All my thoughts I could remember for now. Just kind of stream of consciousness. Not all of this is meant to be constructive but I hope some of it will be. All just my opinion, I'm sure people will disagree.
General thoughts:
I can connect to this game on a personal level a bit. I was a manager at a retail place in my 30's and a lot of the employees were much younger. I didn't actually hate it overall, but it certainly wasn't a forever job. I did have a crush or 2 but I couldn't act on it obviously. This is a nice fantasy scenario (well minus whatever has happened to Nicki by the end of Chapter 2). I want to weigh in on the "is 30's old" question. Let me just say, regardless of how you feel or act, if you're in your 30's and you are or were someone's manager, the people in their late teens and early 20's definitely think you're old. They may not think you're like old, old, like elderly but it would be an incredibly rare person who thought of you as a genuine friend (like hanging out outside of work friend), and the rarest unicorn that ever unicorned that would consider you as a potential romantic partner. I guess it helps that MC is ok looking or at least portrayed that way in text, hung like a horse, and super rich, but still.
This game really gets how to make characters, specifically love interests. They're likable without being perfect. They each have some familiar, comfortable tropes mixed in without feeling cliche; you have the nerdy tomboy, the ditzy blonde who's smarter than you might think at first, the married woman who is happy in her marriage but real flirty, and the little spitfire that's got a soft underbelly. Maybe you could argue they are cliches but, to me, it all worked in favor of the game rather than against it. Good mix of kinks as well. Nicki has the butt stuff and she kind of likes being a "whore" if you go that way, Ashe likes being spanked and choked, and Gabby has her daddy stuff. Bonus points for Gabby's daddy thing actually being part of her characterization and not just "input what you want her to call you".
The dialog is really good; some of the best/most natural I've seen. Maybe other people won't feel the same. For me it was like - have you ever had a teacher or professor that explained things in a way that you just got it? Or a friend where it just feels like you speak the same language? People where you always notice "that's exactly how I would have phrased that"? I felt that way a lot with this game.
MC's dick is perfect. Like a perfect dick you would fantasize about having. Good length and thick as fuck. Just at the limit of not being distracting, where you don't take the game seriously. And perfectly shaped and colored. You believe it would hurt the girls if that's what the plot called for but also within porn logic that they could also all like it. Aaand that's enough analyzing dicks for me.
I could be wrong but I think there's some hints that the game will touch on some racial issues (Ryan's arrest, Gabby's ex kind of fetishizing her race). Could be risky but I respect it; I think you can do it justice.
It seems like there will be content with MC's little sister, which is awesome. Maybe I'm just hopeful. I have had the idea for a MC in his 30's with a younger sister in her teens forever and I'm sooo excited at the prospect of someone putting it in a game. It would combine my 2 favorite scenarios, "Adult MC with teen love interest" + "brother-sister incest".
Kind of a niche concern but thank you for not overusing gimmicks like screen shakes, screen flashes, delayed text that pops up after a split second, etc. Very specific thing, but I just was playing a game that overdid it with that stuff and it was refreshing to just be able to read.
Thoughts about Nicki:
I am a BIG sucker for "first girl". Whether it's movies, tv, books, games; if there are multiple romances, I almost always root for the one introduced earliest. Plus MC keeps thinking of her so she kind of feels like she's set up as the one you're "supposed" to end up with. So I'm rooting for Nicki's story to be one that I like. I don't know if it's going to end up that way though. I was hoping it would be mostly MC netori-ing the shit out of Brent. The end of Chapter 2 makes me think it's not going the way I was hoping but I'll reserve judgment. It could obviously still be good if it's not what I was hoping for. Personally I didn't mind the tatoos as they were and I don't care for the ones that cover the whole arm including the hand.
One thing I really wish is that there was an option in the good route to actually tell her about how much it upset you that you guys haven't really talked since you quit and the only reason you are now is that she came to ask for money. I know that's partly supposed to be because MC was trying to hide his money but I guess that part really hit home and I actually felt hurt by it in real life. I think that's part of why I like the pay for sex route. It sort of feels closest to how I really wanted to react. There's some undertones in there that they actually share feelings but there's also some anger and hurt and insecurity. I wanted to be able to express that on the fully good route as well.
The glitter effect when MC kisses Nicki on the good path made me think it was an imagination spot at first.
I hope a future update goes a little into why Nicki was with Brent in the first place and why she stayed with him. If we're supposed to believe she had some genuine feelings for MC I feel like we need some explanation. All we see of Brent so far is him just being an irredeemable dipshit. In real life it happens all the time that someone we like is with someone else and we just can't understand it but in fiction it feels like that's a point that needs to be resolved.
There's one point in the pay for sex route when Nicki starts sucking MC's dick, he says "yeah actually it is nice" which I think is supposed to be a response to her saying it must be nice he has time to work out now that he has money but that line is only in the rape route.
LOVE the little bit of ahegao with Nicki!
It's always a weird thing with games like these where you can have such different ways the MC can behave. Because most people want things to work out positively for MC regardless. So it's hard to know what's real and what's just the game changing to fit player choices. Is the Nicki on the good path, the "true" Nicki? Is she pretending at all to be into MC? If you play the pay for sex route or the rape route, it's hard to forget what you see of her in those. All things considered she's... pretty okay with what happens as long as she gets the money. Is that the true Nicki? Does each route exist in its own alternate universe and each one is the "true" Nicki in that universe? I don't know if any of that makes sense to anyone else.
About Ashe:
Not much to say. She seems pretty low drama at the moment. Not sure where it will go but it wouldn't be the worst thing to have one LI that's mostly a sweet, romantic story. That is if you don't rape her of course. Maybe some issues with her parents not approving as they are talked about a lot. Some people might not like the valley girls speech patterns but it was okay with me. Potential for a "lady in the streets, but a freak in the bed" situation. Again it could very well get more complicated. Maybe her romance will also involve the sister Cassie. She and MC talk about her and the birthday gift and when MC dreams about Cassie, he thinks it's Ashe at first.
About Gabby and Brittani:
It would be lousy of MC to ditch Gabby for Brittani after her ex did the same thing but maybe that's exactly what an evil MC would do. On the good path, I'm hoping Gabby will have MC steal Brittani from the ex for revenge. Just spitballing.
I'm glad so much of the story connected for you on a personal level. That's super nice to hear. A lot of it's pulled from my own experience being a too-old-to-be-there manager, supervising twenty-somethings.
You'd be right about the racial issues, as well as other potentially hot-button
stuff. I don't want to deliberately court controversy, but I feel like it'd be dishonest to make a game about a guy who's a philanthropist running a local charity, and never brush up against issues of race, sexuality, gender, etc. Plus, if I'm writing a story about a guy who's looking for vulnerable people to help or exploit, they're largely going to be people on the fringes of society, already suffering from marginalization.
There's definitely some content with Cassie incoming. I'm trying to slow-walk that plot a bit, but things will have the potential to advance pretty quickly once she arrives. I've actually got a lot of her content from her introductory chapter written, though I'll have to retrofit it to the current plot developments.
Heh, that glittery image in Chapter One is kind of weird. It came out looking kind of washed-out by the lighting, so I just threw a filter over it to push it into kind of a Scott Pilgrim vs the World direction. It's a visual representation of how that moment feels. But, it does kind of clash with everything else. Thanks for noting that bit of broken dialogue, too. I'll look into that. Chapter One's code is a mess, which is another good reason for me to redo it eventually..
RE: Nicki, I see all the versions of Nicki as basically able to exist alongside each other. She's had a primarily work-based friendship with you up to that point. There's a mutual crush, but it hasn't really turned into anything yet. She arrives at your condo thinking she'll probably have to fuck you for the money, because she's had terrible experiences with nearly every man in her life. But, she's convinced herself it's okay, and maybe it'll even be nice. Then it kind of splits into the four paths.
- You give her the money freely and she realizes you really are just a good guy who cares about her, and she finally lets go of all her hang-ups about you, her, and Brent. This could be the start of a relationship, if things didn't go south for her pretty soon thereafter.
- You give her the money with a condition, but you're nice about it. She's a little disappointed in you, but ultimately it's still fun, and you don't push her boundaries too much. Note that when you're fingering her on your lap, you can ask her if she's your whore or your girl. "Whore" gets you a lukewarm response, while "Girl" gets you a more emphatic reaction. She's into you, but she's playing along because it gives her plausible deniability.
- You give her the money with a condition, but you're a dick about it. She's very disappointed in you, she sees you as just another 'nice guy' who waited until he could get his dick in her, and she ultimately leaves angry and humiliated.
- You're a dick about it, and you give her the money to buy her silence. She realizes she never really knew you, and is anguished, terrified, and humiliated by the end of the night.
Ultimately, in every route I see Nicki as a pretty kinky, headstrong girl who's into you, until you decide to be an asshole to her.
Chapter 3 does get into why she stayed with Brent for so long. It's pretty anti-climactic, but I think it'll be familiar to anyone who's ever been poor, and living with someone long after the relationship had died. Sometimes people choose to be comfortably miserable, because at least that misery is a known quantity. I think Nicki was able to be happy while working with the MC, because he kind of shored up the gaps in her bad relationship. Brent doesn't care about her hobbies and interests, but MC does. Brent doesn't get her sense of humor, but MC does. Brent doesn't have anything nice to say about her, and the MC does.
What MC
didn't do was ever man up enough to just tell her he liked her, so she stayed on her relationship hamster wheel.
I think that on a long enough timeline, without the MC there to be her emotional support boyfriend, she would have ultimately left Brent anyway. He just happened to fuck up her life in less than two months, before she could really even miss MC. That said, I like the new Nicki that emerges in Chapter Three. Like the MC, she's evolved since we last saw her.
RE: Ashe, You'd be right in seeing her as a very chill love interest. She's the one among the girls who kind of has her shit together right now. Most of the immediate drama will come from her bad alignment routes. But, her new position at the museum will put her center-stage for future events. Her valley girl speech patterns will also simmer down to the occasional "um" or "like" as when we see her coerced into returning to the MC's condo.
RE: Gabby and Brittani, this relationship has been super fun to write so far, and more complicated than anticipated. I'd kind of had Brittani in my mind as this two-dimensional villain, but as I started writing her it just didn't ring true. As she started to take shape, I realized she could easily stand as a love interest in her own right. But, that may require some people to play a friendship route with Gabby, if they don't want to break the poor girl's heart.
Thanks for the detailed review/analysis! Always love reading stuff like this!
