RPGM Darkstar [v0.1a] [Harold]

[lizaardt]

I did played this some days ago (female MC ; using wine to play on linux) ;
- Overall, it was a nice experience, as other said, the story is indeed nice!
- The sex "scene" are... More like "they had sex" with picture. Since that's not my cup of tea - sex scene wise - it was a shame, especially when I DLEd this on purpose on a porn site.
- For such an story and dialogue heavy game, the use of RMGM definitively did bring more annoyance than benefit for me.

Here a list of point that could be improved (coupled with some questions/suggestion) in the game IMO:
- Thanks for adding the option of a female protag! I'm somewhat curious of the difference of lore when you play as a male (since the fact than "but lesbian is sin" is told at pretty much every occasion)
- since most of the game is "talk talk talk" > "save point" > "talk talk talk" ; I would have really enjoyed it more if it was made in renpy (which would bring way more control on where to save)
- For the same reason, the rare moment you can freely explore a place feels off (it feel more like two different game smashed together than a smooth, unified gaming experience)
- having to speak to everyone to find the sub event was not fun. In the same way, I never found the blacksmith for the cog thingy (I haven't looked hard into it, but these fedex side quest were way less appealing than the main event)
- Instead of going from purely scripted even with no control to the other, I would have liked it more if you had control of your character on (part of) map and decide when you talk to the NPC to make it process (which in turn would help with save timing control)...
- ... but it would be even worse with replaying the game. I did try a second playthrough to try to drug and betray Merrin ; but I still had the message telling me my stats were not adequate. If that scene don't exists, that would be great if the game would tell it more clearly. If it exists... then walkthrough please ! (and any way to make replaying the game faster while picking different choice would be a godsend)
- Holding the space to skip dialogue is nice and help a bit with replay-ability, but it is still slow as heck and have the really big downside of overwriting your save every time you fumble on an auto save slot (when you hold a button and a choice box pop, it wait for you to release and press it again to continue, but it's not the same case with the save menu)
- Hammering again the "way to skip/progress fast in the story after some change of choice": seems multiple personality are planned per character and the game seems mostly linear outside of that, any way to speed up subsequent playthrough to see how your choice affect the characters would be great ! (or alternatively a gallery when you can watch alternative version of scenes too, that would solve the issue)
- After going on a date with miss nurse, her CG did not disappear and the game seemed pretty broken, that's as far as I was able to go. Corrupt route ended pretty similarly (after grabbing back a certain someone from the baker gal)
- After the tower part, the game did ask extremely often to save twice in a row. The story felt a bit finicky at that part too, so I do wonder if some scene were not skipped for whatever reason (also thanks for allowing to skip it, I was more interested to fast forward to see the story than play a different game)
- On the bug front : in the first battle, the game propose you to avoid all battle. Picking the option does either loop again on that choice or put a game in a pretty weird state ; I was not able to skip it at all
- In the same way, it say you can enable/disable battle (and seeing even when you're not there) with (IIRC) a key item - I never seen such item in my inventory, and haven't found anything remotely close to that in the option
- I wasn't impressed with the tactical combat ; there is definitively a lot of work here to make it feel nice (currently it's "ensure you're out of the npc range during their turn, then one shot these" which is not complex enough to be interesting, and worse doing these basic action on the mouse didn't felt smooth) ; since combat seems pretty rare in the story I'm not sure they are a good time investment.
- Same with the first person exploration, in a way it did surprise/impress me to see that in a RMGM game, in another way I don't think it did really add much to the game overall (disclaimer here: I wanted to know what would happen next in the story and see if you could get inside blushing merrin's pants, so I didn't really want to engage with these nor the combat and wanted to progress instead)
- Town exploration feels a bit aimless, since I didn't see any direction or big quest marker on npc you need to interact with for the sub scenes (compared to just enjoying the story, the prospect of randomly visiting every house and talking to every one is not exciting at all)
- The baker felt (for me) a bit out of place in the pure route (why the heck would someone direct you there ?!), and a bit annoying in the corrupt route (not seeing any option to keep your pet on the inn instead was not really nice - but on another hand I did not disable NTR so it's on me, albeit way earlier tha I expected)
- And to conclude: **throw libra out of the window** I love that character !

 

[Strainding]

This is quite a terrific mind control game. Never seen something like this where the story is actually not decent, but amazing! Oh how I am excited to see that succubus be finally put in her place soon. It's one way to take advantage of me, but to tell my potential slave to kill herself? How dare she!

Edit: If possible, could you add more save files? I'm a save-holic.

Edit 2: I'm currently playing the pure route and It's pretty good too, albeit it's more story driven than the corruption one. Now I'm in an odd situation on which route I want to go for. Should I listen to my dick or my brain? . Alright, I think I'm done with the pure route. The girl told me to go to the church to find more allies and I honestly don't know what to do since I've practically interacted with all the NPCs and it didn't progress whatsoever.

 

[Green_fishtank]

I'm not sure what you mean by no music or sound, there is music/sound effects. The volume is slightly lower than the default volume, but I can hear it clearly through both speaker and headphones at low volumes. Perhaps the game download was corrupted?

I meant things like buttons on the floor working completely silent or same music during exploration of the 2 floor (before you know about monsters and after they starting chasing you).

I stylised the dialogue options based on Fate/GO. The player speaks through the choices, even if there's only one option, that's what you're saying out loud. The text box are your private thoughts. I can make that clearer in updates.

Definitely felt like playing FGO (different flavors of the same outcome). I think this is more of a initial design limitation (of FGO) then a good feature and I doubt this approach will benefit single player game if you don't railroad it. Besides, it's much harder to follow the conversations when you need to guess what MC thinking/saying.

 

[Green_fishtank]

I did played this some days ago (female MC ; using wine to play on linux) ;
Here a list of point that could be improved (coupled with some questions/suggestion) in the game IMO:
- Thanks for adding the option of a female protag! I'm somewhat curious of the difference of lore when you play as a male (since the fact than "but lesbian is sin" is told at pretty much every occasion)
- since most of the game is "talk talk talk" > "save point" > "talk talk talk" ; I would have really enjoyed it more if it was made in renpy (which would bring way more control on where to save)
- For the same reason, the rare moment you can freely explore a place feels off (it feel more like two different game smashed together than a smooth, unified gaming experience)
- having to speak to everyone to find the sub event was not fun. In the same way, I never found the blacksmith for the cog thingy (I haven't looked hard into it, but these fedex side quest were way less appealing than the main event)
- Instead of going from purely scripted even with no control to the other, I would have liked it more if you had control of your character on (part of) map and decide when you talk to the NPC to make it process (which in turn would help with save timing control)...
- Town exploration feels a bit aimless, since I didn't see any direction or big quest marker on npc you need to interact with for the sub scenes (compared to just enjoying the story, the prospect of randomly visiting every house and talking to every one is not exciting at all)
- The baker felt (for me) a bit out of place in the pure route (why the heck would someone direct you there ?!), and a bit annoying in the corrupt route (not seeing any option to keep your pet on the inn instead was not really nice - but on another hand I did not disable NTR so it's on me, albeit way earlier tha I expected)
- And to conclude: **throw libra out of the window** I love that character !

Totally agree with you, I missed these points in my initial post.

BTW, have you tried to launch game natively on linux? I suspect that may be the cause of some graphic glitches I've encountered.

 

[harold]

I did played this some days ago (female MC ; using wine to play on linux) ;
- Overall, it was a nice experience, as other said, the story is indeed nice!
- The sex "scene" are... More like "they had sex" with picture. Since that's not my cup of tea - sex scene wise - it was a shame, especially when I DLEd this on purpose on a porn site.
- For such an story and dialogue heavy game, the use of RMGM definitively did bring more annoyance than benefit for me.

Here a list of point that could be improved (coupled with some questions/suggestion) in the game IMO:
- Thanks for adding the option of a female protag! I'm somewhat curious of the difference of lore when you play as a male (since the fact than "but lesbian is sin" is told at pretty much every occasion)
- since most of the game is "talk talk talk" > "save point" > "talk talk talk" ; I would have really enjoyed it more if it was made in renpy (which would bring way more control on where to save)
- For the same reason, the rare moment you can freely explore a place feels off (it feel more like two different game smashed together than a smooth, unified gaming experience)
- having to speak to everyone to find the sub event was not fun. In the same way, I never found the blacksmith for the cog thingy (I haven't looked hard into it, but these fedex side quest were way less appealing than the main event)
- Instead of going from purely scripted even with no control to the other, I would have liked it more if you had control of your character on (part of) map and decide when you talk to the NPC to make it process (which in turn would help with save timing control)...
- ... but it would be even worse with replaying the game. I did try a second playthrough to try to drug and betray Merrin ; but I still had the message telling me my stats were not adequate. If that scene don't exists, that would be great if the game would tell it more clearly. If it exists... then walkthrough please ! (and any way to make replaying the game faster while picking different choice would be a godsend)
- Holding the space to skip dialogue is nice and help a bit with replay-ability, but it is still slow as heck and have the really big downside of overwriting your save every time you fumble on an auto save slot (when you hold a button and a choice box pop, it wait for you to release and press it again to continue, but it's not the same case with the save menu)
- Hammering again the "way to skip/progress fast in the story after some change of choice": seems multiple personality are planned per character and the game seems mostly linear outside of that, any way to speed up subsequent playthrough to see how your choice affect the characters would be great ! (or alternatively a gallery when you can watch alternative version of scenes too, that would solve the issue)
- After going on a date with miss nurse, her CG did not disappear and the game seemed pretty broken, that's as far as I was able to go. Corrupt route ended pretty similarly (after grabbing back a certain someone from the baker gal)
- After the tower part, the game did ask extremely often to save twice in a row. The story felt a bit finicky at that part too, so I do wonder if some scene were not skipped for whatever reason (also thanks for allowing to skip it, I was more interested to fast forward to see the story than play a different game)
- On the bug front : in the first battle, the game propose you to avoid all battle. Picking the option does either loop again on that choice or put a game in a pretty weird state ; I was not able to skip it at all
- In the same way, it say you can enable/disable battle (and seeing even when you're not there) with (IIRC) a key item - I never seen such item in my inventory, and haven't found anything remotely close to that in the option
- I wasn't impressed with the tactical combat ; there is definitively a lot of work here to make it feel nice (currently it's "ensure you're out of the npc range during their turn, then one shot these" which is not complex enough to be interesting, and worse doing these basic action on the mouse didn't felt smooth) ; since combat seems pretty rare in the story I'm not sure they are a good time investment.
- Same with the first person exploration, in a way it did surprise/impress me to see that in a RMGM game, in another way I don't think it did really add much to the game overall (disclaimer here: I wanted to know what would happen next in the story and see if you could get inside blushing merrin's pants, so I didn't really want to engage with these nor the combat and wanted to progress instead)
- Town exploration feels a bit aimless, since I didn't see any direction or big quest marker on npc you need to interact with for the sub scenes (compared to just enjoying the story, the prospect of randomly visiting every house and talking to every one is not exciting at all)
- The baker felt (for me) a bit out of place in the pure route (why the heck would someone direct you there ?!), and a bit annoying in the corrupt route (not seeing any option to keep your pet on the inn instead was not really nice - but on another hand I did not disable NTR so it's on me, albeit way earlier tha I expected)
- And to conclude: **throw libra out of the window** I love that character !

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you had liked it! I'll make sure to fix those bugs!
I appreciate the suggestions! Some will be addressed in the next content update (markers for quests, better H quality, better save markers).

As for the blacksmith quest

Spoiler

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The first person dungeon sequences aren't going to become normal. I'm content leaving 3D at the Tower (and maaaaaaaaaybe one or two very far off future scenes, just for flavour, much less painful).

And I'm overjoyed to hear Libra has a fan!

I forgot to address your questions! There's little difference between male and female protagonist beyond dialogue and H CGs. I was never a fan of Mass Effect's gender relationship restrictions. I want every heroine to be available regardless of your choice, but I'm still unsure about the implementation. I want the heroines to be more shocked and doubtful about lesbianism, but I don't think players would appreciate having to work harder for that.

For the Merrin drugging scene

Spoiler

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[harold]

I meant things like buttons on the floor working completely silent or same music during exploration of the 2 floor (before you know about monsters and after they starting chasing you).

Definitely felt like playing FGO (different flavors of the same outcome). I think this is more of a initial design limitation (of FGO) then a good feature and I doubt this approach will benefit single player game if you don't railroad it. Besides, it's much harder to follow the conversations when you need to guess what MC thinking/saying.

I understand now, you're right, the first floor is very quiet.

I love the Fate/GO system a lot, so I'm not sure we'll agree on that one, but I get why you're not a fan of the style. I wanted to give the player the opportunity of choosing how to respond without immediately having to worry about it fucking up the playthrough. But in future updates the morality from those choices will add up!

 

[harold]

This is quite a terrific mind control game. Never seen something like this where the story is actually not decent, but amazing! Oh how I am excited to see that succubus be finally put in her place soon. It's one way to take advantage of me, but to tell my potential slave to kill herself? How dare she!

Edit: If possible, could you add more save files? I'm a save-holic.

Edit 2: I'm currently playing the pure route and It's pretty good too, albeit it's more story driven than the corruption one. Now I'm in an odd situation on which route I want to go for. Should I listen to my dick or my brain? . Alright, I think I'm done with the pure route. The girl told me to go to the church to find more allies and I honestly don't know what to do since I've practically interacted with all the NPCs and it didn't progress whatsoever.

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Future updates will have more save spots, and they'll be better placed!

The pure route is going to be much slower going than the corrupt route, but that'll change


There is more progress in the pure route after that

Spoiler

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[lizaardt]

BTW, have you tried to launch game natively on linux? I suspect that may be the cause of some graphic glitches I've encountered.

I actually haven't, and I don't see a link to a linux version in the download links (didn't try to launch it with a standalone version of rpg maker either)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you had liked it! I'll make sure to fix those bugs!
I appreciate the suggestions! Some will be addressed in the next content update (markers for quests, better H quality, better save markers).

As for the blacksmith quest

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

The first person dungeon sequences aren't going to become normal. I'm content leaving 3D at the Tower (and maaaaaaaaaybe one or two very far off future scenes, just for flavour, much less painful).

And I'm overjoyed to hear Libra has a fan!

I forgot to address your questions! There's little difference between male and female protagonist beyond dialogue and H CGs. I was never a fan of Mass Effect's gender relationship restrictions. I want every heroine to be available regardless of your choice, but I'm still unsure about the implementation. I want the heroines to be more shocked and doubtful about lesbianism, but I don't think players would appreciate having to work harder for that.

For the Merrin drugging scene

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I actually noticed the questgiver gone missing, but I didn't spend any time investigating or trying to figure out what happened.. I don't even remember if I did try to talk to the wife or not...

As for the druging merrin ; when you pick that choice the game tell you "stats too low" ; since the choice exist it somehow made me feel the option would exist and than you can simply start again, pick different choice and pass the test for a bonus scene. Since at that point the character feel more like a blank state and the game didn't (yet) give any expectation on what will happen, most thing seems to point to the "try again to get scene" (at least that's what I did remember of playing,)
It is a good idea to highlight the morality system, tho in that very specific instance I'm not sure if it is a "hey that system exists" (and in that case, people that does not play a nasty character will miss it) or "hey, if you replay differently you'll get some hot steamy NTR" Since merrin pretty much betray your trust it's IMO somewhat understandable to replay that part and see what would happen if you give her the same treatment).

On the FGO-like choice, I personally did like it, it "put you in your character choose" since you're the one picking the talk choice, even if there is only a single option.
A more in depth impression of it owuld be "it reinforce the impression the protagonist is a player self insert" (and in turn it feel more limiting when "you" (and not "the MC") cannot do a thing because of a morality system), and "Why there is no silent protagonist choice up to the end of the game" (it was pretty fun to play a woman of few word for the first choice, then these option become rarer)

And most importantly, thanks for taking the time to reply, and for your answers!

 

[xxxxxxxxxxxxx12321]

Future updates will allow a tower skip with a custom character,
best I can do on short notice is a save with a female mc named MC

This is the divergence point where you choose the path. It's still in the tower, but it's straightforward from this point.

Umm is it normal when i download it...it seem like game is stuck or something

 

[Strainding]

The pure route is going to be much slower going than the corrupt route, but that'll change

Quite excited for that. Hopefully it's a reverse-corruption where we brainwash villains to be angelic servants. I don't think I've ever played a game like that where you transform the villain into a pure servant, so hopefully it's what I'm expecting.

There is more progress in the pure route after that

Ah, I see. I thought I had to go straight ahead towards the church. I assume I'm close to the end anyway.

 

[Green_fishtank]

I actually haven't, and I don't see a link to a linux version in the download links (didn't try to launch it with a standalone version of rpg maker either)

There is a way to launch any (probably) game made with RPG Maker MZ natively, you just need to do some file replacement. Discovered this some time ago when tried to launch "linux version" of another game:

Some feedback from penguin side: it seems like this game have some outdated dependencies which may cause linux version to crush on startup.
Solution from internet: download fresh version of nw.js from

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and paste it in game folder. Worked for me, but I am just in the beginning of the game and don't know if anything else will go wrong.

 

[harold]

Umm is it normal when i download it...it seem like game is stuck or something

What platform are you using? Did it get stuck past the title screen or before?

 

[harold]

I actually haven't, and I don't see a link to a linux version in the download links (didn't try to launch it with a standalone version of rpg maker either)



I actually noticed the questgiver gone missing, but I didn't spend any time investigating or trying to figure out what happened.. I don't even remember if I did try to talk to the wife or not...

As for the druging merrin ; when you pick that choice the game tell you "stats too low" ; since the choice exist it somehow made me feel the option would exist and than you can simply start again, pick different choice and pass the test for a bonus scene. Since at that point the character feel more like a blank state and the game didn't (yet) give any expectation on what will happen, most thing seems to point to the "try again to get scene" (at least that's what I did remember of playing,)
It is a good idea to highlight the morality system, tho in that very specific instance I'm not sure if it is a "hey that system exists" (and in that case, people that does not play a nasty character will miss it) or "hey, if you replay differently you'll get some hot steamy NTR" Since merrin pretty much betray your trust it's IMO somewhat understandable to replay that part and see what would happen if you give her the same treatment).

On the FGO-like choice, I personally did like it, it "put you in your character choose" since you're the one picking the talk choice, even if there is only a single option.
A more in depth impression of it owuld be "it reinforce the impression the protagonist is a player self insert" (and in turn it feel more limiting when "you" (and not "the MC") cannot do a thing because of a morality system), and "Why there is no silent protagonist choice up to the end of the game" (it was pretty fun to play a woman of few word for the first choice, then these option become rarer)

And most importantly, thanks for taking the time to reply, and for your answers!

I get it, I'll try to make the morality system more obvious in the next update, I don't want players to endlessly replay the intro trying to get a non-existent scene!

 

[lizaardt]

There is a way to launch any (probably) game made with RPG Maker MZ natively, you just need to do some file replacement. Discovered this some time ago when tried to launch "linux version" of another game:

Oh yea, that's what I meant by "didn't try to launch it with a standalone version of rpg maker either)". I wasn't aware just grabbing nwjs would do the trick, but that makes sense since that version of rpg maker's (and anything using nwjs) is close to being a just a website and web browser bundled together. Thanks for the info ! Tho linux version may have some problem with upper/lower casing of the file names, and IDK if you can include third party dll/plugins in rpg maker, but if yes I would assume these game not to work.

At a point I did something similar with unity's game, but finding / DLing the right unity version was a bit too time consuming compared to just using wine (and let's not talk about game using third party dll or not having webgl support that would not work with a native linux unity)