VN Ren'Py Abandoned Futagenesis Unveiled [v0.06.2] [TessaXYZ]

[Me-ta-Xa]

Thanks! If you've caught up with the story, you can also play all the puzzles from the "Puzzles" option on the main menu, so you don't need to run through the story again to try them out.

You'll be a pro after a few of them!

Damn it....everytime a message of Tessa pops up I'm hoping to see the 0.04 switch to 0.05
Gotta stay patient

 

[TessaXYZ]

Damn it....everytime a message of Tessa pops up I'm hoping to see the 0.04 switch to 0.05
Gotta stay patient

Just think of that dopamine rush when it IS that message!

 

[Me-ta-Xa]

Just think of that dopamine rush when it IS that message!

Hahaha will do....thanks

 

[Orphanus]

Visually the game is indeed quite pleasing & I would certainly like the characters far better if there was any player control over how things unfold and develop but as of now I must say I feel more uncomfortable than anything else about every single spicy situation so far. And the Paige scenes, in my personal opinion, are really ewh. Not a fan of forced sex scenes in general but even less so when they aren't just forced upon me as the player but also on the character. I don't feel the game treats the situation seriously enough for what happens, dunno, not a fan & I ended up loathing the character (Paige) and disliking the whole sorority in general.

The writing itself is fairly good and there's not really anything wrong with having all these different personalities in the game, but due to a lack of input on the player's end I didn't like any of them too much so far. I really wish the protagonist wasn't such a push-over, it doesn't fit at all with her supposedly successfully keeping her secret, how exactly when she is incapable of saying "no" to anything and to not act against her clear, better judgement? Doesn't add up to me at the end of day.

Not sure how I would rate this (I won't, way too early in development) because I think my points are valid, but at the same time a lot of it is personal preference, so not really something to deduct stars for, while at the same time I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement either way. I'd probably go with a 3,5 rounded up to a 4 but I'm not sure if I would play this again if there aren't improvements in regards to how the protagonist acts. Either give the player a lot more control or make her act according to what we are told about her. Just being told something is meaningless when it doesn't translate into behaving accordingly.

This is not a bad story, but I also think it's not a great visual novel at the same time (let alone a game), it does have top-notch visuals though and the writing is also clearly better than average to me.

All in all I would say I was kinda disappointed by the lack of choices in combination (I knew there weren't any choices to make in chapter 1) with the forced sex scenes (with a character who turned from interesting to repulsive through that in an instant), it just makes me worried about future content, while at the same time I am still looking forward to future updates and I wanna see where things go with this story because obviously there might be a change in tone and style and this has the potential for a lot of different things.

If, in the end, this ends up being not to my liking at all I'll live with that, of course this doesn't have to cater to my personal preferences & I surely wouldn't complain about it.

 

[Me-ta-Xa]

Visually the game is indeed quite pleasing & I would certainly like the characters far better if there was any player control over how things unfold and develop but as of now I must say I feel more uncomfortable than anything else about every single spicy situation so far. And the Paige scenes, in my personal opinion, are really ewh. Not a fan of forced sex scenes in general but even less so when they aren't just forced upon me as the player but also on the character. I don't feel the game treats the situation seriously enough for what happens, dunno, not a fan & I ended up loathing the character (Paige) and disliking the whole sorority in general.

The writing itself is fairly good and there's not really anything wrong with having all these different personalities in the game, but due to a lack of input on the player's end I didn't like any of them too much so far. I really wish the protagonist wasn't such a push-over, it doesn't fit at all with her supposedly successfully keeping her secret, how exactly when she is incapable of saying "no" to anything and to not act against her clear, better judgement? Doesn't add up to me at the end of day.

Not sure how I would rate this (I won't, way too early in development) because I think my points are valid, but at the same time a lot of it is personal preference, so not really something to deduct stars for, while at the same time I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement either way. I'd probably go with a 3,5 rounded up to a 4 but I'm not sure if I would play this again if there aren't improvements in regards to how the protagonist acts. Either give the player a lot more control or make her act according to what we are told about her. Just being told something is meaningless when it doesn't translate into behaving accordingly.

This is not a bad story, but I also think it's not a great visual novel at the same time (let alone a game), it does have top-notch visuals though and the writing is also clearly better than average to me.

All in all I would say I was kinda disappointed by the lack of choices in combination (I knew there weren't any choices to make in chapter 1) with the forced sex scenes (with a character who turned from interesting to repulsive through that in an instant), it just makes me worried about future content, while at the same time I am still looking forward to future updates and I wanna see where things go with this story because obviously there might be a change in tone and style and this has the potential for a lot of different things.

If, in the end, this ends up being not to my liking at all I'll live with that, of course this doesn't have to cater to my personal preferences & I surely wouldn't complain about it.

All nice and all to vent your opinion on this game (and no, this is not to critisice...you have the right to have your own view on any game whatsoever) but this should be placed in the review section instead of the game thread imo.

 

[Orphanus]

All nice and all to vent your opinion on this game (and no, this is not to critisice...you have the right to have your own view on any game whatsoever) but this should be placed in the review section instead of the game thread imo.

No, because that would mean I have to give a rating, I can't just write a review and then not give this or that amount of stars, besides this is the game thread so where's the issue with writing down my thoughts and impressions?

 

[Me-ta-Xa]

No, because that would mean I have to give a rating, I can't just write a review and then not give this or that amount of stars, besides this is the game thread so where's the issue with writing down my thoughts and impressions?

Ah ok....so thats your standing point.
No issue in giving your thoughts or opinion (thought I made that clear) just thought it was written as a review, thus thought it should be in the review section.
But hey if you don't want to rate the game your free to do whatever you want.....was merely a suggestion from my part
But you explained so it's all good from my end.

 

[Orphanus]

Ah ok....so thats your standing point.
No issue in giving your thoughts or opinion (thought I made that clear) just thought it was written as a review, thus thought it should be in the review section.
But hey if you don't want to rate the game your free to do whatever you want.....was merely a suggestion from my part
But you explained so it's all good from my end.

I didn't take it as an offense, I'm just not great at conveying my attitude in written form I think, I also wasn't ranting, I tried to describe what exactly I took issue with as bluntly and unmistakably as possible. I'm sorry if I made you feel like I'm snapping at you, you didn't do anything wrong in the slightest. I would rate the game if I felt like I could give a fair score but as of now I do not. I dislike others throwing 5 stars at games in their earliest stages so I try my best to refrain from such, but at the same time I think the game and the author deserve better than getting 3 stars from me just because I don't wanna give 5 stars at this point in time.

Since your replies make me feel as if I came across as shitting on the game I wanna re-iterate that I think this is better than a lot of VNs even though I really disliked every single spicy situation so far, honestly that is quite a feat, normally I would just throw the game aside at that point, but this is a labor of effort, care and love so I won't make a final verdict on how I like it before it's close to being finished.

Right now this has all the potential to become a game I adore still, which, again, isn't ordinary because a (subjectively) meh first chapter with forced sex scenes normally would also make me drop the game immediately.

 

[Me-ta-Xa]

I didn't take it as an offense, I'm just not great at conveying my attitude in written form I think, I also wasn't ranting, I tried to describe what exactly I took issue with as bluntly and unmistakably as possible. I'm sorry if I made you feel like I'm snapping at you, you didn't do anything wrong in the slightest. I would rate the game if I felt like I could give a fair score but as of now I do not. I dislike others throwing 5 stars at games in their earliest stages so I try my best to refrain from such, but at the same time I think the game and the author deserve better than getting 3 stars from me just because I don't wanna give 5 stars at this point in time.

Since your replies make me feel as if I came across as shitting on the game I wanna re-iterate that I think this is better than a lot of VNs even though I really disliked every single spicy situation so far, honestly that is quite a feat, normally I would just throw the game aside at that point, but this is a labor of effort, care and love so I won't make a final verdict on how I like it before it's close to being finished.

Right now this has all the potential to become a game I adore still, which, again, isn't ordinary because a (subjectively) meh first chapter with forced sex scenes normally would also make me drop the game immediately.

Sorry if I made you feel like I thought you were "shitting" on the game....I did not get that feeling...just a honest opnion.
And even if I did ....it does not matter....your entiteled to your opinion.
And you're right I also get the feels that Tessa puts in a lot of effort and wanting to make it perfect before release....don't mind waiting a bit longer for updates because that.
I do have to say you have a good way with words....at least there is no bashing or such
And thats the last I have to say about it before peeps starting telling us to get a room

 

[TessaXYZ]

I really wish the protagonist wasn't such a push-over, it doesn't fit at all with her supposedly successfully keeping her secret, how exactly when she is incapable of saying "no" to anything and to not act against her clear, better judgement?

I was kinda disappointed by the lack of choices in combination (I knew there weren't any choices to make in chapter 1)

Not a fan of forced sex scenes in general but even less so when they aren't just forced upon me as the player but also on the character.
...
I ended up loathing the character (Paige)

but I'm not sure if I would play this again if there aren't improvements in regards to how the protagonist acts.
...
I wanna see where things go with this story because obviously there might be a change in tone and style and this has the potential for a lot of different things

Quite a bit to unpack there, but I'll do my best to comment and contextualize. I imagine some of the points will need long answers from me to address, so let's see how I do. (Hi, future Tessa here. Wow, this got long. I hope people actually read this!)

I'll summarize your points here first, if only to just help me make sure I capture everything:

1. How can it be that Jenny kept this secret all her life and yet, all of a sudden, she's in situations coming about from her inability to prevent being exposed?

2. Disappointed in the lack of choices.

3. Discomfort with how the scene in the dressing room unfolded.

4. Concerned that the MC's behavior and the style/tone of the VN are static and that later content will just be more of the same.

_______________________________________________

1. How can it be that Jenny kept this secret all her life and yet, all of a sudden, she's in situations coming about from her inability to prevent being exposed?

I think we need to look at this from a few angles. I'll list a few pieces of information here:

• Jenny comments at the very beginning of the prologue that up until now, she has been absolutely steadfast in her determination to not be in social situations beyond hanging out one-on-one with Alexis or studying with Paige. She is socially highly naïve, because she's never had to contend with social pressure at any real scale. She's been in college for approximately nine months, and before that she lived with Trina and kept an extremely tight lid on her activities.
• Alexis comments about Jenny being sheltered her whole life when they were walking towards the sorority house. Mentioning this here to simply point out that Jenny's solitude isn't just a mentality; in recent years (read: as her body rapidly developed), she refused to participate in gatherings, would wear really baggy clothing, etc. She's felt ashamed of being different from everyone else, and Lucia's presence in their lives (aka "L" by Jenny et al), however distant, kept her in check.
• Jenny's motivations for coming out of her shell is that she's finally an adult, and the things that start to matter at that age are quite different from the things that matter as a child. She's starting to feel incredibly lonely in a way that didn't affect her as a teenager, and her internal monologue directly alludes to this shift in her mental state since starting college earlier in the year. It's one thing to be a loner as a kid, but to be a loner as an adult is having a pretty severe effect on her happiness and she finally decided she wanted to participate in life.
• It's been two years since she or Trina had heard from Lucia. The entire rest of her life, Lucia has been a constant fixture. This will be talked about more in Chapter 2, but they're both starting to wonder if she's gone for good. Imagine being in a similar situation, where someone is threatening you to stay indoors for 16 years. But then they disappear suddenly. After two years you might start thinking to yourself, "Maybe it's finally safe to go outside...? Did something happen to them? Am I finally free?"
• Through the drinking game, we learn that Jenny masturbates a LOT. Her libido is quite high, but up until now she's always been able to discretely "take care" of things because she's always been in her own element. The care she's given to secrecy now begins to conflict with an equally primal desire to not feel alone anymore. She wants friends, but even more deeply, she wants intimacy and affection and she doesn't really understand how to navigate this space.

Let's summarize. Since she started college around 9 months before the story begins, her loneliness and desire for social connection (and more deeply, intimacy and personal connection) have skyrocketed. She caves and finally accepts participation in social situations she's had very little experience with, and her confusion and excitement that follow have left her rather overwhelmed with emotions she desperately wants to feel despite her prior rational judgment. A part of her doubts whether her rational judgment is still valid. It's been two years since Lucia has contacted her or Trina, and in that time her loneliness has caught up to her sense of self-preservation. And now, she finds herself in situations that sit smack in the middle of those two conflicting interests. A part of her wants to run away because that's what she's always done, and a new part of her wants to get even closer because she's just so fucking tired of running.

I hope I've contextualized this sufficiently so that it doesn't seem so sudden for her. And nothing here is new information, it's all been presented to various degrees in the text.

_______________________________________________

2. Disappointed in the lack of choices.

I've touched on this before, but it's unreasonable to think people will read 30 pages of comments to find it so I'll try to reframe and re-explain my position on this.

First, I'm just one person. I don't have a team. So when my chapter is going to be 600+ images and 20,000+ words, with all new puzzles and music and sounds and everything, I'm hitting an upper limit on what one person can achieve in a reasonable about of time.

So when we talk about choices in these sorts of games, what are we saying, exactly? Are we saying that we want significant choices that impact the story? Because if that's what we're saying, a project that relies this heavily on visual immersion is dead in the water. I can't render 1200 renders in a reasonable amount of time just because people want an option whether to turn left or right at the fork in the road. And ultimately, I feel that my planned story and the planned character arcs are better off not turning this VN into a "choose-your-own-adventure" game, but that the best approach is to tell a tight story with full character arcs, and to offer limited choices along the way.

That said, it's simply untrue when you say there are no choices. Chapter 1 has two choices, and the upcoming chapter has a couple more. But the effects of the choices will bear fruit over time, and the scope of those choices is limited to: (A) changes in dialogue and the context of a scene, or (B) minor effects that don't affect the story. The two choices in Chapter 1 are whether to peek at Alexis, and which of the girls Jenny seems to want to rely on, and these group into type A. The effect of these choices might not even be obvious to you when they happen, because I'm not going to plaster the words "YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO GO LEFT" on the screen, but the effects absolutely shape the nature of certain character dynamics, and all the little choices in the game will actually affect which ending you get (there are multiple endings planned)!

I've played plenty of sandbox games and linear games with frequent choices. And you know what? I feel like the choices being given there are vacuous and the story suffers because the creator had to come up with a collection of branching paths that don't satisfyingly resolve any of the character arcs. And I can't blame them! Offer too many branching paths and the story almost immediately grows past the scope that any one person, or even a small team of people, can manage.

I mean, look at a AAA game like Mass Effect! A game which was touted for its dialogue wheel. But IMO the "choices" in that game were vacuous. You either behave like a decent human being, or you behave like an absolute asshole, and the larger story was entirely unaffected. The choices in the second game mattered in the sense that part of your crew would die if you chose poorly, but that just meant that you were locked out of some later story beats and ultimately had a lesser experience because of it. And that was with a AAA budget and a AAA team. (Edit: For the record, I fucking love Mass Effect.)

All I can do is tell the best story I can and try to offer some engaging gameplay along the way (puzzles) and some player interaction (limited choices). If that's a dealbreaker, because you want to choose the outcome of every scene... I simply don't have the capacity to write and render a dozen parallel stories that are as internally satisfying (in my opinion) as the story I have planned out.

_______________________________________________

3. Discomfort with how the scene in the dressing room unfolded.

Hopefully you read what I wrote about point #1 and understood Jenny's mentality at the start of the story.

The comment I'd make here is that I disagree with the view that this was a "forced sex" scene.

Intimacy in real life isn't a sterile, transactional environment:
Character 1: "I would like to initiate sex. Would you like to initiate sex? Please check yes or no."
Character 2: "Yes, I accept your proposal. I have checked the appropriate box. We may begin the touching process."

Obviously that's a caricature of the complaint, but I'm just trying to say that sexual encounters can develop all sorts of ways. So let's see how this scene unfolded, shall we?

Paige looks in and sees Jenny in a sexy outfit. Paige is then highly turned on by what she learns about Jenny, a girl who she has been close to for several months. Paige makes a move and seats Jenny down. Jenny is initially embarrassed and confused (she's never had a sexual encounter) and figured that anyone who knew about her would be weirded out. Paige then asks Jenny if she wants her to stop. Jenny says she doesn't want her to stop, giving her consent before anything more serious than Paige's initial move happens:

J = Jenny
Pa = Paige
Ale = Alexis

J "Please, I just need you to agree to—"
J "—ooooooooOHHHHHHHHH FUCK~"
Pa "Mmmm..."
J "~What... are you... doing...~"
Pa "You've been... keeping this... a secret from me... all year?!"
J "I have my reasons! Please, you can't tell any—"
Ale "I can still hear whispering in there. Jenny, is Paige with you?"
J "Hey!"
Pa "All our study sessions... You didn't have to stay a virgin..."
J "I haven't told anyone about this! No one knows, it's not just you!"
J "Wait, why are you getting on your knees? What are you d—"
J "{i}(She's... kissing the tip? Oh my god... Don't look underneath, Paige... I have to keep her believing I'm trans...){/i}"
J "Are you...? You're not weirded out by this?!"
Pa "Do you... want me to stop?"
J "I... uh... god! No, don't stop!"
Pa "Good."
J "Am I... dreaming?!"
Pa "Nnn-nnn."
J "If I am... don't wake me up..."
J "Deeper, Paige..."

To lump this in with "forced sex" just seems absurd to me, because Jenny very quickly gives her consent. The fact that Alexis says "she's not thinking clearly" later in the scene is more reflective of Alexis's opinion on the matter than Jenny's.

_______________________________________________

4. Concerned that the MC's behavior and the style/tone of the VN are static and that later content will just be more of the same.

You may remember that one of the last lines in Chapter 1 was Jenny calling Trina and sounding quite alarmed. It's a TINY spoiler about the start of Chapter 2 to say that Jenny has finally come to her senses that she's been a little out of control in the previous 18 hours. All that tension that's been building in her for months finally released, but she realizes she's been too careless and she heads to Trina's to talk about what happened.

I've talked about this before, but I've thought a lot about character arcs. Jenny, Claire, Trina, Paige, Ashley, Alexis, some characters I haven't even introduced yet... they can all be defined as who they are at the start of the story, and who they become by the end. What's missing in their lives? What do they want?

So yes, Jenny is on her own lengthy character arc. And her arc is very rapidly transitioning away from "careless girl who can't make decisions about what she wants and everything happens TO her" to something else. And her arc will progress accordingly.

_______________________________________________

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Probably should have spent all that time trying to finish writing this next chapter, but I felt the need to respond.
I do think it's possible for me to improve the earlier dialogue to better convey some of these premises, and it's something I'll look at.

 

[Orphanus]

Quite a bit to unpack there, but I'll do my best to comment and contextualize. I imagine some of the points will need long answers from me to address, so let's see how I do. (Hi, future Tessa here. Wow, this got long. I hope people actually read this!)

I'll summarize your points here first, if only to just help me make sure I capture everything:

1. How can it be that Jenny kept this secret all her life and yet, all of a sudden, she's in situations coming about from her inability to prevent being exposed?

2. Disappointed in the lack of choices.

3. Discomfort with how the scene in the dressing room unfolded.

4. Concerned that the MC's behavior and the style/tone of the VN are static and that later content will just be more of the same.

_______________________________________________

1. How can it be that Jenny kept this secret all her life and yet, all of a sudden, she's in situations coming about from her inability to prevent being exposed?

I think we need to look at this from a few angles. I'll list a few pieces of information here:

• Jenny comments at the very beginning of the prologue that up until now, she has been absolutely steadfast in her determination to not be in social situations beyond hanging out one-on-one with Alexis or studying with Paige. She is socially highly naïve, because she's never had to contend with social pressure at any real scale. She's been in college for approximately nine months, and before that she lived with Trina and kept an extremely tight lid on her activities.
• Alexis comments about Jenny being sheltered her whole life when they were walking towards the sorority house. Mentioning this here to simply point out that Jenny's solitude isn't just a mentality; in recent years (read: as her body rapidly developed), she refused to participate in gatherings, would wear really baggy clothing, etc. She's felt ashamed of being different from everyone else, and Lucia's presence in their lives (aka "L" by Jenny et al), however distant, kept her in check.
• Jenny's motivations for coming out of her shell is that she's finally an adult, and the things that start to matter at that age are quite different from the things that matter as a child. She's starting to feel incredibly lonely in a way that didn't affect her as a teenager, and her internal monologue directly alludes to this shift in her mental state since starting college earlier in the year. It's one thing to be a loner as a kid, but to be a loner as an adult is having a pretty severe effect on her happiness and she finally decided she wanted to participate in life.
• It's been two years since she or Trina had heard from Lucia. The entire rest of her life, Lucia has been a constant fixture. This will be talked about more in Chapter 2, but they're both starting to wonder if she's gone for good. Imagine being in a similar situation, where someone is threatening you to stay indoors for 16 years. But then they disappear suddenly. After two years you might start thinking to yourself, "Maybe it's finally safe to go outside...? Did something happen to them? Am I finally free?"
• Through the drinking game, we learn that Jenny masturbates a LOT. Her libido is quite high, but up until now she's always been able to discretely "take care" of things because she's always been in her own element. The care she's given to secrecy now begins to conflict with an equally primal desire to not feel alone anymore. She wants friends, but even more deeply, she wants intimacy and affection and she doesn't really understand how to navigate this space.

Let's summarize. Since she started college around 9 months before the story begins, her loneliness and desire for social connection (and more deeply, intimacy and personal connection) have skyrocketed. She caves and finally accepts participation in social situations she's had very little experience with, and her confusion and excitement that follow have left her rather overwhelmed with emotions she desperately wants to feel despite her prior rational judgment. A part of her doubts whether her rational judgment is still valid. It's been two years since Lucia has contacted her or Trina, and in that time her loneliness has caught up to her sense of self-preservation. And now, she finds herself in situations that sit smack in the middle of those two conflicting interests. A part of her wants to run away because that's what she's always done, and a new part of her wants to get even closer because she's just so fucking tired of running.

I hope I've contextualized this sufficiently so that it doesn't seem so sudden for her. And nothing here is new information, it's all been presented to various degrees in the text.

_______________________________________________

2. Disappointed in the lack of choices.

I've touched on this before, but it's unreasonable to think people will read 30 pages of comments to find so I'll try to reframe and re-explain my position on this.

First, I'm just one person. I don't have a team. So when my chapter is going to be 600+ images and 20,000+ words, with all new puzzles and music and sounds and everything, I'm hitting an upper limit on what one person can achieve in a reasonable about of time.

So when we talk about choices in these sorts of games, what are we saying, exactly? Are we saying that we want significant choices that impact the story? Because if that's what we're saying, a project that relies this heavily on visual immersion is dead in the water. I can't render 1200 renders in a reasonable amount of time just because people want an option whether to turn left or right at the fork in the road. And ultimately, I feel that my planned story and the planned character arcs are better off not turning this VN into a "choose-your-own-adventure" game, but that the best approach is to tell a tight story with full character arcs, and to offer limited choices along the way.

That said, it's simply untrue when you say there are no choices. Chapter 1 has two choices, and the upcoming chapter has a couple more. But the effects of the choices will bear fruit over time, and the scope of those choices is limited to: (A) changes in dialogue and the context of a scene, or (B) minor effects that don't affect the story. The two choices in Chapter 1 are whether to peek at Alexis, and which of the girls Jenny seems to want to rely on, and these group into type A. The effect of these choices might not even be obvious to you when they happen, because I'm not going to plaster the words "YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO GO LEFT" on the screen, but the effects absolutely shape the nature of certain character dynamics, and all the little choices in the game will actually affect which ending you get (there are multiple endings planned)!

I've played plenty of sandbox games and linear games with frequent choices. And you know what? I feel like the choices being given there are vacuous and the story suffers because the creator had to come up with a collection of branching paths that don't satisfyingly resolve any of the character arcs. And I can't blame them! Offer too many branching paths and the story almost immediately grows past the scope that any one person, or even a small team of people, can manage.

I mean, look at a AAA game like Mass Effect! A game which was touted for its dialogue wheel. But IMO the "choices" in that game were vacuous. You either behave like a decent human being, or you behave like an absolute asshole, and the larger story was entirely unaffected. The choices in the second game mattered in the sense that part of your crew would die if you chose poorly, but that just meant that you were locked out of some later story beats and ultimately had a lesser experience because of it. And that was with a AAA budget and a AAA team.

All I can do is tell the best story I can and try to offer some engaging gameplay along the way (puzzles) and some player interaction (limited choices). If that's a dealbreaker, because you want to choose the outcome of every scene... I simply don't have the capacity to write and render a dozen parallel stories that are as internally satisfying (in my opinion) as the story I have planned out.

_______________________________________________

3. Discomfort with how the scene in the dressing room unfolded.

Hopefully you read what I wrote about point #1 and understood Jenny's mentality at the start of the story.

The comment I'd make here is that I disagree with the view that this was a "forced sex" scene.

Intimacy in real life isn't a sterile, transactional environment:
Character 1: "I would like to initiate sex. Would you like to initiate sex? Please check yes or no."
Character 2: "Yes, I accept your proposal. I have checked the appropriate box. We may begin the touching process."

Obviously that's a caricature of the complaint, but I'm just trying to say that sexual encounters can develop all sorts of ways. So let's see how this scene unfolded, shall we?

Paige looks in and sees Jenny in a sexy outfit. Paige is then highly turned on by what she learns about Jenny, a girl who she has been close to for several months. Paige makes a move and seats Jenny down. Jenny is initially embarrassed and confused (she's never had a sexual encounter) and figured that anyone who knew about her would be weirded out. Paige then asks Jenny if she wants her to stop. Jenny says she doesn't want her to stop, giving her consent before anything more serious happens than Paige's initial move:

J = Jenny
Pa = Paige

J "Please, I just need you to agree to—"
J "—ooooooooOHHHHHHHHH FUCK~"
Pa "Mmmm..."
J "~What... are you... doing...~"
Pa "You've been... keeping this... a secret from me... all year?!"
J "I have my reasons! Please, you can't tell any—"
Ale "I can still hear whispering in there. Jenny, is Paige with you?"
J "Hey!"
Pa "All our study sessions... You didn't have to stay a virgin..."
J "I haven't told anyone about this! No one knows, it's not just you!"
J "Wait, why are you getting on your knees? What are you d—"
J "{i}(She's... kissing the tip? Oh my god... Don't look underneath, Paige... I have to keep her believing I'm trans...){/i}"
J "Are you...? You're not weirded out by this?!"
Pa "Do you... want me to stop?"
J "I... uh... god! No, don't stop!"
Pa "Good."
J "Am I... dreaming?!"
Pa "Nnn-nnn."
J "If I am... don't wake me up..."
J "Deeper, Paige..."

To lump this in with "forced sex" just seems absurd to me, because Jenny very quickly gives her consent. The fact that Alexis says "she's not thinking clearly" later in the scene is more reflective of Alexis's opinion on the matter than Jenny's.

_______________________________________________

4. Concerned that the MC's behavior and the style/tone of the VN are static and that later content will just be more of the same.

You may remember that one of the last lines in Chapter 1 was Jenny calling Trina and sounding quite alarmed. It's a TINY spoiler about the start of Chapter 2 to say that Jenny has finally come to her senses that she's been a little out of control in the previous 18 hours. All that tension that's been building in her for months finally released, but she realizes she's been too careless and she heads to Trina's to talk about what happened.

I've talked about this before, but I've thought a lot about character arcs. Jenny, Claire, Trina, Paige, Ashley, some characters I haven't even introduced yet... they can all be defined as who they are at the start of the story, and who they become by the end. What's missing in their lives? What do they want?

So yes, Jenny is on her own lengthy character arc. And her arc is very rapidly transitioning away from "careless girl who can't make decisions about what she wants and everything happens TO her" to something else. And her arc will progress accordingly.

_______________________________________________

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Probably should have spent all that time trying to finish writing this next chapter, but I felt the need to respond.
I do think it's possible for me to improve the earlier dialogue to better convey some of these premises, and its something I'll look at.

Let me first thank you for taking the time to give me such an in-depth reply & not getting annoyed at what I hope didn't come across as me being unkind towards you, your efforts and the story you are creating to you either.

Also, while obviously the general feelings I got during my first full playthrough of the current content at some points don't automatically change I have to agree that you are making good points. Also, since I was still musing about the game and my experience, I will say that after reading your reply I realized that some of what I wrote is based on my personal perception and stance on certain issues. If I'm honest with myself I would have felt very different about the wardrobe scene specifically if there had been an option to say "no" to it, in fact I would have found it rather hot (and went along with it) & that tells me that I'm probably unable to fully push aside the fact I have a severe dislike for pushiness in real life and while I feel safe to say that you and most people who take no issue with the scene in all likelihood feel the same about this in regards to real interaction with other people I still can't fully ignore that the way it plays out just rubs me the wrong way even though logically speaking what you say is correct.

I purposefully avoided calling the scene itself "forced sex" (or the r word) because despite all I write I didn't get the impression that the scene was meant to be that dark & despite wishing there had just been the option to say "no" it didn't feel like the protagonist was forced. In my personal book what Paige does is very morally wrong, but it's also not a grievous criminal act. Just a (imho) not-very-excusable lack of proper care for full consent. What I meant with forced sex scene is that there was no way to avoid it for the player, from an in-game perspective it's not what I would call forced sex.

If you end up revisiting some of the wording and occasional lack of enough inside into the protagonist's feelings that would be great (especially since that too would change how some things come across), but I also fully understand if that isn't high on your to-do list for the moment, after all everybody, me included, is likely pretty excited for the next chapter.

All things considered I'm very glad you did give my feedback consideration, of course you should 100% follow through with your vision for the game & from what you wrote I feel like I will most likely properly warm up to Futagenesis and the characters once there is more story and more development in regards to relationships etc.
Also, now that I saw the scene and am aware of what is going to happen I will (going by my experience with other VNs) probably not take it the same way again, since you as the author say that Paige wouldn't have followed through if the protag had insisted that she doesn't want to do it. I definitely feel a lot less antagonized by Paige as well, which I assume will make it a lot easier to enjoy what's already there and what's perhaps to come.

By the way, since I didn't get into that topic at all, I do like the story and those scenes hinting at something more going on in the background.

If it's okay with you I'll write another recollection of my thoughts and feelings about the game once the next chapter dropped, going in again with a clearer perspective on the events unfolding thanks to your explanations likely is going to have a notable impact on things. Take this as me questioning how much of what I wrote was born from personal, outside, bias and concerns & getting the impression I let those get the better of me in the end.

 

[TessaXYZ]

I would have felt very different about the wardrobe scene specifically if there had been an option to say "no" to it

This simply gets back to the issue I mentioned, namely that the option to say "no" to this basically means "I want the story to be completely different from this point on".

If she says no, then she wouldn't have gone out to sea with Paige, which means she wouldn't have had that accident, which means _____ doesn't happen, which means _____ doesn't happen, which means _____ doesn't happen, and so on. That's fine for games where individual scenes don't actually affect the plot at all, but I can't name a single scene besides most of the daydreams that could be cut or changed without drastically changing the story. There's no real filler here. I started the VN, before the prologue title card even shows, with Jenny looking back from a future point in the story and asking herself if she believes in fate, since whatever ends up happening with her only happens because of all the little things that occurred along the way.

By the way, since I didn't get into that topic at all, I do like the story and those scenes hinting at something more going on in the background.

Something more is definitely a-brewin'.

 

[Yakis0ba]

Interesting way to lose your virginity, that's for sure.

 

[LuvFlatChests]

Interesting way to lose your virginity, that's for sure.

Mine was more like something from the movie the Graduate. 49ers won the Superbowl and the gay guys in the dorm
were getting ecstatic with pleasure. I took my girlfriend to my room to get away from them. She suggested we do sex.
I said friendship first, let's just talk. She then asked me if I was gay or inadequate. Inadequate??? I'll show you just how inadequate I am not. She smiled and turned off the lights.

Roommate came in and we just kept going underneath the blankets remaining quiet so not to disturb him as he studied.
Yeah, real life never follows scriptcs BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM.

So please everyone give Tessa a break as she writes the sex scenes for the game.
They are not textbook so where, oh where, does she kum up and down with such ideas?
Maybe in part from her own real life experiences.
BTW This is exactly where the best writing in the universes khummmmms from.

 

[Yakis0ba]

Mine was more like something from the movie the Graduate. 49ers won the Superbowl and the gay guys in the dorm
were getting ecstatic with pleasure. I took my girlfriend to my room to get away from them. She suggested we do sex.
I said friendship first, let's just talk. She then asked me if I was gay or inadequate. Inadequate??? I'll show you just how inadequate I am not. She smiled and turned off the lights.

Roommate came in and we just kept going underneath the blankets remaining quiet so not to disturb him as he studied.
Yeah, real life never follows scriptcs BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM.

So please everyone give Tessa a break as she writes the sex scenes for the game.
They are not textbook so where, oh where, does she kum up and down with such ideas?
Maybe in part from her own real life experiences.
BTW This is exactly where the best writing in the universes khummmmms from.

OK? I like the writing and the unique scenes. In fact, I liked them so much I became a patron this very day.
And are we sharing first times now? Because if so... TBD.

 

[Kind Nightmares]

Quite a bit to unpack there, but I'll do my best to comment and contextualize. I imagine some of the points will need long answers from me to address, so let's see how I do. (Hi, future Tessa here. Wow, this got long. I hope people actually read this!)

I'll summarize your points here first, if only to just help me make sure I capture everything:

1. How can it be that Jenny kept this secret all her life and yet, all of a sudden, she's in situations coming about from her inability to prevent being exposed?

2. Disappointed in the lack of choices.

3. Discomfort with how the scene in the dressing room unfolded.

4. Concerned that the MC's behavior and the style/tone of the VN are static and that later content will just be more of the same.

_______________________________________________

1. How can it be that Jenny kept this secret all her life and yet, all of a sudden, she's in situations coming about from her inability to prevent being exposed?

I think we need to look at this from a few angles. I'll list a few pieces of information here:

• Jenny comments at the very beginning of the prologue that up until now, she has been absolutely steadfast in her determination to not be in social situations beyond hanging out one-on-one with Alexis or studying with Paige. She is socially highly naïve, because she's never had to contend with social pressure at any real scale. She's been in college for approximately nine months, and before that she lived with Trina and kept an extremely tight lid on her activities.
• Alexis comments about Jenny being sheltered her whole life when they were walking towards the sorority house. Mentioning this here to simply point out that Jenny's solitude isn't just a mentality; in recent years (read: as her body rapidly developed), she refused to participate in gatherings, would wear really baggy clothing, etc. She's felt ashamed of being different from everyone else, and Lucia's presence in their lives (aka "L" by Jenny et al), however distant, kept her in check.
• Jenny's motivations for coming out of her shell is that she's finally an adult, and the things that start to matter at that age are quite different from the things that matter as a child. She's starting to feel incredibly lonely in a way that didn't affect her as a teenager, and her internal monologue directly alludes to this shift in her mental state since starting college earlier in the year. It's one thing to be a loner as a kid, but to be a loner as an adult is having a pretty severe effect on her happiness and she finally decided she wanted to participate in life.
• It's been two years since she or Trina had heard from Lucia. The entire rest of her life, Lucia has been a constant fixture. This will be talked about more in Chapter 2, but they're both starting to wonder if she's gone for good. Imagine being in a similar situation, where someone is threatening you to stay indoors for 16 years. But then they disappear suddenly. After two years you might start thinking to yourself, "Maybe it's finally safe to go outside...? Did something happen to them? Am I finally free?"
• Through the drinking game, we learn that Jenny masturbates a LOT. Her libido is quite high, but up until now she's always been able to discretely "take care" of things because she's always been in her own element. The care she's given to secrecy now begins to conflict with an equally primal desire to not feel alone anymore. She wants friends, but even more deeply, she wants intimacy and affection and she doesn't really understand how to navigate this space.

Let's summarize. Since she started college around 9 months before the story begins, her loneliness and desire for social connection (and more deeply, intimacy and personal connection) have skyrocketed. She caves and finally accepts participation in social situations she's had very little experience with, and her confusion and excitement that follow have left her rather overwhelmed with emotions she desperately wants to feel despite her prior rational judgment. A part of her doubts whether her rational judgment is still valid. It's been two years since Lucia has contacted her or Trina, and in that time her loneliness has caught up to her sense of self-preservation. And now, she finds herself in situations that sit smack in the middle of those two conflicting interests. A part of her wants to run away because that's what she's always done, and a new part of her wants to get even closer because she's just so fucking tired of running.

I hope I've contextualized this sufficiently so that it doesn't seem so sudden for her. And nothing here is new information, it's all been presented to various degrees in the text.

_______________________________________________

2. Disappointed in the lack of choices.

I've touched on this before, but it's unreasonable to think people will read 30 pages of comments to find it so I'll try to reframe and re-explain my position on this.

First, I'm just one person. I don't have a team. So when my chapter is going to be 600+ images and 20,000+ words, with all new puzzles and music and sounds and everything, I'm hitting an upper limit on what one person can achieve in a reasonable about of time.

So when we talk about choices in these sorts of games, what are we saying, exactly? Are we saying that we want significant choices that impact the story? Because if that's what we're saying, a project that relies this heavily on visual immersion is dead in the water. I can't render 1200 renders in a reasonable amount of time just because people want an option whether to turn left or right at the fork in the road. And ultimately, I feel that my planned story and the planned character arcs are better off not turning this VN into a "choose-your-own-adventure" game, but that the best approach is to tell a tight story with full character arcs, and to offer limited choices along the way.

That said, it's simply untrue when you say there are no choices. Chapter 1 has two choices, and the upcoming chapter has a couple more. But the effects of the choices will bear fruit over time, and the scope of those choices is limited to: (A) changes in dialogue and the context of a scene, or (B) minor effects that don't affect the story. The two choices in Chapter 1 are whether to peek at Alexis, and which of the girls Jenny seems to want to rely on, and these group into type A. The effect of these choices might not even be obvious to you when they happen, because I'm not going to plaster the words "YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO GO LEFT" on the screen, but the effects absolutely shape the nature of certain character dynamics, and all the little choices in the game will actually affect which ending you get (there are multiple endings planned)!

I've played plenty of sandbox games and linear games with frequent choices. And you know what? I feel like the choices being given there are vacuous and the story suffers because the creator had to come up with a collection of branching paths that don't satisfyingly resolve any of the character arcs. And I can't blame them! Offer too many branching paths and the story almost immediately grows past the scope that any one person, or even a small team of people, can manage.

I mean, look at a AAA game like Mass Effect! A game which was touted for its dialogue wheel. But IMO the "choices" in that game were vacuous. You either behave like a decent human being, or you behave like an absolute asshole, and the larger story was entirely unaffected. The choices in the second game mattered in the sense that part of your crew would die if you chose poorly, but that just meant that you were locked out of some later story beats and ultimately had a lesser experience because of it. And that was with a AAA budget and a AAA team. (Edit: For the record, I fucking love Mass Effect.)

All I can do is tell the best story I can and try to offer some engaging gameplay along the way (puzzles) and some player interaction (limited choices). If that's a dealbreaker, because you want to choose the outcome of every scene... I simply don't have the capacity to write and render a dozen parallel stories that are as internally satisfying (in my opinion) as the story I have planned out.

_______________________________________________

3. Discomfort with how the scene in the dressing room unfolded.

Hopefully you read what I wrote about point #1 and understood Jenny's mentality at the start of the story.

The comment I'd make here is that I disagree with the view that this was a "forced sex" scene.

Intimacy in real life isn't a sterile, transactional environment:
Character 1: "I would like to initiate sex. Would you like to initiate sex? Please check yes or no."
Character 2: "Yes, I accept your proposal. I have checked the appropriate box. We may begin the touching process."

Obviously that's a caricature of the complaint, but I'm just trying to say that sexual encounters can develop all sorts of ways. So let's see how this scene unfolded, shall we?

Paige looks in and sees Jenny in a sexy outfit. Paige is then highly turned on by what she learns about Jenny, a girl who she has been close to for several months. Paige makes a move and seats Jenny down. Jenny is initially embarrassed and confused (she's never had a sexual encounter) and figured that anyone who knew about her would be weirded out. Paige then asks Jenny if she wants her to stop. Jenny says she doesn't want her to stop, giving her consent before anything more serious than Paige's initial move happens:

J = Jenny
Pa = Paige
Ale = Alexis

J "Please, I just need you to agree to—"
J "—ooooooooOHHHHHHHHH FUCK~"
Pa "Mmmm..."
J "~What... are you... doing...~"
Pa "You've been... keeping this... a secret from me... all year?!"
J "I have my reasons! Please, you can't tell any—"
Ale "I can still hear whispering in there. Jenny, is Paige with you?"
J "Hey!"
Pa "All our study sessions... You didn't have to stay a virgin..."
J "I haven't told anyone about this! No one knows, it's not just you!"
J "Wait, why are you getting on your knees? What are you d—"
J "{i}(She's... kissing the tip? Oh my god... Don't look underneath, Paige... I have to keep her believing I'm trans...){/i}"
J "Are you...? You're not weirded out by this?!"
Pa "Do you... want me to stop?"
J "I... uh... god! No, don't stop!"
Pa "Good."
J "Am I... dreaming?!"
Pa "Nnn-nnn."
J "If I am... don't wake me up..."
J "Deeper, Paige..."

To lump this in with "forced sex" just seems absurd to me, because Jenny very quickly gives her consent. The fact that Alexis says "she's not thinking clearly" later in the scene is more reflective of Alexis's opinion on the matter than Jenny's.

_______________________________________________

4. Concerned that the MC's behavior and the style/tone of the VN are static and that later content will just be more of the same.

You may remember that one of the last lines in Chapter 1 was Jenny calling Trina and sounding quite alarmed. It's a TINY spoiler about the start of Chapter 2 to say that Jenny has finally come to her senses that she's been a little out of control in the previous 18 hours. All that tension that's been building in her for months finally released, but she realizes she's been too careless and she heads to Trina's to talk about what happened.

I've talked about this before, but I've thought a lot about character arcs. Jenny, Claire, Trina, Paige, Ashley, Alexis, some characters I haven't even introduced yet... they can all be defined as who they are at the start of the story, and who they become by the end. What's missing in their lives? What do they want?

So yes, Jenny is on her own lengthy character arc. And her arc is very rapidly transitioning away from "careless girl who can't make decisions about what she wants and everything happens TO her" to something else. And her arc will progress accordingly.

_______________________________________________

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Probably should have spent all that time trying to finish writing this next chapter, but I felt the need to respond.
I do think it's possible for me to improve the earlier dialogue to better convey some of these premises, and it's something I'll look at.

Ah, I absolutely love these huge walls of text from Tessa. I read them every morning in my silver-rimmed monocle with a cup of tea that my butler brings me. A true master of words.

 

[Orphanus]

This simply gets back to the issue I mentioned, namely that the option to say "no" to this basically means "I want the story to be completely different from this point on".

If she says no, then she wouldn't have gone out to sea with Paige, which means she wouldn't have had that accident, which means _____ doesn't happen, which means _____ doesn't happen, which means _____ doesn't happen, and so on. That's fine for games where individual scenes don't actually affect the plot at all, but I can't name a single scene besides most of the daydreams that could be cut or changed without drastically changing the story. There's no real filler here. I started the VN, before the prologue title card even shows, with Jenny looking back from a future point in the story and asking herself if she believes in fate, since whatever ends up happening with her only happens because of all the little things that occurred along the way.



Something more is definitely a-brewin'.

Yeah, and I can see that point, but it would already make a difference if Paige more clearly communicated that she would accept a "no", even if we aren't given the choice to pick that as a reaction there. Edit: Which is just a personal note, I understand that my perception of the whole scene and what followed was plain wrong.

It wouldn't be the exact same but would definitely change the flavor, until you gave more perspective I would not have excluded the possibility the whole setup (multiple helpers etc.) was Paige getting ready to use physical violence to have her way, if rebuked, even though it didn't come to anything that drastic and after what you explained it's also clear she would have never done so.

 

[WankerDxD]

I don't remember any incest scene.

For what that incest tag ?

 

[Necrosian]

I don't remember any incest scene.

For what that incest tag ?

I don't think that's implemented yet. Mom was shown at the end of the content.

 

[JDReeco]

I don't remember any incest scene.

For what that incest tag ?

Since it passed some time since I played the game, if I remember right: Claire is Jenny's sister and Alexis is her Cousin.