This is outstanding. I hadn't played a kinetic novel before so I was a bit unsure if I would like it at the beginning, but the setting is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the overall quality of the game is higher than most visual novels I've come across.
I really felt for Gwin, and the first few chapters drew me deep into the story and brought out more emotion than I was expecting. The fact that he makes his own choices rather than mostly serving as an insert or vehicle for the player makes him feel more real as a character. I really hope that the development of the next novel goes well and that we see more of Gwin's journey.
I just finished the story and gods what a ride. This sky rocket on my top10 so fast!!! I need more I need so much more. My only snip is the sour ending. I loved the pep talk but I rooted so much for Gwin and Erianor and that ending hurted so much.
Please don't make me wait so much. Love to the team from another maned wolf <3
Without sounding too critical, and also understanding why the VN finished earlier than originally planned, the ending kinda left me wanting :/ there are so many things left unresolved, and so many ways in which the story could have developed.
I honestly love the concept of the entire VN, moreso the characters, and I could see it playing out just as dramatically as it started, so this ending felt... Hollow.
Again, this is NOT meant as an insult, just that I didn't find the ending to measure up to how amazing the rest of the VN is
Actually, we completed the VN as we originally planned. We have not shortened the story.
Echoes from Valeth is an introduction to the world of Shadre. It was always meant to be a relatively short story with this type of ending. This doesn't mean things are going to be left unresolved. If we end up developing new VN's they will be linked to Echoes from Valeth.
Oh! 😯 If this is part of a series then I completely retract my comment 😁 xou guys have created such an interesting world, so knowing that xa'll hope to continue it is VERY exciting! 😌
Pleasantly surprised how this turned out! Can't believe I spent the whole day binging this VN and i liked it! Spoiler alert: I like how unapologetically evil these people are that they get what they deserve and I don't feel bad xD
I can’t say that the games with the Furry tag were especially interesting for me for many game years. But after testing this and a couple of other adult projects, I realized that the problem is not in the concept of Furry-games, but as always in the talent of developers.
From the very beginning, the game captures all the attention and emotionally involves the player. The first chapters are just a perfect picture of an endless circle of bullying, fear and helplessness.
The only drawback of this game is too high the level that it sets to make it impossible to get pleasure from weaker projects in the future. But I think that I can survive it.
On the other hand, it is obvious to me why this game cannot count on an excess of popularity. Most never walks in such ways and prefers not to look at their own real reflection. Still, I hope that the project will be completed, because there are people for whom it is really important.
Yea i think most dropped the VN after it got accused of glorifying the Ra word. Later on in the story I think that's kind of hilarious. But then the devs got accused of the P word so it's a case of, even if both turn out false, 99% of people will still ignore the VN.
Sucks cus it's very unique, I don't think any other VN has a revenge story like this one, or a MC that can commit sepuku to notself :P
The plot also seemeed like it just started, with the secret orgs, superhuman abilities etc
I could say a lot about this, but I do not want to create even more problems for the authors.
The observing step in this theater of the absurd is apparently a ban of the classic world literature. World literature of course will “suffer” from the absence of such readers.
The whole time I thought that a dhole is like a different weird slur variation of an a-hole, then I googled it an it's a species of an canine ;_; I'm dum
Jesus Christ what a story! the emotions! the vibes! such a great mix with it all so far, my favorite scene rn is when Gwin picks up the knife and says "it's knifing time!" and knives all over the place.
Love this game and the story behind Gwin and the following characters, keep up the amazing work you brought us and hope the next part comes soon to read the work you an your friends/team made.
I like the overall premise, and I especially love the masochistic/Stockholm syndrome aspects of EfV! UwU Xou've created something very original in the furry VN scene, so I'm excited to see where this goes~ ^__^/
Warning: Unsolicited advice and possibly bad opinions, feel free to ignore.
Having read the latest update, the events of the first build make a little more sense now. I think it would be beneficial to make it much clearer, much sooner, that the characters have many feral instincts. When first reading a new furry work, you never know where the world lies on the people-animal spectrum, so knowing that upfront can contextualize a lot of the story.
Writing sexual abuse is always difficult, as you don't want to shy away from the reality of the situation, but going into too much detail (or the wrong detail) can make it come across as erotica. The second instance of the bullying (where they took the pictures) is written in a way that it's clear we're meant to sympathize with Gwin and be disgusted by the bullies. Even though there were sexual undertones to the abuse, the writing itself did not feel sexualized. But the first instance of the bullying just... really misses the mark, tonally.
The nature of Gwin's bullying could very easily be seen as pornographic and sort of exploitative, especially considering all the detail the narration went into about the sensations Gwin felt during it. It's a very polarizing scene to have barely 5 minutes into a story, and it made me highly question the author's intentions. If it were made clearer that it was a feral, domination thing as opposed to a purely sexual act, I think readers would be much less likely to view it as fetishizing abuse. But as it's currently written, I think it comes dangerously close.
To recap: toning down the descriptions of the physical sensations and focusing more on Gwin's feelings in the moment would make that scene feel less questionable, and making the characters' feral nature evident sooner would help contextualize both the bullying and the rest of the story going forward. This build was much better than the first, and I'm curious to see where the story will go moving forward. It's just a shame the game opens on such an off-putting note.
So i decided to write another comment instead of editting my first one
I played the game and i must admit i'm really interested in what is going to happen next. Reading the introduction of the main character and the situations he's going trough remembers me a lot of my past and the bad things that happened to me, so i could easily conect with him.
There is something about the main character's tired eyes that reminds me of myself and the way i use to hide my real emotions and i don't know if thats a intentional detail but i find it very... "realistic" in a sense of way.
About the people on the comments saying the author is trying to romanticise or trying to desguise some kind of fetish (related to the abuse i suppose), i think its a very harsh way of judging someone's way of writing because even on Netflix i could watch a ton of series that can have way more violance and trauma involved, yet they never say the author is writting said work as a fetish or something under those lines, so i could assume its simply because its a furry visual novel that makes people think such things but instead i preffer to believe that is a representation of the harsh reality which i personally think its more relatable than any fairy tale story on many other visual novels, considering that (in my personal opinion) is getting generic and old the same recipe of the character who lost his memories and falls in love for the first guy who shows up in his life who happens to be the perfect husband AND also happens to be gay. Of course that doesn't mean all Visual Novels who use this type of recipe for their development is bad, but it needs to have a very good and well written story ahead to make me feel interest.
So yeah thats my personal opinion. I apologize for the big text and also for any grammatical error as english is not my main language.
For the Author and the ones involved on the project: I'm really excited to see where this is going so i'll surely play the next updates!
We 'd like to give some insight about a couple of "hot topics":
1. We want the players to feel invested in the characters, of course. But making the players feel identified with the MC and his contextual situation wasn't intentional.
2. Regarding the fetish thingy: Domination and primal instincts are a theme in this fictional universe (Shadre). It's just one of the many aspects of the Shadreicidiosyncrasy.Does this mean the plot and sexual interactions are going to focus exclusively on that? Of course not. It's a shame if a player decides to stop playing our game solely because of this reason, but it is what it is and we can't do anything about it. We'll always offer an adult experience to our audience and we'll show them as much explicit content as we can, in the good ones and the bad ones.
We hope you enjoy the next update. It will be released publicly a bit later this month, here on Itch.io!
There is a lot of different opinions on the comment section of this game. i made sure to read at least some of them before deciding to play and seeing for myself if its bad or good so i'll return when i finish it.
I wish we got to know more of Gwin's life before jumping straight into that heavy stuff, doesn't really feel impactful and it gave me the impression that the story was romantacising the whole situation. Even as someone with similar experiences of SA, I just can't connect with it so far. :/
The one hating this game is a person who hasn't experienced any bullying in life maybe if you @kallier were bullied the same way you would have understood what gwin or the author was going through and i have to say its a good game im hoping for more
i used to get bullied not to the point of having that stuff done to me but i remember when i had to take detours just to avoid my bullys i remember it oh so well, and it kinda honestly triggered me ( to avoid any confusion i like the vn so far) just wanted to share i guess my opinion or somethin
Just get on the dowload part just above the coments, PC is windows and APK is for android devices, the other two are obvious, good luck and drink water My sir!
I love Gwin and I want to hug him for all the hell he's enduring. You did excellent in making a likeable fvn protagonist and so far I feel there's a hint of Eden's Reach. Keep up the great work!
An intriguing start. However, I would recommend either you or an editor tightening up the narration, i.e. the portions of the writing where no one is talking. Because I can see two major problems with it. First of all, you spend too much time describing the tiny details of every scene and that's not necessary.
This screenshot, for example, shows what I mean. You don't need to spend so much time describing what the room looks like. Instead, let the visuals do the job for you. That's the whole point of a visual novel. I'd recommend you cut out the details which aren't that important, or can be conveyed through visuals instead.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that you spend too much time describing little details and not enough time describing emotional states. For a story with so many moments of high emotion, the writing feels very flat, like you're just describing what's going on, instead of getting into the heads of the characters and letting the reader feel what they feel.
Still, despite these problems, which I think are easily fixable, I am interested to see where this story is going, so keep up the good work.
I'd have to wholeheartedly disagree. Details are never unnecessary as pictures are not a replacement for writing. They should always be included. Always. Emotion and feeling however are important to depict that I can agree on, being in the characters headspace, instead of a play by play of what's happening. Which isn't awful by any means but you can never have too many details when telling a story!
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Amazing, what if a poor Furry got with Furry Raiden
Great Story, wish there was more but still great nevertheless
This is outstanding. I hadn't played a kinetic novel before so I was a bit unsure if I would like it at the beginning, but the setting is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the overall quality of the game is higher than most visual novels I've come across.
I really felt for Gwin, and the first few chapters drew me deep into the story and brought out more emotion than I was expecting. The fact that he makes his own choices rather than mostly serving as an insert or vehicle for the player makes him feel more real as a character. I really hope that the development of the next novel goes well and that we see more of Gwin's journey.
I can't recommend this highly enough.
I need to know what happened to erianor pls i am begging
I just finished the story and gods what a ride. This sky rocket on my top10 so fast!!! I need more I need so much more. My only snip is the sour ending. I loved the pep talk but I rooted so much for Gwin and Erianor and that ending hurted so much.
Please don't make me wait so much. Love to the team from another maned wolf <3
I hope Erianor is ok from his mission...
Be strong Gwin
who made the sprite and art tho? they looked fine AF
Blakenfen
Without sounding too critical, and also understanding why the VN finished earlier than originally planned, the ending kinda left me wanting :/ there are so many things left unresolved, and so many ways in which the story could have developed.
I honestly love the concept of the entire VN, moreso the characters, and I could see it playing out just as dramatically as it started, so this ending felt... Hollow.
Again, this is NOT meant as an insult, just that I didn't find the ending to measure up to how amazing the rest of the VN is
Actually, we completed the VN as we originally planned. We have not shortened the story.
Echoes from Valeth is an introduction to the world of Shadre. It was always meant to be a relatively short story with this type of ending. This doesn't mean things are going to be left unresolved. If we end up developing new VN's they will be linked to Echoes from Valeth.
Oh! 😯 If this is part of a series then I completely retract my comment 😁 xou guys have created such an interesting world, so knowing that xa'll hope to continue it is VERY exciting! 😌
; )
Here's to hoping a sequel will come in the near future! 😁
poggers
I am looking forward to see it. Shadre is gonna be a great story :)
I wanna scream so badly 😭 that ending was perfect!!!
: )
Norren 💀 💀 💀 💀
Pleasantly surprised how this turned out! Can't believe I spent the whole day binging this VN and i liked it! Spoiler alert: I like how unapologetically evil these people are that they get what they deserve and I don't feel bad xD
I can’t say that the games with the Furry tag were especially interesting for me for many game years. But after testing this and a couple of other adult projects, I realized that the problem is not in the concept of Furry-games, but as always in the talent of developers.
From the very beginning, the game captures all the attention and emotionally involves the player. The first chapters are just a perfect picture of an endless circle of bullying, fear and helplessness.
The only drawback of this game is too high the level that it sets to make it impossible to get pleasure from weaker projects in the future. But I think that I can survive it.
On the other hand, it is obvious to me why this game cannot count on an excess of popularity. Most never walks in such ways and prefers not to look at their own real reflection. Still, I hope that the project will be completed, because there are people for whom it is really important.
Yea i think most dropped the VN after it got accused of glorifying the Ra word. Later on in the story I think that's kind of hilarious. But then the devs got accused of the P word so it's a case of, even if both turn out false, 99% of people will still ignore the VN.
Sucks cus it's very unique, I don't think any other VN has a revenge story like this one, or a MC that can commit sepuku to notself :P
The plot also seemeed like it just started, with the secret orgs, superhuman abilities etc
I could say a lot about this, but I do not want to create even more problems for the authors.
The observing step in this theater of the absurd is apparently a ban of the classic world literature. World literature of course will “suffer” from the absence of such readers.
The whole time I thought that a dhole is like a different weird slur variation of an a-hole, then I googled it an it's a species of an canine ;_;
I'm dum
Oh, but you're right. Norren is a dhole but also a d-hole
This game deserve much more publicity! Its a great story and i enjoyed it to the fullest!
SPOILERS (I guess?)
Is it bad that I was hoping for a more descriptive rape scene? "^^_
It is a very good VN!
Honestly loving the last few updates, binged them and didn't expect things at all
You're most welcome, dude.
I give a 100 to this vn, I love the content, the story and the ost.
Thank you for your kind words!
BROOOOO!!!!! I didn't think that would happen in this update. I was expecting a revenge sex scene.
I read through the thing and was satisfied with it, but kind of fell away from it after a while. I'm interested in the new content.
those plot twists...
I. am. in. love.
Jesus Christ what a story! the emotions! the vibes! such a great mix with it all so far, my favorite scene rn is when Gwin picks up the knife and says "it's knifing time!" and knives all over the place.
good stuff, pls keep it up!
Love this game and the story behind Gwin and the following characters, keep up the amazing work you brought us and hope the next part comes soon to read the work you an your friends/team made.
Love Gwin and Erianor
I like the overall premise, and I especially love the masochistic/Stockholm syndrome aspects of EfV! UwU Xou've created something very original in the furry VN scene, so I'm excited to see where this goes~ ^__^/
Warning: Unsolicited advice and possibly bad opinions, feel free to ignore.
Having read the latest update, the events of the first build make a little more sense now. I think it would be beneficial to make it much clearer, much sooner, that the characters have many feral instincts. When first reading a new furry work, you never know where the world lies on the people-animal spectrum, so knowing that upfront can contextualize a lot of the story.
Writing sexual abuse is always difficult, as you don't want to shy away from the reality of the situation, but going into too much detail (or the wrong detail) can make it come across as erotica. The second instance of the bullying (where they took the pictures) is written in a way that it's clear we're meant to sympathize with Gwin and be disgusted by the bullies. Even though there were sexual undertones to the abuse, the writing itself did not feel sexualized. But the first instance of the bullying just... really misses the mark, tonally.
The nature of Gwin's bullying could very easily be seen as pornographic and sort of exploitative, especially considering all the detail the narration went into about the sensations Gwin felt during it. It's a very polarizing scene to have barely 5 minutes into a story, and it made me highly question the author's intentions. If it were made clearer that it was a feral, domination thing as opposed to a purely sexual act, I think readers would be much less likely to view it as fetishizing abuse. But as it's currently written, I think it comes dangerously close.
To recap: toning down the descriptions of the physical sensations and focusing more on Gwin's feelings in the moment would make that scene feel less questionable, and making the characters' feral nature evident sooner would help contextualize both the bullying and the rest of the story going forward. This build was much better than the first, and I'm curious to see where the story will go moving forward. It's just a shame the game opens on such an off-putting note.
This update was amazing, Keep up the great work!
So i decided to write another comment instead of editting my first one
I played the game and i must admit i'm really interested in what is going to happen next. Reading the introduction of the main character and the situations he's going trough remembers me a lot of my past and the bad things that happened to me, so i could easily conect with him.
There is something about the main character's tired eyes that reminds me of myself and the way i use to hide my real emotions and i don't know if thats a intentional detail but i find it very... "realistic" in a sense of way.
About the people on the comments saying the author is trying to romanticise or trying to desguise some kind of fetish (related to the abuse i suppose), i think its a very harsh way of judging someone's way of writing because even on Netflix i could watch a ton of series that can have way more violance and trauma involved, yet they never say the author is writting said work as a fetish or something under those lines, so i could assume its simply because its a furry visual novel that makes people think such things but instead i preffer to believe that is a representation of the harsh reality which i personally think its more relatable than any fairy tale story on many other visual novels, considering that (in my personal opinion) is getting generic and old the same recipe of the character who lost his memories and falls in love for the first guy who shows up in his life who happens to be the perfect husband AND also happens to be gay. Of course that doesn't mean all Visual Novels who use this type of recipe for their development is bad, but it needs to have a very good and well written story ahead to make me feel interest.
So yeah thats my personal opinion. I apologize for the big text and also for any grammatical error as english is not my main language.
For the Author and the ones involved on the project: I'm really excited to see where this is going so i'll surely play the next updates!
Hello, Lucian. Thank you for such a cool comment.
We 'd like to give some insight about a couple of "hot topics":
1. We want the players to feel invested in the characters, of course. But making the players feel identified with the MC and his contextual situation wasn't intentional.
2. Regarding the fetish thingy: Domination and primal instincts are a theme in this fictional universe (Shadre). It's just one of the many aspects of the Shadreic idiosyncrasy. Does this mean the plot and sexual interactions are going to focus exclusively on that? Of course not. It's a shame if a player decides to stop playing our game solely because of this reason, but it is what it is and we can't do anything about it. We'll always offer an adult experience to our audience and we'll show them as much explicit content as we can, in the good ones and the bad ones.
We hope you enjoy the next update. It will be released publicly a bit later this month, here on Itch.io!
i'm very happy to know the update will be here soon, thank you very much :)
There is a lot of different opinions on the comment section of this game. i made sure to read at least some of them before deciding to play and seeing for myself if its bad or good so i'll return when i finish it.
10 out of 10 congratulations for the novel
I wish we got to know more of Gwin's life before jumping straight into that heavy stuff, doesn't really feel impactful and it gave me the impression that the story was romantacising the whole situation.
Even as someone with similar experiences of SA, I just can't connect with it so far. :/
The one hating this game is a person who hasn't experienced any bullying in life maybe if you @kallier were bullied the same way you would have understood what gwin or the author was going through and i have to say its a good game im hoping for more
9 out of 10
spoiler alert
i used to get bullied not to the point of having that stuff done to me but i remember when i had to take detours just to avoid my bullys i remember it oh so well, and it kinda honestly triggered me ( to avoid any confusion i like the vn so far) just wanted to share i guess my opinion or somethin
How to download?
Just get on the dowload part just above the coments, PC is windows and APK is for android devices, the other two are obvious, good luck and drink water My sir!
ya i know that but what after that?
Install(on mobile) or extract and run in the PC?
cant extract it. It doesn't register as .rar files ^^'. I think he has the same problem as me
We've changed the PC version from .rar to .zip.
Please try again now and let us know if the problem is solved.
Use 7zip buddy, much better than WinRar or whatever it is you use.
I love Gwin and I want to hug him for all the hell he's enduring. You did excellent in making a likeable fvn protagonist and so far I feel there's a hint of Eden's Reach. Keep up the great work!
An intriguing start. However, I would recommend either you or an editor tightening up the narration, i.e. the portions of the writing where no one is talking. Because I can see two major problems with it. First of all, you spend too much time describing the tiny details of every scene and that's not necessary.
This screenshot, for example, shows what I mean. You don't need to spend so much time describing what the room looks like. Instead, let the visuals do the job for you. That's the whole point of a visual novel. I'd recommend you cut out the details which aren't that important, or can be conveyed through visuals instead.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that you spend too much time describing little details and not enough time describing emotional states. For a story with so many moments of high emotion, the writing feels very flat, like you're just describing what's going on, instead of getting into the heads of the characters and letting the reader feel what they feel.
Still, despite these problems, which I think are easily fixable, I am interested to see where this story is going, so keep up the good work.
I'd have to wholeheartedly disagree. Details are never unnecessary as pictures are not a replacement for writing. They should always be included. Always. Emotion and feeling however are important to depict that I can agree on, being in the characters headspace, instead of a play by play of what's happening. Which isn't awful by any means but you can never have too many details when telling a story!