Ren'Py Divine Dawn [v0.30] [Cryswar]

[Cryswar]

After stumbling upon the game and feeling an itch to dive into text-based games once more, here's what I can tell after finishing the content:

First off - great writing. Witty humor, not-so-witty humor, clever callbacks and a quite consistent tone makes for a great reading material, even though Metatron can be quite the exposition dump when asked. But hey, that info needs to come from somewhere after all. I had some genuine laughter at times and what exists already felt intriguing enough to want me seeing what keeps happening next.

The combat - well.. it's a mixed bag. It functions quite well and gives you a decent variety right from the get-go with no apparently "I win" button or strategy that utterly breaks the game, but a bit more tutorialization would be appreciated. I had no clue what the encounter chaining system did until I read about it here and I basically stumbled upon the mastery system by accident once I was in the random adventure part, not to mention said mastery system starts to heavily clutter the selection menu since the abilities and masteries unlocked are additions rather than replacements, which I would've enjoyed seeing more.
Might make it harder to find a proper balance as it would require a whole lot more playtesting to see if the replacements aren't just breaking your build in one way or the other, but with how much variety is planned, how many new abilities one is supposed to get and all that, this is going to be an interface nightmare to navigate, even with the ability to hide skills unless you want to uncheck/check a new ability list after every other encounter.

Something that I felt is missing - especially since this game seems to be more focused on the RPG side - is a way to inspect the abilities of allies as well as their effects, maybe even something akin to a skilltree with possible ability unlocks for oneself (at appropriate stats) so you can plan your character accordingly. It's hard to plan a build for something you have no advance knowledge of.
While not much of a problem as of right now due to the fact that elements and side-effects of spells are not nearly as important in the beginning, that is however a disaster waiting to happen in more intricate encounters that I reckon will be coming later down the line, when you brought the worst possible ally for a fight and are left to figure that one out for yourself. That will lead to frustration.

Glad you enjoyed the writing! I agree that Metatron's scenes tend towards verbal diarrhea a bit, I have to find a better way to present it. More back and forth would probably help.

You raise an excellent point about the lacking tutorials. You get one short overview of the chaining thing, I think after the first battle, but nothing else and no way to review it. I can probably improve that particular. One thing I had been considering was some kind of help codex that could be revisited at any time, and detailed battle mechanics, chaining, etc. would that be helpful?

On mastery, I could have it default to hiding the original ability, but I didn't want to replace it entirely in case I do end up adding a system to unlock both mastery paths for an ability at some cost. Maybe when you first enter the camp, there could be a little pop up tutorial that goes over mastery, the time system, etc?

As for allies, you can actually inspect the stats, traits, and abilities of any ally you have unlocked at any time; at the top of the stats and abilities overviews you can click on an ally's name to switch the display to them, and hide them as well, though that won't disable the ability for their AI until 0.5. I'm not sure how to display it better atm, but you're not the first who didn't see it, so clearly it could use improvement.

I generally agree on the difficulty of build planning. My concern was that displaying all possible traits and abilities would be a UI nightmare for those menus - would be an instant dump of 50+ abilities for starters. That said, the mastery screen does show all of your abilities, even if you can't upgrade them yet; maybe I could find a way to filter that stuff effectively so you can plan ahead better? A lot of the planned elements and weapons are simply not in-game yet though, so there is a limited amount I can do about that.

Thank you for the detailed feedback, lotta useful stuff there!

 

[Pr0man]

Time to answer in chunks for readability. I can only give you my insights here, as I'm not nearly informed enough to just make a decision and say "yes, do that." or "no, that sounds like a dumb idea" - besides: that's your game you are making.
If you feel like you want it to be a more purist experience, that is entirely up to you. I just hope that what I provide at least gives out some deeper information on how I felt on the points raised.

Glad you enjoyed the writing! I agree that Metatron's scenes tend towards verbal diarrhea a bit, I have to find a better way to present it. More back and forth would probably help.

It's not that I'd specifically call the dialogue "verbal diarrhea", but something along the lines of badly paced out and located. Like I said, that info needs to come from somewhere - be it information gained through environmental storytelling, be it characters verbally dumping it out onto you, through something like a cutscene or visions - whatever way you feel works best for the development of the story without creating some major inconsistencies and also be too difficult/time consuming to make. But receiving all of that at once, when the plot starts to ramp up drastically with the return home (where you have a whole lot of character development happen all at the same time), seems to be a bit of an odd choice, as you'll have too much to process as is, so another helping of that might just not be the best spot to do so.
Basically, you have the plot suddenly starting to pick up the pace at that point, just to run into Metatron and get a whole lot of exposition onto you with no apparent way out (though there is, the last option just moves the dialogue forward, but how would a player know that)

You raise an excellent point about the lacking tutorials. You get one short overview of the chaining thing, I think after the first battle, but nothing else and no way to review it. I can probably improve that particular. One thing I had been considering was some kind of help codex that could be revisited at any time, and detailed battle mechanics, chaining, etc. would that be helpful?

On mastery, I could have it default to hiding the original ability, but I didn't want to replace it entirely in case I do end up adding a system to unlock both mastery paths for an ability at some cost. Maybe when you first enter the camp, there could be a little pop up tutorial that goes over mastery, the time system, etc?

Well, you can always take multiple options into consideration for the sake of tutorialization. I felt the very few tutorial messages you receive to be lacking, but fleshing it out then and there might drive off people who will then be bombarded with information that might just not be necessary at that time, or to them entirely. So my suggestion would be that if you want to improve the tutorial messages that the player receives before certain sections: Flesh them out more, but ask beforehand if a player is interested in a tutorial about the section of combat, about the encounter system or the section of mastery, or if they want to skip that section.

You could also totally make something like a tutorial codex that explains different mechanics on different pages - organization and structure is king when it comes to tutorials though: If you make it too complex, the important information could easily get lost in a subpage or similar to someone with a thick skull like me. While if you make it too generic without giving out in-depth explanations, the stat driven purists out there will go sharpen their swords in anticipation of the bloodbath they'll commence in the comment section, asking why you'd spend time on implementing something like that when it doesn't contain every bit of information possible.
Basically, there is no one way to do something, you could totally have multiple venues on how to tackle something like that and even mix-and-match multiple ideas if you feel they are helpful for the overall experience.

On the note of hiding an ability by default, that is entirely dependant on how the game is going to be balanced: If the base ability is to stay relevant because the masteries of it will be more situational or comes with drawbacks, having it on default hiding is gonna cause trouble on one end. If the ability is going to be outclassed severely by the masteries (the masteries to cross slash spring to mind), having the option to use an objectively worse move is cluttering the interface with little benefit. So since I do not really know what the gameplan is going to be moving forward, that is up to you. Though auto-hiding specific moves that will just be outclassed by their mastery might be an option.

As for allies, you can actually inspect the stats, traits, and abilities of any ally you have unlocked at any time; at the top of the stats and abilities overviews you can click on an ally's name to switch the display to them, and hide them as well, though that won't disable the ability for their AI until 0.5. I'm not sure how to display it better atm, but you're not the first who didn't see it, so clearly it could use improvement.

That clearly needs some mentioning somewhere and some visual improvement then.
I just had to launch the game and after looking through all the different UIs in the game proper, I stumbled upon that it's the main menu that contains these tabs with the information I was so desperately looking for, when my first instinct was to look through every possible thing in the game.
Putting information like that in the esc menu is totally viable, but I would've definitely preferred a button in one of the UIs that brought me to that window in particular then.

I generally agree on the difficulty of build planning. My concern was that displaying all possible traits and abilities would be a UI nightmare for those menus - would be an instant dump of 50+ abilities for starters. That said, the mastery screen does show all of your abilities, even if you can't upgrade them yet; maybe I could find a way to filter that stuff effectively so you can plan ahead better? A lot of the planned elements and weapons are simply not in-game yet though, so there is a limited amount I can do about that.

Here it might be worthwhile to instead go with a compromise then. If the amount of abilities is going to be so big that the UI is not going to be able to easily handle it, you might want to have something like a button to toggle between showing all abilities, or hiding abilities/traits that you aren't eligible for yet. This way, players won't be overwhelmed with information, but can chose to have a glimpse of the things they'll be able unlock along the way to plan ahead better.

 

[Nevart]

First up: Nice work so far, Cryswar!


Bug (?)

• Hidden skills still appear in combat. (Sometimes?) - Sadly I have no idea how to trigger it. Worked just fine for the longest time, but in the last few fights the skills would pop up again without me ''un-hiding'' them. After the initial confusion I hid them again, - only for them to still be visible in the next fight. Reloading the save/Starting the game up again seems to help with that problem for now.

Questions

• Will there be a max. level? (Level 100?)
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• Do the secondary stats stack? Would a universal crit. chance of 10% stack with a physical/magical crit. chance of 10% for example?
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• Are there/Will there be traits that have an influence on events like the primary stats, or are they really just nice buffs (mostly) and nothing more?
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• Can we have stat displays for the passive stats and %s of -Vitality-, -Agility- and -Insight-? Sorry guys, Stat/Numberphile here.
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• ...Is there a cheat/console code for TP? ...Asking for a friend.

Thoughts

• Having a skill you upgrade to a mastery level not replace the base skill is a huge mistake. And it will be even worse in the future (with more powerful skills) if left unchanged. Not only is it already a bit overkill, it also almost completely disregards the cooldown mechanic. Why use anything other than the slightly weaker version of that one good and powerful skill that just works, right? And after that? Guess what, cooldown over.
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• Speaking of cooldown... why is it described as a 2-turn cooldown if it really is only one?
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• How about adding something along the lines of an ''Advanced Mastery'' - meaning once you ''master'' a mastery skill you will be able to freely change the skill into whatever variant you want at camp or a safe zone. - Even back to the original.
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• I hope that we will be able to choose which abilities and traits our companions get in the future.
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• Why would you take the alpha version of -Cross Slash- if the beta exists? The numbers are either not quite right or I am completely misunderstanding something here.
• - Alpha: Single enemy damage = 35%+35%+40% / Multi enemy damage = 40%
• - Beta: S.E.D. = 50%+30%+30% / M.E.D. = 30%+30%
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• Can something be done about the RNG of affection- and mini-events? (obstacle in the way) - I am the type of player who wants to see everything there is for characters I like. - Having to go multiple times through a zone to trigger these events for every character (without save scumming) is a safe and secure way to get me overleveled and burnt out. (My fault, I know.)
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• What do you think about set points in a zone that will 100% trigger these events? The current forest zone would go from a length of 7 to 9 for example.
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• The -Initiative- stat should passively increase for companions every 2 or 3 levels by one point. Hate to see that they are over level 20 and they are still at 5. Meanwhile I sit at over 35.
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• Many stat increases and therefore builds seem far too strong. Let me explain: At 100 points the -DEX- stat will give me a 40% crit. chance. 40%. And it gets even better with the innate 10% chance and the -Precision- trait... which also gives 10%. Why have any other build if a crit. based one is going to be all you'll ever- you get the point. ...And that's just one example. Another one would be a current -Agility&Vitality- build. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this, don't you. At 100 points both of them would give you 40% damage reduction. Nice. You may now add a spoon full of -Insight- and put it in the oven. (That's without any traits or equipment, mind you.) - You basically become immortal. Who needs damage, am I right? I am. You have companions and a high -Threat- for that.
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• Hell, DEX, FOC, AGI and VIT would still be incredibly powerful if their stat gains were halved. Actually, let me one up that one: DEX, FOC, AGI and VIT would still be incredibly powerful if their halved stat gains were halved. And that's a fact.
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• Why is Libido even a stat?
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• To be perfectly clear: The game has barely even started and I already have a crit. chance of 30% and 100% crit. damage. That's... that just feels so... so... right. Thanks Cryswar. Best dudebro ever.
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• On another note: A few -Traits- are utterly underpowered or useless at the moment, while many others only serve to further escalate the immense stat issues I mentioned above. I'll be going over 2 weak ones.
• - Quicksilver: 1 Initiative is... nothing.
• - Healthy: 10% for ailments? C'mon, you know better. It could be 50% and it would still not be a first choice for many.
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• Wouldn't it be better to have an actual -Evade- stat? Would also make more sense for -AGI- to increase an evade chance % instead of damage reduction.
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• The game/story has barely even started and we already have a party of 6. (+Parents) Damn.

 

[Vasilica2]

I tried this game out of boredom, and i was surprised by how much i liked it. I hope you'll continue the development.
The story seems to be well-thought, the characters are written pretty good so far.

Don't know if anyone mentioned it (or if you tested it), but it runs on Linux with no problems (i mean by running the .sh). That's another pleasant surprise, a lot of games that are supposed to run, don't - i'm usually having more luck running the games on wine than native.

Some thoughts, i hope you don't mind:
- i understand this is a text-based game. But i think it will benefit a lot from some simple graphics, such as icons for the characters, at least the allies. If you're not good at drawing, i think you'd find a lot of people on this forum willing to do some sketches just for a name drop in credits. Just a simple face / bust so it identifies the people we're interacting with.
- Sam continues to be a "they" in some (all?) descriptions, even after you pick their sex.
- What's the deal with Celica? She just appears out of nowhere. Is that intentional, some plot twist that she's not what we think she is and mind-controlling the party? If not, i think she needs a better introduction.
- It's weird that some mastered skills are weaker or about the same as the non-masted ones. Example: spinning slash alpha is weaker than the original spinning slash.
- The Stats and Abilities menu is kind of hidden. Usually, in Ren'py games, on the escape menu there's just save/load, preferences and so on.

Otherwise, keep up the good work, i'll check on the updates.

 

[Cryswar]

Pr0man , good point on pacing; I'll probably move at least some of those to her camp conversations, and make the skip option clearer. Optional tutorials are also a good idea. I had trouble adding hotkey or button that showed that menu in a way that worked well, but I'll look into it.

Nevart , thanks for your kind words!

I'll look into the hidden thing, I haven't been able to replicate it but it's probably some spaghetti code.

On questions;
Max level is tentatively planned to be 100, but it may end up infinite with hard caps on some of the secondary stats.

Secondary stats do stack.

Yes, some traits will have an effect on events. Mostly libido, but some normal stats as well.

Yeah, I can do the secondary stuff. I was going to split the bottom of the stats page into offensive and defensive secondary stats for visibility, anyways.

What do you mean by TP? It should be possible to enable the Ren'py dev console and do whatever, I was going to start adding some built-in cheats in the next version or two but right now that's not much.

On thoughts;
A couple of people have brought that up, and you might be onto something. I'll probably drop the original move when you master it, and down the road have an option to swap/refund masteries or learn the second.

Cooldowns and statuses count down at the end of every turn. It is a two-turn cooldown, it just counts the turn you used it. Same with statuses that only apply for one turn. I'm not sure if it was a good design choice, but it was a design choice.

Ally abilities and traits are a work in progress; they'll definitely get level-up traits and abilities, you'll probably be able to pick their masteries, and some events will let you pick abilities or traits. Haven't finalized yet.

No, you're right, I used some funky numbers for cross slash.

I'll have to think about the mini-events; my concern is that it would get very repetitive to see them each run since they don't vary much for the same character.

The initiative thing is a bug in the current version that is already fixed for 0.5. Initiative should not naturally go up at all, but similar to you, some allies will get initiative-boosting traits.

I think the problem with dexterity is that strength doesn't have an innate bonus. Dexterity focus and insight are all universally useful for melee builds; my tentative plan was to have Strength give flat physical damage increase, ditto for magic. Picking up dexterity means you're giving up on insight's armor pen or focus's skill cooldown reduction, so I don't think dexterity itself is the problem.

If you want to spend two-thirds of your stats on defenses, I'm cool with you being a super tank. There isn't much offense scaling there, so even if you swapped insight for magic, you'd be doing half the damage or less of an offense build.

Libido is a stat for sex battles and temptation events, which will probably intro in 0.5 or 0.6.

Initiative pairs very well with assassinate traits/buffs, getting extra damage for going first in a turn, and makes you nearly immune to one turn debuffs like the boar stun. It'll be more useful in the future when you run into more fast enemies as well. It's basically first-turn advantage as a stat; underrate at your peril.

I considered an evasion stat, but it was frustrating to play against when playtesting, and having evasion just have a chance of lowering damage didn't actually feel any more interesting than having it be flat resistance. I'm not sure if I like the current version, but at least is less buggy than the first take lol.


Vasilica2 , glad to hear! I can't test on Linux so I'm very happy to know that it does work, it had some issues in 0.3 apparently.

I'm learning how to draw, but am nowhere near good enough to put in art yet. I do agree that it would be a major improvement and intend to add it ASAP.

Once you pick a gender, most mentions of Sam use gendered pronouns, but I kept a few theys and theirs in there to keep the text a little more varied. It has proven to be a surprisingly unpopular decision, so I've been slowly going through and making most of them gendered.

Celica is mentioned in the forest and once at home I believe, as a longtime friend of yours that you haven't seen much of lately. Her showing up out of nowhere is somewhat played for laughs, but 0.5 will have conversations with her in camp to offer her perspective and hint at why Sam was acting kind of weird about it.

Spinning Slash has a typo in the description; it's actually a 60% AOE like all pure damage t1 AOEs. The description was fixed yesterday for 0.5, but the actual damage numbers are already correct, both masteries are indeed an upgrade.

I've gotten a fair amount of feedback similar to yours on the stats and abilities menu. I will try to make it easier to find.

 

[Nevart]

What do you mean by TP?

Oh, I meant Trait-Points. I wanted to give them a go without it being too time consuming, but couldn't for the life of me figure out the right code for it. I know how to adjust stats, health and so on, which leads me to believe that I must either be missing something or I am making a very obvious/dumb mistake with the code.

I'll have to think about the mini-events; my concern is that it would get very repetitive to see them each run since they don't vary much for the same character.

True. But is RNG better? RNG is an option where you might not see them at all, after all. ...And it would certainly give incentive to take other characters besides your top 1 or 2 with you if you do decide to visit these zones again.

I think the problem with dexterity is that strength doesn't have an innate bonus. Dexterity focus and insight are all universally useful for melee builds; my tentative plan was to have Strength give flat physical damage increase, ditto for magic. Picking up dexterity means you're giving up on insight's armor pen or focus's skill cooldown reduction, so I don't think dexterity itself is the problem.

If you want to spend two-thirds of your stats on defenses, I'm cool with you being a super tank. There isn't much offense scaling there, so even if you swapped insight for magic, you'd be doing half the damage or less of an offense build.

Also true. But my main concern here wasn't actually with DEX, - or any other single stat for that matter. It was the raw stat %s with which you could/and already can end up through the game. Like I said, the game has just begun and I am already sitting at a 30% crit. chance, which is huge. Be it physical or magical, you will end up with at least 60%. And if you do decide to give us even more options to increase these already very high stats through more traits, equipment or other means, then it would just be overkill. This rings especially true for the super tank build. 80% damage reduction through 2 core stats alone is flat out op. Damage also isn't an issue if you always have a teammate with you who can dish it out in your stead. - Hence effectively giving you the option to cheese a (probably) huge portion of the game/end game. It really feels like it's just too much, honestly.

Libido is a stat for sex battles and temptation events, which will probably intro in 0.5 or 0.6.

The Libido line was meant as a joke, as I was talking about pretty much every stat but Libido. But hey, good to know. Can't wait to see how the next updates will turn out.

Initiative pairs very well with assassinate traits/buffs, getting extra damage for going first in a turn, and makes you nearly immune to one turn debuffs like the boar stun. It'll be more useful in the future when you run into more fast enemies as well. It's basically first-turn advantage as a stat; underrate at your peril.

Don't worry, I am not underrating it at all. ...I think. But is 1 point of INI really worth a trait point? Seeing as I'm well over 30 in the INI department... probably not. ...Probably.

I considered an evasion stat, but it was frustrating to play against when playtesting, and having evasion just have a chance of lowering damage didn't actually feel any more interesting than having it be flat resistance. I'm not sure if I like the current version, but at least is less buggy than the first take lol

Understandable. Noted.

 

[Cryswar]

Nevart Try something like these two lines in dev console;

$ player.progress.traitPoints += 10
$ player.progress.traitPointsAcquired+= 10

XP, stat points, ability points, trust, etc. are all stored in the Progress class as an attribute of the Actor class. I don't THINK anything bad will happen if you skip the second line but might run into issues down the road, idk.

If you want to mess with that stuff more, check the classes.rpy file in the 'dawncode' folder, much of the game is classes nested into each other like a Matryoshka doll of fuckery.


Fair point on the randomness. I'll see if I can improve it in 0.5.


The damage mitigation is multiplicative, so you're actually only getting 64% mitigation from maxing both stats. That said, stat inflation is something I will keep an eye on; I wanted to give people fairly solid early access to crit so those kinds of builds could get online quickly, without giving more trait options for it for a while.

When weapons and their upgrade system comes out you'll be able to get closer to 100%, but universal crit bonuses will probably get nerfed before then and there won't be many other permanent crit chance bonuses, so investing in 100% crit will only REALLY be a thing for a few weapons that work well with it. Some of the values will have to get rebalanced over time.

A fair chunk of it comes from abilities, getting 100% crit with the warhammer will likely be impossible, whereas swords can get a bit, and daggers/dual daggers/rapiers won't have as much trouble hitting 100%. Crit resist will PROBABLY also be a stat down the road, haven't finalized that decision yet.


Your having thirty initiative is due to a bug in 0.4 rather than the intended design; 5 base initiative is the default long-term. I actually went for initiative and assassinate for my first two trait points (Spear, dex/agi/ins) and found it fairly solid for now, and will be vastly more useful in 0.5 or 0.6 when you start running into faster enemies where 5 or less init will show its weakness.

 

[Animalsfan5698]

If the Libido Stat does get added in this game in the future, then you can have new scenes and classes related to it, some example are Prostitute, Escort, and Dancer.

Maybe in the future a FemBoy character can be included as one of the genders for male characters to have at the beginning of the game? Another thing that might happen is allowing one of the NPC characters to take charge while the PC is a Sub, but can still choose the actions and stuffs if needed every now and then?

Just having Random Ideas here, feel free to ignore any of the ones your not comfortable with if you want to.

 

[Draco0]

Depends on reading speed, whether you just play 1 route so far or want to see all of the content, and if you want to grind the random adventure, probably about 1.5-2h if you read at a decent speed and only do 1 route, 2-2.5 if you want to see all content and fast-forward the stuff you already read, 3+ if you decide to grind; I don't recommend it, but that is your decision not mine.

Thanks, I like to make sure there's enough content to keep me occupied for at least 2-3 hrs that way I cen be satisfied playing

 

[Animalsfan5698]

More random ideas to go with the last one, there can be Dom/Sub, Pred/Prey, as well as the Top/Bottom roles, and there can be moves that cause the Lust bar to be affect or have statue effects for it, and 2 new ways a combat stuff can end, either by having the lust bar max out or by convincing them to stop fighting during combat, it is up to Cryswar if he/she likes thoses ideas or not, they can be included in future updates every now and then after each main ones if needed.

 

[Cryswar]

More random ideas to go with the last one, there can be Dom/Sub, Pred/Prey, as well as the Top/Bottom roles, and there can be moves that cause the Lust bar to be affect or have statue effects for it, and 2 new ways a combat stuff can end, either by having the lust bar max out or by convincing them to stop fighting during combat, it is up to Cryswar if he/she likes thoses ideas or not, they can be included in future updates every now and then after each main ones if needed.

Will keep both sets of ideas in mind, no promises on which/if will happen though. I need to get the basic lewd battle stuff done and out for feedback before I start complicating it too much haha.

 

[Animalsfan5698]

Will keep both sets of ideas in mind, no promises on which/if will happen though. I need to get the basic lewd battle stuff done and out for feedback before I start complicating it too much haha.

It is fine, you get whatever main things you need to do first before doing the ideas i give to you, you can take your time for new stuffs after you finish doing the main story ones and adventures.

 

[JuAqe]

This is an excellent game so far, im eager to see how this develops

 

[JoleenStar]

That boss battle annoyed me. It was way too long.

 

[Slaanesh Champion]

That boss battle annoyed me. It was way too long.

Git gud.

 

[Cryswar]

That boss battle annoyed me. It was way too long.

You're fighting a nearly deific being that you cannot meaningfully harm. The battle is intended to drive home that feeling, but using Metatron to nuke will take it down fairly quickly; if you have someone (or both) with Bleed or Burn you can take it down in 10-15 turns tops.

Git gud.

THIS SILENCE OFFENDS SLAANESH!

 

[MarkasLin]

This might be my first post, but I had to praise this. As an avid AIF fan this is scratching an itch, that only Monster Girl Dreams has so far.

Some feedback:
Your characters are very nice and believable. I did have a couple of moments where modern slang would break my immersion, but that is an artistic choice.

You are butting heads with the age old RPG problem. How to make level ups feel meaningful, while not murdering the scaling of the game.
I'd suggest drawing some inspiration from table top RPG's or games like Dark Souls. You don't need to dole out stat points at every level, nor do you need each point to be equally significant. Diminishing returns, or soft caps, are a tried and true method of curtailing stat inflation and encouraging build diversity.
I agree that RNG in affection events is frustrating, but you might not need to scrap the RNG entirely. Mind you I am not a programmer of any stripe, but it should be possible to implement some bad luck protection, in that repeated rolls increase the likeliness of an event occurring until it has occurred.
For your UI, I'd also suggest looking at some of what Monster Girl Dreams is doing. Both in terms of the level up menu and in terms of combat ui. Additionally, maybe some inspiration for the sexual encounters can be found there.

 

[Cryswar]

This might be my first post, but I had to praise this. As an avid AIF fan this is scratching an itch, that only Monster Girl Dreams has so far.

Some feedback:
Your characters are very nice and believable. I did have a couple of moments where modern slang would break my immersion, but that is an artistic choice.

You are butting heads with the age old RPG problem. How to make level ups feel meaningful, while not murdering the scaling of the game.
I'd suggest drawing some inspiration from table top RPG's or games like Dark Souls. You don't need to dole out stat points at every level, nor do you need each point to be equally significant. Diminishing returns, or soft caps, are a tried and true method of curtailing stat inflation and encouraging build diversity.
I agree that RNG in affection events is frustrating, but you might not need to scrap the RNG entirely. Mind you I am not a programmer of any stripe, but it should be possible to implement some bad luck protection, in that repeated rolls increase the likeliness of an event occurring until it has occurred.
For your UI, I'd also suggest looking at some of what Monster Girl Dreams is doing. Both in terms of the level up menu and in terms of combat ui. Additionally, maybe some inspiration for the sexual encounters can be found there.

Glad you're enjoying it so far Markas! Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Soft caps are mostly planned in the form of not getting traits for a stat after a certain point - not sure about softcapping the stats themselves yet. I agree the scaling is a little harsh atm, but by nature, it slows down once you get past the earlier stuff.

0.5 (releasing a little later tonight) adds two additional non-RNG forms of affection, which were planned long before 0.4 as two of the primary affection sources - I honestly didn't even think of the random event as a real source of it, just an occasional nice bonus.

UI has a lot of work to do, though I'd rather not rip off MGD - Thresh puts a lot of work into his stuff, it'd be disrespectful to him to just jack his work. Got some stuff in the works there but it's far from ready yet.

EDIT: until such time as mods do the official update stuff, I'll just put links here

PC/Linux:

You must be registered to see the links

Mac:

You must be registered to see the links

Android:

You must be registered to see the links

Changelog:

• Metatron and Sarah now have camp conversations, trust, and affection scenes. 2 trust and 15 affection will unlock all current content for them. I welcome feedback on the scenes!
• 3 new H-scenes, 2 with Sarah, 1 with Ashley. A bit more femdom-heavy than usual.
• Camp sex now builds affection and corruption. Corruption currently caps at 20, so don't stress it too much.
• The new Evening timeslot lets you hang out with an ally of choice to gain affection. It'll be fleshed out VASTLY more later.
• Crits now display in battle! Also, cleanse/buff/debuff duration and regen effects should be less buggy. Maybe.
• Many bugfixes and typo fixes.

Looking forward; 0.6 content will focus on continuing to expand camp conversations, adding the next area, adding some PLOOOOOOT(tm), and hopefully adding the actual sex battle system! We'll see how that goes and how much else I can add in alongside it. I'm gonna tentatively say April 20th, but this is gonna be a major update so it's hard to say for sure.

 

[dxd]

Glad you're enjoying it so far Markas! Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Soft caps are mostly planned in the form of not getting traits for a stat after a certain point - not sure about softcapping the stats themselves yet. I agree the scaling is a little harsh atm, but by nature, it slows down once you get past the earlier stuff.

0.5 (releasing a little later tonight) adds two additional non-RNG forms of affection, which were planned long before 0.4 as two of the primary affection sources - I honestly didn't even think of the random event as a real source of it, just an occasional nice bonus.

UI has a lot of work to do, though I'd rather not rip off MGD - Thresh puts a lot of work into his stuff, it'd be disrespectful to him to just jack his work. Got some stuff in the works there but it's far from ready yet.

EDIT: until such time as mods do the official update stuff, I'll just put links here

PC/Linux: Mega
Mac: Mega
Android: Mega

Changelog:

• Metatron and Sarah now have camp conversations, trust, and affection scenes. 2 trust and 15 affection will unlock all current content for them. I welcome feedback on the scenes!
• 3 new H-scenes, 2 with Sarah, 1 with Ashley. A bit more femdom-heavy than usual.
• Camp sex now builds affection and corruption. Corruption currently caps at 20, so don't stress it too much.
• The new Evening timeslot lets you hang out with an ally of choice to gain affection. It'll be fleshed out VASTLY more later.
• Crits now display in battle! Also, cleanse/buff/debuff duration and regen effects should be less buggy. Maybe.
• Many bugfixes and typo fixes.

Looking forward; 0.6 content will focus on continuing to expand camp conversations, adding the next area, adding some PLOOOOOOT(tm), and hopefully adding the actual sex battle system! We'll see how that goes and how much else I can add in alongside it. I'm gonna tentatively say April 20th, but this is gonna be a major update so it's hard to say for sure.

The links are for 0.4 not 0.5

 

[Cryswar]

The links are for 0.4 not 0.5

Well... that's just awkward. Fixed for that post, thanks!