Ren'Py Another Chance [v1.51] [TimeWizardStudios]
- Thread starter Crazygamer43
- Start date
- Apr 22, 2018
- 74
- 376
Hey timewizardstudios , just wanted to present my suggestions for your game. I am a full time indie game dev, with a secret interest in lewd games and i'm happy to see a lewd game that has actual care and good polishing. Perhaps with my experience it could give you ideas and guidance on what to do and not.
So, the good:
Graphical
Overall graphics, presentation and user interface is excellent! The art style is pleasantly coloured and has a distinct style that is easy to read and the characters looks charming, cute and attractive, yet most have distinctive features that make them easy to recognize (Differents clothes, postures, hairs and other physical traits such as freckles, body shape and such).
Also, excellent poses, facial expressions and enough variety between them to make the dialogue more genuine and interesting. It's a excellent change from the usual frigid and barely animated characters we often see.
Level Design
Most of the scenery is properly filled with appropriate props and decoration, making the background believable and interesting to look and search. Navigating through the different rooms and scenes is usually easy enough but more details about that lower in this post.
Gameplay
The different dialogues choices that give various stats is an excellent idea to reduce the necessity of training whatever skill or stats you need for later in the game. Also i appreciate immensely the ability to actually be able to choose the dialogue you want and not being forced to pick whatever "good" choice to farm brownies points with whatever girl you talk to.
I also greatly appreciate how talking to the characters is actually useful and relevant, so that you can learn what she like/dislike
Writing
Excellent job on that end as well. The writing feel natural, properly paced, yet is filled with enough actually relevant details to be worth reading through and is constantly filled with a nice dose of humor. The characters behave in realistic way, being disgusted, happy, sad and having proper normal reactions to the different situations at hand.
The bad:
This game has a an obvious case of over engineering and feature creep. Here i'm specifically mentioning the exploration system where you can combine objects together, inspect them, use unrelated objects with other actions but also the stats and perks system and the minigames.
While in principle it add more detail and depth (You can amuse yourself trying to open a locker with a book for a giggle), it's something that is usually unnecessary for a lewd game and can be an ordeal in the long term to manage. You have to keep track of what would be hundreds (Thousands?) of different possibilities between the objects, which would take time and be tedious and not bring any useful content or utility to the average player.
Because one thing you must do is to be consistent with the quality of the content you bring over the coming months and years for the game. The more things you add, the more stuff and work you have to do before being able to deliver an update and the list will grow exponentially as you add more and more objects and stuff.
Also, the stats number and the seemingly non-existent ability to train stats outside of dialogue could give a plethora of issue where you can't get some scenes because you don't have X and Y in appropriate numbers and what could be a possible grindfest in order to obtain the correct number of points is tedious.
The minigames and the way you obtain some of the items is often confusing and frustating. Why the hell do i need to pick kitchen objects in the correct order and have no ability to properly identify them? Also, some of the quests are hard to figure out without using help and step outside of the logical thing to do (Fuse box thing, with the loli is straight ridiculous)
Also, i'm kind of on the fence about the time value decreasing for each action you take then flip to the next hour. This remove the player's ability to properly control the time and plan the different interactions he need to do in order to reach a certain place and do certain actions. A simple ability to skip time or skipping itself at major events would have been simpler and better.
My final piece of advice and perhaps the most important one: Make sure to make a theme out of your updates. Each update should add a significant portion (Or even the entire story) of a small number of characters (or even only one!). Too many games sprinkles their update all over the place, advancing all of the storylines at a snail pace so you can't actually get nowhere until many, many more updates later.
If you complete each storyline one by one, people will actually be able to complete those, and/or wait for the character they want to get the update. You could easily make it a vote thing on Patreon too.
In short:
Learn the KISS principle (Keep It Stupid Simple or Keep It Simple, Stupid)
Make sure every item, every interaction you have in the game is useful or serve to an end, a goal. If it's unnecessary or doesn't do anything, remove it.
Make a priority list. What you should focus on first, secondary objectives, etc...
Simplify some of the quests and make sure the quests are easy to figure out using basic logic.
Because in the end, it's a lewd game. Most play those for sex, hot action and the ability to control and have an implicit impact to the lewd scenes. With a game format, you give the player an opportunity to know the characters and interact with them. So it make the scenes much more exciting this way. If you have gameplay mechanics that gets in the way of that purpose, you should not have them.
TL;DR:
1. Keep it simple
2. Prioritize
3. Keep it fun and to the point.
So, the good:
Graphical
Overall graphics, presentation and user interface is excellent! The art style is pleasantly coloured and has a distinct style that is easy to read and the characters looks charming, cute and attractive, yet most have distinctive features that make them easy to recognize (Differents clothes, postures, hairs and other physical traits such as freckles, body shape and such).
Also, excellent poses, facial expressions and enough variety between them to make the dialogue more genuine and interesting. It's a excellent change from the usual frigid and barely animated characters we often see.
Level Design
Most of the scenery is properly filled with appropriate props and decoration, making the background believable and interesting to look and search. Navigating through the different rooms and scenes is usually easy enough but more details about that lower in this post.
Gameplay
The different dialogues choices that give various stats is an excellent idea to reduce the necessity of training whatever skill or stats you need for later in the game. Also i appreciate immensely the ability to actually be able to choose the dialogue you want and not being forced to pick whatever "good" choice to farm brownies points with whatever girl you talk to.
I also greatly appreciate how talking to the characters is actually useful and relevant, so that you can learn what she like/dislike
Writing
Excellent job on that end as well. The writing feel natural, properly paced, yet is filled with enough actually relevant details to be worth reading through and is constantly filled with a nice dose of humor. The characters behave in realistic way, being disgusted, happy, sad and having proper normal reactions to the different situations at hand.
The bad:
This game has a an obvious case of over engineering and feature creep. Here i'm specifically mentioning the exploration system where you can combine objects together, inspect them, use unrelated objects with other actions but also the stats and perks system and the minigames.
While in principle it add more detail and depth (You can amuse yourself trying to open a locker with a book for a giggle), it's something that is usually unnecessary for a lewd game and can be an ordeal in the long term to manage. You have to keep track of what would be hundreds (Thousands?) of different possibilities between the objects, which would take time and be tedious and not bring any useful content or utility to the average player.
Because one thing you must do is to be consistent with the quality of the content you bring over the coming months and years for the game. The more things you add, the more stuff and work you have to do before being able to deliver an update and the list will grow exponentially as you add more and more objects and stuff.
Also, the stats number and the seemingly non-existent ability to train stats outside of dialogue could give a plethora of issue where you can't get some scenes because you don't have X and Y in appropriate numbers and what could be a possible grindfest in order to obtain the correct number of points is tedious.
The minigames and the way you obtain some of the items is often confusing and frustating. Why the hell do i need to pick kitchen objects in the correct order and have no ability to properly identify them? Also, some of the quests are hard to figure out without using help and step outside of the logical thing to do (Fuse box thing, with the loli is straight ridiculous)
Also, i'm kind of on the fence about the time value decreasing for each action you take then flip to the next hour. This remove the player's ability to properly control the time and plan the different interactions he need to do in order to reach a certain place and do certain actions. A simple ability to skip time or skipping itself at major events would have been simpler and better.
My final piece of advice and perhaps the most important one: Make sure to make a theme out of your updates. Each update should add a significant portion (Or even the entire story) of a small number of characters (or even only one!). Too many games sprinkles their update all over the place, advancing all of the storylines at a snail pace so you can't actually get nowhere until many, many more updates later.
If you complete each storyline one by one, people will actually be able to complete those, and/or wait for the character they want to get the update. You could easily make it a vote thing on Patreon too.
In short:
Learn the KISS principle (Keep It Stupid Simple or Keep It Simple, Stupid)
Make sure every item, every interaction you have in the game is useful or serve to an end, a goal. If it's unnecessary or doesn't do anything, remove it.
Make a priority list. What you should focus on first, secondary objectives, etc...
Simplify some of the quests and make sure the quests are easy to figure out using basic logic.
Because in the end, it's a lewd game. Most play those for sex, hot action and the ability to control and have an implicit impact to the lewd scenes. With a game format, you give the player an opportunity to know the characters and interact with them. So it make the scenes much more exciting this way. If you have gameplay mechanics that gets in the way of that purpose, you should not have them.
TL;DR:
1. Keep it simple
2. Prioritize
3. Keep it fun and to the point.
Last edited:
- Apr 11, 2018
- 9
- 12
So far, I've been enjoying the game. The artwork & design is most likely the main selling point, it's very well done. The interface works well, the humour is pretty damn good, and I can relate to the protagonist.
It still needs work, naturally, such as more content, more 'sexytimes', perhaps more characters, after school events with the teacher/other students and such.
I like the idea of those RPG elements, such as the different perks and different outcomes of the dialogue you've picked, but it also leads to missed scenes, unfortunately. For example, the outdoor painting scene. It's pretty late in the game, and you need a lot of strength stats to get it to a good end. I didn't mainly focus on getting strength stats, so I never had enough for that option. It would be nice if those things could get a little tweak. Either in the form of a cheat button you can press somewhere to raise the selected stats, or lowering the needed amount.
I liked the puzzles so far, they aren't too complicated, but I got lost from time to time though. As I didn't know where to find each item.
Like I said before, the humour is pretty good, there were also a few references/Easter eggs in there, such as, without spoiling too much, Sabaton - Primo Victoria. Amazing song. The random Hell's Kitchen references were a nice addition, I almost expected Flora to say something in the lines of: "Now hand me this jacket and fuck off".
I think, and I hope, there'll be more updates soon, can't wait to play them. So far, this has been one my favorite games on here so far. Keep up the good work!
It still needs work, naturally, such as more content, more 'sexytimes', perhaps more characters, after school events with the teacher/other students and such.
I like the idea of those RPG elements, such as the different perks and different outcomes of the dialogue you've picked, but it also leads to missed scenes, unfortunately. For example, the outdoor painting scene. It's pretty late in the game, and you need a lot of strength stats to get it to a good end. I didn't mainly focus on getting strength stats, so I never had enough for that option. It would be nice if those things could get a little tweak. Either in the form of a cheat button you can press somewhere to raise the selected stats, or lowering the needed amount.
I liked the puzzles so far, they aren't too complicated, but I got lost from time to time though. As I didn't know where to find each item.
Like I said before, the humour is pretty good, there were also a few references/Easter eggs in there, such as, without spoiling too much, Sabaton - Primo Victoria. Amazing song. The random Hell's Kitchen references were a nice addition, I almost expected Flora to say something in the lines of: "Now hand me this jacket and fuck off".
I think, and I hope, there'll be more updates soon, can't wait to play them. So far, this has been one my favorite games on here so far. Keep up the good work!
- Jan 9, 2020
- 87
- 141
Crazygamer43
Hello, I pushed a slightly more updated version that fixes a few bugs. It was a day one patch. Can the link be updated because people will download the buggy version.
Hello, I pushed a slightly more updated version that fixes a few bugs. It was a day one patch. Can the link be updated because people will download the buggy version.
- Jun 6, 2017
- 715
- 890
Anyone has Incel version ? already got 100% on previous version. want to try all those new feature but public version only let me see some lingerie . it's just destroy my motivation to play. I'd still playing regardless if it has new story but well it has not.
- Feb 25, 2018
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- Apr 22, 2019
- 272
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Incel ver.
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- Jul 20, 2017
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- Mar 22, 2018
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- Mar 22, 2018
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timewizardstudios
One thing I noticed - the gif showcasing the X-ray Feature on your Patreon shows Kate's nipples for a split second. I'm all for that(she looks great!), but Patreon is extremely strict with any form of adult content in public posts.
I'd advise cutting/censoring that part from the video, otherwise you risk your page getting flagged.
One thing I noticed - the gif showcasing the X-ray Feature on your Patreon shows Kate's nipples for a split second. I'm all for that(she looks great!), but Patreon is extremely strict with any form of adult content in public posts.
I'd advise cutting/censoring that part from the video, otherwise you risk your page getting flagged.
Can I offer my thoughts on the above? I'll say that I agree with some (much?) of what Gopnikdude says but have a few caveats. This is as a player, not as a programmer.
1. I think he undersells the writing. "Excellent" is not good enough. It is above excellent. It is laugh-out-loud funny in places, and uniformly well-written and engaging.
2. There's a theme here that you need to cut out the details and focus on the porn. I get it, it's a porn game. But I disagree that people are playing it for the porn. There's too much pure porn out there. And although I stumbled across this game, I'm going to keep playing it for the writing and the plethora of little details that are absolutely worth exploring. I LOVE this game (in a purely platonic sense, mind you) and it's because of all the little details and humor. (Humour if you're British.) Maybe there's a programming imperative (and admittedly that's what Gopnikdude is claiming) to slim it down. But I hope not. If it's only a recommendation and not an imperative, don't even think about cutting the little details that you've added. They MAKE the game.
3. I kind of agree with the time mechanism. It's a minor annoyance that doesn't serve a larger purpose. I'd like to see you switch to an "advance time" option. But it's minor. You've already made sure that it doesn't affect gameplay by allowing us to come back to any interaction we need to to continue the story.
4. I agree that some of the solutions are not intuitive (or even counter-intuitive), but you do have the built-in gameplay hint system to compensate. It all serves the larger purpose of delivering an excellent punchline, so I say stick with it and let the player use the hint system when needed. It's no worse than the old adventure games that we grew up loving, so I say it's a price worth paying.
5. The biggest thing I disagree with is this: "... in the end, it's a lewd game." In the end *(and I love the idea of hitting Kate, Flora, Lindsay, Jacklyn, and Isabelle "in the end") this is not a lewd game. It's an adventure game that has tons of humor and excellent lewdness in equal measure. Don't compromise the former for the latter.
Other thoughts.
1. I do love the lewd parts. I can't wait for more action between FLora and Isabelle or Jacklyn and any of the above. But the x-ray feature gives too much away for free. I think it would actually be hotter if we could dial in our x-ray vision to see through one layer or two (or maybe more? Butt plug for Kate, perhaps? She is a secret submissive!). I only had the regular x-ray before downloading the incel version. But now I miss the undies....
2. We do need an incest patch. Jo and Flora are just not as hot as mom and sis.
Love the game, and I'm going to up my Patreon from $2 to $7 (at least for a while). I know it's not much, but hopefully you're aiming for volume.
Thanks for the great work!
Last edited:
- Jun 30, 2018
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9 unsure, however 13 is part of the quest locked in the homeroom. You need all the cups and the rubber from the room, onto the desk, rest is beautiful history.
- Apr 22, 2018
- 74
- 376
You are making great points! About the lewd game goal, it really depends on what the prefered goal of the creator is. If he want something more adventurous, less porn-ish with a focus on details then that's a good thing! The game already feature a pretty unique style and the adventurous may just be the thing that would make it different from the others.
Now obviously it's not something i would personally do, but it's really a matter of different endgoals personal preferences and that's okay. I would still recommend to prioritize and carefully make the details tho.
Because my job is not programmer it's actually (officially at least) Writing Director, but i also dip heavily in gameplay design and have a background in 3D character animations (Hence, my comments on poses and expressions). I'm much more of a pragmatic type, making sure everything i write and design is properly relevant and important. It's more a matter of work efficiency and to avoid content bloating.
The reason i'm saying "In the end it's a lewd game" it's mostly because it's very easy to get lost in the details and overwhelming task of creating a game. Which is something that happens very often in the lewd game genre since most lewd games devs have no prior experience in game design or game dev in general. This cause a huge numbers of issues such as poor design, shortcomings, inconsistent deadlines, inconsistent quality among other things which can easily bring the downfall of the game since the dev can't tackle the tasks appropriately. This can even lead to burnouts (See Milfy City). Which is why it is important to keep it simple when you can and make sure to focus the game on what people like.
I never was a fan of lewd games with RPG mechanics because of that (due to the added complexity and in my opinion, it is not what contribute to a good lewd game) and i hate RPGM based games due to the additional ordeal you have to deal with that just doesn't contribute to the game (Such as having to search around and move the character which is often tedious and uninteresting).
It's not just matter of quality. It's about what can you actually make consistently and reliably. Too many bite more than they can chew.
This is why my reasoning is usually a focus on quality, pertinence and efficiency.
Final note, there is nothing wrong in thinking about the details. But i do believe there is a more pertinent time for them other than at the beginning of production. Although granted the framework is already present and perhaps it's easy to add those details, i still believe that he should make sure to know where to focus his attention and efforts.
Thank you for the different perspective. Take care my dude.
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- Dec 7, 2017
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- Jun 19, 2017
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This aged well!
- Dec 7, 2017
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