VN Ren'Py It's Just a Game [v0.4.1] [DigiDec]

[Justaflynn]

I like the premise a lot, and this feels like a good start. Since you asked for feedback, I've got some suggestions that might help.

I like the writing and story you're creating, but you're doing a lot of telling without showing. This is more of an issue in the first half, but there's a lot of exposition dumped on us with little variance in what we're seeing. I know you have a lot to explain to get us into the world, but it felt like too much at times. Like the very technical explanation of the MC developing Qai felt like a bit of a slog.

Another thing that's not helping that situation is the punctuation. You're clearly a skilled writer, but your writing is missing a lot of commas. There's quite a few run-on sentences too. I'd recommend putting your writing through a program like Grammarly to help you out. This works really well in a situation like yours, where the base writing is good, it just needs punctuation added and sentences broken up.

Third, there is definite lack of emotions shown on the MC's face. He looks like he's blankly glaring the majority of the time, which makes him come across as a sociopath. This makes it hard to connect with the MC as a player. Dude is about to eat out his girlfriend and he looks like he's about to murder her.



Try to give him more emotion. I think I only saw him smile a single time, and that was when he an NPC at the pool photo shoot. You're probably going to need to do more than just move his mouth too, like emote with his eyes/eyebrows as well, because this model has a massive case of resting bitch face.

Something I think would also benefit your game, would be adding a little more sex/nudity at the start to hook people into reading all the exposition. People have short attention spans and this may be your only opportunity to hook people into your story. If I were you, I'd add some sort of small sexy scene in the cyberpunk world to grab people's interest. Like something with the cyberpunk Natalie, or even the MC watching Sara briefly strip in the club while he waits for his meeting. It doesn't have to be a full sex scene, just a nice primer for what's to come. At the end of the day, this is an adult VN and you gotta give us enough sex and nudity to commit to reading all the story.

Currently, the first "sex scene" with Natalie was also disappointing. I know it's supposed to be disappointing for the MC, since she abruptly ends things, but we barely get to see anything. The MC doesn't even take off Natalie's bra in that scene. I know you're trying to use that as a way to tell us that she's shy around sex, but it didn't feel necessary. Natalie is, in my opinion, your best looking LI, and hiding her boobs from us in that scene was a bit of a let down. There's no reason the MC couldn't take it off of her, while she shyly covers herself at first, then stops as she gets more into it. That would get the same point across, and it would give you a reason to bring up the exposition of her being shy, instead of just telling us that's the case.

Another thing, that may just be aesthetic you're going for, is the lighting. Scenes felt a little darker than they needed to be. I would lighten them up more, especially anything sex-related.

Those are all changes that would obviously take some time to implement, but here are a few small ones that I think would really help your game in the short term:

First, you should put a better description for the game on this site. If you really want to use the mysterious one as the main description, then add a more typical synopsis in a spoiler just below it. Currently, it tells us almost nothing about the game, which is terrible for hooking people into trying it out. You've got a good game here, but a lot of people wont try it unless they know what they're getting into. I almost passed on if for this very reason.

Second, you should really put out an incest patch to fix the text referring to Sara and Mol as roommates. I know you said you're new to this, but it would be pretty easy, since your game is already set up for it. Incest is a great selling point, and people hate reading the roommate/tenant/friend workarounds.

Third, I'm sure you know this already, but you should put some music in your game. Fitting music helps immensely.

I wouldn't hold off on putting those changes in for too long. Devs often assume people are more forgiving about the little things, than they really are. You often only have one chance to capture someones interest, before they mentally write the game off forever and ignore future releases.

Lastly, (and it may be too late) it's good to be explicitly clear any time you mention NTR on this site. Seems like you may be new here, but it's a very sensitive topic. Saying anything vague about NTR possibly being in the game will get so many people's panties in a bunch, that it'll be the only thing discussed on this thread. I may be slightly biased as I'm not into NTR, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't even touch NTR at all in my game. The majority of people aren't into it, and it's such a turn off for some people on here that they'll never even try your game, even if it's avoidable.

Despite all these notes, I did really enjoy your game and I think the story is compelling. I think you've got something good here and I'm excited to see where things go.

 

[DigiDec]

I like the premise a lot, and this feels like a good start. Since you asked for feedback, I've got some suggestions that might help.

I like the writing and story you're creating, but you're doing a lot of telling without showing. This is more of an issue in the first half, but there's a lot of exposition dumped on us with little variance in what we're seeing. I know you have a lot to explain to get us into the world, but it felt like too much at times. Like the very technical explanation of the MC developing Qai felt like a bit of a slog.

Another thing that's not helping that situation is the punctuation. You're clearly a skilled writer, but your writing is missing a lot of commas. There's quite a few run-on sentences too. I'd recommend putting your writing through a program like Grammarly to help you out. This works really well in a situation like yours, where the base writing is good, it just needs punctuation added and sentences broken up.

Third, there is definite lack of emotions shown on the MC's face. He looks like he's blankly glaring the majority of the time, which makes him come across as a sociopath. This makes it hard to connect with the MC as a player. Dude is about to eat out his girlfriend and he looks like he's about to murder her.

View attachment 3505793

Try to give him more emotion. I think I only saw him smile a single time, and that was when he an NPC at the pool photo shoot. You're probably going to need to do more than just move his mouth too, like emote with his eyes/eyebrows as well, because this model has a massive case of resting bitch face.

Something I think would also benefit your game, would be adding a little more sex/nudity at the start to hook people into reading all the exposition. People have short attention spans and this may be your only opportunity to hook people into your story. If I were you, I'd add some sort of small sexy scene in the cyberpunk world to grab people's interest. Like something with the cyberpunk Natalie, or even the MC watching Sara briefly strip in the club while he waits for his meeting. It doesn't have to be a full sex scene, just a nice primer for what's to come. At the end of the day, this is an adult VN and you gotta give us enough sex and nudity to commit to reading all the story.

Currently, the first "sex scene" with Natalie was also disappointing. I know it's supposed to be disappointing for the MC, since she abruptly ends things, but we barely get to see anything. The MC doesn't even take off Natalie's bra in that scene. I know you're trying to use that as a way to tell us that she's shy around sex, but it didn't feel necessary. Natalie is, in my opinion, your best looking LI, and hiding her boobs from us in that scene was a bit of a let down. There's no reason the MC couldn't take it off of her, while she shyly covers herself at first, then stops as she gets more into it. That would get the same point across, and it would give you a reason to bring up the exposition of her being shy, instead of just telling us that's the case.

Another thing, that may just be aesthetic you're going for, is the lighting. Scenes felt a little darker than they needed to be. I would lighten them up more, especially anything sex-related.

Those are all changes that would obviously take some time to implement, but here are a few small ones that I think would really help your game in the short term:

First, you should put a better description for the game on this site. If you really want to use the mysterious one as the main description, then add a more typical synopsis in a spoiler just below it. Currently, it tells us almost nothing about the game, which is terrible for hooking people into trying it out. You've got a good game here, but a lot of people wont try it unless they know what they're getting into. I almost passed on if for this very reason.

Second, you should really put out an incest patch to fix the text referring to Sara and Mol as roommates. I know you said you're new to this, but it would be pretty easy, since your game is already set up for it. Incest is a great selling point, and people hate reading the roommate/tenant/friend workarounds.

Third, I'm sure you know this already, but you should put some music in your game. Fitting music helps immensely.

I wouldn't hold off on putting those changes in for too long. Devs often assume people are more forgiving about the little things, than they really are. You often only have one chance to capture someones interest, before they mentally write the game off forever and ignore future releases.

Lastly, (and it may be too late) it's good to be explicitly clear any time you mention NTR on this site. Seems like you may be new here, but it's a very sensitive topic. Saying anything vague about NTR possibly being in the game will get so many people's panties in a bunch, that it'll be the only thing discussed on this thread. I may be slightly biased as I'm not into NTR, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't even touch NTR at all in my game. The majority of people aren't into it, and it's such a turn off for some people on here that they'll never even try your game, even if it's avoidable.

Despite all these notes, I did really enjoy your game and I think the story is compelling. I think you've got something good here and I'm excited to see where things go.

Great feedback, and I'm not just saying that because you hit on some specific areas, I've been worried about myself.

I hate the plot dumping at the beginning. A lot of that was a last minute addition, which is why there's not much changing with the images. I'm the type of guy who doesn't want/need you to explain how everything works for me to enjoy a story but I'm also aware that there are a lot of people who don't feel that way. I would love to just gloss over everything, maybe drip feed some little details as necessary as we go and trust the audience to just enjoy the ride and pick up on the parts that matter. Like you said, show don't tell. But then I'll go on Twitter and see people who unironically think that the Imperium from 40k are good guys or act confused why a fictional character might say one thing but then behave in a contradictory way and I lose faith in the average person's media literacy. I should probably have a little more trust in my audience though.

*Some* of the run on sentences are intentional. At least when it's dialogue and a few other times. I probably need to go through and clean up the grammar for most of them though.

I'll work on the MC facial expressions. Most of the time I would start out with a preset and then tweak it a little but most of those can end up looking extremely exaggerated. So I ended up losing perspective, forgetting what normal human emotion is supposed to look like and made the poor bastard look like a robot. Sort of like when I try to groom my beard by trimming down the stray hairs a little bit at a time but then by the time I finish half my beard is gone.

I think you're right about a sex scene at the beginning. I wanted to create a sense that the MC's sex life is pretty normal and tame just so the players can appreciate how fucked up things are going to get but I didn't want to present the MC as a sexless virgin. He's boring and tame because he's just a regular guy with a regular sex life. If you've been with someone for a while sometimes netflix and chill means fucking your girlfriend but sometimes it means you both fall asleep. However, like you said I need to do a better job of grabbing everyone's attention. I might end up doing it with a cut away that involves people other than the MC but that presents issues related to one of your other points.

The shy Natalie thing is also intended just to give the player a starting point to compare things to as Natalie changes over the game. But everyone loves tits so maybe I'll go back and free the nip.

I agree with the lighting issues too. Primarily I need to get better at lighting night scenes but I am curious how you felt the "real-world" night scenes compared to the "virtual-world" night scenes. I'm doing some stuff with the color and contrast to heighten the visual distinction between reality and simulation that I think is contributing to the problem. If that ends up being the primary reason why the night scenes are too dark then even if I can't figure out how to better set up the lighting I might just be able to adjust the coloring tweaks some and fix it that way.

As far as the description/preview images and even the tags - I'm not the OP. My account is younger than this thread. If you compare the preview images here to what I used on itch.io you'll see that OP definitely focused on a specific part of the game whereas I was a little more random/balanced. And don't get me wrong I understand (I think) why the OP chose the images he did, if players are already primed for the little bait and switch gimmick at the beginning it will feel a little more impactful. Same with the tags, they're maybe not the tags I would've chose but they're not wrong. It's been nice for me though because it's let me see what players are thinking about the game before I had a chance to tell them what to think about the game. But that's been a double-edged sword. For example, there have been several commenters bring up female domination. I probably wouldn't have added that tag, even though there is a scene that involves some girl on girl bdsm, except maybe to advertise future content. Either way there won't be a significant amount of content featuring the MC getting dominated. But seeing everyone's reaction made me go back through the game to see if I accidentally gave off a bunch of femdom vibes, even if I suspect they were mostly just worried because of the tag, and I realized that the MC can come off kind of wimpy depending on how you read a lot the dialogue. It was my intention to show that the MC is out of his element/overwhelmed/uncomfortable with some of the stuff that happens at the beginning but not my intention to make him come across as a sniveling wuss. I don't know how much of these reactions reflect the lines I actually wrote versus their expectations from seeing the female domination tag though.

Related to that is the incest patch. I posted updated scripts in an earlier comment, but obviously if someone lands on this thread from the Latest Updates page or the Games forum they're not going to go digging through the comments to find it. I might rush out an update with some other fixes just to get that version on the initial post.

Someone else mentioned music and you're both right. I spent like three hours straight last weekend listening to different tracks so that I'd have music in the initial release and when I finally decided I found the "perfect" songs it turned out they were not free open source files. I'm not against paying a few bucks but I'm not going to pay a subscription fee. So I got mad, I took a break, had a beer and tried again. Forty-five(ish) minutes later I think I've found a solid alternative but that one turns out to be paywalled too. So now I'm big mad, I through a little hissy fit and say fuck it I'm doing the initial release without music. Not the best decision I've made but I was definitely being a perfectionist/procrastinating about the first release and ultimately I'm glad I ripped the bandaid off.


This post is getting really long and I have more to say but I'm going to put it into another comment.

 

[Wildbill5150]

Would really like to know what future tags for this will be?
I would suggest putting future tags somewhere in like a dev notes section so people understand what there getting into and won't have a surprise moment to ruin a game they got invested in to have something forced on them that their uncomfortable with I've seen that destroy many games honesty is always the best way to go in my opinion and I don't think anyone likes forced content that's just my opinion based on what I've seen here.
Thank you for your time

 

[DigiDec]

Great feedback, and I'm not just saying that because you hit on some specific areas, I've been worried about myself.

I hate the plot dumping at the beginning. A lot of that was a last minute addition, which is why there's not much changing with the images. I'm the type of guy who doesn't want/need you to explain how everything works for me to enjoy a story but I'm also aware that there are a lot of people who don't feel that way. I would love to just gloss over everything, maybe drip feed some little details as necessary as we go and trust the audience to just enjoy the ride and pick up on the parts that matter. Like you said, show don't tell. But then I'll go on Twitter and see people who unironically think that the Imperium from 40k are good guys or act confused why a fictional character might say one thing but then behave in a contradictory way and I lose faith in the average person's media literacy. I should probably have a little more trust in my audience though.

*Some* of the run on sentences are intentional. At least when it's dialogue and a few other times. I probably need to go through and clean up the grammar for most of them though.

I'll work on the MC facial expressions. Most of the time I would start out with a preset and then tweak it a little but most of those can end up looking extremely exaggerated. So I ended up losing perspective, forgetting what normal human emotion is supposed to look like and made the poor bastard look like a robot. Sort of like when I try to groom my beard by trimming down the stray hairs a little bit at a time but then by the time I finish half my beard is gone.

I think you're right about a sex scene at the beginning. I wanted to create a sense that the MC's sex life is pretty normal and tame just so the players can appreciate how fucked up things are going to get but I didn't want to present the MC as a sexless virgin. He's boring and tame because he's just a regular guy with a regular sex life. If you've been with someone for a while sometimes netflix and chill means fucking your girlfriend but sometimes it means you both fall asleep. However, like you said I need to do a better job of grabbing everyone's attention. I might end up doing it with a cut away that involves people other than the MC but that presents issues related to one of your other points.

The shy Natalie thing is also intended just to give the player a starting point to compare things to as Natalie changes over the game. But everyone loves tits so maybe I'll go back and free the nip.

I agree with the lighting issues too. Primarily I need to get better at lighting night scenes but I am curious how you felt the "real-world" night scenes compared to the "virtual-world" night scenes. I'm doing some stuff with the color and contrast to heighten the visual distinction between reality and simulation that I think is contributing to the problem. If that ends up being the primary reason why the night scenes are too dark then even if I can't figure out how to better set up the lighting I might just be able to adjust the coloring tweaks some and fix it that way.

As far as the description/preview images and even the tags - I'm not the OP. My account is younger than this thread. If you compare the preview images here to what I used on itch.io you'll see that OP definitely focused on a specific part of the game whereas I was a little more random/balanced. And don't get me wrong I understand (I think) why the OP chose the images he did, if players are already primed for the little bait and switch gimmick at the beginning it will feel a little more impactful. Same with the tags, they're maybe not the tags I would've chose but they're not wrong. It's been nice for me though because it's let me see what players are thinking about the game before I had a chance to tell them what to think about the game. But that's been a double-edged sword. For example, there have been several commenters bring up female domination. I probably wouldn't have added that tag, even though there is a scene that involves some girl on girl bdsm, except maybe to advertise future content. Either way there won't be a significant amount of content featuring the MC getting dominated. But seeing everyone's reaction made me go back through the game to see if I accidentally gave off a bunch of femdom vibes, even if I suspect they were mostly just worried because of the tag, and I realized that the MC can come off kind of wimpy depending on how you read a lot the dialogue. It was my intention to show that the MC is out of his element/overwhelmed/uncomfortable with some of the stuff that happens at the beginning but not my intention to make him come across as a sniveling wuss. I don't know how much of these reactions reflect the lines I actually wrote versus their expectations from seeing the female domination tag though.

Related to that is the incest patch. I posted updated scripts in an earlier comment, but obviously if someone lands on this thread from the Latest Updates page or the Games forum they're not going to go digging through the comments to find it. I might rush out an update with some other fixes just to get that version on the initial post.

Someone else mentioned music and you're both right. I spent like three hours straight last weekend listening to different tracks so that I'd have music in the initial release and when I finally decided I found the "perfect" songs it turned out they were not free open source files. I'm not against paying a few bucks but I'm not going to pay a subscription fee. So I got mad, I took a break, had a beer and tried again. Forty-five(ish) minutes later I think I've found a solid alternative but that one turns out to be paywalled too. So now I'm big mad, I through a little hissy fit and say fuck it I'm doing the initial release without music. Not the best decision I've made but I was definitely being a perfectionist/procrastinating about the first release and ultimately I'm glad I ripped the bandaid off.


This post is getting really long and I have more to say but I'm going to put it into another comment.

Following up -

So the NTR thing, I've talked about it in other comments and unless there's specific things that people are still unclear on I don't want to keep addressing it. I wasn't planning on taking ownership of this whole thread, my game made it on this site before I had a chance to post it myself, but I'll probably have to just to post some kind of disclaimer on the top post.

So, instead of rehashing the things I've already gone over and as a way to give you guys a better idea of future content/overall direction I'm going to post some character previews and briefly mention the type of content that each of them would focus on.

Spoilers incoming.

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[DigiDec]

Would really like to know what future tags for this will be?
I would suggest putting future tags somewhere in like a dev notes section so people understand what there getting into and won't have a surprise moment to ruin a game they got invested in to have something forced on them that their uncomfortable with I've seen that destroy many games honesty is always the best way to go in my opinion and I don't think anyone likes forced content that's just my opinion based on what I've seen here.
Thank you for your time

I think I might have answered some of your questions in a comment I was writing when you posted this, but also I am not OP so I can't change the top post in this thread.

 

[SpyderArachnid]

I think I might have answered some of your questions in a comment I was writing when you posted this, but also I am not OP so I can't change the top post in this thread.

You can actually request ownership of the thread as the dev of this game.

On that same note, you can submit a ticket for the developer badge too here.

 

[Wildbill5150]

I think I might have answered some of your questions in a comment I was writing when you posted this, but also I am not OP so I can't change the top post in this thread.

Reading what you wrote I will definitely give it a try and I certainly appreciate you replying that certainly shows that you care about the game and about how players feel about said game so that alone earns you a point in my book so least I can do it give a serious chance.

Thank you for your time and your reply most appreciated.

 

[DigiDec]

You can actually request ownership of the thread as the dev of this game.

On that same note, you can submit a ticket for the developer badge too here.

Lol, thank you for pointing that out to me. I started to look into it a day ago but got distracted and completely forgot. Anyways if/when my ticket gets approved I'll clean up the top post.

 

[marcoverrati45]

Looks good

 

[Justaflynn]

Following up -

So the NTR thing, I've talked about it in other comments and unless there's specific things that people are still unclear on I don't want to keep addressing it. I wasn't planning on taking ownership of this whole thread, my game made it on this site before I had a chance to post it myself, but I'll probably have to just to post some kind of disclaimer on the top post.

So, instead of rehashing the things I've already gone over and as a way to give you guys a better idea of future content/overall direction I'm going to post some character previews and briefly mention the type of content that each of them would focus on.

Spoilers incoming.

Spoiler

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So there are no male characters coming to steal your girl. None of the main girls or the household girls will be getting fucked by anyone but the MC unless the MC explicitly allows/encourages it and even then it would almost always be with another woman with *maybe* a couple easily avoidable and clearly marked outliers. The side girls might have scenes with other women that happen regardless of the players choices, for example one of the side girls is already in a sexual relationship with one of the main girls at the beginning of the game, and I am open to the idea of making these scenes skippable.

Hopefully this clears up some of your questions but if there's anything more specific you want to know just keep asking and I'll do my best to answer. The game isn't done yet so I might not have very specific answers to every question though.

Really helpful info here. I appreciate the detailed reply. Anyone with NTR questions should read this ^ Some of that content is not my cup of tea, but I'm glad to hear it's all easily avoidable.

I didn't realize you weren't the owner of the thread, but I'm glad SpyderArachnid pointed out how to do that. Once you become the owner of the thread, I'd recommend putting all of that information in the Developer Notes section so people have easy access to it.

It'd also be good to add some of that info in the Genre section as Planned Tags and then direct people to read the developer notes for the more detailed info. There's no such thing as too many reminders when it comes to pointing to answers about NTR. Though, unfortunately, I'm sure you'll still get some of the same NTR questions in comments regardless.

Oh, and I think the reason why the pictures of the girls that you added are showing as links instead of embeded pics is because they're webp. I may be wrong, as I'm no expert here, but I think they need to be jpg or png, like all the preview pictures are. Someone else more knowledgeable should correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

[DigiDec]

Really helpful info here. I appreciate the detailed reply. Anyone with NTR questions should read this ^ Some of that content is not my cup of tea, but I'm glad to hear it's all easily avoidable.

I didn't realize you weren't the owner of the thread, but I'm glad SpyderArachnid pointed out how to do that. Once you become the owner of the thread, I'd recommend putting all of that information in the Developer Notes section so people have easy access to it.

It'd also be good to add some of that info in the Genre section as Planned Tags and then direct people to read the developer notes for the more detailed info. There's no such thing as too many reminders when it comes to pointing to answers about NTR. Though, unfortunately, I'm sure you'll still get some of the same NTR questions in comments regardless.

Oh, and I think the reason why the pictures of the girls that you added are showing as links instead of embeded pics is because they're webp. I may be wrong, as I'm no expert here, but I think they need to be jpg or png, like all the preview pictures are. Someone else more knowledgeable should correct me if I'm wrong though.

I'm probably going to have to put together a planned comment speech about NTR and then just copy-paste it every time someone asks. Don't get me wrong I don't mind offering additional clarification but like you said I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of comments in this thread by people who just skipped past any statement I've already made.

In other news I have a Dev badge and I own this thread now. Yay! Everyone clap!

Also, I finally found some music so next update won't be awkwardly silent. Yay! More clapping!

I've taken some of the early feedback into consideration and I've decided to rework some of the current content... which means it's going to be little bit longer before you all get some truly new stuff. Boo! Everyone's sad now!

I'm going to trim some of the fat at the beginning, cut out most of the pointless technobabble exposition and see if I can just clean up the writing in general. I'm also going to slide something sexy in at the very beginning, props to Justaflynn for that suggestion, but the most time consuming change is going to be changing the MC model.

Some people commented on his general appearance and separately his lack of emotion. Turns out those two things are related. Here's a quick preview that I think shows what I mean -


Exact same slider settings for the expression but there's something off-putting about that creep on the right. Anyway the models I think are similar enough that it's not going to be a jarring difference. Here's a full side by side-

Outside of the sex scenes he's not actually on camera a whole lot so hopefully I can get an updated version 0.1 out for you guys soon.

If I can get the replacement stuff done fast enough I'll also add in a sexy scene towards the later half of the current content just so everyone who tried the first release have something to look forward to while playing. It's almost certainly going to be with Natalie since that's the only character the MC is actually involved with as of this update but if you guys have any requests/suggestions for the nature of the scene let me know.

Regarding the lighting issue, I am not going to go back and redo every render but here's a quick look at what I can do with the renders that I already have-

Old:

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Some of those new ones are probably a little too bright but let me know what you guys think.

Mild story related spoiler-

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I think that covers everything. I made some small updates to the top post, I'm going to wait for the revamped release before I switch up too much stuff up there though. Shout out whoever let me know about the webp not showing up in the posts. Thanks again for all your comments, I'm excited to see how you guys receive the updated version.

 

[DigiDec]

Currently burning the midnight oil to get the revamp done asap. Here's a couple teaser shots from the new intro-

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I'm sure you all have a pretty good idea of how that scene will play out.

 

[Look-see]

Currently burning the midnight oil to get the revamp done asap. Here's a couple teaser shots from the new intro-

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I'm sure you all have a pretty good idea of how that scene will play out.

future barbies are clearly not for kids.

 

[Justaflynn]

Great changes all around. The emotions on the new MC's model looks so much better. He looks significantly less creepy. I really liked the lighting changes as well, the world looks less drab and dystopian now. I know you said that's what you were going for, but I think it was a good idea to drop that aesthetic. Anyway, it's nice to see a dev so receptive to feedback.

Glad to see you got control of the thread as well. I feel compelled to clap for some reason. Odd.

I know you mentioned you're rushing to get the revamp done asap, but if you don't already know, any updates you make won't get promoted for 2 weeks. Only one game update every 2 weeks will show up on the "Latest Updates" page. So, unless people are refreshing this thread for changes, not as many people will see it as your game has gotten buried at this point on the updates page. That's the primary way people find games here. So, if you do a big revamp within 2 weeks, way fewer eyes will see it. Just a head up on how the system works, since you're new here.

 

[DigiDec]

Great changes all around. The emotions on the new MC's model looks so much better. He looks significantly less creepy. I really liked the lighting changes as well, the world looks less drab and dystopian now. I know you said that's what you were going for, but I think it was a good idea to drop that aesthetic. Anyway, it's nice to see a dev so receptive to feedback.

Glad to see you got control of the thread as well. I feel compelled to clap for some reason. Odd.

I know you mentioned you're rushing to get the revamp done asap, but if you don't already know, any updates you make won't get promoted for 2 weeks. Only one game update every 2 weeks will show up on the "Latest Updates" page. So, unless people are refreshing this thread for changes, not as many people will see it as your game has gotten buried at this point on the updates page. That's the primary way people find games here. So, if you do a big revamp within 2 weeks, way fewer eyes will see it. Just a head up on how the system works, since you're new here.

I wasn't 100% on the 2-week thing but I was sort of aware of it just because I saw an announcement about a new promotion/update feature. And yeah, if I get the update out before that two-week mark then not a lot of people will notice it.

I'm going to have to play the game to some extent to maximize visibility, but I do want to make the update available as soon as I can even if it gets limited exposure at first. So, I might not post it to this site as soon as it's finished. Or maybe I'll be sneaky and hold on to a little bit of content just so I can justify another update once that two-week timer finishes. Or maybe I'll make an army of sock puppet accounts to shamelessly shill my game in other people's threads. (That's a joke) I don't really want to game the system or bore everyone with tiny meaningless updates though. I do however want to get as much input as possible while I'm still early in development. I can change the MC model now but if I had waited another update or two that would have been a nightmare. If one of the other characters needs a rework, I need to hear about it while it's still doable.

I also want to get focused on building the rest of the game so I can start to get a feel for what my normal update cycle might look like. One of the reasons I pushed out the initial release was just because it was the start of a new month. I want to see how quickly (or slowly) I can add content now that the stage is set. Am I going to be able to do monthly releases? Two months? Or will it be better to focus on a content quantity/quality goal for each update and not get hung up about frequency? The answer will probably come partially from what the players want/expect. But I need to get some (more) players first.

And this isn't a dig at any other developers out there, but I also don't intend for this game to be in development for a decade. I don't know how long it will take to finish but after another real update or two I will probably have a decent idea of the timeline. I have an endpoint in the story planned and a pretty good roadmap built on how to get there. Things will change along the way and some content might get added or scrapped based on audience reactions, but the overall shape of the story isn't going to change. I'm also not going to be adding new mechanics and it's not going to turn into a sandbox at any point. This will be a fairly linear VN. There's absolutely going to be some variance based on the players choices, but the story is not going to branch out wildly. This isn't me trying to gas myself up or say I'm better than any other developer (I'm not) but to further make the point that I need feedback as early as possible because once I really get the ball rolling the clock starts ticking. If someone discovers the game 5 or 6 updates from now it might be too late for me to implement any of their feedback.

I want the game to speak for itself and attract people to my itch.io or SubscribeStar (which just got approved) so I can get them onto my Discord. I want to engage with the audience, I want to have polls, share previews and work with the audience some to steer future content. I also wouldn't mind making a few bucks. But I need to get the game out there and I need some time in the market before I can expect people to join my dedicated pages.

I'd love to have a big discussion about what incentives to offer for my subscribers, but I don't think this forum is a great format for it. Still, if anyone has any suggestions beyond the standard early access/exclusive voting I'm all ears. I've snooped around on other creator's pages to gather ideas, but I don't want to start promising 100 different things to my purely hypothetical subscribers if all they really care about are two or three perks.

 

[Ghost'']

It's Just A Game [v0.1.1] Unofficial Android Port + \FOXBOT/'s WT Mod

Spoiler: Features

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- 457mb


My Android Ports have a 2nd Persistent save location. So, even if you uninstall the game, the saves will remain Intact.

Saves location: Storage/0011/Game-name


You can also join my discord server for more and support me.

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You can also join 0011 discord server

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If you like my works please support me.

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[Rockero_69]

Following up -

So the NTR thing, I've talked about it in other comments and unless there's specific things that people are still unclear on I don't want to keep addressing it. I wasn't planning on taking ownership of this whole thread, my game made it on this site before I had a chance to post it myself, but I'll probably have to just to post some kind of disclaimer on the top post.

So, instead of rehashing the things I've already gone over and as a way to give you guys a better idea of future content/overall direction I'm going to post some character previews and briefly mention the type of content that each of them would focus on.

Spoilers incoming.

Spoiler

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Wow how many things were discussed that I just read so much about the ntr, sharing, balancing, what content there will be what content, that there will not be what could be avoidable that could be omitted, honestly I had never read so much in a single forum, however after After reading all this, the only question is, the game will have a harem ending with all the girls and my recommendation is to make everything avoidable, so the player decides what happens and what does not happen in the game (for example, some do not like the Lesbians, since it is avoidable, it does not happen, but there will be others who like it and since it is avoidable, they will not avoid it and it happens and so it happens with all the content that you want to implement, a great example of a game with that content dynamic is Grandma's House) without further ado I wait for the answer, to give the game a chance, if not luck and other DEV

 

[DigiDec]

Wow how many things were discussed that I just read so much about the ntr, sharing, balancing, what content there will be what content, that there will not be what could be avoidable that could be omitted, honestly I had never read so much in a single forum, however after After reading all this, the only question is, the game will have a harem ending with all the girls and my recommendation is to make everything avoidable, so the player decides what happens and what does not happen in the game (for example, some do not like the Lesbians, since it is avoidable, it does not happen, but there will be others who like it and since it is avoidable, they will not avoid it and it happens and so it happens with all the content that you want to implement, a great example of a game with that content dynamic is Grandma's House) without further ado I wait for the answer, to give the game a chance, if not luck and other DEV

Yes there will absolutely be a harem ending. Several of the endings will probably end up qualifying but at the very least there will be one ending that should check all the typical harem ending boxes.

As far as avoidable content I sort of touched on it in response to an earlier question, but I'll try to elaborate here. When the MC is present for a given scene, the player will typically be able to choose how it plays out. That means that pretty much any potential girl on girl scene could end up being a threesome or maybe one of the girls just ends up watching or something. Or maybe the MC chooses not to be involved at all and leaves. Now realistically I can't create scenes for every hypothetical option. The game would never get finished and creating 2 or 3 versions of 10 sex different sex scenes is probably going to make for a better game than 10 different versions of 2 or 3 sex scenes. I just pulled those numbers out of my ass, they are not meant to be indications of how much sexual content is planned for this game.

There will be cutaway scenes that show events that the MC is not present for. There aren't going to be a ton of them, the game is going to focus on the MC's perspective, but they'll happen often enough that if you are completely turned off by the idea of the characters doing sexy things when the MC isn't around then I imagine they'll fuck up the game for you. I am open to (and currently testing) the idea of including a filter so the player can skip these scenes - but as far as the plot of the game is concerned, they are happening. If that's a deal breaker then hey sorry these things happen it's not you it's me I hope we can still be friends.

I hope that answers your question and I hope you enjoy the game. I'm reworking some stuff right now but there's no harm in trying the current release, just know that some things are going to look different soon.

If you want to know a little bit more about the general direction the game is going to take but don't mind some spoiler-ish stuff keep reading:

Spoiler

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[Rockero_69]

Yes there will absolutely be a harem ending. Several of the endings will probably end up qualifying but at the very least there will be one ending that should check all the typical harem ending boxes.

As far as avoidable content I sort of touched on it in response to an earlier question, but I'll try to elaborate here. When the MC is present for a given scene, the player will typically be able to choose how it plays out. That means that pretty much any potential girl on girl scene could end up being a threesome or maybe one of the girls just ends up watching or something. Or maybe the MC chooses not to be involved at all and leaves. Now realistically I can't create scenes for every hypothetical option. The game would never get finished and creating 2 or 3 versions of 10 sex different sex scenes is probably going to make for a better game than 10 different versions of 2 or 3 sex scenes. I just pulled those numbers out of my ass, they are not meant to be indications of how much sexual content is planned for this game.

There will be cutaway scenes that show events that the MC is not present for. There aren't going to be a ton of them, the game is going to focus on the MC's perspective, but they'll happen often enough that if you are completely turned off by the idea of the characters doing sexy things when the MC isn't around then I imagine they'll fuck up the game for you. I am open to (and currently testing) the idea of including a filter so the player can skip these scenes - but as far as the plot of the game is concerned, they are happening. If that's a deal breaker then hey sorry these things happen it's not you it's me I hope we can still be friends.

I hope that answers your question and I hope you enjoy the game. I'm reworking some stuff right now but there's no harm in trying the current release, just know that some things are going to look different soon.

If you want to know a little bit more about the general direction the game is going to take but don't mind some spoiler-ish stuff keep reading:

Spoiler

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Wow, thanks for the response and yes it was completely clarified but I will wait for the next update and with the different changes and improvements that you mentioned we did good luck in the development of the game and we will see how this game develops

 

[DigiDec]

Random update-

I mentioned earlier that I was going to change the model for Hanna. I can't pretend like I was surprised by the extremely vocal and toxic outcry about the news, Hanna fandom has always had a dark side to it, but I've stuck to my guns and pushed through with the changes.

Spoiler

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Hanna is a very minor character, I don't have much dedicated content planned for her, but the old model just looked too similar to some of the other characters. Hopefully you guys like the new model.

I also changed a much more important character.

Spoiler

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This change wasn't because she looks similar to other characters but because I just didn't really like the old model. Early in development she was sort of just a background character who wasn't going to be a big part of the game but that changed as I worked out more of the details for the story. Unfortunately, inertia had sunk in and I didn't take the time to re-appraise the character design. I think this new one maintains the vibe of the old model but looks better and helps visually communicate some details about the character that you'll learn later in the story.

I'm stuck in front of the computer suffering through Daz load times while working on the revamp so I might end up posting some more teasers later just to help break up the monotony.