Hi dev!
Congrats on your new release! This is a really detailed demo, and as you can see looking around in this thread, you've already ingratiated yourself with quite a few users here. While I don't know what your goal is with this project, and a page like Substar/Patreon/Twit isn't necessary, I imagine a lot of users would enjoy being able to follow along with progress when you aren't ready to commit a full release/ version. Otherwise, updating us through this thread seems perfectly viable.
The corruption system slowing unveiling new expressions, stances, cut-ins etc is really exciting to discover while playing. I was surprised how many poses and how much content was included in this first release. As your profile asks for us to deliver feedback via this thread, I wanted to share some of my own. (You know, as a random lurker on this forum, whose opinion should *definitely* matter ;P )
First, the visuals. I think the visuals generally work quite well. I'm not hardline opposed to AI CG, and I've been in this scene long enough to know that opinions are constantly shifting as far as what good eroge looks like. I do think there are a few specific things to note as far as it goes, however. Some images, such as the handjob stance, make Cibelle look a little different from how she usually does? Her eyebrows and face shape, for example, become a bit thinner, making her appear older than she does in say, her standing sprite. I also think that when... fluids... are on her face, her eyebrows seem to break underneath said fluids (the best example being the paizuri pose, where the eye on her anatomic right/ our left has a big bubble on top of it). Lastly, the hotdogging stance someone posted in this thread (which I believe to be the only piece of content I haven't been able to find in the demo) has Cibelle's exposed foot in the bottom left of the frame positioned backwards. I was pleasantly surprised with the general visual consistency in the demo otherwise, but wanted to share those here in case you were looking for that level of criticism.
Second, gameplay balance; this will come down to how much you want corruption and lewd scenes to revolve around defeats in battle. The most consistent way I found in this demo to find "content" was to simply not level Cibelle, and run around losing to bandits. Eventually, the repeated exposure built corruption and later taught Cibelle the H-skills. This is fine, and also the standard for this genre. However, I felt that as soon as I began to level her in any stat, it became to hard to gain arousal or body-part stimulation (???? I don't think the game denotes terms for these mechanics but I may have missed that).
Higher speed means you naturally cooldown quicker. Higher defenses or charisma mean you don't take damage quickly enough for enemies to defeat Cibelle. This problem goes further for HP and offenses, as when enemies orgasm, they take massive amounts of damage. Without ways for them to heal, because you only fight them one-on-one, and because Cibelle both takes longer to and needs to orgasm to take larger damage chunks in lewd battles, there will be a point where she effectively cannot lose. If that is how you want the game to play, you've already foreshadowed that with town NPC dialogue, so good for you.
Otherwise, it would probably take stronger enemies or successive waves of enemies to wear her down enough that you'd be able to see more content.
As far as bugs or instability, everyone's already talking about the enemy actions, and somehow pretending like other games on this site never launch with bugs. You don't need me to go into that. However, sometimes if you lose to an enemy at the same time as Cibelle orgasming or losing all her health, it doesn't always warp the player back to the chapel or despawn the enemy model on the map, leading to the player occasionally getting stuck. This most commonly happens losing to the men in town, as that scenario doesn't force you back to spawn or have a "battle-loss" scene.
Based on the advice of some others in the thread (primarily nk0x):
- A toggle for heartbeat would be nice. I think it's hot. I can see others not.
- I also second hoping for other outfits at some point, but that depends on your scope for the game. If not that route, maybe make the accessories appear on her model? No idea what you're using to display the graphics so do what works best for stability and such.
- Charisma's bonuses should likely be separated, in part for the balance I discuss above. The option to just play with enemies endlessly or finish them quickly could potentially align with different playstyles, and having to take both when I was trying to take as much lewd damage as possible mean Charisma and its accessory were unattractive options for me.
- I enjoy not knowing exactly how the corruption works, but a hint on a bookshelf or from an NPC on exactly how we get skills, what the stats do, etc. would be useful.
I had a lot more to say than I thought I did. Overall, this project has a lot of promise and as a veteran battlefuck eroge enjoyer, whatever comes next will be fun! No pressure to listen to any of us jabronies here-- just wanted to share ideas in case you wanted to know what players might be thinking.
To any fellow lurkers playing the demo, I haven't seen anyone else discussing how once your corruption is high enough, the townspeople get handsy...
