Ren'Py Cabin by the Lake [v0.34d] [Nunu]

[Jobbing]

This game is inspired, honestly. Most fun I've had playing such an early build of a h-game in a long time. The complicated sandbox combined with a lack of annoying time restraints or punishments for failure is fun and actually interesting without being stressful.

The only things really worth complaining about imo are the somewhat unintuitive end-of-loop and scene guide UIs. The Scene guide in particular could really use some interactivity, and could perhaps double as a gallery? If it's not prohibitively difficult to implement. It's not too hard to read, but it is a little frustrating to navigate.

Other than that the bug where you sometimes can't scroll to the bottom of a complicated scene's guide is frustrating, and it seems like some of the conversation options for the jenny photo scene bug the associated scene guide out, which is particularly frustrating in a game that pushes you towards collecting information about every possible choice.
It's also kinda weird that the cassidy yoga event is a mandatory part of every loop when it currently has no interactivity. Feels a little bad, hopefully it becomes more important in an upcoming build?

I cannot wait to see how this game blossoms as content is added and it grows more complicated. I would encourage the dev to not give a moment's thought to the people complaining the game isn't linear enough, there are a million cookie-cutter games that they can use to scratch that itch. This one is special.

 

[skinnysweatyman]

So I've been lurking in this thread since last release, I would have poked my head up earlier but I've been working on the bugs and experiments and I've had a lot to think about. Firstly I wanted to apologize about the amount of bugs that the guide has caused. I've heard it called untested and I can see why you might say that... particularly in regards to the bug where the game will crash if you play the prologue. That being said the game has in fact been very heavily tested by myself and my patrons in the weekly releases, but heavily tested is not the same as thoroughly tested. Significant things made it through the cracks and some of them just don't make sense. I tried to do something that should work, but Ren'py refused to let that thing be stable. Thusly the size of the hot fix grew and grew and it's going to end up less a hotfix and more a re-architecture of the underlying variable system that runs the new guide. That's not done yet.

Similarly, despite my attempts to make the game easier to play with these guides are having the same problems they've always had. That's not a problem with my guides, and it's not a problem with the players (players can't be wrong about how they feel), it is rapidly becoming apparent that it is a fundamental problem with the basic mechanics of the game. In it's current form this issue is irreconcilable.

That being said, there are quite a few people who are very fond of the basic mechanics of the game, which puts me in a tough spot where I am left with essentially a lose lose decision where I'm going to have to tell one group of people who have been immensely complimentary of my work that I wont be able to let them enjoy what I make. And that's something I refuse to do blind or without input. Therefore I give you:

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This is a specific version of the game that I have broken in half and wrapped around a more user friendly way to play, instead of progressing through time you will have full access to every scene that you have unlocked. It will still loop as usual when you want to reset the world and spend corruption, and I've scraped the guide out of it because that would be even more buggy in this version. This is not a polished build though, it is an experiment, I did the bare minimum because it is essentially a gameplay test. If the general consensus is that this version is the way to go then there will be a pile of rewrites and polish that needs to go into it, not two long and sleepless days between me moving office.

Play the game, see how it works and assume that if there is an easily solvable problem it will be solved. Then go to that thread and vote on the poll, leave a comment, spam gifs of giant titties or something. Everyone has been so good about giving feedback and I want to be able to meet your expectations.

Finally:
View attachment 1553827

Hey Dev, I did a quick playthrough on your experiment. I'm really happy you're listening to your community. After doing a playthrough with the "fork", I hate to tell you that it will also run into the same problems. Also continuing to try and develop the loop system at the same time as the sandbox is gonna result in both suffering significantly. The best thing you can do is honestly keep the assets, and the characters stories, and scrap everything else. The general rule for organization with these games is to unlock lewder and lewder options after having reached checkpoints after a single encounter, and then having the rewards as revistable. For example, if it's day one and you ask one of the characters for a kiss, you might get it. If on the same day you go for a grope, you might politely get told "no", and if you try to fuck them right out the gate, you'll get told off and possibly a penalty that lowers their affection score. Some games break that down into three categories like "Love" "Lust" and "Submissive/Dominant", but I would just keep it simple with "Affection" for now. You should have days and a daypart clock to break it up. Like, you should have a morning, noon, evening, and night part of the day with the girls going to set locations for those times. DO NOT have a girl available at two locations at the same time, that is confusing to the player. You can change where that location is based on the day, but try to limit it to the weekends for altering their set location. Consistency is best for a sandbox because people like to easily access the content they unlocked by revisiting the girl. The thing that should change with the characters over time is there dialogue with the MC as you unlock different events with them. Like, if I have raised my affection score with sammi to 100, and go to talk with her, she should be madly in love/lust with the MC. It would be weird if she was still dismissive and rude after the MC fucks her. If you haven't played it, I recommend you try playing "Mythic Manor". If you take a look at how that game flows, I think you'll have a better understanding of how to organize a game like this. Trying to adapt what you've already done with the loop is just not going to work. You want to build on a solid foundation, and the loop is just going to continually cause you problems. I wrote out a comment a few days ago with ideas on how you can adapt the story and have it work in the spirit of what you tried doing. Big fan of your work, and Much Respect to you for actually being proactive with your community and taking criticism to make something better. You keep up that kind of attitude, and people WILL take notice. They WILL become fans of yours, and WANT you to succeed. Good Job and Good luck!!! Here's my previous post for reference purposes

Hey Dev, if you're listening, First off I LOVE THE GAME. The Art and character design is a big win for me. The fetishes are fantastic. The story is solid. I say this with love, but the whole "time loop" thing just isn't working. It's great you tried something new, but it's starting to detract heavily from the merits of this game as a whole. AGAIN, I LOVE THIS GAME!!! But I am making an honest appeal to you that maybe it would be better to reframe the game into a more traditional linear gameplay/ sandbox while its still early on. I'm really afraid that in like three updates time, it's just gonna be impossible to play the game from the beginning. I think you could most easily adapt this into an eternal reunion thing with some deus ex machina, like say they planned on having a quick weekend getaway but some virus outbreak in town caused the government to put the whole place on lockdown. Instead of having the corruption levels be manually activated, just have checkpoints after lust events that cue new options automatically. It makes things feel more organic that way, plus I'm now at the point where I'm skipping over all the text that I've read hundreds of times now just to change one option each playthrough. I appreciate the effort you put in with the guide, truly, but it honestly doesn't help much. I don't think any type of guide will work well for this game system, it's just a baked in problem. Making things linear also makes it easier to flesh out the fetishes. You had a scene where the MC and Alex talking about how breast message can cause boobs to grow, alex says her boobs are still growing, imagine how much better it would be if you gave them a week of breast messages to have visible results in the growth of her boobs. Instead of having "dreams of the future" you could just turn them into actual events you could actually reach. My ultimate would be the MC getting to know all the girls fetishes and helping them develop them over time. Or you could have the MC guide them to his personal preferences over time. I think it would be great if he was able to develop a harem of pregnant girls with lots of breast expansion because he worked with alex to guide the rest of the girls towards that goal. Other players might choose a different path like indulging the vampire girl, finding some sort of relic that turns the MC into a vampire, and turning the rest of the girls into his vampire brides. You open yourself up a lot by making the decision to go linear, and will be able to develop the story more instead of spending time trying to make the "loop" concept user friendly. You can still do a lot of interesting ideas with a linear story, and make a much more personalized experience. Hell, you could even make defined endings for all the girls like I listed above, like complete the alex ending with all the girls having expanding breasts and pregnant bellies, AND THEN do a loop to start over with perks to get another girls ending. Get the endings for all the girls and unlock a special ending. Just please, seriously think about it. I am seriously worried that a great game might turn sour because of an unsustainable mechanic.

 

[Epsilon66]

Personally I would be far less interested in this game if it scrapped everything and became just another generic sandbox. I actually find the loop mechanic very interesting and fun to mess with to see how well I can do with what I start with each run and how things change.

I also like the idea of act in the present to change the past. Wouldn't really work too well in a standard sandbox format. Would lose a lot of the effect I think.

 

[HentaiciNagit]

one of the best things about this game is a unseen mechanic time loop i love time loop shits like majoras mask etc. if you remove that feature from this game but there would be another problem for you after a certain amount of content it would be really hard for you to add new ones i have no ideas how to fix it but you could add feature of staying more days at cabin like talking to aunt and asking her etc

 

[odinkun]

I love the loop, would hate to see it go away. Really enjoy being gated off on these runs based on what I've learned about each girl, and it makes the corruption mechanic make sense to me considering it effects events outside of the week spent in the game. It was one of the early selling points to me. Everyone's tolerance is going to be different but holding control to skip seen dialog really makes it a non-issue for me for quick runs to make a different choice.

As for the guide system, I just wanted to say, I really like it's current implementation. I'm the kind of person who will keep replaying a thing to see all possible content, so i played early builds with the flow charts, and would mark off the choices I had already seen / made to keep track of it all. So with it's current inplementation, it's basically just doing the work I would have done manually. Disappointed it's not fully implemented for every scene yet, but wanted to say the flow chart system in game really works for my ideal way of engaging with this game.

 

[skinnysweatyman]

I love the loop, would hate to see it go away. Really enjoy being gated off on these runs based on what I've learned about each girl, and it makes the corruption mechanic make sense to me considering it effects events outside of the week spent in the game. It was one of the early selling points to me. Everyone's tolerance is going to be different but holding control to skip seen dialog really makes it a non-issue for me for quick runs to make a different choice.

As for the guide system, I just wanted to say, I really like it's current implementation. I'm the kind of person who will keep replaying a thing to see all possible content, so i played early builds with the flow charts, and would mark off the choices I had already seen / made to keep track of it all. So with it's current inplementation, it's basically just doing the work I would have done manually. Disappointed it's not fully implemented for every scene yet, but wanted to say the flow chart system in game really works for my ideal way of engaging with this game.

The problem I had with it, is that nothing really changes for most of the loops. Everyone says the same thing over and over again, and hopefully you've stumbled upon the one small change for that loop that advances the story a bit. The problem of this game is literally the same problem the movie groundhog day was about. That much repetition is tedious, boring, and ultimately becomes a punishment. Early on, I was going through the loop hundreds of times to figure out what I wasn't doing right. Having just one extra scene for all that work is not worth it. It's a cool concept, sure, but it will not work as this game gets bigger

 

[the_fluff]

Content. How much we lookin at?

 

[Epsilon66]

The problem I had with it, is that nothing really changes for most of the loops. Everyone says the same thing over and over again, and hopefully you've stumbled upon the one small change for that loop that advances the story a bit. The problem of this game is literally the same problem the movie groundhog day was about. That much repetition is tedious, boring, and ultimately becomes a punishment. Early on, I was going through the loop hundreds of times to figure out what I wasn't doing right. Having just one extra scene for all that work is not worth it. It's a cool concept, sure, but it will not work as this game gets bigger

And that is why skip seen text function along with the new map function that tracks progress and per loop stats are well paired up. You don't want to read everything over again? you have the tools to blaze past it. Can't find what you're hoping for? narrow it down with the map by finding a branch you never took.

 

[skinnysweatyman]

And that is why skip seen text function along with the new map function that tracks progress and per loop stats are well paired up. You don't want to read everything over again? you have the tools to blaze past it. Can't find what you're hoping for? narrow it down with the map by finding a branch you never took.

That's great and all if you know exactly what paths you are taking, but I was encountering a problem (especially in the first two builds) where I'd be skipping everything, trying different dialogue options, but still having no advancement in corruption points or story. I am not exaggerating when I said I was going through loops hundreds of times. It's just not intuitive enough to be accessible, and ultimately not worth it to go through the same thing over and over again for a small change. It gave me a sense of futility, I felt like I wasn't making any progress and all I wanted to do was enjoy the story. I think this game has great art, good characters, and a good story. I just don't want to spend hours and hours doing the same thing every update to chance upon new content. The guide kinda helps, but is really lacking in actually utility in my opinion. I think there is a way to make the loop concept work, but it would look noticeably different from how it's currently implemented. My idea for that is to have the reunion start, and then the mc can focus on one girls story. The game keeps going until you reach her ending, and then you have the option to start the loop again to get a different girls ending. When that happens, the girls who you've already cleared can give perks like hints for how to advance the story, starting out slutty for the mc, or still have the effects of corruption from the previous playthrough. Three days just isn't long enough to make any significant changes to the characters.

 

[Epsilon66]

My idea for that is to have the reunion start, and then the mc can focus on one girls story. The game keeps going until you reach her ending, and then you have the option to start the loop again to get a different girls ending. When that happens, the girls who you've already cleared can give perks like hints for how to advance the story, starting out slutty for the mc, or still have the effects of corruption from the previous playthrough. Three days just isn't long enough to make any significant changes to the characters.

That's changing the entire plot and draw of the game. This game isn't about "progressing" a girl's story. Its about your actions "rewriting" the story before it starts again which is a lot more interesting. That's why there's only 3 days.

 

[odinkun]

Including this traceback to report a bug when trying to get Jenny's flowchart to pop up. Worked fine for a while but then stopped and didn't fix itself in future loops.

That's fine though because I think I'm gonna skip playing anymore until the flowcharts are in for all the other scenes. Is the plan to get to a point where charts are up to date with the content in the build, or will they always lag behind?

 

[Nunu312]

Including this traceback to report a bug when trying to get Jenny's flowchart to pop up. Worked fine for a while but then stopped and didn't fix itself in future loops.

That's fine though because I think I'm gonna skip playing anymore until the flowcharts are in for all the other scenes. Is the plan to get to a point where charts are up to date with the content in the build, or will they always lag behind?

The plan is to get the guides up to date and keep them up to date.

In an ideal world some lag wouldn't matter and people could just explore the paths and find new content themselves organically. We dont live in an ideal world though, and I want to give people the best experience I can.

 

[cyborgturtle]

tbh i really like the core idea of the game and the gameplay, it's super interesting starting off with a relatively innocent/mundane world of visiting your mega busty 'friends', and as you proceed unlocking things each loop the world gradually gets more corrupt and sexual - i'd love to see more emphasis on this (like while i do enjoy things like how you might build up a girl one loop and get rejected for a grope, maybe next loop you corrupted her more and now she will say yes, but i'd love if the changes started getting more drastic and affecting the group as a whole or certain dynamics where the 'world'/cabin was getting aggressively sexualized without necessarily needing the player to instigate it after X loops - would also be interesting if the girls started to dress differently over time). also phenomenal focus on the breasts with how each girl will talk about them, or use them, or have them described - fantastic!

adore the giant breasts and how each girl is differently sized, too many games end up copy + pasting the same body or using a few specific, noticeable body types (e.g. a petite girl, a busty one, and an average build), makes me want to see more and more characters and see how big we can get, like the farm girl's mom i also adore BE, although i assume in this context it's all going to be part of a dream or fantasy and not permanent? which is understandable, but a bit disappointing, would love for a girl/girls to start growing throughout...i'd imagine it wouldn't be terribly hard to have body changes/outfits/whatever since each girl has a pretty small amount of portraits? although then there's the obvious problem of events/scenes... would also be fun if, eventually, you could corrupt something so the girls grew up differently and now the 'small' girl (sami? the one you bunk with) was bustier than everyone else and had an attitude to match

i don't want to be too harsh since it's a pretty unique premise and i like what there is so far, but i'd say a minor complaint is the red head talks about her big ass but never actually shows it! would love an ass-shot of her (and goes with what i said earlier, would love if they had different ass sizes, and maybe one girl had a super big one that blew everyone else away - love body outliers like that!) it also feels like once you get the hang of it/get the 'core' scenes or reactions unlocked, there isn't much you gain from repeating the loop, which is a bit of a shame, but i imagine that'd get fixed with time and i wouldn't actually complain about it in such an early build

all in all keep it up OP!

 

[majdaddin]

But where are the big tits?

 

[slyyfoxx99]

But where are the big tits?

Everywhere...?

 

[Ramenlord2001]

One I got to say love the mega tits there perfect and two is pregnancy and birth content in here yet? This game and like tread appeared in the my search for game with huge tits and pregnancy content birth a bonus if the game has that

 

[Nunu312]

One I got to say love the mega tits there perfect and two is pregnancy and birth content in here yet? This game and like tread appeared in the my search for game with huge tits and pregnancy content birth a bonus if the game has that

Thank you very much, although unfortunately the pregnancy content is still coming, outside of some side content there isn't meaningful pregnancy in the game yet.

As for actual birth content, I actually think thats an important question that I wanted to tackle at some stage. I'm actually quite fond of birth content but I'm a bit unsure of the desire for it (as well as the ability for me to actually produce the art). I've also noticed that it is so niche that there isn't even a tag for it in the tag guidelines here. My question is who wants to see it? Obviously it would be optional scenes so it isn't something to be actively repulsed by, but who wants to actively see it?

 

[Ramenlord2001]

Thank you very much, although unfortunately the pregnancy content is still coming, outside of some side content there isn't meaningful pregnancy in the game yet.

As for actual birth content, I actually think thats an important question that I wanted to tackle at some stage. I'm actually quite fond of birth content but I'm a bit unsure of the desire for it (as well as the ability for me to actually produce the art). I've also noticed that it is so niche that there isn't even a tag for it in the tag guidelines here. My question is who wants to see it? Obviously it would be optional scenes so it isn't something to be actively repulsed by, but who wants to actively see it?

you be surprized i seen so many threads asking for game recommendations that has pregnancy and birth what sad is the content is so little and all the super good ones are not complete at all unless there translations all in all theirs a demand for it

 

[Nunu312]

Although I've currently been caught up in writing guides and the tedium of underlying code, I look forward to the relatively near future where Alex turns up to the reunion with a little gift for you. If that happened about nine months ago then who knows what could happen?

 

[Kazutoyo]

Love huge pregnant bellies, and consider actual birth content to be far less important (but still nice).