VN Ren'Py Abandoned Estate : Dominate [v0.36.1] [Henissart]

[Lermo]

as someone who is interested in the sub route i was really reserved after ur 1st episode but the 2nd one felt much better.
in addition to the story progression i really like the renders and the music.
I hope in the 3rd release we will be able to enjoy some tea with mistress isabella while being restrained

keep up the good work.

 

[RubyEriksen7]

To them, MC and Heather are nothing more then animals that they feel they can do whatever they want to, and as such gain pleasure out of it. Hell, just hear how Bella talks about both MC and Heather, treating those two like work horses, to where she feels that the two, as well as Anja, are not even human to her. this is why she retaliates the way she does if the mc doesn't do things her way. With Elisabeth, she's the type of person who loves to manipulate others in a different way, where she feels the same as her sister, but also enjoys playing with her food more. To Lisa, it's about seeing how far she can get someone to trust her before she stabs them in the back, as we see her pretending to enjoy their company, and then starts "accidentally" spouting out punishments to put Anja through, and when mc takes responsibility, she starts to act like it's an act of heroism only to belittle him in the process, and if he agrees to punish Anja, she starts to manipulate Heather, trying to get her to view her brother in a worse way.

This

i get that Isabella and Elizabeth are very manipulative plus they probably find a lot of enjoyment in toying with people.

My point was that the way the scene is set up is in a way that makes Elizabeth and Isabella look like they prioritize chilling with MC and Heather instead of actually doing something, or demanding something that really benefits their interests.
and yes i get that Beth wanted to to make MC and Heather feel conformable around her as part of the manipulation
but to come back home and to basically interview and analyze the new servants? for that long? she has no life? is she that bored?

that's why IMO if MC and heather for example were cleaning an oven, or massaging a foot or washing a car while having the exact same conversations it would have made the entire scene much more noteworthy , but again they were all just chilling as if to say, Yes you are servants but lets have you chill for 2 hours just so we can manipulate a bit more.

They gotta have then do more shit, the pay off was not worth it, not for me.

 

[horst123]

This

My point was that the way the scene is set up is in a way that makes Elizabeth and Isabella look like they prioritize chilling with MC and Heather instead of actually doing something, or demanding something that really benefits their interests.
and yes i get that Beth wanted to to make MC and Heather feel conformable around her as part of the manipulation
but to come back home and to basically interview and analyze the new servants? for that long? she has no life? is she that bored?

I think you use way too much rl logic here...she is just curious and can´t wait to toy with MC and Heather...she just got new shiny toys and want to use them as fast as possible. She sees a perfect opening when she catches MC spying on her sister. And if you want to make it more realistic and "slow" we would have had at least 3-4 updates where absolutely nothing happens but for the MC and Heather cleaning the house and will be eased in being servants with maybe (just maybe) minimal hints that there could be more behind the mistresses. But this would be a very slow and (at least in the beginning) boring game in my opinion
I think this is the hardest part for the dev, the pacing...i personally think it is good as it is (like i said before, maybe make the desperate situation of MC and Heather more prominent).

 

[jish55]

This


My point was that the way the scene is set up is in a way that makes Elizabeth and Isabella look like they prioritize chilling with MC and Heather instead of actually doing something, or demanding something that really benefits their interests.
and yes i get that Beth wanted to to make MC and Heather feel conformable around her as part of the manipulation
but to come back home and to basically interview and analyze the new servants? for that long? she has no life? is she that bored?

that's why IMO if MC and heather for example were cleaning an oven, or massaging a foot or washing a car while having the exact same conversations it would have made the entire scene much more noteworthy , but again they were all just chilling as if to say, Yes you are servants but lets have you chill for 2 hours just so we can manipulate a bit more.

They gotta have then do more shit, the pay off was not worth it, not for me.

Has nothing to do with no life, the whole point of using an extended period of time is to get mc and Heather to lower their guards down around her while she figures out how they tick. She's like the Littlefinger of this game, she quietly waits, pulls the strings, and then strikes when it's most advantageous for her. Hell, just look at her mindset when she told mc to call her "Young Mistress." her whole reasoning behind it is to fuck with her mother and drive her mother insane without doing anything, because it brings her the most joy to see that look of anger, rage, and defeat on her mothers face.

 

[muzzi]

Lost interest in Heather since she shaved..any bushy girl in this update?

 

[RubyEriksen7]

if you want to make it more realistic and "slow" we would have had at least 3-4 updates where absolutely nothing happens but for the MC and Heather cleaning the house and will be eased in being servants with maybe (just maybe) minimal hints that

Actually them cleaning the house while being verbally humiliated sounds much better than them sitting and chatting with Beth And Bella for hours. My suggestion below would have kept the story going while adding some layers of humiliation to the game.
To me the DEV likes teasing the player as much as possible before giving him them the payoff, which in this update was not worth it.

that's why IMO if MC and heather for example were cleaning an oven, or massaging a foot or washing a car while having the exact same conversations it would have made the entire scene much more noteworthy , but again they were all just chilling as if to say, Yes you are servants but lets have you chill for 2 hours just so we can manipulate a bit more.

They gotta have then do more shit, the pay off was not worth it, not for me.

 

[horst123]

that's why IMO if MC and heather for example were cleaning an oven, or massaging a foot or washing a car while having the exact same conversations it would have made the entire scene much more noteworthy , but again they were all just chilling as if to say, Yes you are servants but lets have you chill for 2 hours just so we can manipulate a bit more.

In the game, this would be Isabella, but definetly not Elizabeth...Bella is straight forward and wants MC and Heather to obey...Elizabeth is more cunning, she wants to turn them against each other but without them "knowing", so she has to earn their trust and bring them in situations where she just puts hints in their heads. This is best achieved if they feal at ease and comfortable. They should think that Elizabeth is the "good" mistress when in reality (at least in my opinion) she possibly is the worst out of them because she doesn´t show her intentions right from the start.

 

[RubyEriksen7]

Has nothing to do with no life, the whole point of using an extended period of time is to get mc and Heather to lower their guards down around her while she figures out how they tick. She's like the Littlefinger of this game, she quietly waits, pulls the strings, and then strikes when it's most advantageous for her. Hell, just look at her mindset when she told mc to call her "Young Mistress." her whole reasoning behind it is to fuck with her mother and drive her mother insane without doing anything, because it brings her the most joy to see that look of anger, rage, and defeat on her mothers face.

"the whole point of using an extended period of time is to get mc and Heather to lower their guards down around her while she figures out how they tick"

"Has no life" was an exaggeration, but a fair criticism since the scene stated at like noon and ended at the evening
"Extended amount of time" on MC and Heather is ok but not in the way the scene was presented, the scene is simply not noteworthy for me. like i said 80% buildup to 20% payoff.

In the game, this would be Isabella, but definetly not Elizabeth...Bella is straight forward and wants MC and Heather to obey...Elizabeth is more cunning, she wants to turn them against each other but without them "knowing", so she has to earn their trust and bring them in situations where she just puts hints in their heads. This is best achieved if they feal at ease and comfortable. They should think that Elizabeth is the "good" mistress when in reality (at least in my opinion) she possibly is the worst out of them because she doesn´t show her intentions right from the start.

And so they just sat there.. for hours. talking... analyzing... making in dept conclusions... soul readings and stuff ..
MC has 50 thousand self dialogues with himself. not for me. not with that payoff.


Anyway it's just one scene. endless potential on this game.

 

[horst123]

Yeah, like i said, for me the scene is absolutely fine but everybody sees it differently. So we agree to disagree on this one

And yeah, much potential for me too...that´s why i became a patreon even if i don´t like FemDom...but the hinted redemption or full dom "asshole" path made me really curious. And of course the stunning visuals.

 

[zh]

The only thing I find "meh" about this game is that... you can't go on a more dominating path if you aren't a douche...
MC is a wimp or a douche. Is there a "middle path" were MC dominates more, but isn't an "asshole" ? I couldn't find it.

 

[Frosty2000]

Why, oh why, is the MC such a moron (nothing but stupid choices and shitty justifications) ??? ... and when you get down to it ... when people so evil and vile push your buttons ... an option should be to slam their face into a wall till they are just as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside. That might result in a game over ... but it would be freaking worth it ... guess I am not very into the domination/degradation crap or the idea that some rich bitch blue-blood is somehow better than everyone else.

Hmm there is always someone who hates female domination, who has a hissy fit in a forum with such content. Does this really trigger you so much?
I hate male domination and I simply avoid all the games and the forums containing that. Honestly don't get the need to frequent stuff I don't like and vent there. Is this part of therapy?

 

[RubyEriksen7]

Hmm there is always someone who hates female domination, who has a hissy fit in a forum with such content. Does this really trigger you so much?
I hate male domination and I simply avoid all the games and the forums containing that. Honestly don't get the need to frequent stuff I don't like and vent there. Is this part of therapy?

The bigger problem is that 98% of the game you'll see here won't feature Femdom.
yet every time a Femdom game comes out people ask the devs to change it, because "the game will be more popular and accessible with a dom route".

Its fine for a game to have a sub route and that's it.
the people that are into Femdom (and there's many of them) usually can't get into a game without their fetishes in it, so they never try it out.

why would the dev make an effort adding fetishes when he stuck working on a dom route?
that's why there's like 5 Femdom games that are worth mentioning right now.

 

[Henissart]

I know you don't like the comparison to Starless, and Starless's art can't hold a candle to yours, but in this instance this was covered rather well in Starless. There, the pressure to accept the abuse was that their father was dying and needed the money for medical care. So the choice was to allow their abuse or let their father die. That is a believable motivation for taking abuse I think.

Fair enough, that would've been a more believable motivation to stay. I guess I didn't think about the prologue justification that much since 'real world' logic isn't all that important to me as long as the game is consistent in how it applies the 'game logic'. It's something I've been meaning to write a longer post on for the Patreon page that I'll also turn public when I do. Seems to be an area where my thinking differs from quite a few people.

While I don't mind the focus on her, I didn't like that the game only gives us the option to decide what the MC says to Heather (flirt/neutral), but not what he thinks about her. I would be perfectly fine, if they just stayed friends (without benefits).

Depending on your choices the game customizes the thoughts of the MC on Heather quite a bit. There's actually a variable called 'var_morningafter_heather_pursue', and if it's set to 'false' your MC will try his best to have only friendly thoughts.

Need walkthrough tho asap (at least for me).

I'm working on a walkthrough on the side, but since I don't use a system that simply adds +1 to a score or something when you make a choice, I have to individually describe the effect of every choice in the game. And many choices have a ton of different small effects, so this is a ton of work and will take some time. Personally I also think a certain opacity to what anything will do is part of the game. The whole thing is about not being entirely in control, so using a walkthrough strikes me as ruining the game. But that's for every player to decide of course, so I'll still make one.

 

[Henissart]

I also wanted to mention that I was very surprised in "that scene" that you set yourself up for an "out" but didn't take it. You ask the player if they're into that, then the PC monologues that they need to see if Isabella is bluffing or serious about it. I was very sure that choice was going to influence which one she was: you're into watersports, it's real, but if you're not, it was a power play to see how submissive Heather was. Not sure if you felt that a route split so early on would be too much of a headache going forward or if I totally misread your intentions.

The reason you can't prevent the scene is first and foremost that I need Heather to experience something traumatic at the start. So if you prevented that from happening by being nice to her the day before, the consequence is that Isabella is angry and Heather is traumatized in that way. Another reason is to 'teach' the player that while you have control over your intentions, the other characters play their own games and you can't control the outcome. That's an integral part of the setting and of the creative vision for the game. I'm well aware many players want to be in total control, but that's just not going to happen in this game.

I can see that making too many branches, will take too much time and/or dilute the overall quality. And I also agree that this is one of the traps that quite a few games run into. That however is mostly due to large branching paths. Branching on a branching path, will exponentially increase the work needed, and thus create problems.

But let me give an example and some possible suggestions that, although they do require some effort, they don't branch the story much, nor require too much effort.

Spoiler

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

----
And let me be clear here, this game is really good to amazing in most aspects -- and isn't even horrible in the aspect of choices. I'd say when it comes to choices, this game is average. Average is however a large step down from good/great/amazing and thus detracts from the overal experience.
The only reason I'm even typing this, is because this is such a great game. It could however be even better.
----
I feel that with not that much extra effort, you can add some feeling of agency here. Coming back to the example above:

Spoiler

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

Overall, I feel that potentially there is much to gained here regarding choices and player agency here, for fairly little effort.

I'm sorry I don't have time to answer this in more detail, but generally speaking I agree with you that the more agency I give the player the better. But just about anything you call 'a little extra work' adds up. In terms of time I have spend working, I'm at the absolute maximum I can do. I've done genuinely nothing but working, eating and sleeping since the start of development. So every single thing I add at one end takes something away somewhere else. If you have a look at the script you'll notice that there are already several very distict versions of the MC in the game. At least 3 versions are present just about any time he thinks about something. The spanking scene has 4 different versions. More simply isn't possible for me to write or create the images for.

 

[Phooploid]

I'm working on a walkthrough on the side, but since I don't use a system that simply adds +1 to a score or something when you make a choice, I have to individually describe the effect of every choice in the game. And many choices have a ton of different small effects, so this is a ton of work and will take some time. Personally I also think a certain opacity to what anything will do is part of the game. The whole thing is about not being entirely in control, so using a walkthrough strikes me as ruining the game. But that's for every player to decide of course, so I'll still make one.

How exactly do you see this "not being entirely in control"? Because to me, the opacity of the choices combined with the possibilities you do get for player agency, make it feel like you're playing some kind of secondary personality most of the time -- someone/something that can only whisper into the protagonist's ear.

It's true that this gives you a feeling of lacking control. I however feel it's a really unsatisfying lack of control. It's a lack of player agency and overall control over the main character, instead of the lack of control that comes from the circumstances, the other characters in the game and the overall situation.

The choices that jumps out to me in the positive sense, is the last ones you make in episode two, where you get to make choices based both on long and short term decisions.

Spoiler

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

Those choices gives a lot of feeling of player agency, yet also makes you realize that the MC is clearly not in control of the situation.

[edit]
Just read your reaction above. If you're going that hard: nothing but respect. I do realize that every little bit of extra work counts.
Great game and keep up the good work!

 

[Henissart]

The only thing I find "meh" about this game is that... you can't go on a more dominating path if you aren't a douche...
MC is a wimp or a douche. Is there a "middle path" were MC dominates more, but isn't an "asshole" ? I couldn't find it.

There are 3 main versions of the MC currently in the game. In your terms 'wimp' and 'douche', and then there's the version when you set neither flag and the MC is 'monitoring the situation' so to speak. The spanking scene for example is split into 2 main paths, but both have the sub/dom version respectively, and a more subdued, neutral version.
So there isn't exactly a 'more dominating path if you aren't a douche', but... I just can't write even more versions of the same character. You want what you want of course, and if none of the versions I've written suit your taste I won't argue with you about it, but I am slightly surprised that several people writing here seem to think having even more variation is possible.
I'd actually be interested if you can link me to a game that let's you have more choice about the attitude of the MC. And I don't mean this as a dig, if you have a game I'd love to have a look at how the dev has done it. Speaking about 1 person projects of course.

Edit: Here's a little snipped from the spanking scene to illustrate the 3 characters:

 

[Bonhomie]

There seems to be no doubt that this is a well presented game with great renders. The writing is good too, though the second episode is not quite as proofed as the first, but that's minor, and there is perhaps a little too much soul searching by the MC.
I was immensely impressed with the first release, and eagerly anticipated this new update.
And
I feel sort of disappointed.
Maybe my expectation was too high, but on reflection I think it is down to the pissing storyline.
Watersports is not my thing, and normally I would just ignore it, and continue, but there is something about the logic of it in this case.

If you buy into the first episode, Mother is a dominant powerful arrogant figure, who is all about class and breeding and behaviour.
Would a woman like that allow her youngest daughter to behave like she does. Mrs VS describes Isabella as 'wilful' I think, and refers to having problems getting staff due to an 'unfortunate incident', suggesting Isabella did something to a previous servant.
So if she allows her daughter to piss on the maids, what the hell does Mrs VS consider an 'unfortunate incident'.

Elizabeth will be interesting, and following Henissart's brief that there will be rivalry between the 3 Van Stern women, it looks like Mother will probably be the dom, Elizabeth the psychologically manipulating one, and Isabella the humiliating sadist, and then they bitch and vie with each other as well as over the servants.

Anja is the example of the potential end result for submission. She has been 'groomed' by the previous generation, and the reason why she is now ridiculed or teased if you want as being old, is probably due to the fact that she can 'switch off' so her tormentors derive very little pleasure, as she gives very little reaction to whatever they do to her.

I wonder if mother ever punishes the daughters. It will be interesting to see if she still has enough power or control over them to do that. Will she ask the MC to administer it. He has been tasked to deal with Heather and now with Anja. But her daughters? Hmmm

 

[jish55]

There are 3 main versions of the MC currently in the game. In your terms 'wimp' and 'douche', and then there's the version when you set neither flag and the MC is 'monitoring the situation' so to speak. The spanking scene for example is split into 2 main paths, but both have the sub/dom version respectively, and a more subdued, neutral version.
So there isn't exactly a 'more dominating path if you aren't a douche', but... I just can't write even more versions of the same character. You want what you want of course, and if none of the versions I've written suit your taste I won't argue with you about it, but I am slightly surprised that several people writing here seem to think having even more variation is possible.
I'd actually be interested if you can link me to a game that let's you have more choice about the attitude of the MC. And I don't mean this as a dig, if you have a game I'd love to have a look at how the dev has done it. Speaking about 1 person projects of course.

I'm hoping the "monitoring" path is the one where he's stepping up and protecting the others essentially, that would make sense where he'll speak when it's necessary, do what he can to make sure Anja and Heather aren't put through so much crap, but also not become submissive over it (I honestly saw the spanking as a form of submission where you were submitting to Bella, but speaking up and taking the fall was going against what she was wanting you to do).

 

[MausMaus]

Is there two routes? I seen someone mention a piss seen but I didnt get it

 

[genmaximo]

Is there two routes? I seen someone mention a piss seen but I didnt get it

You have to not push Heather the day before to get it.