No doubt, many of you who have started playing this game will find NoEL to be
quite unique to other simulation games like Tokimemo. For one thing, all the
interactions are done using your computer. Basically the object of the game is
to find out as much as possible about the three girls- Kaho, Yuka, & Emi - using
everything resource your computer has as its disposal. Ultimately, your goal is
to win someone's heart by Christmas day. I have only started playing this game
myself, so I will try to give a rough sketch of the game's controls and
highlights as a way of introducing the game to new users.
If you have any comments and anything you want to submit to this list, please
don't hesitate to email me at
nerv@usa.net
Happy gaming!
Introduction to the Rabbit OS v.1.00
W. PHONE
When you start playing the game for the first time and after you have viewed
that gorgeous demo, you will be contacted by Kaho Shimizu through the VDO phone,
which will be your primary means of contacting the girls. Move the rabbit cursor
to the lower right hand corner of the screen to the command circle and click on
W. Phone, which is the VDO phone. Click on Interactive to start talking to Kaho
right away. During the talk mode, there is a re-sizable data window in the
middle of the screen. The data which goes into this window comes from this black
bar at the lower left hand corner of the screen right below the timer. As you
talk with Kaho or any other character, topic icons stream across this bar, so
click on them and they will be transferred to the data window. If you want to
ask Kaho about a particular topic, just click on the topic icon from your data
window. In general, the more you ask the more clues you will get. One helpful
tip I've found is not to use all the topic icons the second you get them, but to
use them slowly, perhaps once every 30 secs and use only the recent ones.
You can also leave the topic icons in the data window for later conversations.
Of course, you may not get a connection everytime you call someone and even you
do, if you don't have enough data (more on gathering data later), she might cut
the conversation short, so it's helpful if you collect enough data first before
you call.
In the W. Phone mode, there's also the pool"Delete.. mode which allows you to
delete data acquired from conversations by clicking on the topic icons to be
deleted. This is useful if you get repetitive data and the icons are starting to
hog up screen space :). Be warned though that there is no undelete command for
this, so be careful!
AGAIN
This is the second command in the command circle which is your means of finding
data about the three girls outside of conversations (and this data can aid
conversations as well). Once this command is selected, you will see two large
squares, one with the Rabbit OS logo (for viewing data) and the other filled
with data search icons (the square can be rotated by using the arrow keys on the
left). There's also a bar at the bottom of the screen lined up with 5 "search
rabbits". To collect data, simply click on the data icons you want to find. For
example, if you click on the icon "K" and then the cat icon, you want to find
out info about Kaho's pet. You can select up to four topics to search for at any
one time per rabbit. To initiate search, just simply click on one of the search
rabbits and it will disappear into the cybernet and may or may not appear with
the data you need (if it does, you'll see it holding a new data icon). The
availability of each new data icon depends on where you are in the game, so keep
on trying! Here is a brief overview of the 6 sides on the data search square:
First side: has the half-black half-white open book as the first icon. The icons
here deal with your relationship status with the three girls, whether it's about
dating, money, etc.
Second side: has a wavy line as the first icon. The icons here deal with the
personal aspects for each of the three girls. You normally would not get much
info here yet until late in the game because the data you get are things like
personal photos, maps to their houses, and time schedules (mighty useful for
timing phone calls!).
Third side: has an arrow pointing upwards as the first icon. The icons here deal
with latest happenings, for example, weather reports and news. You will use this
side the most as the data you get here will be your basis for conversations. For
example, if you wanted to ask someone out for a date you need to know weather
report first.
Fourth side: has the K letter as the first icon. The icons here contain
information directly dealing with the three girls. You can find out things like
their personal profiles, their airline schedules (if they are traveling
overseas) and their school sports day activities.
Fifth side: has the lock with the letter S as the first icon. Mostly misc. stuff
here like cosmetics, gifts, etc. But the icon which has an arrow with a D in it
is useful because at one point the girls will go to an amusement park and you
can use this icon to talk to them.
Sixth side: has this thing that looks like a chip as the first icon. Again,
mostly misc. stuff like clothes, etc. The tree icon is very useful during Dec.
23-24 as it contains vital information about Christmas activities.
Once you have collected all the data you need and you wish to view them, click
on the Program button on the right side. The Rabbit OS logo screen will enlarge
and from here, click on the search rabbit(s) carrying the data to view that
item. You can also click on Text to view the text data of that file.
COMP
There are four commands here that deal with your computer. They are:
Time Control - allows you to jump ahead in time in increments of minutes, hours,
and days. You can't jump back, so use this command with caution. Time control is
useful when you don't want to spend anymore time collecting data and want to
jump ahead to events, like dates or times of the day when one of the girls is at
home and you want to call her. To jump, just use the arrow keys to fix the
future time and click on Jump to execute.
Account Meter - allows you to see various game settings like speech rate but you
aren't allowed to change anything.
Sound - allows you to change various sound settings.
Shut down - quits and saves the game. You are allowed to save only one game, and
this is loaded automatically everytime you boot up NoEL.
V.MAIL
Supposedly stands for "Video Mail" which isn't far from the truth as this
command will allow you to view whatever video clips you may have acquired. You
automatically start out with one clip (which is the demo animation) and will
gain more later as you progress.
