Is it intended to be a black and white game or is it going to be coloured later? If it's meant to be black and white I'd appreciate some options to change the brightness, the white is a little harsh on my stupid eyes. Game looks cool otherwise I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure.
The story of the game involves all the colour literally draining from the world. So until someone comes along to save the world from whatever is wrong with it while we romance Lucy and fix our inn, then there'll probably be no colour.
As a character she is a powerhouse, solving issues and combats while the protagonist is a bit of a bumbling idiot, at least at the beginning. The reasons she stays with the protagonist are random chance, convenience and the fact the protagonist owns an inn, which feels kind of disappointing in a romance. I would prefer if there was an extended section during the first summer where she is weaker and the protagonist nurses her back to health, or show more reasons why she would care about a seemingly very mediocre person. Other than that the shift from friend to girlfriend(?) feels very sudden.
The "flirting" action needs to be fleshed out, and then there needs to be more "go mapping out the area" kinda stuff IMO, that'll give plenty of opportunities for the friend-gf shift to get smoothed out.
Sure, protag *probably* knows some stuff about the surrounding area, depending on intro decisions, but that's not really reflected in gameplay that well yet. Playing with things like certain old landmarks being gone, finding new landmarks he couldn't reach as a kid, etc etc.
It'd also help with giving Lucy more motivation to stick around, since it'd become more of a home.
As for rounding out her character/motivations, physical health issues are a classic, but with her being "barely managed fracturing," I feel like the trauma/mental health issues side would be more accessible if not better. It'd also potentially bring an opportunity to explain why protag has to build from basically 0, if there was an episode where she, say, met MC on the road to the inn, got caught out by another adventuring party in her fractured state, and MC took a big wound to break up the situation, and we start like 2-3 weeks after that incident which is why our stats suck. (y'know, cuz MC doesn't panic or flail like a total combat newbie often does, and yet our stats are suuuper low) Free setup for expositing a survivor's guilt complex or what have you, stalls out the development of the relationship, etc. note: this setup would require a new framing for the level-up system, the first few skills become "relearning" or scraping off rust instead of simply "improving," but it'd remove some ludonarrative dissonance (sorry, basically it'd make the gap between mc's stats and his background/attitude make more sense).
as it stands it feels cozy, but maybe a little too cozy and distant from the backstories given :/. Hopefully it's adjusted in future updates, the gameplay loop is quite nice and the setting makes some amount of sense and interest, rare things in games posted here (lol)
I do kinda wish the fractured wasn't as simple as a single meter and over half = fractured! under = not fractured!
Hysteresis (the fancy term for "go very high before getting up a level, go very low before dropping a level") is the kinda "classical" way these states are handled in other games, take Darkest Dungeon, you need to hit 100 stress to have a breakdown, then hit 0 stress to recover. if you never hit 100, you never break down, but after hitting 100, you're stuck until either a heart attack at 200 or going all the way to 0 (or exiting the dungeon). similarly, overheating in sci-fi weapons, if you hit the max, you overheat and have to wait until it drops to 0 before shooting again.
That way it actually feels like something that sticks around better, imo, and is a bit more threatening.
As for rounding out her character/motivations, physical health issues are a classic, but with her being "barely managed fracturing," I feel like the trauma/mental health issues side would be more accessible if not better. It'd also potentially bring an opportunity to explain why protag has to build from basically 0, if there was an episode where she, say, met MC on the road to the inn, got caught out by another adventuring party in her fractured state, and MC took a big wound to break up the situation, and we start like 2-3 weeks after that incident which is why our stats suck. (y'know, cuz MC doesn't panic or flail like a total combat newbie often does, and yet our stats are suuuper low) Free setup for expositing a survivor's guilt complex or what have you, stalls out the development of the relationship, etc. note: this setup would require a new framing for the level-up system, the first few skills become "relearning" or scraping off rust instead of simply "improving," but it'd remove some ludonarrative dissonance (sorry, basically it'd make the gap between mc's stats and his background/attitude make more sense).
There are a couple of ways the dev could go depending on the themes they want to hit. There is something nice about the idea of making yourself worthy of another person, and if they want to explore that idea the main character should be a bit of a fuckup at the start. There are also ways the dev can resolve the characters incredibly dark backstories by making them find solace in each other. It is also possible that the author just wants a cozy inn game without any layered themes. My advice would be different depending on the authors intentions, but I am not really a writer and am not going to start writing essays on f95zone lol. Just something to motivate the dev, if they're here.
There are a couple of ways the dev could go depending on the themes they want to hit. There is something nice about the idea of making yourself worthy of another person, and if they want to explore that idea the main character should be a bit of a fuckup at the start. There are also ways the dev can resolve the characters incredibly dark backstories by making them find solace in each other. It is also possible that the author just wants a cozy inn game without any layered themes. My advice would be different depending on the authors intentions, but I am not really a writer and am not going to start writing essays on f95zone lol. Just something to motivate the dev, if they're here.
Dev seems to read itch page more actively than here per se, if you happen to have an account. in the meantime we have to wait and see. By the by, if you're not playing it, version 0.21 is out on the itch page
Hey, Dev here, didn't know there was a thread for my game. If you guys have suggestions / complaints, feel free to leave them here and I'll be sure to check in and respond where I can. Also I check the itchio page frequently so you can give feedback there as well.
I'll add a toggle for chromatic abb. for everyone having a bad time with it - that's really not hard to do. It was added to give a little visual variety, but also for lore reasons.
For people asking about colored version of the game, there will 100% be fully colored stuff added. Color will be coming back to the world over the course of the game, but I'm a solo dev (minus SFX and Music) and so everything just takes time.
The version of the game up right now is alpha, balancing / dialog pacing / many other things are all subject to change and polish, but please, if you find any sticking points lemme know. I'm always happy to get feedback.
The "flirting" action needs to be fleshed out, and then there needs to be more "go mapping out the area" kinda stuff IMO, that'll give plenty of opportunities for the friend-gf shift to get smoothed out.
Sure, protag *probably* knows some stuff about the surrounding area, depending on intro decisions, but that's not really reflected in gameplay that well yet. Playing with things like certain old landmarks being gone, finding new landmarks he couldn't reach as a kid, etc etc.
It'd also help with giving Lucy more motivation to stick around, since it'd become more of a home.
As for rounding out her character/motivations, physical health issues are a classic, but with her being "barely managed fracturing," I feel like the trauma/mental health issues side would be more accessible if not better. It'd also potentially bring an opportunity to explain why protag has to build from basically 0, if there was an episode where she, say, met MC on the road to the inn, got caught out by another adventuring party in her fractured state, and MC took a big wound to break up the situation, and we start like 2-3 weeks after that incident which is why our stats suck. (y'know, cuz MC doesn't panic or flail like a total combat newbie often does, and yet our stats are suuuper low) Free setup for expositing a survivor's guilt complex or what have you, stalls out the development of the relationship, etc. note: this setup would require a new framing for the level-up system, the first few skills become "relearning" or scraping off rust instead of simply "improving," but it'd remove some ludonarrative dissonance (sorry, basically it'd make the gap between mc's stats and his background/attitude make more sense).
as it stands it feels cozy, but maybe a little too cozy and distant from the backstories given :/. Hopefully it's adjusted in future updates, the gameplay loop is quite nice and the setting makes some amount of sense and interest, rare things in games posted here (lol)
Hey thanks for all the thoughts there, and let me say, I hear you.
I'm implementing gameplay systems at the same time as I'm laying in story. As I get more systems online, the story will adjust to take advantage of those systems (for example, in the first update, I added events. These are an opportunity to take a more active role in decision making / conversations and will drive a lot of the story).
The prologue is almost certainly going to be adjusted, the pacing of story and dialog adjusted etc. I wanted to give a good intro to the world and kind of help people understand the setting, even with the initial alpha, and if it feels a little rushed or odd, hey, you're probably right. But I'll try to sand away those rough edges with each update.
The MC has bad stats to start with, because a) it's an RPG, you start with bad stats haha, and b)they haven't actually fought any monsters before, even if they've had a little training. But hopefully as development progresses this stuff can be ironed out a bit. Again, thanks for the suggestions / musings - I like reading what people think about the game.
Does anyone have a list of games like this? I really love this kind of h-game and this one here is by far the most promising. (Hoping for more scenes!)
I know the black and white imouto series but I"m not sure if there are any other else
Does anyone have a list of games like this? I really love this kind of h-game and this one here is by far the most promising. (Hoping for more scenes!)
I know the black and white imouto series but I"m not sure if there are any other else
this is basically similar to living with sister monochrome fantasy
And from what I can see now - if dev will continue their work on same level as they delivered current version, and also listen to community (which, for example, recent Subverse devs pretty much failed in all aspects) - we will get yet another good adult game
Ended up spending a majority of my time foraging for food and trying to trigger any sort of ero event. Didn't pull it off in the bit over an hour I played. Maybe I was doign something wrong. I maxed her interest and trust and was hoping to find some way to increase desire but didn't pull it off.
Ended up spending a majority of my time foraging for food and trying to trigger any sort of ero event. Didn't pull it off in the bit over an hour I played. Maybe I was doign something wrong. I maxed her interest and trust and was hoping to find some way to increase desire but didn't pull it off.
It might be locked behind one of the first couple quests, but at high interest you should see a "flirt" option appear in the "[...] spend time with Lucy" interaction. Some level-ups unlock higher interest max too, so try that as well...
It might be locked behind one of the first couple quests, but at high interest you should see a "flirt" option appear in the "[...] spend time with Lucy" interaction. Some level-ups unlock higher interest max too, so try that as well...
she never seemed interested. probably locked behind something I haven't done. I'll revisit sometime tonight or tomorrow but it was definitely a little bit frustrating to feel like I was scrambling like a fast dog on wood floors
she never seemed interested. probably locked behind something I haven't done. I'll revisit sometime tonight or tomorrow but it was definitely a little bit frustrating to feel like I was scrambling like a fast dog on wood floors
Her max affinity can be increased by levelling up certain abilities (alchemy table, learning spell casting, etc) - mouse over the different skills in the level up chart and they will tell you if they increase her affinity or not. But many of those skills are locked behind quests or interactions.
As I get some more development done, I'll signpost things a bit better and work on overall balance. Thanks for your patience.
