From the Bottom of the Heart

The Sleepless Nights team is aiming for timely reviews of all al|together 2008 releases this year. Lets get this party started! This is round 1/6.

• Title - From the Bottom of the Heart
  
• Author - Persian Blue
• Style - Linear Visual Novel (non-interactive)
  
• Engine - ONScripter
  
• Price - Free
• Get - Web Download -
  http://altogether.insani.org/2008/1.html

This is the first work of al|together 2008. A bit of an appetizer, short but sweet.
Graphics - This game is approximately five minutes long. There are two standing dolls in the work, both well detailed and polished. All of the backgrounds are grayscale stock images with one exception used for artistic effect. A CG for his flashback or a few more variations on the standing CG would be nice but ultimately are not needed. 8/10

Music/SFX - The music comprises of classical pieces mostly piano. No sound effects are present and none are needed. The loops were each very short but the transistions were well timed Unfortunately, the sound transitions were rather abrupt . 9/10

Story - The story is very original and well-written. It has that melancholy charm to it that is reminiscent of Makoto Shinkai (think Voices of a Distant Star and 5 centimeters per second). The prologue was nice and set the scene well, but the overall story was extremely short and could have used a better paced lead in to the main plot. Still a very sweet and short love story, well worth the 5 minutes. 9/10

System/Extras - This is an ONScripter release with offical builds for Windows and Mac OS X (I suspect there is no offical "Linux" build because of the varying nature of Linux). Both versions run quickly and cleanly. Since the game comprised of a few short music loops and no event CGs, no extras modes are supplied or really needed. 4/5

Overall - It's five minutes long, Vista can take that long to boot up. You probably spend twice that on YouTube every day; What do you have to lose?

Score - 30/35 - 86% -Good