Years back there was a game called Study § Steady (a.k.a. “Study and Steady”), from a company called Marmalade (“Orange Marmalade”). I’ve always had a soft spot for this studio’s stuff — the early “Primal” series, and later Marshmallow. The vibe they give off is “solid”: no shitposting in the plot, just ordinary school romances with a little heartstring-tugging. Straight-up orthodox work. But for some reason, with the previous Study § Steady they lost their damn minds and changed the whole production style, pivoting hard into engine R&D. They poured what looks to me like a shitload of effort into a not-particularly-novel Emotion tech, and sacrificed most of the game’s content for it. So Study § Steady ended up feeling weird as hell. The story was dead simple, the pacing was a bore, and the only bright spot was the “animated heroine sprite” wobbling around like a balloon. But the tech wasn’t mature, so not only did the sprite look stiff and yank you out of the story, the game’s specs were absurdly high — no top-tier PC and you couldn’t hold a stable 30fps. Sure, plenty of people were praising the heroine’s black-tights CGs, and the game had a ton of HCGs, but those HCGs weren’t “animated” at all, which made them a total snooze… In my book, Study § Steady is a complete failure. The weird part is it still got Fandiscs, and the even more baffling part is it got a sequel… Study § Steady 2!