Played this game for the first time yesterday and finished it today. I realized immediately that the story must be inspired heavily by the movie "Passengers", which I really enjoyed thematically, so it was no surprise that I got really immersed while playing.
The positives:
- Unique setting, character models and backgrounds. There are space-themed games and I have played some of them, but the assets that are being used here (very well at that) feel fresh and it makes playing more fun, because there's new shit to explore for seasoned VN-players.
- The pacing. What I mean is that the characters spend some time to get to know each other before really building a relationship. They work and play together and talk to each other before they get to the next level. Selene is conflicted and while she pretty much gave the MC a death sentence in some way with her actions, her actions make sense. Somewhat. The fact she's still lying and doing her own thing bugs me. The MC, while he started out as an annoying wimp, does redeem himself as the story progresses. He takes charge, is competent in his field and stands up for himself and Selene/Ellie. I like that.
- The renders are pretty good, the coding-stuff is fun as I'm learning how to code myself right now, although I'm still very much a beginner.
- I like the dynamic that MC and Selene have going on. It seems natural, and Stella, while not being given all that much time to talk, is also very lively. I hope that she'll soon get to join the group.
The negatives:
- The pacing. As the game has been out for a little over two years now, I wonder how these 6 females that are still sleeping in their cryo pods will ever get their moments inside the game. It plays like a harem game in the making, but if those girls are still asleep after two years and Selene already took quite a bit of ingame time and attention to 'conquer', it doesn't bode well for those characters. Stella is still a captive and mostly a non-factor, too.
- Pia. I feel that her purpose was a) to give the players sex scenes (that were super long) to tide them over and b) to give SOME background information for our MC. I skipped her sex scenes since I don't like her model and as she won't appear in the game other than in dreams or thoughts, she's very much not a real character to me.
- The sandbox. I feel that right now, it doesn't serve much purpose at all other than to find secrets, which seem to be just pictures unless I missed something.
In conclusion:
I find the game brilliant and if I had to compare it to all the other games I played, it would be a solid 8 or 8.5/10. I've put it on my watchlist and look forward to finding out how things will go!
Thanks for the feedback and the kinds words. Really appreciated.
Regarding the pacing. You are right, it's quite slow, initially I wanted to keep the introduction/act 1 way shorter but I just liked how to story developed while writing it and therefor decided the add more details. I'm aware that this might become a problem in act 2 in regards of development time if I want to keep up the depth of character development, which I do want. I have to find ways to render faster without cutting to much edges, but at the moment my focus is finishing act 1 with the same (or progressively better) quality than before.
Regarding Pia. I answered this a few times before so here just in short: Pia will have impact down the line in what way I won't tell, but it's teased. I know people didn't liked her first appearance because of the over-the-top veiny details. That's pretty much "fixed" / reduced to barley visible in her second scene.
Regarding sandbox, my motives can be read in the faq in op. Other than pictures there is a repeatable scene in the observation between episode 2 and 4 and a "dj game" in the dance club. But they are just small gimmicks. The sandbox elements are supposed for act 2 which was my main focus during developing of the framework for the game during the early days of the project.
I replayed the game since it has been a long time since the last update and well... I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand the technical part of the game is great and my most sincere congrats to the dev. My issues are with the story, or more precisely with the lack of choices for such an important matter as is the (in the spoilers)
I don't know... I'm not gonna drop this because the graphics are really good and the story is not half bad... But very close to that point, let's see how it progress...
Edit. I post this critic because I consider the game to be top notch. If it was a more normal game, I wouldn't have bothered to write anything.
Thanks for the feedback as well!
This might doesn't set well with all but I'm developing this story to my liking, not as a community project. So in regards of the story, my focus is on my preferences. The reason why I don't add much choices is because I have a very clear story laid out that carries into act 2. As noted I'm not fasted in terms of developing as I do this as a hobby in my free time and branching stories would even take more time develop and bear the risk of plot holes which I try to avoid as best as possible.
I may be wrong but despite the two years development I think that's only because it's still early in the game like an extended prologue that will end when we get rid of the other 2 guys...
After that it could be more a sandbox game with daily routine and more choice in the free roam. I base my assumption on the SD's character attribute:
View attachment 2818939
Pretty much on point. The initial design was to develop a sandbox game with a "short" linear introduction. Well, I liked that "short" introduction so much I extended it a "little" bit. However, as I have developed most of the framework prior to start writing the initial chapter and I'm pretty happy with it, I don't want to hide it "genes".
Man, that's insanely cool to know. How much talent is one man allowed to have?
Must be so much work.. but it's definitely worth it!
Thanks. I do pretty much everything myself. The framework, coding, scripting, writing (
osanaiko helps a lot with editing and story consistency). Most of the used 3D and 2D assets are mine but I also used some some kitbash packs to build some environments quicker. So all the locations are unique to my game, except one that isn't even activated in-game yet. All shaders are my own, most of the textures are my own or at least customized to some extend. All music is created by myself, all SFX but the sex sounds, they are just sampled.
The downside on doing everything myself is that it takes longer in development and my isn't as detailed as much as I like in same places, but on the upside I can proudly say that it is quite unique and it's mine and I do enjoy creating all those things. I like modelling my own environments, I like coding some small minigames and I coded quite a few tools for background activities.
I created a whole language for my game script with syntax highlighting and many handy tools that help me testing my stuff. So for me it's not just about the game itself, but also creating everything.
