- Jan 3, 2021
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Yep, still hot garbage with no content. You get a 1 frame kiss on the lips with pineapple girl, and you see a few frames of a topless lady though some binoculars. That's it.
The game fires up in Russian, and forces you to bumblefuck your way through the menus to find the language selection. All of the writing is a MTL hellscape of nonsense. Not only is what's there nearly an indecipherable fever dream, but it is also riddled with missing capitalization and punctuation (the easiest stuff to actually fix, if any human actually cared enough to go over it even once). The navigation is half-baked, frustratingly bad, and unnecessary since it is an entirely linear experience. Every time you are allowed to 'navigate', you have one and only one valid option; trying to go anywhere else just gets you a "I don't need to go there" until you happen to click on the right spot to move things forward.
Just avoid. There is nothing to see or do here, unless you want to rubberneck at this staggering example of slavjank.
The game fires up in Russian, and forces you to bumblefuck your way through the menus to find the language selection. All of the writing is a MTL hellscape of nonsense. Not only is what's there nearly an indecipherable fever dream, but it is also riddled with missing capitalization and punctuation (the easiest stuff to actually fix, if any human actually cared enough to go over it even once). The navigation is half-baked, frustratingly bad, and unnecessary since it is an entirely linear experience. Every time you are allowed to 'navigate', you have one and only one valid option; trying to go anywhere else just gets you a "I don't need to go there" until you happen to click on the right spot to move things forward.
Just avoid. There is nothing to see or do here, unless you want to rubberneck at this staggering example of slavjank.
- Oct 15, 2019
- 11
- 4
Thank you for your comment, I will take this criticism into consideration, but I have a couple of comments:
1) About the small amount of content in the game, it's quite simple, I've written before that the versions will not be released large and at this rate the game is only 4 months old, the question for you is - did you want more content with my release schedule?
2) About badly written text and other things, about grammar I partially agree, but I already wrote here that this is my first experience in such business as releasing games in the genre of novels, in my opinion you just didn't like everything that came out during these months of game development, and I understand you, we all have different tastes and we should respect them. Yes the game has problems, but they are all there because it's an early access game.
3) Is it a big problem to change the language in the game? Okay, the default will be English.
At the end - I want to say that all criticism about the game is appropriate and I read it, but please do not consider that the game is already completely out.
- Jan 3, 2021
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Your game is half-baked. If you didn't have any worthwhile content, then you probably should have waited and continued developing your game until you had reached some form of
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before kicking it out the door for public consumption. If not, don't be surprised when the audience sees and comments on the lack of meaningful content.Lots of people have the attention spans of caffeinated gerbils. You are competing for attention with not only the thousands of games on this site alone, but also Itch.io and the broader internet in general. I don't know what response you expected to get from a lewd game pirate site for a unfinished game lacking even a visible nipple, but here we are.
No. You don't get to handwave away your inability to write sensible dialogue by claiming 'we all have different tastes'. Failure to reach the level of being comprehensible is not a matter of 'taste'. Lowercase letters at the start of sentences and missing punctuation isn't a matter of 'taste'. Rather it's a lack of reaching a minimum standard of quality. I'm not expecting Hemingway, Wilde, or Tolstoy here; but I am expecting at a minimum for sentences to consistently start with capital letters and end with punctuation marks.
This is mostly nonsense, and riddled with grammatical errors, the kind which would easily be highlighted and corrected with but the press of a button in any English word processor. The problem here isn't a difference in 'taste', it is lack of effort and comprehension. It is making the audience wrestle with deciphering this Gordian Knot of verbiage in an effort to try to make sense of what is written. It might be comprehensible in Russian, but I'm not reading it in Russian here.
People can 'choose' to lie or tell the truth. They are making a 'choice'. They are not colloquially making an 'election'. Elections are when we vote for politicians to fulfil political offices. This use of the word 'election' here is technically correct, when using the 3rd or 5th sense of the word (behind both voting and being chosen for eternal life), and is generally a pretty archaic usage; so much so that many online dictionaries don't even include it. So unless you are specifically looking to evoke the style of Shakespeare or otherwise sound like ye olde English, its usage is pretty inappropriate.
I mean, I kinda had an idea what I was getting into when within the first minute the MC refers to himself as a 'longshoreman'. Yet another incredibly specific and rather archaic word choice, used to refer specifically to waterfront manual laborers and the like. Someone just working in a warehouse is not a longshoreman. Someone working stock in the back of a big-box retail store is not a longshoreman. Someone fulfilling orders in an Amazon warehouse is not a longshoreman. Someone loading or unloading fish, grain, coal, or shipping containers in a port? That's a longshoreman. But even then, the more common and modern usage would be 'dockworker'.
So do you really have such a poor grasp on the vernacular, or is this work that has just been offloaded onto machines? Because it reads very much like the later.
Maybe the above is funny and witty, a common turn of phrase or idiom in your native language. But in English? It's just nonsense. I can read it, I understand each and every word. But within the context of the MC eating something prepared by Pineapple Girl? When taken together as a pair of whole sentences spoken sequentially in response to her? It is an absolute non sequitur. Being perplexed by this is not a matter of 'taste'.
Dialogue that reads as misattributed because the MC is referring to their career as a psychologist while having a session with an actual psychologist is not a matter of 'taste'.
Being unable to read untranslated Cyrillic is not a matter of 'taste' either.
This is a serious contender for being one of the dumbest thing I've ever seen a writer shove into the mouth of a professional with a doctorate level degree. Not liking this is a matter of 'taste'. But I'll happily roast anyone trying to defend it.
None of the relationships ever being explained is not a matter of 'taste'. Is Pineapple Girl the MC's relative? Roommate? More? Who is Bridget to either of them? She needs to ask Pineapple Girl what the MC's name is, so surely she can't be closely related to them, can she? Being sent on errands (which the game refers to as 'seats') where the MC interacts with people by describing the physical traits of Bridget rather than just using her name? What is even going on here?
The amount Bridget owes to Dante would be worrisome but understandable in rubles, as ₽ 500,000 is about 52,400 in USD. That's the price of a nice new luxury car in the US (think Acura MDX or a BMW 3 series), or a decent chunk out of a college education. But half a million dollars is an absurd amount to be getting from a loan shark moonlighting as a club owner.
I could keep going on with more readily available examples, but I really hope I'm getting my point across here. I get what is happening, to an extent. It's a hot mess of random shit with little to no connecting tissue linking it all together. I have no reason to care about anyone or anything that is going on here. Nobody is likable or has any sort of discernable personality. There is no charm, not wit, no humor, nothing worth engaging with. After having to put this much effort into simply trying to understand what is going it, what is there is supremely underwhelming and undercooked. Perhaps worst of all, it's just boring.
Put plainly, the game experience on offer is currently not worth the time and effort to download and read. It lacks even cheap and gratuitous titillation, something that a lot of low quality projects easily coast on. Everyone's time would be better spent doing just about anything else worthwhile.
Yes, writing is hard. Not every amateur is going to end up being a savant and writing the next Great American Novel. That's why I'm not making VN's and publishing them in languages I'm not confidently fluent in. Even as a native English speaker, I'm daunted by the staggering mountain of work that would be required to make something that I wouldn't be embarrassed to share with the wider public, even with the caveat of being an amateur.
Even this response took me over two hours, as I quickly replayed the entire game and made the reference screenshots. Plus writing, reading, rewriting, rereading, editing, formatting, more writing, more rereading, more rewriting, even more editing. All in an effort to make sure that I am being honest and not misrepresenting the game; but also to make sure that I could express myself and get my meaning across as clearly as possible. I do personally put a premium on effective communication. Again, it's why I'm terrified of the colossal amount of work I would need to do to make something I wouldn't be embarrassed to share publicly.
Release it in whatever languages you like. I'm not your dad. But my Brother in Christ™, if you are promoting the game on English language sites (Patreon, Itch.io) and intend it for an English language audience, that version at least needs to start in English.
Of course not. I know it's not finished. But I am left with zero enthusiasm for what is here, and no hope for what's to come. What is currently on offer does not bode well for the future. How many games are able to pull a 180° and go from near incomprehensible nonsense to something worthwhile? Here, in the amateur lewd game space? Not a single example comes to mind. Games can certainly vary in quality over time, but that trajectory is more often than not downward. How many games fall apart and are abandoned, compared to how many that not only reach reach completion but do so in a way that actually satisfies the fans and patrons of the game? That gulf is deep and wide.
Most of the good games seem to start out pretty good to begin with and hold steady or get better, as dedicated and talented people who care are able to hone their craft over time. But the simple truth is, not everyone cares, and not everyone is talented.
- Oct 15, 2019
- 11
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Hi, thanks for spending so much time on my project, I really appreciate it, thanks to people like you and goes the development of me as an author, although I am not Tolstoy, and the tree to describe 500 pages will not )
I certainly have questions for you, where without them, and yes I apologize for the machine translation.
I really respect your opinion and when I wrote that it is a matter of taste - I meant the content:
The characters in this game are mysterious, and if I don't reveal them in the first minutes of the game it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing, questions are given to answer them.
I as the author don't have to explain what's going on, because it would look like a comedian saying his joke is funny. But here it's really a different case - and it's really a matter of taste, either you like what's going on and you get into the characters, or you just delete the game.
The name of the game House of Deception already hints that it's not all that straightforward:
Who is Bridget, Tiffany, MC, I'm not making the characters simple, already in the 0.03 version which is basically just starting the conflict, there are hints of all the actions that led to this result that we have now. I realize that probably no one has ever done it this way, but even visually there are clues that someone is hiding something.
I'm really sorry that through bad English it's even harder to grasp some of this, I'll fix it.
P.S Of course not everyone like Tolstoy has talent, but even he failed to please all readers
P.S.S I don't know what you really wanted to achieve - either to improve my project, or to completely destroy it ?
In any case, my project caused in you some emotions, of course they are negative, but it is better than emptiness. The project really needs time - its essence is the gradual revealing of the main characters. of the main characters, and it takes a really long time.
- Jan 3, 2021
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If "...no one has ever done it this way", there's probably a good reason for that. This is not Avant-Garde storytelling, this just does not work.
Here's the problem. It's not a good mystery.
Did Arthur Conan Doyle need to hide the nature of the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Watson for his stories? No. No he did not. That was not the point of the mystery. You might not get their whole biographies in any given adventure, but you always got that they were professional colleges and personal friends. The audience wasn't left wondering if Watson was his son, estranged cousin, or erstwhile business partner. Knowing that, the audience could contextualize their interactions with each other, and it gave context to them. It facilitated the audience being able to invest themselves in their friendship, while the two of them worked on solving the Mystery of the Day™.
In the mystery/dark comedy film 'Clue', the audience is not kept in the absolute dark about the characters. The cast are a bunch of strangers invited to a mansion. They do not know each other, and they are in an unfamiliar location. Giving the audience that information does not spoil the mystery of who the murderer is. It does however help to contextualize the events so the audience understands what is happening, so they can follow along and care about characters and the events that they are involved with. It allows the audience to focus on the actual murder mystery, rather than be constantly confused about the very nature of what is happening and how anyone reacts.
Something being left unknown does not make it a good mystery. Especially when the thing is known by the characters, but is never explained to the audience; and doubly so if the narrative is told from the first person perspective of a character who has the knowledge and could explain or contextualize the mystery but does not.
Hiding the most basic information about the nature of the relationship of the 3 central characters is not a good mystery, it is just keeping the audience in the dark to purposely confuse them. The MC knows what Pineapple Girl and Bridget are to him, he knows the nature of their relationships; it is not a mystery to him. However, the audience does not know. So we the audience are left watching a MC have reactions to characters with zero context.
Whether the MC thinks of Bridget as his mom, or guardian, or surrogate should be something the audience knows, because it is something the MC knows. Even if Bridget is hiding things from the MC or is not entirely truthful with him. I can understand not explaining why she left or has suddenly reentered their lives. But refusing to explain the very nature of the relationship, so as to actually give context and meaning to her absences in the first place? That is just plain bad storytelling. Her absence seems to have affected the MC, but the audience doesn't know why. We get to read his inner thoughts, but never get any context or explanation here. That's not a good mystery, that's just keeping your audience so far in the dark that they cannot possibly hope to care about the characters and their relationship to each other.
Why should the audience care about Bridget and the errands the MC runs for her, if we don't have any fucking clue who she is and why the MC cares about her? Again, that is not a good mystery, that is just poor storytelling. So again, with no information about the other characters, who they are to MC and why he cares about either of them, the audience is left with NO REASON TO CARE. There is nobody to get invested in. So the audience is left confused and disinterested, which is the exact opposite of having an engaged and invested audience that cares about what it happening.
The experience of the game right now is akin to being an invisible observer (akin to a ghost) in the day of a life of a random stranger. The MC's thoughts give zero context, nothing is explained, and we are just witnesses to a series of seemingly random events with no reason to care. The player is not actually the MC, because the player cannot understand what is going on, they lack enough information to contextualize what is happening. That is NOT how you get an audience invested in your story. That is NOT how you make a good mystery.
People don't care about mysteries. People care about characters. To have an interesting mystery, it needs to be happening to or involved with interesting characters. By refusing to explain even the most basic information regarding your characters and their relationships, you make it so the audience cannot care about them. You are making bad characters, and people don't care about mysteries involving bad characters.
I'm seriously left wondering who is this game even for? People who actually want a slow burn narrative with a good characters and mystery are going to want a story they can comprehend, not a raging dumpster fire of grammatical errors and poor translation. The people who are just looking for some titillation to jerk off to and wouldn't care about the poor writing? There is nothing here to interest them either. So this game occupies the worst spot on the board, being both too poorly written for narrative fans and lacking in any lewdz for the basic perverts. It has nothing to offer to anybody.
Except me, because apparently I enjoy rubbernecking at slavjank...
Personally, I blame
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- Oct 15, 2019
- 11
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You have interesting thoughts that would make sense if the game's plot was revealed at least 25 percent, but no it's not, the plot is at an early stage, and that's why there are no answers.
It's not a detective, there are just questions to be answered, it's not for nothing that the narrative is in first person. This means that the hero is experiencing the whole story from his own eyes, which means that the events that took place are too influential, the whole game is the consequences of all the decisions that were made before the events when Bridget came over the threshold of the house.
That's why the player doesn't get answers so quickly bo it's all the denouement of the events of the game, in the man who lives on Baker street the basis of everything is the relationship between him and Watson that's why the reveal comes first and then everything else.
In my game the narrative formula is different, that's all - you can't summarize all available works under one thing and compare them with it. It's much more complicated here.
I think we've all had moments in our lives when even thinking about them causes pain that will haunt us later, and the cure for all this is acceptance.
And if the pain is so strong that the whole person changes because of it?
I'm not asking you to understand the whole game at once, it's more complicated than it seems. There are few versions out, they take a relatively long time to make and they are small.
The last thing I want to add is just give it a chance to unfold, if you don't like it, write constructively why, this game is at the very beginning of its development.
- Jan 3, 2021
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Being Complicated =/= Being Good
None of that fixes or excuses the game's myriad problems. You made a game with boring, vapid, uninteresting characters. Failing to explain to the audience basic information that the characters know does not make for a good mystery, it is just needlessly confusing.
You don't actually have a protagonist in your story, you have a random stranger. The audience is not the MC, they are a ghost witnessing events they cannot influence, understand, or comprehend. Not because the events are interesting or exciting, but because the most basic of context is being withheld. It is narrative structure akin to a schoolyard bully, holding a ball out of reach of other children so they can't play with it; not because it is fun or interesting to do so, but simply because they can.
You are acting like withholding this information is the entirety of the plot. If the only way you can think of to write something interesting is just never explain anything? Congratulations, you've utterly failed as a storyteller. You are not Miyazaki, you do not work at From Software, and this game is not Dark Souls or Elden Ring. It takes a lot of work and skill to make the drip-fed stories in those game work, and brother, this ain't working. There is nothing here to explore, there is nothing to fight; there is only the writing, and the writing is bad.
You keep coming back with 'the game is not finished'. Why should anyone in your audience care at this point? What is here is a mess, and adding more mess won't fix it. The characters are empty, lack any personality, and are impossible to care about. No one can care about the what's coming next, because what is here is impossible to be invested in. It might make sense in your head, you may think it is a good story and like the characters that you created; but I can't critique your headcanon. All I have is what's here in this game. It is not good, and the rest of the supposed story sitting inside your head does not change that fact. Here and now, with the game that is available, it is bad. Promises that it will makes sense later does not change that.
Honestly, I have seen bad improv theater skits with characters that were both more interesting and easier to care about. Even people not especially good at improv can make up better and more interesting characters on the fly.
Unless your goal here is to expressly perplex your audience until they disengage with the material, you are failing. Your style is not Avant-Garde, it is not mysterious, it is not interesting, and it is not compelling. You are not J.J. Abrams, this is not his 'Mystery Box' TEDx Talk. I have seen LOST, I know what happens when people try this narrative 'style' when they utterly lack the skill to stick the landing.
If your excuse is there isn't enough of the story done, that's your fault, not the audience's.
If your excuse is things are getting lost in translation, that's your fault, not the audience's.
If your excuse is the story only works as a whole completed piece, that's your fault, not the audience's.
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- Oct 15, 2019
- 11
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Wow, all your claims are rolled into one phrase - if I don't like it then no one can like it, the opinion is absolutely not objective, I have already explained why for this story this is the right approach. Admit that you don't like the game and that's it, you don't need to look for any reasons why this happened.
I don't blame people for anything, i'm just stating a fact and you are trying to prove something to me that I didn't say. Your opinion that I'm a bad author is only based on the fact that nothing is clear, and when the mystery became a bad thing. You don't try to understand what I'm saying, I make bold hints as to why this is so and why it all makes sense, but you don't listen, you want to prove something to me and you actually pointed out the problems to me, but when you try to prove your taste and why it should be done this way you get in trouble, the fact that you refer to authors of successful novels doesn't give you any strength in your argument. We are all different people, and our tastes are different too.
How can you evaluate a story if it's not finished? It's not objective. You have so many claims on what I do, it seems that you pay me money, you are clearly lying to yourself that you do not like the game, so much time you have devoted to it. Yes you are a big fan - of course you will deny it, but as I wrote earlier the hardest thing is acceptance, you can disagree with my opinion, it's not the truth in the last instance.
Of course my game is my problem and only me to fix it, but even in this state I see not only hatred for my project, it has positive aspects and people appreciated them.
If all that you write was true was not even someone like you who now wants to prove something to me, then it was immediately clear what we are dealing with. I will gladly continue this conversation, but I'm interested in one question? Why can't you say I didn't like it and say everyone didn't like it?
- Jan 3, 2021
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You released a badly written, poorly translated mess, and your response to criticism has and remains 'It will be better later, trust me'. That's bullshit.
Nobody forced you to release your story before it made any sense. Nobody forced you to machine translate it into a language you demonstrably do not comprehend. Every problem the game has is one YOU created.
If Martin Scorsese had released the film 'Shutter Island' as only the first 10 minutes, people would absolutely complain and point that out; and they would be absolutely right in doing so.
I did listen. It's just your explanations boil down to bullshit excuses.
Empty promises that the game will improve in the future does nothing to resolve the fact that it is bad right now.
You released it unfinished! That was your choice! That was your fault!
Being unfinished is not a shield from criticism!
Really? Now you're deflecting with bad psychoanalysis? I keep writing because you keep responding, and I strongly believe that your obvious bullshit shouldn't be left unchallenged.
Yeah, cause if simps and the lowest common denominator 'enjoy' the game it must be good, right?
Just to be abundantly clear, the previous sentence was me being very sarcastic.
You are 3 releases in. There is only 4 pages worth of posts here, and 1 of those pages is mostly me talking with you. By and large, almost everyone is ignoring this game and just not engaging with it. They are passing it by.
Not commenting.
Not posting.
Not reviewing.
Even your one and only review, while 4 stars, is nothing but an overly optimistic short paragraph hoping that the game gets better in the future, but even they concede the game has no content. It was written back in May. Also, if you're going to be logically consistent with what you said earlier, their opinion is just as invalid as mine because they too did not play the finished game. So don't pat yourself too hard on the back there.
I am easily the most engaged person here, and it is not because of your game, but rather in spite of it. Usually someone being confrontational with a game dev here would cause all of the simps to come crawling out and reflexively dogpile on whoever is being negative about a game that they sorta like. That hasn't happened here. It should tell you something about the complete lack of interest in your game.
This is because your game is a nonsensical, poorly translated mess that lacks even basic titillation. It commits the ultimate sin of entertainment, in that it is supremely BORING. Even the simps just looking to masturbate and who would happily ignore all of your poorly written mess just to see some tits, they have nothing to see or do here, and have just ignored your game.
You have failed to make even bad porn. That is how badly you have failed.
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- Oct 15, 2019
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Like I said before, if it was that obvious, you weren't even here.
You're calling my words an excuse, even though it's a fact, twisting them to make your point seem right - but I disagree, I'm distributing the game for free, and only if I did the opposite would your point make sense. I release a version, see the reaction, release the next, the formula is simple enough.
The game is young - or is that an excuse too? Calling people who are interested in what's currently out there the lowest denominator, how are you better than them? What kind of hatred is coming out of you, I advised you to save your nerves a bit.
I will continue to release the game and tell my story piece by piece, I'm doing what I think is right - I agree with a couple of the arguments , and will move towards improving those aspects. You can criticise the game as much as you like, it will do the game good.
I want to chime in here, because I was going to wait a few release cycles before trying this game (as I usually do, since it takes time to add enough content for a proper run-through). However, with the discussion between EvolutionKills and ReidMilkey, my interest was piqued. Thus I went ahead and tried version 0.03.
Honestly, with the apparent entitlement issues I observe among many of the forum members, I was expecting EvolutionKills' scathing critiques to be largely hyperbole. After trying the game, however, I find myself agreeing with much of his sentiment, though perhaps not his phrasing. Thus I'd like to try my hand at conveying the feedback as constructively as I can.
The first thing you meet when opening the game, is a menu in Russian. Luckily, this is a standard Ren'Py menu, so finding the settings and selecting the language is not the hardest thing in the world. It is, however, a strange choice when uploading a game to a primarily English speaking forum.
Secondly, you guys have been arguing about the mystery and the incomprehensibility of the dialogue. I believe these are two separate issues and that you're each arguing different points. For ReidMilkeys part, I think I get it: You're trying to build a mystery by not supplying all of the information. The dream-sequences and internal dialogue/voices in MC's head are a tool to convey that. So I'm fine with not understanding the entirety of the story as it stands right now. The trouble with this pertains to EvolutionKills' point about your lack of command of the English language.
A lot of your sentences appear quite nonsensical. (And I'm not talking about the mysterious hints here.) This is largely due to your choice of words. Like e.g. using the word "election" when you mean - or at least could benefit from using - "choice". This is compounded by the use of archaic words, like "longshoreman". Add onto this your apparent unfamiliarity with English idioms, and your writing gets increasingly difficult to parse. The result is that these involuntary mistakes get very hard to separate from your intentional vagueness in trying to build up the mystery.
I see (both from the discussion here and on the Discord) that ReidMilkey's already taken a lot of points to heart, which I do find promising. One of the points you concede, is that translation to English is challenging. To me, the English in this game is by far the most glaring issue.
To be quite frank: If you're going to succeed with this game (at least with the potential English speaking demography), simple dictionary translation (or MTL for that matter) is not going to cut it. You need to ally yourself with someone who can actually translate from the original language to English. The sooner you do this, the less backlog you will have and the less of a slog it's going to be.
Thirdly, I've noted that you've stated your intention to remove the sandbox elements. In the current build, they appear quite half-assed to me. E.g. for every "task" you get, you get railroaded into the "correct" choice with the same type of phrase; "I need to speak with ...". While removing these, I'd advice you to also remove all of the "choices" in the game where you only get one option. I could understand if these are placeholders for future expansion, but right now they just annoy me. For my part, I much prefer a sandbox experience to a linear, kinetic novel, but I realize that actually building a proper framework for sandbox game-play requires a huge amount of programming. Thus your effort may be better spent on just expanding the story.
As for the things that I think work well in the game:
Honestly, with the apparent entitlement issues I observe among many of the forum members, I was expecting EvolutionKills' scathing critiques to be largely hyperbole. After trying the game, however, I find myself agreeing with much of his sentiment, though perhaps not his phrasing. Thus I'd like to try my hand at conveying the feedback as constructively as I can.
The first thing you meet when opening the game, is a menu in Russian. Luckily, this is a standard Ren'Py menu, so finding the settings and selecting the language is not the hardest thing in the world. It is, however, a strange choice when uploading a game to a primarily English speaking forum.
Secondly, you guys have been arguing about the mystery and the incomprehensibility of the dialogue. I believe these are two separate issues and that you're each arguing different points. For ReidMilkeys part, I think I get it: You're trying to build a mystery by not supplying all of the information. The dream-sequences and internal dialogue/voices in MC's head are a tool to convey that. So I'm fine with not understanding the entirety of the story as it stands right now. The trouble with this pertains to EvolutionKills' point about your lack of command of the English language.
A lot of your sentences appear quite nonsensical. (And I'm not talking about the mysterious hints here.) This is largely due to your choice of words. Like e.g. using the word "election" when you mean - or at least could benefit from using - "choice". This is compounded by the use of archaic words, like "longshoreman". Add onto this your apparent unfamiliarity with English idioms, and your writing gets increasingly difficult to parse. The result is that these involuntary mistakes get very hard to separate from your intentional vagueness in trying to build up the mystery.
I see (both from the discussion here and on the Discord) that ReidMilkey's already taken a lot of points to heart, which I do find promising. One of the points you concede, is that translation to English is challenging. To me, the English in this game is by far the most glaring issue.
To be quite frank: If you're going to succeed with this game (at least with the potential English speaking demography), simple dictionary translation (or MTL for that matter) is not going to cut it. You need to ally yourself with someone who can actually translate from the original language to English. The sooner you do this, the less backlog you will have and the less of a slog it's going to be.
Thirdly, I've noted that you've stated your intention to remove the sandbox elements. In the current build, they appear quite half-assed to me. E.g. for every "task" you get, you get railroaded into the "correct" choice with the same type of phrase; "I need to speak with ...". While removing these, I'd advice you to also remove all of the "choices" in the game where you only get one option. I could understand if these are placeholders for future expansion, but right now they just annoy me. For my part, I much prefer a sandbox experience to a linear, kinetic novel, but I realize that actually building a proper framework for sandbox game-play requires a huge amount of programming. Thus your effort may be better spent on just expanding the story.
As for the things that I think work well in the game:
- You've succeeded in making good looking models.
- Your angles, renders and post-production are also very nice.
- I think your whimsical style of storytelling works, just make sure that your game doesn't take itself too seriously going forward.
Last edited:
- Sep 3, 2022
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Did you check
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? As you can see nothing since August.And just like that ... the very same day news about an update is teased on patreon.
Let's just hope "soon" is actually fairly soon.
- Sep 3, 2022
- 16,867
- 135,495
House of Deception [v0.1] [Palcezar]
Looks like the dev re-did the game and named it v0.01 and the game has content in up to v0.03 in the files.
This Patreon post shows it release 2 hours ago as well:
This is the dev and the dev's Patreon
House of Deception [v0.1] [Palcezar]
Win/Linux:
Looks like the dev re-did the game and named it v0.01 and the game has content in up to v0.03 in the files.
This Patreon post shows it release 2 hours ago as well:
You must be registered to see the links
This is the dev and the dev's Patreon
You must be registered to see the links
House of Deception [v0.1] [Palcezar]
Win/Linux:
You must be registered to see the links
You must be registered to see the links
Last edited:
- Sep 3, 2022
- 16,867
- 135,495
House of Deception [v0.1] [Palcezar]
COMPRESSED:
Win/Linux:
Mac:
COMPRESSED:
Win/Linux:
You must be registered to see the links
-
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-
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-
You must be registered to see the links
Mac:
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Last edited:
- Oct 15, 2019
- 11
- 4
Simply to prevent any misunderstanding, it's version called as 0.1, not 0.01, and it signifies a major new version of the game.