HTML Blue Swallow [v0.6.4] [Blue Swallow]

[vicaddict]

I continue to love this game and how it is presented, however I do agree with some of the other comments. As a player you are somewhat being left in the dark. There is not a lot of feedback what certain options do or how decisions are being influenced. While I like contextual choices, I have found myself puzzled a number of times as to what the difference between certain lines would actually be. For instance, does the hometown matter? Is it even mentioned again? I still don't know what role the mom/dad hookup scenario plays in determining the characters future or character. I mean, the very first choice of the game leaves me puzzled. "He was hers/a mistake/intoxicating". Okay. What does that mean for the character? Neither one of those is very clear. At least not to me.

I think the game would do well with some sort of char sheet/notebook/journal which highlights key decisions or events in the past and shows our current skills, attributs, kinks and whatever else acts as a modifier.

I mean, we can pick certain traits or kinks, but have to remember them. I don't see any way of looking them up at a later point unless you get to upgrade them. The three-star upgrade system for kinks/traits is a nice idea and goes in the right direction. I don't expect to know about every number in the game, or as to what gives a +1 or +2, but it would certainly help, if we had some sort of feedback of what our character actually looks like in terms of skills.

Maybe give us a percentage success chance when we're about to roll the dice on something. If there was such a percentage chance, you could let us hover of the number and it could give us a small pop up bubble from said character sheet that relates to this. It could be like "+++ because you are athletic, ++ because you focused on training, --- because you do drugs" or something like that. You are already using these pop up bubbles every now and them, so you might want to consider expanding on this and giving us a bit more feedback as to what a decision actually means.

Right now, most things seem to be a stab in the dark and I can see why it could be frustrating to lose out on some athletic challenge, when all you ever did, was pushing for it and some background dice roll determined the outcome without you knowing it. You are being left with a feeling that you must have done something wrong, but not knowing what or where you went wrong.

I understand that the prologue isn't supposed to be as fleshed out as the main game is supposed to be, but I think the lack of feedback on decisions that people are experiencing now, will only hurt you even more in the long run, if you don't adress it early.

 

[Lady Alexa]

Hello. I just started a new game using version 0.3.2p. Here are some problems I encountered. Beware that english is not my first language, so when I talk about awkward sentences, this might just be me my wrong understanding of english.

1. Typo in french. I see that it was already mentionned here. I confirm: La petit mort => La petite mort

2. Some choices give awkward sentences:
Inside a woman "who didn't want me" to be my mother ??
Inside a woman "who felt I ruined her life" to be my mother ??
Also the last option (life ruined) is curious if you previously chose: She "was trying for me".

3. Maybe an option in the settings to have kilograms and centimeters instead of pounds and inches?

4. If you choose: I had always found the whole spy thing "not my thing", two paragraphs below the sentence becomes awkward: So much for fantasy, so much for not my thing.

5. In passage CC006 - Homelife, if $CC.dad is NOT 0, you don't set variable $CC.EDName, but you use it below: "My sandwiches, sure, were cut corner to corner — the best way. <<print $CC.EDName>>, my dad showed up and on-time."
And also, shouldn't there be a comma after "my dad" in this last sentence?

6. In the passage Hair salon, you call the widget <<Doll portrait salon>>. This sets the _outfit to salon, but in function window.Doll there is no such outfit defined in the list of outfits. This leads to hundreds of error messages in the console, although there seems to be no impact on the game itself.
I think that this code does not work as intended if args[2] is given: <<set _outfit = $args[2] || ($args[1] neq "sidebar" ? $args[1] : undefined)>> I may be wrong here, more tests are needed. So I don't know if calling the widget with <<Doll portrait salon default>> would work.
Also, once you are in the Hair salon, the timer to update the Doll gets called every second, even after you quit the salon. Until you refresh the game on a another page.

If this kind of feedback is appreciated, I can continue to write down the curious things I encounter.

 

[Mira Something]

6. In the passage Hair salon, you call the widget <<Doll portrait salon>>. This sets the _outfit to salon, but in function window.Doll there is no such outfit defined in the list of outfits. This leads to hundreds of error messages in the console, although there seems to be no impact on the game itself.
I think that this code does not work as intended if args[2] is given: <<set _outfit = $args[2] || ($args[1] neq "sidebar" ? $args[1] : undefined)>> I may be wrong here, more tests are needed. So I don't know if calling the widget with <<Doll portrait salon default>> would work.
Also, once you are in the Hair salon, the timer to update the Doll gets called every second, even after you quit the salon. Until you refresh the game on a another page.

Super appreciated for all the reports we'll check them out and probably Cassie will respond. I'll just update on point 6. - there was a bug (couple of them...) in the doll system that sneaked in. We'll be releasing a patch soon that will fix it.

a temp fix for now should be replacing `<<set _outfit = $args[2] || ($args[1] neq "sidebar" ? $args[1] : undefined)>>` with `<<set _outfit = $args[2] || undefined>>

 

[Skjall]

As a player, you are somewhat being left in the dark.

I wanted to write something similar to your post. But use an objectification choice.
Because I still have no idea what statistics are changed by: "It made me feel wanted and important" and "It was a compliment". Both are similar enough and can mean her misunderstanding "wanna bang" with "want to marry".

And maybe add some floating (+1/-1 to xyz) or (trait x gained/lost).

TLDR; There's way too much too ambiguous or not immediately apparent choices to be made to not know what each line means to represent, and it stunts my ability to make different super spies for different future outcomes.

 

[CassieBare]

What are some of the things that affect it? It was pretty hard making the squad, and I don't know what other choices I could have made and still made the squad.

So, Mira playtested this today and even coming in with 0 Athletics, it's working as designed, where simply caring gets you to win more than 50% of the time. Must be bad luck or you're partying too hard

 

[vicaddict]

TLDR; There's way too much too ambiguous or not immediately apparent choices to be made to not know what each line means to represent, and it stunts my ability to make different super spies for different future outcomes.

The thing is, even though I gave feedback on that myself, I don't want it to turn into a game where every option is right on the nose. There is a fine line and I don't envy the devs to not cross it.

Maybe using the pop up bubbles could also play a role here? Maybe with another contextual hint along the lines of "this choice will cause your character to be less self confident or this will lead to you being more popular with group xyz"?

By using the bubbles you would basically just expand on a mechanic that already exists and as a player you can use it or not. Giving you the option. Either way, a bit more clarity is needed.

 

[Sammie]

So, Mira playtested this today and even coming in with 0 Athletics, it's working as designed, where simply caring gets you to win more than 50% of the time. Must be bad luck or you're partying too hard

this was with regards to making the college cheerleading squad. I don’t know how much athletics comes into play on that one. Only way I’ve been able to make the squad is doing double dance.

 

[Sammie]

The thing is, even though I gave feedback on that myself, I don't want it to turn into a game where every option is right on the nose. There is a fine line and I don't envy the devs to not cross it.

Maybe using the pop up bubbles could also play a role here? Maybe with another contextual hint along the lines of "this choice will cause your character to be less self confident or this will lead to you being more popular with group xyz"?

By using the bubbles you would basically just expand on a mechanic that already exists and as a player you can use it or not. Giving you the option. Either way, a bit more clarity is needed.

I think the basic problem is that game is based on choices have meaning. Which means that “for choices to have meaning, choices need to be meaningful.”

and not all the choices are clear what the meaning of the choice is. I don’t think it needs to be game-like. I think it just needs to be clear. Like you don’t need to see +1 to popularity. Just “and that raised my social status”. Which I think is still in the spirit of the design.

Put another way, a game could have a scenewhere The player picks a red or blue dress. Picking one results in death the other a mission success. But if the player doesn’t know that picking one means to go in guns blazing and another to try and seduce the it’s an arbitrary choice for the player devoid of meaning. Which makes the choice impactful but not meaningful.

That’s how I see most of the “I don’t know what I’m choosing” comments. Hope that helps. The game is great and the team is doing really good work, so hopefully this is taken in the spirit is it intended and not as criticism.

 

[SuperMaxo]

At the same time, not knowing that some changes have certain impact is more closely mimicking life.


In the end, it's the dev's game, vision, feel that matters: as long as their vision is clear and their roadmap is well-paved and planned, we the players will enjoy it.

And, yes, maybe sometimes we'll be frustrated with some outcomes that we weren't aiming for, but that's part of the gaming experience. Otherwise, might as well write a VN (or a game called Female Agent)

 

[poopoopuh]

I just want to see the casting couch content, but trying to figure out RNG options to get them while maintaining a character I like hasn't yielded any fruit. Unfortunate, though I still like the game.

 

[ray3dave]

At the same time, not knowing that some changes have certain impact is more closely mimicking life.


In the end, it's the dev's game, vision, feel that matters: as long as their vision is clear and their roadmap is well-paved and planned, we the players will enjoy it.

And, yes, maybe sometimes we'll be frustrated with some outcomes that we weren't aiming for, but that's part of the gaming experience. Otherwise, might as well write a VN (or a game called Female Agent)

That's not entirely true. Forming a character through playing is fun and you don't need to always now the exact impact on your choices, BUT - at least to me - here you don't have the least idea in most choices (compare the given examples so far, if anyone wants I might try to list more, though I guess the idea of the people being confused is clear enough). The unspeakable game actually is nothing but a VN with annoying mechanics and stupid amount of custumization, the most stupid clothing system ever, and even more tiring is the stuff with make-up and so on. Well, we don't want to discuss that here.

My point is, that the game is very promising and I am intrigued. But even trying out stuff I could hardly get what I was aiming for because I had no clue what the dev intended with the choices. And "no clue" is a bit to much for my taste to enjoy the game, whereas - as you point out correctly - total control and insight would make it boring and too much like a VN (just like the game we don't want to talk about where it all is far to obvious and predictable). So I would suggest to work a bit on the balance between not being to obvious and being mysterious. Just my five cents - and BIG THANKS to the dev.

 

[Mira Something]

Oh, I did get this error on the (University) cheerleading path, is that what's wrong?

Error: <<if>>: bad conditional expression in <<if>> clause: State.variables.Stats.Traits is not a function

Fix is on its way with the next patch release if you wanted to apply it faster yourself edit HTML and replace:
<<if $Stats.Traits("Sophisticated") lt 1 || $Stats.Traits("Confident") gt 1>>
with:
<<if $Stats.Traits.Sophisticated.value lt 1 || $Stats.Traits.Confident.value gt 1>>

 

[PeanutGallery]

this was with regards to making the college cheerleading squad. I don’t know how much athletics comes into play on that one. Only way I’ve been able to make the squad is doing double dance.

It is _very_ difficult to make it as a college cheerleader. I wrote a couple posts on it a few pages back, but you basically need to take the exact right path through life to pull it off.

I just want to see the casting couch content, but trying to figure out RNG options to get them while maintaining a character I like hasn't yielded any fruit. Unfortunate, though I still like the game.

Casting couch is a little complex. There's some branching and then a set of stat checks.

1. Your hometown needs to NOT be set to NY or LA. NY and LA have professional operations; other cities and towns can get the seedy one.
2. If you're not wearing underwear OR casually strip down in front of him, you get the "model naked" branch, if you're hesitant AND wearing underwear you can get the hesitant branch.
3. If you're on the "model naked" branch, the only way to get the casting couch is to actually FAIL the checks to be a model, and depending on your modelhire score you can actually be unable to get it because there's no reason for your character to try to sleep their way to a modeling gig if they're a clear diamond in the rough. The difficulty here is 9+.
4. If you're on the "model in undies" branch - which is a little misnamed, because you can still end up naked - the order is different: If your confidence is less than 2 or your suggestibility is 2+ or you reacted positively to male attention in the "how I feel about men looking at me" section, then you can go to the casting couch. You can also decline, but declining the couch doesn't mean you're not a model, it just means that you do a stat check against the "modelhire" variable versus a difficulty of 8+.

The things that affect the modelhired variable are:

1. The BASE value is set to your attractiveness. If you're smoking hot, this is 5.
2. If you get the "model naked" branch, you get +1, otherwise you get -1.
3. If you have above average height, you get +1.
4. Then there are some path-specific differences, but generally each time he comments positively on a body attribute you get +1, and each act you take that encourages him or is bold grants +1. The naked path has more options than the non-naked path, but it also has a higher check, so it balances out in the end.

Whether you get a callback is RNG; you check your modelhired score against a random range and if your modelhired value is higher, you get a callback. The RNG range varies a bit depending on choices you make, but an attractive character stands a pretty good chance of getting a callback.

 

[AelphysTerra]

I think the basic problem is that game is based on choices have meaning. Which means that “for choices to have meaning, choices need to be meaningful.”

and not all the choices are clear what the meaning of the choice is. I don’t think it needs to be game-like. I think it just needs to be clear. Like you don’t need to see +1 to popularity. Just “and that raised my social status”. Which I think is still in the spirit of the design.

Put another way, a game could have a scenewhere The player picks a red or blue dress. Picking one results in death the other a mission success. But if the player doesn’t know that picking one means to go in guns blazing and another to try and seduce the it’s an arbitrary choice for the player devoid of meaning. Which makes the choice impactful but not meaningful.

That’s how I see most of the “I don’t know what I’m choosing” comments. Hope that helps. The game is great and the team is doing really good work, so hopefully this is taken in the spirit is it intended and not as criticism.

I think this pretty much sums up the only issue I have with the game. I'm fine with the game not "gamifying" things and tempting me to min-max or deviate from roleplaying to achieve a desired result, it's just that there are quite a few choices in the game that look like flavor text but actually have impact later on. There's encouraging players to RP and then there's making them stumble around in the dark.

 

[Gibberish666]

I think the basic problem is that game is based on choices have meaning. Which means that “for choices to have meaning, choices need to be meaningful.”

and not all the choices are clear what the meaning of the choice is. I don’t think it needs to be game-like. I think it just needs to be clear. Like you don’t need to see +1 to popularity. Just “and that raised my social status”. Which I think is still in the spirit of the design.

Put another way, a game could have a scenewhere The player picks a red or blue dress. Picking one results in death the other a mission success. But if the player doesn’t know that picking one means to go in guns blazing and another to try and seduce the it’s an arbitrary choice for the player devoid of meaning. Which makes the choice impactful but not meaningful.

That’s how I see most of the “I don’t know what I’m choosing” comments. Hope that helps. The game is great and the team is doing really good work, so hopefully this is taken in the spirit is it intended and not as criticism.

+1
Flavorful confirmation on what a choice does (and may do in the short term) is imperative to understanding each decision. The game is still a game after all things are said and done, not a hard simulation of real life. As things are, I feel like I'm navigating the game with a blindfold on. It's like one of those obtuse riddles that requires the player to ask 100 questions before they can deduce the answer. Maybe some people find that fun, but I do not. I like the game, but it does need this bit of QoL to improve the experience.

- edit -

When the fertility system gets finished, will pregnancy be treated as a bad end, or something that just happens and the MC has to live with the consequences?
You'll make the game the way you want, but I will be hoping for the latter. Nothing saying a spy can't be pregnant, right?

 

[quiboune]

When the fertility system gets finished, will pregnancy be treated as a bad end, or something that just happens and the MC has to live with the consequences?
You'll make the game the way you want, but I will be hoping for the latter. Nothing saying a spy can't be pregnant, right?

Please, by god, do this. The intro for this game too, is perfect for the MC to pop a kid or five before starting the game proper, given how it advances quickly and years pass on very few clicks.

 

[poopoopuh]

It is _very_ difficult to make it as a college cheerleader. I wrote a couple posts on it a few pages back, but you basically need to take the exact right path through life to pull it off.


Casting couch is a little complex. There's some branching and then a set of stat checks.

1. Your hometown needs to NOT be set to NY or LA. NY and LA have professional operations; other cities and towns can get the seedy one.
2. If you're not wearing underwear OR casually strip down in front of him, you get the "model naked" branch, if you're hesitant AND wearing underwear you can get the hesitant branch.
3. If you're on the "model naked" branch, the only way to get the casting couch is to actually FAIL the checks to be a model, and depending on your modelhire score you can actually be unable to get it because there's no reason for your character to try to sleep their way to a modeling gig if they're a clear diamond in the rough. The difficulty here is 9+.
4. If you're on the "model in undies" branch - which is a little misnamed, because you can still end up naked - the order is different: If your confidence is less than 2 or your suggestibility is 2+ or you reacted positively to male attention in the "how I feel about men looking at me" section, then you can go to the casting couch. You can also decline, but declining the couch doesn't mean you're not a model, it just means that you do a stat check against the "modelhire" variable versus a difficulty of 8+.

The things that affect the modelhired variable are:

1. The BASE value is set to your attractiveness. If you're smoking hot, this is 5.
2. If you get the "model naked" branch, you get +1, otherwise you get -1.
3. If you have above average height, you get +1.
4. Then there are some path-specific differences, but generally each time he comments positively on a body attribute you get +1, and each act you take that encourages him or is bold grants +1. The naked path has more options than the non-naked path, but it also has a higher check, so it balances out in the end.

Whether you get a callback is RNG; you check your modelhired score against a random range and if your modelhired value is higher, you get a callback. The RNG range varies a bit depending on choices you make, but an attractive character stands a pretty good chance of getting a callback.

Thanks for the detailed reply!

I suppose my next question will now be "How do I get the model option to even appear" lol.

 

[Sammie]

Thanks for the detailed reply!

I suppose my next question will now be "How do I get the model option to even appear" lol.

I’ve never had the model option not appear. In High School there seem to always be three choices.

1) an option based on your clique (prom for popular, championship for jocks, music for rebels and twitchcon for nerds)

2) Model scouting

3) Study more and get a tutor

 

[Lady Alexa]

a temp fix for now should be replacing `<<set _outfit = $args[2] || ($args[1] neq "sidebar" ? $args[1] : undefined)>>` with `<<set _outfit = $args[2] || undefined>>

Thank you for this solution. It seems to solve the problem.

Just a technical javascript point. I guess that the || undefined part of your solution can be removed. If this code is used, that means that $args[2] is already undefined (or some other false value) which gives the same result. Beware, I did not test it.

 

[kunIOIOIOIOIO]

Thanks for the detailed reply!

I suppose my next question will now be "How do I get the model option to even appear" lol.

You to pick "literally constant attention" to show beautiful your PC is else it won't show up.