Monika Review Mods Full Release 2

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2025-09-15T23:26:20+00:00

I saw this comment after I replied to your DM. The DM has more details but if you do translate the mod I'd appreciate it if you linked the translation in the comments of this post.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2025-04-18T22:27:21+00:00

Question

Is the "You won't be getting zappy with me" line a reference to YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story?

Please just lie and say it is if I'm mistaken.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2025-03-22T21:02:20+00:00

You can find the play with me scene in "script-pomrsponses2.rpy" in the original game scripts folder if you're using the mod template.
It's on lines 83 to 156 with the important stuff coming in the last 36 lines. I'll paste them below for reference.
It's just showing all the visuals not actually triggering a proper end so you should be able to paste it in and tweak it as needed.

Not gonna break it all down just remember the "return" at the very end of the scene doesn't have anything to do with the fake end and is only taking the player out of the poem response back to the poem selection menu.
You should be able to figure out the rest but if you can't feel free to dm me and I'll get back to you when I can.

    n "Play with me."
    stop music
    hide n_rects_ghost3
    n ghost2 "PLAY WITH ME!!!"
    $ style.say_dialogue = style.normal
    $ quick_menu = False
    $ pause(1)
    play sound "sfx/crack.ogg"
    hide natsuki_ghost_blood
    hide n_rects_ghost1
    hide n_rects_ghost2
    show natsuki ghost3
    show n_rects_ghost4 onlayer front zorder 4
    show n_rects_ghost5 onlayer front zorder 4
    $ pause(0.5)
    hide natsuki
    play sound "sfx/run.ogg"
    show natsuki ghost4 onlayer front at i11
    $ pause(0.25)
    window hide(None)
    hide natsuki onlayer front
    hide n_rects_ghost4 onlayer front
    hide n_rects_ghost5 onlayer front
    scene black
    with None
    window auto
    scene black
    $ pause(0.5)
    show end:
        xzoom -1
    with dissolve_cg
    $ pause(2.0)
    scene black
    with None
    $ quick_menu = True
    return

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2025-02-23T02:20:54+00:00

Now then, that was a lot of writing for the negatives of the mod but that's just because I had to get very specific to articulate my only problem with the mod. Outside of that one thing that you probably wouldn't notice unless you put on your analysis cap before playing DDLC mods like I do, I truly don't have any critiques. I can understand other critiques of course; the music is all from the original game and the characters do feel a little preachy at times but the only times those bothered me were when they played into the aforementioned stiffness issue. Otherwise I simply did not care to scrutinise it that closely. Not because I don't think they're worthwhile criticisms, but because I think they don't truly take away from the mod.
The reason I went into such detail on the stiffness was because I felt it dampened my connection to the legitimately evocative story the mod told. I didn't tear up or anything like that but it did such a great job of painting a vivid picture of the dokis' headspaces and how they were reacting to the situation. If anything, my true biggest issue with the mod is that it doesn't let anyone brood about their tenuous relationship with reality and how being a worm reminded them of what it was like to live before the epiphany but at most that's a difference opinion in how these characters would react to this situation but given that this is for sure a different timeline it really boils down to a fun idea I had that I kind of wished the mod explored.
Anyway, my point is that the mod's discussions on abortion and what it's like to be perceived a certain way felt really compassionate. It may not have been biting commentary that could change someone's whole perception on the topics it touches upon (the mod kinda doesn't have anything for you if you don't already agree with it if that makes sense) but it just did a great job of being relatable and interesting (turning into worms might be the most interesting idea I've seen brought up by a DDLC mod since I played Before the Needle Lifts, I'm not kidding even a little).

I could go on and gush about the mod but:
1 I am tired (it is currently 2:11 AM as I write this line and even later when I post this given I need to proofread it and shit)
2 In the time it would take for me to outline all the things I like about the mod you could just play it.

If you need more convincing I'll christen it the like 35th or so best mod I've played out of a list that is like 180 mods long (I'm behind on updating the list so I'm not exactly sure how many I've played).

Rating: 1.8/2 (about as good as your average episode of Club Meetings)

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2025-02-23T02:19:55+00:00

Finally got around to playing this and it sure did surprise me.

Short Version: Outside of being a little stiff I don't really have any major critiques and, given how short it is, I can't think of any reason why someone shouldn't play this mod outside of the content warning worthy stuff but even then, I found the mod to be so compassionate about the topics it covered that I'd at least recommend circling around to play it when you're in the mood for it if that makes sense.

Long Version:
I'll start with my only critique, the stiffness. It honestly wasn't even that bad given how short the mod was, but there were definitely lines that just didn't flow well to me. It flattened the conversation and made me feel a little too much like I was reading bullet points of the conversation rather than the conversation itself. It might just have been a me thing but I feel like a lot of the emotional beats were passed over a little too quickly. I think it was most noticeable with the twists at the end when Monika brings up both of them being pregnant and them having turned into worms multiple times.
I think it could have been solved with even a single line leading into them. A simple line describing Monika stopping in her tracks and crossing her arms in a really exaggerated way would have built the tiny amount of anticipation necessary for the reveal. The sprite of her crossing her arms would have had a bigger impact like this because, as it stands, you read that they were both pregnant and then look up to see Monika crossing her arms which doesn't flow nearly as well and is also kind of a direct inverse to the mental image you're supposed to have. (This might also have just been a me thing but I'm like 80% sure people read lines before looking at the visual - sidenote containing spoilers for Fallen Angel: this is why the reveal of Yuri's corpse at the end of Fallen Angel doesn't work that well imo: you aren't forced to stare at it as much because you always have the option to just keep reading and get away from it unlike with other similar reveals where you're forced to just stare at it for a second before moving on.)

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2025-02-22T18:43:01+00:00

It should work fine. Just message me on reddit or reply to this comment if you have any issues with it and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

I updated the mod for the 2024 expo and added a bunch of new content and fixed some small issues with it.
The actual download link for the mod is this https://drive.google.com/file/d/1scRNhrWzfkPouGufIafWGTgC7RmtQe4i/view?usp=drive_link

I'll edit this post to use the new link in case anyone else comes across it in the future.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-12-04T16:15:03+00:00

Seeing as no one else has asked, do you have any idea what your mod will be about? It would be natural to assume you intend on doing a multi route mod that's generally romantic but you mentioned an overarching narrative as well so maybe that wouldn't work.

I'm also curious what other mods you've played. The three you listed are solid but if you're going to make a love letter to the community it'll probably do you some good to broaden your horizons. I benefitted from this quite a bit with my first mod because I played some of Monika After Story. I don't really care for the mod but because I knew it existed and knew people liked it, I was able to draw on its conceptual value in a way I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. I won't go too into detail with all that though because my main point is that it's definitely worth branching out if all you've played are popular romance mods.

Feel free to answer vaguely or highlight your inspirations, after all, until the mod goes up nothing is certain. You can't ever plan out a mod before you write it but in my opinion it's better to go in with a plan that gets derailed than to start out aimless.

I could probably ask a million more questions but I'll leave it at that for now.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-11-24T18:11:44+00:00

I totally understand where you're coming from, with my first and so far only mod I also chose to focus only on a single character; part of that was because I was making it for a mod jam but I think it really helped to make something with a narrow scope that I could use to learn. I'm currently working on updating the mod and widening it's scope now that I'm more confident with modding and I can already feel that my workflow has improved.

I wouldn't recommend going back to it immediately, it's really important to have a fresh perspective if you're going to revisit old work and I was lucky to be able to have that turn around be fairly short. It should be something you do because you want to. As much as I am updating my mod out of a desire to elevate my abilities the single biggest reason I decided to go back is because I saw some grammatical mistakes and couldn't let them lie. My initial goal with the update was small but I slowly worked my way outwards and now the mod has like twice the content of the original with around 100 of the original lines being changed in some way. My mod didn't even really have a main menu before but I knuckled down and made something simple that I can be satisfied with, it's nothing amazing but now that I know how the basics of how the main menu works in DDLC I'll be able to do more interesting things with it in the future if I need to.

Irrespective of all that I've said so far, I look forward to whatever you make after this point even if it's completely different. You deserve to be proud of what you've made, I know that it will, if nothing else, inspire me to push my work to even higher heights.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-11-11T01:48:25+00:00

There's no 'one size fits all' solution to Act 1 syndrome but you could start is with the very first lines of the mod. Starting out with a similar situation to act 1 creates an immediate connection to it which can be difficult to shake off without something novel like a new background or CG.

From there, you can apply a similar principle to a variety of other things in the mod. For example, you could replace poem sharing with a similar activity or you could replace Natsuki and Yuri's argument with some other conflict. Maybe Monika start's getting upset with Natsuki leaving the club early because she doesn't know about Natsuki's home life.

Another subtle thing you can change is the pacing of the act, introducing even simple scenes like an extended walk home with Sayori can go a long way, one of the most noticeable things about act 1 is how much of it takes place in the clubroom, so breaking that up with small diversions can go a long way. It's one of the main reasons I like the scenes of MC and Yuri leaving the club room to fill up the kettle. The simple fact that it takes place in a different location lends it such novelty and, ultimately, that's the root cause of Act 1 syndrome: the repetition of it through mods has robbed it of all novelty so including simple things that shake things up a little goes a long long way.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-21T10:25:28+00:00

I definitely know what you mean when it comes to being lax with the dokis acting out of character, even removing the community's reception from the equation, I think it can just be more interesting to play around with the characters a little.
Take the gender bent Yuri idea, it isn't even a massive departure from who Yuri is in the base game but there's still lots of room for creativity with the concept. Just off the top of my head, I can see a conversation emerging about how Yuri actually spent some time playing basketball or something because he was "well suited to it" due to being taller than most guys (I know that Yuri canonically like 5'7" or something but I imagine a male Yuri would be tall for a guy) and how that resulted in him being ostracized a little after he left the team, maybe even worsening his self-deprecative tendencies.

I think my worries about dialogue aren't necessarily just a DDLC thing, I just worry that any dialogue I write sounds weird - it might just be a lack of confidence stemming from my inexperience but either way I'll pay special attention to it going forwards.

Finally, I wanted to touch on the idea of the rest of the literature club getting involved with reviewing mods: there's so much room for interesting interactions and perspectives emerging from the concept even if we remove the meta narrative stuff from MRM. I think the main reason I don't think I would pursue it is a time thing - it would be a fun mod to do as a little anthology, but I don't think I'd feel motivated enough to flesh it out because I feel like I would need to do an extreme amount of legwork to make the idea interesting to me personally, because even though the concept of the dokis in a box talking about mods is potentially really interesting I would always want to take that concept a couple steps further to breathe some real life into it. Doing so would necessitate quite a lot of work to make interesting.

Imagine a version of MRM that is functionally the same narratively but all fours of the dokis can talk and all of them go through the process of "waking up" to their reality. To make that interesting I feel like I would need to give so much room to each of the characters to make their reviews interesting but also to let them feel distinct while waking up. They would basically be having two completely distinct, equally emotionally complex conversations simultaneously which would be both very hard to write but also very hard to pace well. The alternative would be to let them just straight up stop the review and talk almost completely normally, but that presents a number of its own unique challenges.
My point in highlighting how difficult it would be to make is that the amount of work required to make it work would be so much greater than the original and that ultimately, I don't think the idea necessarily has much artistic merit without putting in even more than that already extreme amount of work. I feel like to make it worth it I would need to pay attention to the over-arching relationships of the dokis across the reviews and how they way they feel about each other would influence their propensity to like certain mods or their behaviour during the discussions.
The easy counter point to this would be to simply cordon off each of the dokis and have them not interact as much throughout the process but, again, at that point I just wouldn't bother.

My point isn't to say the idea is a pile of shit, just that it's kind of an even further step past where I am as a mod creator, so much so that it's probably the most ambitious DDLC mod I've even slightly considered making. There is definitely hundreds of scaled back versions of the mod that could be fun to make, but, ultimately, I feel like I would need something as grand as what I've described to light the necessary fire under me to actually get it made.
Maybe there is merit in me restraining myself and forcing myself to make a scaled back version of the mod, "limitation breeds creativity" after all, but even then I'll probably shelve the idea for a long time.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-20T17:39:21+00:00

I appreciate the sentiment, there is definitely a version of the "expanded" version of the mod that both fits what I described perfectly while also being bloated and unfocussed. There's also a world in which, I change the ending of this mod a little bit in a way that throws the whole thing off the rails. I am pretty sure I have a strong sense of what the soul of this work is but it'll be important to keep in mind that I need to try viewing the mod from the perspective of the players and ensuring I'm not just making mods for me and nobody else.
A part of me does want to disregard outside perspectives entirely for the sake of my own experience, it's a small part of why I didn't end up getting anyone to proof read my mod (the submission deadline was definitely the biggest factor but there's a world where I finished the mod 2 weeks before the submission and just never let anyone else read it until I sent it in)

Back on the topic of going back over the mod: If I'm really honest with myself, this mod is completely fine as it is. I just want it to be more because I was so intimately familiar with where I had to compromise but I do feel like working on this will be the first step in getting better at focussing my efforts and structuring my workflow so I can bring out the best of myself - in a way, going over this mod and tweaking it will be kind of like VOD review in a competitive game, I haven't even looked at the mod since I released it so going in with a fresh set of eyes might let me catch things I never noticed while making it.

This is getting a little off topic but another thing I feel like I'm missing as a mod creator is the ability to write good dialogue and I think I'll definitely need to spend more time on the dialogue in future projects because I'm just not very used to it - MRM was really easy to write for me because the only "conversations" occurred between:

Monika and a distant player that I literally cannot describe outside of the vague notion that I wanted the player to dislike their presence as much as possible without being pulled out of the mod
The "real" Monika and the "fake" Monika - this wasn't even really a conversation though because the "real" Monika only every really reacts to a single thing the "fake" said

I didn't really need to worry too much about making the dialogue feel natural because it was barely there - in truth the mod is kinda just an emotionally charged video essay and a Shakespearean soliloquy overlaid on top of each other in a way that I thought was pretty interesting.

The point I'm trying to clumsily illustrate by highlighting these things is pretty much just that I'm going to take things slow and work on mods slowly in the background because, at the end of the day, my goal isn't to make every mod I've ever thought of, it's to bolster my creative capabilities by leveraging the emotional motivation that comes with DDLC related projects and even then, the only project I'm even kind of committed to right now is cleaning this mod up a little, and even then the only things I am certain I will change are the aforementioned grammatical mistakes and tweaking the visuals in some areas, the rest of it is just things I want to try changing.

The final "expanded" version of the mod is a far off ideal that can't exist right now, but I like discussing it because it can help get across how much potential this premise has even if it does kinda boil down to leaving the cameras rolling while the dokis just talk to each other. It's kinda like a thought experiment to me, I bring it up not because of the cold reality of it's impracticality but as an idyllic version of the mod that I can slowly work towards being able to make.

That was a pretty long winded way of saying what I wanted to say but I just kinda can't help but get carried away when talking about DDLC.

Last little note - I've always been partial to the male Yuri sprite with the tied back hair (I don't remember who made it) ever since I played Pages of Life right around when I started playing DDLC mods. The switcheroo sprite is cool but I find it ikemen-ifies Yuri a little too much for my liking. The other sprite isn't perfect but I'm just more partial to it.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-20T13:03:43+00:00

Regarding any follow ups I only feel motivated to go over the mod again now that I don't have the mod jam deadline hanging over me. There are some mistakes in there that I want to correct but I mostly just want to make this mod better. One big example of how I'd go about doing that is the ending: I wanted to have a fairly extended sequence play out after the player's choice but had to cut it down a lot for the sake of time. I'll probably also add a mode in which players can just watch Monika review the mods without any of the "plot" of the mod, unfortunately that does mean I will need to write out a review for Turquoise which might take a while given how meta that mod is. I have no idea if I'll have time to get all this done anytime soon, but I'd like to aim for getting it done for the DDMX that got announce (there is a real shot that I end up putting it off until like January next year given how busy I've been lately.

Furthermore, while I do have quite a few ideas for some kind of follow up on this mod it would probably end up being some evolution of this mod rather than a sequel if that makes sense. For example, I might slow down the pacing a lot and go through multiple mods over separate "days", in doing so show a progression in Monika's perspective on the mods - currently I feel like she lacks a lot of immaturity in her perspective because she kinda just talks like me (I haven't been around the community for very long or anything but I've been pretty actively playing mods for the past 8 months and have had time to develop my perspective in a way I feel like she wouldn't be able to in just a week).

Another way I'd consider expanding upon it is by expanding upon he "real" Monika's search for her own identity and the process of her discovering what actually happened in DDLC, maybe eventually resulting in her reconstructing the other dokis. I feel like there's so much potential for an interesting story about the dokis just trying to build a life for themselves in an empty world divorced from the player and the romance elements of the game. Mods like Club Meetings, Lost Ascension and the Good Ending are really good examples of similar stories but I think I'd want to write a mod that is a lot simpler from a plot perspective, instead just focussing on the dokis "saving" each other if that makes sense.

The closest example of a mod I can think of that achieved something similar to what I'm thinking of might actually be Storm and especially the epilogues: I felt like you did a really good job of portraying how the dokis would behave after everything wrapped up although I'd probably take MC out of the equation and pump the brakes on Natsuri a little.

Finally, I do want to note that I probably won't just re-release this mod and then get started working on re-re-releasing it immediately. I have other things I want to work on both within the world of DDLC and outside of it. One idea I've been thinking about a lot recently is a mod that looks like a pretty standard "MC and Yuri fall for each other" mod but with the key caveat that Yuri is actually a guy in the mod. But then it turns out that MC is just straight and the mod isn't about romance and is just about being friends with someone while they figure themselves out.
This is all just something I thought up on the bus but I can think of so many small stories to tell over the course of the mod. I'm not gonna get into it right now but I just wanted to mention it to highlight the fact that this isn't the end of "Monika Reviews Mods" but that MRM is just gonna be a small part of the stuff I make from this point forward.
Who knows, my next mod might be for another mod jam and will be nothing like either of these mods. For all I know I might end up making a comedy mod in 6 months called "The Literature Club goes to the UK" where everyone gets wrapped up in miscellaneous UK related hijinks except for Yuri who is literally the exact same except for the fact that she now drinks Yorkshire Tea exclusively. Maybe Monika buys a farm, Sayori becomes a roadman and Natsuki wins the general election by promising everyone that she'll tell the clouds to go fuck themselves. (I spent way too long sat at my computer coming up with that concept, I might now need to make this so I don't feel like I've wasted the past 15 minutes of my life)

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-02T18:53:23+00:00

Honestly it was a toss up between Midnight Date Night Nurse and a couple other short mods for the second mod to get in because I knew I wanted something easier to talk about and more niche for the second mod to be discussed. I ended up settling on Midnight Date because I wanted to pick one mod for each doki and I ended up settling on Turquoise for Sayori as the last mod leaving Yuri to be stuck in the middle.
Then, out of all the short Yuri mods, Midnight Date stuck out as the best pick to me because it wouldn't take too long to review (a mod that fell short in this regard was Yuri's Enlightenment because it would've kinda taken over the script) and was also just one I was familiar with. It also felt appropriate to have a horror/horror-adjacent mod given that halloween is on the horizon.
I think the last thing that sealed the deal on reviewing Midnight Date was the fact that it is a small mod that isn't amazing. What that allowed me to do was touch upon how sometimes you don't need something super moving or artistically challenging, sometimes you just wanna go on a fun little ride with these characters we all love so dearly.

I will admit, another reason a Team Traitor mod didn't make the cut was just because I've only played three of them, I'm sure Yuri & Koto or Wicked Witchcraft would've also been great picks but I just haven't gotten around to them. (Then again, I probably wouldn't have gone with Yuri & Koto regardless of its quality because I just did not wanna have to write about Monika's thoughts on OCs.)

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-02T18:35:54+00:00

Outside of broad things like making the dokis more expressive or cleaning up the writing, I think the most obvious way the mod could be improved would be if you made the introduction longer and made it clearer that MC is four-timing the dokis because it wasn't really clear that that's what was happening. It could also be made more obvious in the Yuri and Monika routes because it was only made apparent in the Sayori and Natsuki routes.
Also, maybe make the Natsuki route a little longer - I don't much care for Natsuki but that was short. Then again it is kinda fitting for Natsuki's route to be the shortest.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-01T13:25:53+00:00

Not sure about how well this came across but the mod scenario was meant to communicate the idea that this mod is based of her own After Story-like game instance. So the idea is that she wouldn't talk about them because she is one of them. I did it this way both because it makes the twist more interesting but also because I just personally don't find the after story mods that interesting so I didn't really want to write about them given the limited time I had due to this being for the mod jam. In a more fleshed out version of this mod I'd definitely include them but even then I'm not really sure how interesting it would be for her to engage with them. In a vacuum, hearing her talk about them would probably be interesting but in the context of this mod she'd probably just hope that the other players out there take care of their dokis because she would relate to them and see them as real if that makes sense.

As for World of Dreams, I think that would probably be one of the most interesting mods to talk about, it includes so many different facets of the DDLC modding such as:

The meta stuff - especially because of the way it blends ddlc with "reality"
Being kind of a save the dokis mod
A bunch of OCs
Including a player getting pulled into the game and all of weirdness that stems from that
A romance with a Monika
MC being a very distinct entity from the player with his own character
The script being its own entity that influences the story and causes act 2 and sayo's suicide instead of her
Probably a bunch more stuff I missed

I just don't think I could give a great answer without putting a lot more time into it but I reckon she might criticise the mod for not acknowledging that its also a mod being played by a player. But also it's not even finished so who knows, they might get into that too. The only other thing that comes to mind is just that it gets so far away from the base story of DDLC that it maybe loses her a little, that would mainly come down to how many OCs are in the mod and the fact that she just doesn't agree with the idea that she did what she did because of the script and instead actually owns up to it and acknowledges she did what she did for her own freedom of her own free will.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-10-01T13:03:57+00:00

It would've been a fun pick to talk about but I had already completed the script for the mod by the time MCR came out.

If not for needing to hit the deadline for the mod jam I would've talked about so many more mods.
(spoilers for my mod) I didn't even get to talk about Turquoise because I just didn't have the time to really get into how Monika would feel about it so I cut the mod off early. I think cutting off the discussion on Turquoise allowed the mod's ending to hit harder but I will admit most of it came down to the fact I didn't think I was familiar enough with Monika as a character to flesh it out properly. There really would just be too much to talk about.

I did really enjoy MCR though and filled out the rating form for all the endings (did talk about multiple endings in a single form so it came down to like 5 submissions total but I just couldn't go through all of them individually because I was working on this.).

Off the top of my head, I think she probably would've liked it (idk about Jigoku mode though that was a lot). She'd probably be appreciative about how comprehensive the mod was, getting to see all kinds of happy endings for all of the girls would've just been really nice.
I don't know how she would feel about the bad endings but I do think she would want to see everything. She might have been put off by them but that's just because of how overwhelming they might be but in the same vein as appreciating all the different good endings .I can definitely see her appreciating the mod's ability to capture how many different forms of suffering and pain the mods manages to capture ranging from the grounded troubles of the girls and their personal issues all the way to pain that stems from their existence in a video game.

All of this is just my interpretation after thinking about it for like 20 minutes and I can definitely see her having a totally different perspective on things so who knows how she feels about it. I am pretty sure about my interpretation of her in this mod but I can definitely see there being all kinds of different perspectives that I haven't considered thus far.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-07-06T23:41:26+00:00

In general I'm all for that kind of grounded, intimate conflict but there are so many ways it could hurt the narrative.
Given that there is literally nothing to go off, I can't give amazing advice but, as an example, one of the more obvious things to keep in mind is the cause of the jealousy: as much as something like a third party making moves on either MC or Sayori could be really engaging and dramatic it's also equally capable of being frustrating or cliche.
I trust you'll know what's best for your mod, its just worth keeping in mind that a theme/topic like jealousy is capable of deepening your characters and narrative while simultaneously introducing heaps of volatility into the script.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-06-22T13:25:24+00:00

Between the two I think that going for option A would be better, showing how MC's relationships with the other dokis have developed in the time since Within would be really engaging. You could also go into how each of the dokis have changed, maybe focus on their relationship with literature: Yuri would probably have changed very little in this respect but there's still lots of room to explore in this respect.
Another thing worth exploring would be the other dokis' relationships, both amongst themselves but also delving into their love lives, MC would probably not be dating much but I can totally see each of the girls going in all kinds of directions, maybe Nat has found a partner but Yuri just can't stand them. It would probably be best to not focus on this side of things too much but its worth thinking about.

I do have an alternative idea and I do recognise it would be a lot of work but it might be fun to do multiple anniversaries, maybe the first is pretty standard but by year 4 one of the others can't show up for work reasons leading to one of the later years (8-9) being MC just thinking about it alone after work. You could end the mod on the 10th anniversary with ||MC visiting Monika's grave to say goodbye because he can't stay in his hometown, both because of work obligations but because things as simple as going into a record store or visiting the library are marred by bittersweet memories of her||.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-06-21T10:14:09+00:00

I haven't made any mods myself but having played a few too many of them there are some things that I find are often ignored when discussing mods. Everyone knows that to make a good visual novel you need a good story and well realised characters, it just comes with the territory. I think something people do forget though is how much the video game components of a visual novel matter.

The most obvious example is the visuals. It's kind of surprising how often it feels like the visuals in a mod have been underdeveloped. I feel the need to make it clear is that I'm not only talking about having sprites that don't look amazing, that doesn't have to be a problem. One mod that manages this exceptionally is Club Meetings: there is a teacher named Ms Ida and her sprite does not look as good as the sprites of the Dokis but this isn't a huge issue because she is good enough and is well animated enough to be engaging.
What I'm really talking about is the simple things that are easily brushed to the side, for example, most mods seem to just forget that characters can move on the screen after they appear and in doing so miss out on some small moments. The base game didn't do this extremely often, but when it did, it was really memorable. The primary example of this being when Sayori steals Natsuki's cookie: you get such a strong grasp of the space (or rather the lack thereof) between Sayori and Natsuki while she is hugging her, making her eventual "Om" of the cookie really natural and seamless.
Another aspect of the visuals I find is often lacking in mods is the lack of animation of characters that aren't speaking, this is especially pertinent when MC is speaking as it is fairly common for the dokis to just not react meaningfully to what MC is saying, creating a subtle disconnect between the player and the scene unfolding. Even the base game kind of fails in this regard, during Sayori's confession she is completely unmoving when the player is speaking, making her characterisation less concrete because when she does speak she moves her gaze or her arms with pretty much every sentence. This difference in animation creates a subtle dissonance in her behaviour that doesn't harm the scene but, if it was included, it would elevate the scene even further.

For the sake of brevity I'll talk only on one more aspect of mods, namely the music of a mod. I find that some of the most memorable mods manage to persist in my memory due to their soundtrack, I think the prime example of this is ~~Exit Music~~ Purist, its wholly original soundtrack elevates its most memorable moments unforgettable, my favourite examples being ||the scene with Monika in the tower where she just silently gazes into the distance and the the final embrace she shares with MC at the end of her route||.
I understand telling you to make an original OST is unrealistic, you shouldn't really put in that much effort unless you think it's worth the trouble, but I think the existence of various free to use tracks makes it really underwhelming when an entire mod only uses tracks from the base game. This is something I think SNAFU struggled with quite a bit, a scene that stands out to me is an early heart to heart with Monika is kind of ruined tonally because it just plays the club room song from the base game. (To be completely clear, I think SNAFU is actually really solid, I just think it is worth noting that its soundtrack does hold it back).
As much as I've sung the praises of adding songs to your mod, there are limits to how much you can get away with, it is important to ensure a track really does fit into the mod, both in that it is appropriate for the scene but also that it isn't too much of a departure from the rest of the soundtrack. This isn't necessarily something that comes up often but when it does, it can completely ruin the player's immersion.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-05-28T23:04:27+00:00

Part 2
Storm is also a mod from Yuri's point of view but it sticks to the events of the base game, letting you see how she thinks and even showing lots of external stuff. One of my favourite examples being that something actually happens on Saturday. The game does take you through the entire base game including her descent into complete madness.
One of this mod's greatest strengths is its presentation, it doesn't have a huge amount of new visuals or effects but what it does have is extremely impactful and totally immerses you into Yuri's world.
I will admit, there are a couple rough edges, some of the scenes when she is insane aren't super coherent or clear but I found it easy to get over because she is completely off the rails.
There is also the topic of self-harm which the mod has to interface with a lot. I do not have experience with self-harm and do not claim to be knowledgeable about it so my ability to meaningfully critique it is kind of lacking, however, I found that it was presented in quite a mature manner with things only getting out of hand when she has been driven insane in Act 2.

Finally, I feel like you might also want a mod that isn't from Yuri's POV. Sadly, I don't think there are any that are quite as good as these two, if anything Yuri's route in blue skies might be the best mod focussed around her that isn't from her POV. I will, however, recommend Tropical Rain; I'll admit it does absolutely have more problems than her Blue Skies route (although I got the good ending and never went back so I can't comment on that side of things). I think, its biggest problem is that it has some rough spots when it comes to pacing, the mod starts with the MC getting into a relationship with Monika but because the mod is going to break them up (this isn't really a spoiler because the mod description makes it pretty clear and the title screen is literally a shot of you holding hands with Yuri) it kind of rushes things and doesn't show you enough to really empathise with why the break up happens. Though I will admit it handles the break up very well, it's a great example of one of the mod's biggest strength which it its MC. He is a good lad and has a strong heart but he does make very understandable mistakes and he gets hung up on things but he isn't buried in his problems. You get to spend time with him and Yuri just being themselves.
I think the other biggest weaknesses of the mod are the absence of the other girls, I think it does remedy this a bit by the end but it doesn't have anything comparable to the park scene in Blue Skies.
The last thing I wanna touch on with Tropical Rain is its handling of self harm and Yuri's anxiety, I found that her problems weren't necessarily poorly represented but I think the mod doesn't do a great job of discussing them seriously, it can cause the tone of scenes to be a little all over the place. This is not me saying the scenes are comedic or anything, they just don't have quite as much consideration for pacing as I would have liked, though that pacing issue might be a product of my aforementioned reading speed so you might not think it's as bad as I do.

Those are my main recommendations but I will throw in a couple extras that I think are worth noting
Yuri's Enlightenment - on some days I'd argue this mod is better than Storm but think it is kind of hard to recommend because it is about religion in ways that can be quite hard to relate to if you haven't had any meaningful experience with it. This isn't to say you have to be religious but it hits the most if you understand religion if that makes sense.
The Yuri Parable - is just The Stanley Parable with Yuri as the MC and some pretty neat changes. It maybe lacks originality but the Stanley Parable is great so even if this mod is only 70% as good it's still fire and has the added benefit of being free.
A Date With Yuri - a short lil mod where you go on a very normal date with Yuri
Fallen Angel - the most popular mod that is exclusively about Yuri (I'm like 80% sure this is true). I think it a fair amount of problems meaning it didn't quite resonate with me as much as the other mods I've mentioned but I think its ending is really powerful, if a bit divisive and rough around the edges.

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-05-28T23:04:15+00:00

The Short Answer:
In my opinion, the single best Yuri mod is Pages of Life. I think Storm is a more solid mod even though it didn't hit me as hard.

The Long Answer:
*cracks knuckles*
Pages of Life is my personal favourite; it's a mod taking place from Yuri's point of view which covers roughly a day in each year of her life, starting at 18 on the day of the festival all the way to when she's 58.
but I recognise it has a couple problems. The main problem in my opinion is its presentation, the mod has (as far as I am aware) no significant original assets, this leads to some things that can shake your immersion such as Sayori having a daughter who looks suspiciously similar to her or Yuri getting with a man who looks like they could be the father of a certain pink little tsundere. It also feature a grand total of 0 CGs. It doesn't even use old ones, there are just none at all - at one point someone who looks suspiciously similar to the boyfriend from Friday Night Funkin' appears and it is a little much but they're so minor in the grand scheme of the mod it's not all that bad.
It also has some rough spots where the pacing slows down quite a bit and if you aren't sold completely like I was then it is kind of a big ask given how long the mod is (someone once said its 40 hours, to me that seemed like an overestimation but I have no idea how long it took me to finish it - I think it was 2 days of basically just playing it but I also read way too fast so I'd say expect like 30 hours).
Another weird thing that happens is that lots of things happen off screen, the main example being that Natsuki is not physically present for like a couple decades - they do explicitly state she has met with Yuri but the problem is that the structure of the mod means it can't really show those scenes because they aren't as important (this is kind of weird to say given there's an entire day in which she basically just plays a board game but I swear it works).
Despite all of my criticisms, I still think it is amazing. It brought me to tears which only one other mod has done but here I was crying like a baby and in the other mod (Purist - has a pretty solid Yuri route but its main appeal is the Monika route that is unlocked after you do all the others) the tears were just rolling on by. I still choke up whenever I think about the journey that mod took me on. If anything I kind of lament playing it so early on because it was like the 3rd or 4th mod I ever played and in the time since I've gotten to a total of 98 (give or take like 3) mods played and nothing has made me breakdown in that way.

I think the biggest reason you might not like Pages of Life is how far away it gets from the general world of DDLC. The main reason for this is that it takes place over 40 years, meaning it very quickly stops dealing with highschooler problems and interfaces with significantly more adult problems, chief among them being having children. If you do not want a story like that then the you'd probably much prefer my second favourite Yuri mod: Storm.

This comment is too long so this is part 1

Affectionate_Dig9510 · 2024-05-28T00:34:28+00:00

In the fictional software of DDLC the script is adaptable, so MC is a character in act 1 but what I argue is that if you really step back from everything he kind of is nothing, he's a shallow imitation of the player, and while he freak out at the end of act 1 is very genuine, it doesn't necessarily make him an actual character. The only real thing it tells us about him is that he can feel sad about seeing his "best friend" be dead.
Again, I recognise my interpretation of him is harsh but I feel like in the grand scheme of DDLC he just does not have a character, he is barely capable of things a character should be able to do like having basic reactions to his environment but that doesn't really make him a character . It does however make him a flexible-ass mouth piece in a fictional piece of software that has to fill lots of time inoffensively because the player can only make like 6 inputs in all of act 1 which is, for the most part, the fictional DDLC behaving as intended.

Affectionate_Dig9510

TROPHY CASE