I have the exact same opinion of your review as you do of the game. Despite all the negatives, I'm glad it's engaging. My natures urges me to respond a bit though so...
The cliffhanger wasn't just for the sake of a cliffhanger. As someone said on a different platform: "I wonder what the resulting fallout will be?"
I tried to make each character cater to a different taste. Luxe definitely isn't for everyone. I'm not going for 20+, but there are a few sub goals for new characters. I had 10 initial ideas, but each girl would extend the story a lot. Unless people are really invested, there's no point.
You're right about the sex scenes trying to subvert. It's because I'm bored of the generic stuff with thousands of games doing that. The sex acts are here mostly for the sake of having them anyway. They don't logically fit the main story other than to create a bit of drama. Also, I don't think I ever wrote "Why won't you cum?", because that's not the effect the repetition is supposed to convey.
I'm glad you're invested after all that criticism though!
I wrote my review just before bed so i overly focused on the negatives. Glad you didn't tell me to go and get fucked
Yeah, no doubt the fallout is where the interest lies but you could've ended the scene 5 minutes later with her getting rushed to the emergency room or something, having her get shot isn't what i found grating, it was simply where you chose to end the chapter.
I don't hate Luxe, i just find her frustrating cause i have no power of the MC to do what i would do which is to call her out on her bullshit every time at the moment she does shit, the MC spends too much time in his head when i would be giving her a serve. She doesn't come across as a bad person, just shitty in how she goes about things and i feel an urge to do something the game doesn't give me the ability to do, so it builds up as a sense of frustration.
Well, more girls won't kill the game, but i stand by my comment, with Serenity there are now plenty of characters, adding more will come at the cost of who already exists, you do you and make the game you want to make, that's more important to me than my own opinion or i'd go and make my own game.
Yeah but subversion for subversion's sake isn't exactly an improvement over the cliches. The only measuring stick that matters for whether a sex scene is any good is if it gets the engine running and to that i can firmly state none of them have.
Eh, maybe not that specific line, but the feel of it, each of them ends with the girl basically barking at the MC to cum already, do it, glaze them and i found it very unappealing.
With all that responding out of the way, time for some praise.
I really like Shadow as a character both in how you've written her and how you've given her connection the MC, i felt very invested in matching her pace and seeing where things would go with her, she's definitely 'best girl' at this point. Sparks is just fun, the arms-raised cheering Sparks made me smile several times (i'm not very physically expressive in RL) and the whole Jeffrey saga was delicious sugary syrup poured over my jaded and pessimistic heart.
I like how you used Serenity to start to draw the MC out of his head, by that point in the story it was really starting to get frustrating how the MC monologues in his head constantly mid-conversation and weaving into the story a way to get him to stop doing that was wonderful, very believable and satisfying and hopefully the start of the MC breaking that habit to the benefit of the player experience.
So yeah, i'm in, how often do you update roughly?