Ren'Py Acardia Afterdark: Thrones of Desire [v0.22] [Unknown White Raven]

4.00 star(s) 3 Votes

db-bchr-iv

Newbie
Mar 12, 2023
62
138
Three out of three 5*/5* reviews for a VN with AI CG, dayum, what's going on here, will download for sure
The reviews are ridiculous and the game isn't that good. "Disco Elysium but in my favorite setting?" Give me a fucking break, this has nothing to do with DE. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the dev manipulating the rating himself.

Either way, someone needs to humble this game's rating a bit. Myself to the rescue I guess.
 
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Unknown White Raven

Newbie
Game Developer
Sep 3, 2024
23
39
The reviews are ridiculous and the game isn't that good. "Disco Elysium but in my favorite setting?" Give me a fucking break, this has nothing to do with DE. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the dev manipulating the rating himself.

Either way, someone needs to humble this game's rating a bit. Myself to the rescue I guess.
I mean everyone has different tastes so they might have liked what you did not. It is certainly within possibility I would say.
And no there is no 'manipulation' going on.
But man, why the anger, I mean this is just a small game that is in its very start phase. It has room to change and grow.
Thank you anyways for not leaving a 1 star review considering the hatred you have for this game.
 

Riggedbound

Newbie
Jul 25, 2024
30
68
The reviews are ridiculous and the game isn't that good. "Disco Elysium but in my favorite setting?" Give me a fucking break, this has nothing to do with DE. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the dev manipulating the rating himself.
It kinda has something similar to DE though. I won't review the game myself since it feels like a demo, basically, but I liked its idea and dialogues. I'd even say, really liked.
 
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Unknown White Raven

Newbie
Game Developer
Sep 3, 2024
23
39
It kinda has something similar to DE though. I won't review the game myself since it feels like a demo, basically, but I liked its idea and dialogues. I'd even say, really liked.
Thank you.
If possible, could you tell us how long it took you to finish the content. We are trying to get a general estimate.
 

Sality

New Member
Sep 2, 2017
12
19
When I see another game made with Ren'Py, I always die inside, cause of all the shitty stuff people "try" to make just to grab money from other people (basically just shitty models made in koikatsu or looking decent but stolen, no effort). So I mostly avoid any Ren'Py stuff. But I decided to give this one a try, since it didn't look like another koikatsu-like shit.

Aaand we get isekai-ed. And I laughed a lot at this one:
obraz_2025-01-09_184442606.png

I must say, I did enjoy it. I like the mechanics, I like the style, so far so good. Interestingly enough - I got this while visiting the shop.
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Looking forward to this one.
 

youraccount69

I'm like a karate chop
Donor
Dec 30, 2020
5,169
2,380
AcardiaAfterdarkThronesOfDesire-0.19
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Nimbus Commando

Active Member
Aug 7, 2024
575
1,393
Played it through. Things that could be changed for better, in my humble opinion:
1. As said before —"choiceless" choises: fight with bear, Evelyn scene.
Bear — that "fight" description wasn't even needed, because the choice in its core is "to end the game" and player only wastes time. You don't wan't players to waste their time, you want them to spend it with pleasure.
Suggestion: rock-paper-scissors fight system. You have description of bear's attack and choices with side to evade to. Make decreasing reaction time-line (like in QTE moments in the game "Wolf Among Us") so it feels more intense. Give character for example 3 or 2 HP, i.e. small room for error. And story wise, when after few evade-sequences, when the Principle arrives, it will make more sense that he feels / sees potential in MH — he survived encounter with a magic beast. I beg you not to make MH "The Chosen One" without him actually doing surprising things and earning and proving that status from THE GOD himself. Also you could do "Run" choice likewise, make player choose where to run, i.e. think fast and click fast, he shouuld feel intense, because the situation IS intentese.
Evelyn — two choices leading to the exacts same dialog, i.e. event sequence, when in a good written story different choices should matter and should create at least small and different story-branches or different ways to the main point (in global story or relations-between-characters-story).
Suggestion: think through your characters' personality first, then play the interaction in your head as MH and as the character. It might help you understand how they will interact irl, lol. And then build your dialog choices. Also, if you want RP here, give MH varying personality choices, decide, for example 3 routes "Cool kid", "Kind guy" or "Shut-in nerd" that will affect other characters as well. He was dissapointed with his high school life and university was his "new life starting" moment, make your story matter, you can play it out like this here, it's his new life, literally, he can be whatever he wants now and more players may bond stronger with him if they can choose what they like, don't decide for players, make them decide for themselves.

2. Useless descriptions
Why do you need to describe me a character's apperance if I can see her/his picture and see how she/he looks like. It may work in book, but not in the game, you have visual channel of perception here, consider this, please. Demoness' description was literally description of her art, which I can see with my own eyes. This is a problem, because player will think that the writer is bad or that the writer thinks, that the player is blind or stupid. If you want to describe a character, describe those parts that we can't see, actions or gestures (if you won't animatethem), small body movements ("her chest rapidly goes up and down from excitement" or smthng like this). Everything except what we can actually see on the screen, because it's needless.

3. Minigames
As Jesse Schell said in his book "The art of game design", game has 4 elements: story, style, technology and mechanics. And they must support and complete each other. First decide what mechanics, simply said minigames will be used for different routes (warrior, mage, priest), make them from paper and play test it, you will se how it works and if it's actually interesting. Second, decide how it will loook, i.e. style. Magic-shooting training with archer-targets look not so good, imho. Also don't forget about story, because throwing minigame at player immediately after he clicks "go to lecture" without any explanation (thanks to warrior classes for having at least key-pressing tutorial) and seeing how MH then says "I learned a lot about magic today" feels very incoherent. We need to understand as a player why are we doing those arrows or clicking those targets.

4. Another "The Chosen" guy
I mentioned it above and want to emphasize — please, don't make character just "The Chosen" and so that he then gain everything just because God said that he is "special". Youshould prove it to us readers/players through his story, character development and actions. Don't turn your story into another stereotyped isekai anime, please, I beg you (I can forgive you that truck in the beginning, ok, it's sort of a meme at this point). And I know it's demo and story didn't even started so to speak, but I am looking a few steps ahead.

5. Priest minigame where? XD
- - - - -
I mixed everything a little but that's it.
I'm not trying to offence you, guys. You did not bad for beginners (as I understood), but there is a lot to learn and improve. Don't be lazy about searching info and improve your skills. There are a lot of videos on writing stories, characters and gamedesing on Youtube, it's free, use it wisely.
Also remember: it is good when people critisize your work (except some woke bs), because complaining — is caring. The thing is dead when nobody cares.
And I hope you're not trying to make some cash from patreon and then leave with abandoned 0.0.3v game. Don't be like this, please.
Best regards.
Rather play as the chosen one than some weak ass pussy.
 
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iamsensei

Newbie
Feb 17, 2024
15
21
Yeah sorry we are quite new to these things so we were not able to write a good description. We will fix it along with the thumbnail, in a new update in probably 2 weeks. Thank you for your suggestion.
the plot and the mechanics are wonderful, keep going.

and i would be really happy if you improve H-scenes by adding interactionand sounds, in future versions of course. good luck in development
 
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Unknown White Raven

Newbie
Game Developer
Sep 3, 2024
23
39
the plot and the mechanics are wonderful, keep going.

and i would be really happy if you improve H-scenes by adding interactionand sounds, in future versions of course. good luck in development
Thank you, we are glad you liked it.
Little by little we will keep improving the game.
 
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May 11, 2019
16
10
don't agree with the criticism of the bear choice. Pleasure can be higher if there's some build-up to get it and if the world of arcadia is supposed to be dangerous than having choices with death as a consequence. The question is whether the choice establishes something or uses something established. Are there types of animals you need to run from vs stand your ground vs?
 

ShadowAsgard

New Member
Jul 16, 2023
3
6
I mean everyone has different tastes so they might have liked what you did not. It is certainly within possibility I would say.
And no there is no 'manipulation' going on.
But man, why the anger, I mean this is just a small game that is in its very start phase. It has room to change and grow.
Thank you anyways for not leaving a 1 star review considering the hatred you have for this game.
this is the reason i will try it out. Instead of giving in to hatred you replied in sincerity and that makes me feel a little bit more assured you really like your own game.

keep going
 

Unknown White Raven

Newbie
Game Developer
Sep 3, 2024
23
39
How to study in the library ?
How to go past 15 in combat/magic/faith ?
You can't study in the library by itself. If quest is telling you to study in the library at some specific time it just means go inside the university at that time and there should be an exclamation mark for the event. Sometimes the exclamation marks can also be on the heroine itself. If you tell us which quest you are trying to do we might help you better.
15 is the hard cap for Chapter 1. You won't be able to go past it currently.
If you have any more questions ask away, we are happy to help.
 

Atarraxie

New Member
Feb 25, 2025
6
6
Thank you for you answer.
I think it is a bit confusing. In introduction, it is said that mage go to the library to study and some scene take place there. So as a player, I expect to be able to go there. Moreover I don't know what to do in evening time slot. Maybe you could add the library and give the player to study there ; and the option to pray at the church or something ; and add a training ground for the martials.
 

Unknown White Raven

Newbie
Game Developer
Sep 3, 2024
23
39
Hello everyone and thanks to the people who played our game.
Chapter 1 of the game is finished as of the current version on our patreon.
We want your opinions, suggestions on the game.
It is very valuable as it is very hard to look at it from an unbiased outsiders viewpoint so we value your opinions highly.
Here is some topic we are curious and unsure about:

-Does the game progress too slow to your liking? Maybe too few +18 scenes or too much time between each one. We are aiming to make the game feel coherent, rewarding and are trying to keep heroines personalities in mind while trying to balance it with +18 scenes. Chapter 2 and onwards, there will be more sex scenes.

-Is it too vanilla for a +18 game. Game up to this point is pretty vanilla. Do people still play and want vanilla games or do you guys prefer other things. Chapter 2 will add some spice to the mix hopefully that should satisfy both of the sides.

-Alter Ego's are definitely one of our strong points yet we still feel like we cannot use the concept in its full potential due to our own limitations and the setting.

-One idea thrown around is adding an alter ego council system where the games choices will be decided based on votes. Alter Ego levels would be used as voting power. Factions can also form between like minded egos. But we are hesitant as taking away the ability to choose from the player might make the game feel unfair.

-We seems to have bitten more than we could chew with the skill system. After card system and scalings came into the mix it became a major headache trying to balance cards and enemies. But we were able to come up with a grading system for cards to have a basic idea about power levels. Are you happy with the card system?

-There is definitely a subsection of people who hate games which use AI generated content. The mass flooding of low quality AI games do certainly affect us as well. What we want to ask you is, are the images good, pleasing to look at. we try our best to distance ourselves from the usual AI looking art and try to lean more on anime style or illustration styles.

Thank you.
 

Atarraxie

New Member
Feb 25, 2025
6
6
Game progress is fine but unrefined. We only have 3 stats + gold/equipment. And we are soon capped. My suggestion would be to start with a mandatory training with Isabella where we unlock some basic warrior cards. But after that, let us win more cards while attending lectures, studying in the library, going to the training yard...

The card system is fine but too generic. When I played the game, I chose the mage blessing, but in my battle I felt more like a warrior who knew one spell than a real mage.

The biggest culprit about the game right now is time management. It is so bad that, as it stands, the game would be better in a visual novel format where you just choose which lecture to attend and which event to trigger. Right now, in the evening, if there isn't any event, you just have to skip time, and it feels terrible.
So I suggest adding a possibility for a mage to study at the library to train the general magic stat or to study a new spell in order to eventually learn a new card.
Or maybe study with Evelyn to gain affection. Repeating the same dialogue option every day to gain affection is an engaging experience.

About Alter Ego, removing player agency is a terrible idea, but maybe you make Alter Ego affect some card ? Maybe a Logic scaling on some mage card. An aggression one for some warrior card. Or maybe some unique card specific to some Alter Ego.

The current card system is fine but feels too generic. It would be good if we could customize our experience and create our own deck. Ideally, depending on our blessing and our Alter-Ego we should be able to have a different gameplay experience in each playthrough, and the MC should feel like our own.

Other than that, I like vanilla, and IA art is fine for me.

If I have taken the time to write all of this, it's because I believe in the potential of your game. I don't bother writing anything for 95% of the games I play on this site. Good luck.
 
4.00 star(s) 3 Votes