I have to offer some heavy critique about a specific particular route. The Garcia's. I absolutely hate the fact at how quickly and easily the route by itself just immediately locks you out of any and all free roam, there seems to be no way that you can just get out of it once you open up a certain point. Even if you spawn in the bedroom and it feels like you got your free roam back, you didn't, it immediately forces you into entering the Garcia's residence even if you have't even remotely touched the [EV] symbol to trigger the events if you even so much as come close to the gates. I'd argue they should've enabled the player the choice to trigger those events especially since you have to stand on the [EV] symbols in other areas of the game to trigger those events without it forcing you to trigger those events just trying to walk passed the house gates.
There's at the very least 3 times the game warns you that if you keep going that you'll be locked and three times the game gives you an opportunity to not go deeper into that route, not to mention the countless opportunities to make a save before the big decision.
There's more I'd love to critique, I really like the game and want it to succeed, but I'll keep the rest short with a list of just things I'd like to see for some improvements.
- Add a wardrobe in the bedroom for selecting Ayame's appearance(s). Clothing, tan, etc.
"More often than not when people ask us to do it, it's because some other games do it but they don't consider the differences between our game and theirs, just in terms of sheer size, it's like saying "I saw a guy lift 5kg, can you lift 5000kg? No? Why? Aren't they both weights?" It's not the same task.
I'm if I'm going to be blatantly obvious with you, I do get a little bit of "here we go again" when I hear that suggestion being brought up but that's about it, because we've been at this for 8+ years, we've heard it more times than I can possibly remember, because every time we have to explain the same thing and this happens over and over again and that's alright, it's like, being a celebrity repeating itself on an interview and telling the same story over and over, it's part of the business and comes with it but it's more humorous than annoying, it's not annoying at all, I don't see any post here as annoying per sé.
You guys are here willing to debate our game (our baby) and that shows you guys are interested and care and I can't take that on a negative light ever, I appreciate it, I will always appreciate ideas and feedback because I know it comes from a good place. With that said, I think that if we did that (just allowing you to use the clothes when walking on the world map), and we can EASILY do that without a lot of work (probably a few days, tops), but it would completely break immersion in my opinion because, then the outfit will magically change during the hentai scenes.
And by design choice, we refuse to do it because again, we've spent so much time creating immersion in small details, from matching pubes being in sprites and busts and the scenes, to backgrounds matching the game maps, to all the hundreds of sprites to reflects the CGs, to dozens of other details for the game to seem consistent and immersive, to then break it entirely by having the outfits magically switch.
So in order to do it properly we would have to actually draw every single hentai scene we have, 300+ hentai scenes, over 20000 assets, in every single possible outfit out of 60+ outfits Ayame has not to mention different skin tones and possibly pubes since you can see those in quite a few of those outfits.
I hate going down a path of "I know better than you" because it's so fucking condescending and I hate it and it's one of the reasons I hated school and rebelled as a child, because "I said so" isn't an answer to anything, but trust me on this
No dev in the history of devs in Patreon, regardless of their financial support, size of their team, etc. would take a task that daunting. Just imagining makes my balls crawl up my body
The sheer amount of work that would take is unfathomable and beyond regular people (non-developer) comprehension. Shit, even most developers wouldn't understand
HOWEVER, trying to do it on a more controlled environment like an option in the CG room that allows you to pick the outfits from a list just to see the outfits and have like a.... I don't know, "outfit recollection" could be done with very little work and we might consider it but to be honest that's really not what people want, is it? And if we do consider it, we'd definitely only do it after the bust reboot that we have planned in the future (I've shared a preview here
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and in Patreon and Subscribestar in case you don't remember what I'm talking about.
People want us to do something that is unthinkable with the resources we have and the support we have right now, we'd literally have to hire more people and it would take months of hard work just to do that which would add no story, no content, nothing to the game other than "you can see the same scene, but with a different outfit" which is not only high on our list of priorities, it's not even in it. We would have to put everything else on hold for months, probably years just to do that. To me that would be amazing since I wouldn't have to do any work to add that
For the CG team, not so appealing. I hope this explains somewhat why we can't add it."
Quoted from the Dev himself on his Discord because he keeps getting that suggestion.
- Add a "New Game Plus" feature for game continuation, let us keep all money/ items & parts of the map from previous sessions unlocked.
Done, was sent to the beta testers and it will be available for every supporter this Sunday.
- Once you've been through the routes that you're required to go through to open up areas of the map, you should not be required to progress in the same route(s) again in new games just to open those areas of the map again for other routes.
Done, was sent to the beta testers and it will be available for every supporter this Sunday.
- Add items you can buy in a shop that help you manage Ayame's Morality bar to either increase or decrease her Morality.
This would break the game and the immersion entirely and I'm willing to bet there's more people that would hate that than people wanting it. You're supposed to deal with the consequences of your choices, even when you don't know you're making choices.
- Ayame's cell phone could use some QoL features. There's no point in having it and opening a scene where she can obtain somebodies cell number if she can't even call them (like when her morality is low and she helps some children get their ball back from a neighbors yard & gets stuck. He gives Ayame his number, but there's neither reason nor any use for it.) -- (I assume such a thing regarding the guy giving Ayame his phone number will progress into something in a future update?)
The dev mentioned that he planned to add that function later but the community didn't reach the patreon goal for it. It might still be added later on depending on the support they get in the future.
- I would appreciate helpful hints OUTSIDE of the CG collection room telling you how to unlock CG scenes. I've gone to the Fitness Center dozens of times while Ayame's Morality was extremely low and have yet to be able to unlock any of the Fitness Centers CG's. It would be greatly appreciated if these hints would be more easily navigated such as stepping onto [EV] areas and it tells you what the minimum requirements are to unlock that specific CG.
Not a bad idea, I'll mention it to the dev or even better, you can go on their Discord, head to the suggestions section and do it yourself.