Concerning Alison and The Shrink

[Avaron1974]

This visual noval will be about a failure(7 years without finding his wife and slaughtering the jerks who i assumed kidnapped her despite being a highly trained military veteran and cop really doesnt inspire me to believe he is comptent and i deal with enough incomptence in real life that i dont want it in my games) ends up in trouble with criminals because he saved a girl they wanted.
Sounds like a boring story about being on the run.
Not really my thing.
Ow and he points out choices will matter and decisions will have major consequences?
Every time i read that line it was a lie.
I have yet to see a game where choices did more then change a dialog here and there.
Visual novals are boring to begin with (most of them have crap stories and those with good stories tent to lack gameplay/choices that accauly change the outcome enough for the choice to matter)

Am i wrong about this?
Probley.
Would i download this?
Not really it just screams failure protaganist to me.
A compleet lack of gameplay, choices that effect more then a few dialog change's, linear gameplay and a unlikeable main character who apparent doesnt just slaughter idiots on mass?
Yeah not really my thing.

Just to note, you are wrong about it. So very wrong.

 

[psychoticgamer]

i love both the shrink and alison (even tho with alison i havent played pasted the partner intro which im ashamed of ) but if i had the money i would definitely chip in some dollery dos to ya

 

[McWoodz]

Ow and he points out choices will matter and decisions will have major consequences?
Every time i read that line it was a lie.

Maledom and Incest, nice.
Ow femdom and urnination, pity.
No mind control? What did the scientist release then?.

So we have a scientist that releases an outbreak of ???

In Alison you get 3 entirely different stories without a render repeated and based on what choices you make within those stories things can change even further. Whether it's how you approach the Dom route (obedience/affection), the girls you choose in the Harem route and the dynamics of your relationships with them or which 1 girl you choose in the Love route and how badly things can go wrong if you don't make the right choice.

As for SHRiNK every kink is avoidable. Choices matter here too as each girl has 2 routes and you'd have to multiple playthroughs to get all the content.
As far the outbreak goes the full effects have only been implied at this point in the story so it'd be wrong to go into too much detail on that in the description but it does effect people mentally and can effect them physically. I think I've kept that cryptic enough

 

[Deleted member 229118]

Pre-emptive: I mostly just tryed to explain how i read it.
It wasnt a judgement of the game or story.
Just what the page looked like to me.

In Alison you get 3 entirely different stories without a render repeated and based on what choices you make within those stories things can change even further. Whether it's how you approach the Dom route (obedience/affection), the girls you choose in the Harem route and the dynamics of your relationships with them or which 1 girl you choose in the Love route and how badly things can go wrong if you don't make the right choice.

Two questions:
1: How much do choices effect.
Do they effect where you are going?
How you live?
You general personality?

Choice of robots is a game of a story done right.
The general idea behind the story is that you invent robots that are far beter then anyone else there robots.
This starts an arms race between the usa(where you live) and china.
You can prevent the war, win the war, join the enemy, sit out the war, you can fail your education, you can become a succefull busniess owner, you can have friends, can not have friends, create sex bots, or something compleetly none human, etc ,etc.
Basicly the you get massive change's baised on your choices.

In my experiance: Most visual novels you follow a linear path with minnor change's to the story.
You still go to the exact same location every time, Get the same manditory events every time.

So my question: How much do choices effect things.
Can i make significant enough change's to feel like my choices matter or do i always end up where the writter wanted me to be and my influence on the story is limeted to how i threat my sex slaves?

2: How badly are we talking about:
Game over because you picked a choice the writter didnt like?
Something going horrible wrong because you didnt say the exact right thing at the exact right time(aka the walkthrough problem)
Or is it more forgiving then that?

As for SHRiNK every kink is avoidable. Choices matter here too as each girl has 2 routes and you'd have to multiple playthroughs to get all the content.
As far the outbreak goes the full effects have only been implied at this point in the story so it'd be wrong to go into too much detail on that in the description but it does effect people mentally and can effect them physically. I think I've kept that cryptic enough

Opitional kinks are always nice.
Two route's sound very linear to me tho.
Care to clairfy how strict these route's are.
For example can i play like i am slowly becoming sexual interested in my family or will it auto fail if i dont pick the right choice at the right time?

As for the outbreak.
Being cryptic is exactly the problem.
There is no mind control tag so either the virus doesnt effect the mind or mind control isnt in game yet.
No corruption tag either so no condition either.
Just what kind of virus are we talking about here?
Sluttification?
Bimbofication?
Gender bending?
It sends conflicting message's.
So we have this virus that is going to cause a major effect on his life.
But no mind control, transformation or corruption tag's.
So what kind of virus is it then?
The black death?
Small pox?
For all i know the only effect the virus has is that the goverment is trying to prevent the spread by forcing people to stay in doors.
But since this: but the effects of this virus are set to change your life in ways you could never imagine.
Was written it means that the virus is important part of the story(rather then an excuees to keep people in door)
Which just makes me go:
Right so no information on what the virus does and a cheecky line about it effecting his life.
I think i will pass on this as it seems the writter is very fond of not informing us of what is happing.
Those stories tent to be bad.

Again: I do not know the games.
I just want to make it clear that nothing on those page's make the game stand out as anything more then just an other visual novel.
No different from the thousents of linear junk we have on this site.

 

[OneManVN]

Pre-emptive: I mostly just tryed to explain how i read it.
It wasnt a judgement of the game or story.
Just what the page looked like to me.


Two questions:
1: How much do choices effect.
Do they effect where you are going?
How you live?
You general personality?

Choice of robots is a game of a story done right.
The general idea behind the story is that you invent robots that are far beter then anyone else there robots.
This starts an arms race between the usa(where you live) and china.
You can prevent the war, win the war, join the enemy, sit out the war, you can fail your education, you can become a succefull busniess owner, you can have friends, can not have friends, create sex bots, or something compleetly none human, etc ,etc.
Basicly the you get massive change's baised on your choices.

In my experiance: Most visual novels you follow a linear path with minnor change's to the story.
You still go to the exact same location every time, Get the same manditory events every time.

So my question: How much do choices effect things.
Can i make significant enough change's to feel like my choices matter or do i always end up where the writter wanted me to be and my influence on the story is limeted to how i threat my sex slaves?

2: How badly are we talking about:
Game over because you picked a choice the writter didnt like?
Something going horrible wrong because you didnt say the exact right thing at the exact right time(aka the walkthrough problem)
Or is it more forgiving then that?



Opitional kinks are always nice.
Two route's sound very linear to me tho.
Care to clairfy how strict these route's are.
For example can i play like i am slowly becoming sexual interested in my family or will it auto fail if i dont pick the right choice at the right time?

As for the outbreak.
Being cryptic is exactly the problem.
There is no mind control tag so either the virus doesnt effect the mind or mind control isnt in game yet.
No corruption tag either so no condition either.
Just what kind of virus are we talking about here?
Sluttification?
Bimbofication?
Gender bending?
It sends conflicting message's.
So we have this virus that is going to cause a major effect on his life.
But no mind control, transformation or corruption tag's.
So what kind of virus is it then?
The black death?
Small pox?
For all i know the only effect the virus has is that the goverment is trying to prevent the spread by forcing people to stay in doors.
But since this: but the effects of this virus are set to change your life in ways you could never imagine.
Was written it means that the virus is important part of the story(rather then an excuees to keep people in door)
Which just makes me go:
Right so no information on what the virus does and a cheecky line about it effecting his life.
I think i will pass on this as it seems the writter is very fond of not informing us of what is happing.
Those stories tent to be bad.

Again: I do not know the games.
I just want to make it clear that nothing on those page's make the game stand out as anything more then just an other visual novel.
No different from the thousents of linear junk we have on this site.

Then, by all means, play the thousand other games and not mine. I have no need for support from people who can't even bother to download the game and try it out for themselves.

 

[polywog]

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[215303j]

It is mainly trying to find out..why two games..that have all the tags traits etc high render quality..humour writing yumyum scenes etc as so many popular games..are gaining little traction after so much time?

I'll try to give my opinion.

I think it may be due to a lack of focus.
Alison is basically three games in one, but with completely different stories which have little in common except for the character models.
The Shrink (didn't play that one yet TBH) is again a different game.

I played Alison's love route first. It was awesome, but I think (could be wrong) that has not been updated for some time.
I played Alison's other routes second, they were great fap material (better than love route) but the stories didn't stick as much.

Further, all routes in Alison have quite a big scope, with plenty of characters, in itself.
All in all, I have to admit to getting confused by it all a bit.

Seems so... Look at WVM for instance, good game and he's got so much support in such a short time. so kudos to him.
THen you have The Intoxicating Flavor, awesome game in all aspects, yet...

One big difference is the update schedule...
The Intoxicating Flavor is great, but WVM is updated so often, it's hard to forget the characters or the story.
With The Intoxicating Flavor, I am now struggling to remember the name of any character... Fortunately the story itself is hard to forget. Unlike several other games which are pretty good, just forgettable.

 

[rf96]

My reason: I hate tattoos, it's an instant turn off.

 

[McWoodz]

My reason: I hate tattoos, it's an instant turn off.

Don't think anyone has tattoos in The SHRiNK.

In Alison - 2 of the girls do have tattoos but those girls are totally optional.
Nadia and Shadow on the Harem route and Shadow also has tats in the obedience path of Dom.

Don't think anyone has tattoos on the main Love route.
I could be forgetting someone, somewhere, but I think that's it.

 

[Paz]

My 2c on why some games in particular might not seem to gain traction, or at least the perceived traction they deserve (also applies to e.g. Alison).

I assume we can all agree that general visibility plays a quite big role, especially in a community as large as this one.
The two quickest ways to check for updates or new releases (for me at least) are the "Latest Updates" tab and the first couple pages in the Games subforum.

- Regarding "Latest Updates", at this day and age there are so many releases that even if I check them daily, it can easily span 1 page of new games, so things are potentially overlooked.
- Regarding the Game subforum, I believe the default sorting is based on the date of the initial post. I went and checked, and Alison is currently on page 112 sorted that way. It's unrealistic that anyone ever will stumble on it through that. Scratch that.

Let's assume that I happened to stumble on the initial release on Latest Updates and thought "Well, it looks like a decent premise" and marked the thread as Watched (for reference my watched threads list is 22 pages long -a cleanup is long overdue-), since I usually don't play 0.000001s or whatever.
Now, with the way the alerting system works, your navbar notifications are limited to a few alerts from the most recently visited watched threads. Which means the Alison thread will probably never make it into my notifications if I don't actively visit it. After some time I'll forget I've even watched it, or that it even exists.

On the other hand I might have downloaded an earlier release and kept for future reference. I tend to do that. Currently there are 300+ different games in there, because why not.
There is some chance I go through that list on a slow day and bump on the game and decide to re-check it, but that's not really a reliable way.

In a related fact, certain threads tend to dominate activity and discussions, effectively pushing others out of view. So there's another thing going against many games. And supporting is usually a cascading effect. The more a game has, the more it gets (since apparently it is a skewed way of evaluating quality).

The issue is akin to how indie devs on Steam have a really limited window of opportunity for exposure, effectively turning it into a make-or-break condition. Sure, some will eventually find their way to success, but most won't.

TL;DR - Oftentimes, it's not really about the quality or the themes of the game, it's just about a stroke of chance. An individual's attention span has to be divided in smaller and smaller chunks with each passing day and the influx of new games.
Sure, the presentation plays a part but one has to first land on said presentation to even matter.

(In fact, I checked Alison solely because I happened to bump on this thread, so silver linings I guess).