Bc the original dev purged everything he had, patreon and his own website. Only way for this game to be active again is if someone else picks up development
- Thread starter IcarusLabs
- Start date
- May 4, 2022
- 1,042
- 7,025
What's there to put on hold? Icarus disappeared without a trace. BS Patreon page is currently being checked, but before that he just vanished like TNG when the episode 6 of AOA Academy was going to be released.
I defended the game before, but the dev just couldn't deliver a good revenge story, going so far to make the villains more likeable and the MC and his group more like the real Bitch Squad instead of Kate and her girls. It also didn't help he reacted badly to criticism.
The problem isn't that the MC is inexperienced, it's that it's not just the MC. The MC has support of one of the richest and most influential people in the city whom the girls stole from. He has support from the dean of the university that the girls all attend. He has the support from the sorority that they all screwed over. Hell, he even has some support from some of the 'bullies' themselves, on account of some of them being too stupid or oblivious to actually be functional humans. He even has some secret spy tech where he taps all their phones and sees their texts and communications.
And for some insane reason, the bullies are still always a step ahead. For whatever ridiculous reason, despite the mask slipping off multiple times in public and there being a long laundry list of victims, everyone just assumes these random girls are perfect little angels. Not even the government or Illuminati could be written with this level of suspension of disbelief, much less some random schoolgirls.
This is not defensible writing, dude. The scope has already blown so far afield that you could credibly introduce hypnosis, plasma cannons, and magic wands and it still wouldn't be less believable.
It's completely lazy writing. Instead of writing relationships, drama, and characters who evolve and change over time, the author just power creeps everything into oblivion because he wants to maintain the drama status quo without making it seem like nothing is happening. This is common among young, immature writers, whose only understanding of upping tension is to up the stakes. But it doesn't mean we have to all collectively excuse it. Call a spade a spade.
As for a forgiveness route, the problem is several-fold:
First, you cannot 'forgive' someone who shows no contrition. If they show no remorse, or hell, don't even believe they did anything wrong, what are you actually 'forgiving'?
Two, these people are still tormenting the MC. It's not like they stopped and the MC can just move on with his life. They still harass him for completely unknown and unspecified reasons. If the game actually wanted to explore the complexes these girls must have to still be obsessed with this boring, milquetoast lump of a human that is the MC, then maybe we can talk about an actually interesting forgiveness arc. Instead, the developer just wanted people to just forgive for... reasons?
Thirdly, these girls are transparently one-dimensional assholes and the game is framed as a revenge fantasy. Suddenly bait and switching that and making it about trying to forgive and join with them is both tonal whiplash and immensely unsatisfying. You don't want to see a story about the one-note mustache twirlers winning. They aren't even compelling characters. They're just transparent dicks.
Finally, these characters keep escalating and pulling more and more people into the fold. Even if the MC randomly decided to forgive them, it doesn't create a satisfying ending for the long list of characters they screwed over.
The author wanted to keep escalating the drama but quickly ran out of ways to make it keep climbing since the only way he knows how is by making it involve bigger and bigger feats. That's probably why he quit. He wrote himself into a corner and couldn't get himself out. You can tell with his "leaked nudes" dependence that he has no creativity involving acts of bullying, so his only way of escalating is to involve bigger and bigger parties. The problem is you run out of real estate when you reach evil world domination status.
And male bullies (and men in general) use their masculinity to try to get their way. Peacocking, machismo, etc are all masculine tools of the trade, and the MC even tries using it on several girls in this series. It still doesn't excuse when it's poorly written, like in this game.