 4 endings in and im already traumatized honestly only complaint (altho this is my personal opinion) i feel like hope just acts WAY too weird around the player ngl i find them funny as a character but some of the jokes they make are a bit.. odd)

I understand. P.S. Thank you for making this game.