YDJSIR knows that the official English name of the game is School Years, however, as the name of the root directory of the game is Love Diary, which is closer to its Chinese name, YDJSIR prefers to call the game Love Diary.

Thanks to the recommendation mechanism of Steam, YDJSIR meets this work.

For the first time, YDJSIR discovers a work similar to the ideal AVG work in YDJSIR’s mind. However, it is still not the model of YDJSIR’s expectations. YDJSIR dives into the work and manages to figure out the shining points of the work to enrich YDJSIR’s plan for YDJSIR’s own game.

YDJSIR joins the QQ group of the game, and joins many discussions in the group(even though not many of them are related to the game itself) and even has some talk with the author of the work.

Features That YDJSIR Wants to Adopt

Self-owned Script-based Engine on Unity

This is the feature that YDJSIR admires most. The author says that he doesn’t want to be restricted in other people’s frameworks, so he creates his script language and the engine. The engine enables a variety of brand new interactive modes like many 3D scenes in the game and many graphical effects, which significantly distinguish the game from other so-called “Galgames”. These design greatly enhances the expansibility and the flexibility of the work and enables the project of Steam Workshops. With documentation of the script language, everyone can create his or her own story which is compatible with the base game. YDJSIR extremely appreciates the interface of subtitles, which is simply lines of words rather than an area blocking the scenes. The option of Skip read-only also enhances the experience of the game.

The Sense of Reality

The work doesn’t present us with a traditional comedy. However, after Chapter 36, the reality in the game shocked the protagonist the previous sweet memories only existed in his dreams. However, he had been trapped in his previous impressions. He kept calling Moko as “baby”, which quite annoyed her. Day by day, his mind began to warp.

Additionally, a few questions in high school exactly strengthen the sense of the school years’ memories. What’s more, your answer to these questions will only slightly affect some of the values of your properties rather than deciding the direction of the story, which guarantees that people without specific knowledge will not be pulled back from enjoying the story.

The plot of Mathematical Olympiad worths being specially mentioned. At first, YDJSIR considers that let a student not focusing on Olympiad to try to get into THU by attending the competition is a stupid idea and the plot must be the author’s ignorance. However, YDJSIR really put much time into learning it. When I failed on the examination and found that there is no way out to win the competition, YDJSIR finally realized that the plot is intended to tell us how progressive or even arrogant the protagonist is.

The Idea of Operating the Community

As is mentioned above, the game adopts its own engine based on Unity, and supported scripted coding. Consequently, the workshop appears. However, the creaters are not that keen on updating there content.

Additionally, the official QQ group of the game is very lively. Nearly all topics are discussed here(but for the game itself), and the group members enjoy the atmosphere. As for YDJSIR, YDJSIR will seperate different topics into different groups to satisfy the need of different information and discussions.

Lessons That YDJSIR Will Learn From Its Weakness

Game Makers Must Have A Clear Aim on Propaganda

YDJSIR is quite not satisfied with the author’s explanations on the type and aim players of the game. The author considers that this game is not a traditional Galgame and its content is the best in China. The author also admits his weakness in promoting the game. He considers the traditional games boring and wants to finds his way out. However, he doesn’t want to know how other games gain their success. YDJSIR considers turning people into players is a kind of art, which needs experience and learning. As a matter of fact, after a thorough walkthrough, YDJSIR cannot distinguish the game between other so-called “Galgames”. Such a game that can neither attract traditional similar game players nor new players is bound to be in obscurity. YDJSIR will not do this. YDJSIR will honestly point out YDJSIR’s work’s similarities and differences to show the quality of YDJSIR’s works.

Game Makers Must be Good at Maintaining a Reliable Team

In the field of art, truly understand and master a character is very hard and mostly only those who work on it continuously can guarantee the uniformity of the character in continuous works. However, the author admits that he is not good at maintaining a team and professional things should be handled by professional people, and lacks deep communication with even the dubbers. To be honest, the dubbing of the game is not bad, however, this mode lacks sustainability. You can easily find significant differences in different scenes of the game, which brings me lots of feelings of strangeness. As for YDJSIR, YDJSIR must have a solid creator of visual and audio for a specific character and must ensure that he or she has true understandings of the character. If the author simply considers outsourcing services just as outsourcing services, the quality of this kind of outsourcing must be limited.