RandomServant77
Newbie
- Jun 13, 2017
- 80
- 296
- 238
IT IS TIME TO JOIN TOGETHER AND LAUGH
How many "recycled assets" to "speed up production"?
How short the "strong indipendent woman" to "dumb bimbo bitch" pipeline?
How many "recycled assets" to "speed up production"?
How short the "strong indipendent woman" to "dumb bimbo bitch" pipeline?
On the patreon post, that is visible before paywall:
"DISCLAIMER: some assets reused to enable fast release; assets will be replaced over time with new assets for cohesive artstyle. Hey everyon..."
How does this work? Will the new game need a new thread or will it get linked here since it also wears the KoD brand?
Jimbo-do
Newbie
- May 10, 2017
- 43
- 80
- 196
Probably best to wait and see if it gets regular updates or is also abandoned before even considering
Sarvin
New Member
- Oct 15, 2017
- 3
- 8
- 126
7 minutes
rather that than 5+ years of incremental updates to find any character development.
Damn another female protagonist abondoned!!!
Is this some kind of propaganda?
Is this some kind of propaganda?
Xenon-San
Active Member
- Jun 16, 2017
- 747
- 1,050
- 325
guys? i know that this question is off topic but i am going to ask it here since this game is dead anyways
i am looking for similar game but i don't remember the name, all i remember that there was a scene with some rich asshole with female mc, it was taking place in a borthel and mc was wearing amulet that could change her appeareance to whatever the customer wanted. The rich dude wanted the mc change to "herself" quite funny scene to be honest
anyone? i think the main girl was blonde and the game was about some debt repayment?
also is there a special way or thread to ask such questions ? i don't really want to make a new thread each time i forget a game name
i am looking for similar game but i don't remember the name, all i remember that there was a scene with some rich asshole with female mc, it was taking place in a borthel and mc was wearing amulet that could change her appeareance to whatever the customer wanted. The rich dude wanted the mc change to "herself" quite funny scene to be honest
anyone? i think the main girl was blonde and the game was about some debt repayment?
also is there a special way or thread to ask such questions ? i don't really want to make a new thread each time i forget a game name
microskills
Newbie
- Apr 30, 2018
- 28
- 47
- 112
Genuinely sad that the game got shafted, but the painting was on the wall a long time ago.
TL;DR: No management, no game.
Though to be fair I think that Sierre's ambition doomed the project from the start, or rather the lack of management (which I'll pretty much repeat endless in this rant lol), if she wanted this grandiose multi-layered visual novel with combat, mini games and what not, I think it's pretty clear they should've done:
Core game: Sabia's fall from grace -> hustling and fucking orcs -> She gets close to the throne -> The end
Expansions: Sabia gets her revenge, Sabia takes over the kingdom
The scope was waaay out there especially if Sierre had worked with Nomo before, that said... Sierre leaving caused enough problems with no one to pushback against any idea that went against Sierre's established writting (hence the drop in quality when it comes to writing).
I don't know how many small patreon "studios" blowing up their good will it's going to take to make them understand you need someone who can take on the role of manager if you're going to have a team bigger than 2 (hell even 2 can blow up).
Since it's odd that it's specifically the Western adult game scene that is struggling this much with this, if you look at the Japanese scene it's very consistent.
You either got:
Speaking from personal experience a "hobby/self-employed" project is usually a lot more destruct to your well-being because any free-time is considered "wasted hours", it really messes with your psyche.
That said regardless if what transpired with Sierre is true (that she felt Nomo was unprofessional which... seems correct given the shit show), since even if Sierre was too ambitious, didn't want to do certain story writing (non-con, bestiality or whatever else); that's most her personal taste than an active choice made during the development of the game (you can still criticize that taste though, afaik she wrote things she normally wouldn't want to write about in Noxian Nights due to in part fans and Nomo wanting her to).
Instead it's how (lack of) management clearly didn't reel in her personal ideas and made them productive if that WAS the case; same goes for Nomo though, either they quit, work part time or work full time - it's that simple.
I have my doubts that Hreinn stalling was doing this out of greed, I certainly understand the frustration from people saying as such, but I think it's more likely the case that again poor leadership put too much trust into the unstable artist that sure had 1 game under their belt, but most likely caused the writer to quit partially due to it.
Since if we flip the script a bit:
If you're in a DND group with a competent but 'unstable' DM and one day they don't show up to the group, the first time you might make up an excuse for it to try and just stall for more time, since if you start looking for a new DM and the person comes back (Nomo in this case) it'll 100% cause drama and be especially destructive if your group were relying on the DM's DND set.
So it was a damn if you do; damn if you don't, mind you, not trying to defend Monsinne here, they fucked up by not stepping up to be the manager of the project or doing a piss poor job being the unofficial person for it, but it's so painfully clear that if someone in Hreinn Games did some basic 101 administration, then Sierre wouldn't have left and either Nomo step up, get downgraded or replaced.
Since if someone leaves the project and it's not with a neon light saying "ILLNESS/FAMILY/NEW ADVENTURE" but instead they go and do their own thing, you fucked up management wise.
Either way I think it would've been smarter to do a new game that is promised to be short (1 year deadline to make sure the new artist won't do a Nomo), than just doing a spin-off, especially if there are copyright concerns (which if so... how the hell no one can look up HBomb Games situation and learn to make sure the Company/Studio/Collaboration/Cooperative has the copyright not the artist is beyond me).
Who knows maybe in the year 5000 when we figure out pararell universe travel can we visit the universe where the gang stuck together and got Game of the Year award for KoD, but alas until then we live in the shitiverse.
TL;DR: No management, no game.
Though to be fair I think that Sierre's ambition doomed the project from the start, or rather the lack of management (which I'll pretty much repeat endless in this rant lol), if she wanted this grandiose multi-layered visual novel with combat, mini games and what not, I think it's pretty clear they should've done:
Core game: Sabia's fall from grace -> hustling and fucking orcs -> She gets close to the throne -> The end
Expansions: Sabia gets her revenge, Sabia takes over the kingdom
The scope was waaay out there especially if Sierre had worked with Nomo before, that said... Sierre leaving caused enough problems with no one to pushback against any idea that went against Sierre's established writting (hence the drop in quality when it comes to writing).
I don't know how many small patreon "studios" blowing up their good will it's going to take to make them understand you need someone who can take on the role of manager if you're going to have a team bigger than 2 (hell even 2 can blow up).
Since it's odd that it's specifically the Western adult game scene that is struggling this much with this, if you look at the Japanese scene it's very consistent.
You either got:
- Circle support (which can range from social networking to contract freelance work to collaborative teams which is what a lot turned into)
- Solo dev with some freelance support
- Small hardcore team with strict management (ONEONE1, Black Lilith, etc.)
Speaking from personal experience a "hobby/self-employed" project is usually a lot more destruct to your well-being because any free-time is considered "wasted hours", it really messes with your psyche.
That said regardless if what transpired with Sierre is true (that she felt Nomo was unprofessional which... seems correct given the shit show), since even if Sierre was too ambitious, didn't want to do certain story writing (non-con, bestiality or whatever else); that's most her personal taste than an active choice made during the development of the game (you can still criticize that taste though, afaik she wrote things she normally wouldn't want to write about in Noxian Nights due to in part fans and Nomo wanting her to).
Instead it's how (lack of) management clearly didn't reel in her personal ideas and made them productive if that WAS the case; same goes for Nomo though, either they quit, work part time or work full time - it's that simple.
I have my doubts that Hreinn stalling was doing this out of greed, I certainly understand the frustration from people saying as such, but I think it's more likely the case that again poor leadership put too much trust into the unstable artist that sure had 1 game under their belt, but most likely caused the writer to quit partially due to it.
Since if we flip the script a bit:
If you're in a DND group with a competent but 'unstable' DM and one day they don't show up to the group, the first time you might make up an excuse for it to try and just stall for more time, since if you start looking for a new DM and the person comes back (Nomo in this case) it'll 100% cause drama and be especially destructive if your group were relying on the DM's DND set.
So it was a damn if you do; damn if you don't, mind you, not trying to defend Monsinne here, they fucked up by not stepping up to be the manager of the project or doing a piss poor job being the unofficial person for it, but it's so painfully clear that if someone in Hreinn Games did some basic 101 administration, then Sierre wouldn't have left and either Nomo step up, get downgraded or replaced.
Since if someone leaves the project and it's not with a neon light saying "ILLNESS/FAMILY/NEW ADVENTURE" but instead they go and do their own thing, you fucked up management wise.
Either way I think it would've been smarter to do a new game that is promised to be short (1 year deadline to make sure the new artist won't do a Nomo), than just doing a spin-off, especially if there are copyright concerns (which if so... how the hell no one can look up HBomb Games situation and learn to make sure the Company/Studio/Collaboration/Cooperative has the copyright not the artist is beyond me).
Who knows maybe in the year 5000 when we figure out pararell universe travel can we visit the universe where the gang stuck together and got Game of the Year award for KoD, but alas until then we live in the shitiverse.
Last edited:
I'm completely unaware of which are Sierra game names, anyone can tell me?
microskills
Newbie
- Apr 30, 2018
- 28
- 47
- 112
If you want every single game (including I believe SFW) itch.io page:
You must be registered to see the links
There's also:
https://f95zone.to/threads/once-ever-after-v1-0-sierra-lee.76402/page-3
https://f95zone.to/threads/desecration-of-wings-final-sierra-lee.10441/page-3
https://f95zone.to/threads/the-last-sovereign-v0-80-6-sierra-lee.616/br-reviews/page-2
Brother Penetrātus
Member
- Aug 12, 2018
- 377
- 1,098
- 307
Just in case someone still cares:
"Hey everyone - the 0.1 patch for our Amelia project is now publicly available for free.
download links here >
PC VERSION:
MAC VERSION:
check full post for more info >
POST MORTEM:
hey everyone, Monsinne here, since this last release is such a big shift for the team (new artist, new ‘effective’ team lead, new project), I thought it might be interesting to do a short post-mortem of it for anyone who’s interested in that. I don’t see doing this as a consistent thing unless there happens to be a really big demand for it. More that I just wanted to let everyone know how the change in all those aspects has played out. I’ve never really done this before so I guess it’ll just be me saying a bunch for stuff loosely in the right order, here goes:
So obviously we had some issues with the previous team, Nomo basically now being unavailable. I won’t go further into that. When it became clear that that’s what was happening, I started looking for another potential artist, and I messaged Joy about it. I had some loose ideas of several different things Nds and I could do, some were my own ideas, but the consensus seemed that most people would be most interested in a KoD side thing - that worked fine, I had ideas, the characters are fun, and we have some assets for it already.
Then when it became clear that, yep, we needed a new artist 100%, I basically messaged Joy that very day and asked if he was still keen, he said yep, and then we started this project the next day, with only a very few loose ideas.
Some stuff went right, some stuff went wrong, let’s talk about it:
What went wrong?
A few things - mostly logistical and mostly my fault. Nomo had always been the effective ‘lead’ on the team. He was the one that was deciding most of the plots, quests, characters, art/scene composition, etc, all that stuff. Now it’s basically me as the effective ‘lead’.
Planning earlier would have been nice. Or maybe we could have taken a 2-3 week period of dedicated planning. We didn’t start this until it became 100% clear this was the way forward. So we only had a really loose plan, and mostly in my head. Having a general idea of the actual quest/characters/relevant locations we wanted to include before starting would have been a little better. We had to iterate on a few ideas and bits and pieces because of that, instead of it going a bit smoother.
I forgot to go over some logistics with Joy. Transitioning to the effective lead meant I needed to keep a lot more housekeeping stuff in mind that I flat out forgot to go over - mostly properly explaining sketch/hi-res reward packs with Joy, some of the other elements like what exactly we needed for sprites, UI elements, and stuff like that. I’d say I covered about 70%ish but there was certainly some stuff I missed, and that’s reflected in this first cycle with no hi-res art and no real sketch pack. I think I’ve gone over pretty much everything now with him though, so going forward this should be good and we’ll re-visit the reward tiers soon.
Missing some if:then stuff. I really dislike when some projects don’t cover various approaches to dialogue - for example, you might have an introduction with Character A, and a quest to talk to Character A. Sometimes, you’ll be able to get the quest dialogue before the introduction, and that reads weird. I forgot to cover this on some stuff (with Claer, the shopkeeper). So last minute, I had to go back and put in some extra stuff to make sure the dialogue flows well if you go talk to her with the food quest before visiting her a second time. Same with Willow. It’s maybe pretty minor, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. This sometimes happens but we usually catch it before release, and if not it’s something I usually fix up by the next patch.
What went right? Also a few things!
Art and sprites! Joy’s really great to work with, he’s fast and does awesome stuff. It’s great having multiple new sprites and backgrounds per cycle. Following that, we’re making a shift back to how earlier KoD scenes had a smaller number of ‘panels’, but this allowed us to have 2 completely different poses/pics in the scene, as well as a significant different in one of the panels in the second part of the scene (post-bang). I think this is a good move, but I’m open to hear what people think.
Teamwork - we worked really together. Joy hopped on and everything went really smooth.
Set-up, foreshadowing and some minor choices: Since we have a much more defined plan with this project (and it planned to be shorter), we already have an idea of where it ends. So we’ve already introduced some foreshadowing for events, characters and things that are going to be major plot points and stuff later in the game - as well as already including some choices that will pay off later.
Pacing, communication: this is a big one for me, I think. I’m REALLY happy with the pacing we had for this. Admittedly we did reuse some assets, but even still we went from vague ideas, no new art, no new sprites, and a new artist, to a finished intro patch with several new sprites, effectively 2 scenes and 2 backgrounds in a little over 2 months. Nds spend the rest of the time coding while I edited/fixed up any issues. Very happy with that. Additionally, I’m happy with the level of communication between us and everyone for this as well, that was a thing that was lacking before, and I want that to be fixed. I’m working on it, and going forward we’ll continue to be very communicative.
Quick run through of timeline>
First few days: brought Joy on, went over stuff, talked about things. Came up with a rough plan, did a couple of small votes on discord and whatnot to have a general quick consensus on a few minor choices (obligatory reminder to hop on our discord if you wanna interact with us more!).
Next few days: fleshed out the details more, made a definitive plan and some characters, spent a night looking through r34 for some refs and pose ideas and all that.
The rest of the time up until about the start of July was us doing the work. Did the sprites, did the background/art, did all the writing - not much to say here, we just did the stuff and the stuff takes some time.
A couple of days into July we sent all the stuff to Nds, he compiled it, and then realizing we had some extra time and Willow was a big screentime char for this, Joy did her sprite as well. Nds compiled it, gave it a few tests, and then sent it to us. We did a quick playthrough, noticed a few things, but nothing major, and everything worked well and that’s when we made the announcement post. We spent that work iterating and editing some of the small stuff, and then we released it for the appropriate tier on the 25th.
Going forward, we’ll only be announcing release dates when the patch is finished to a state of it being playable with no major issues.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it went, the end product, and looking forward I’m excited to continue and expand on this start.
Thanks, everyone."
TL;DR:
It was Nomo's fault, we did everything we could, we blame partially our inexperience (after >10 years of game developing lol), but we have something for you guys - you only have to wait for it!!!11!!1!!, give us money and you will get a more boring version of the initial game, lots and lots of glasing and grooming.
"Hey everyone - the 0.1 patch for our Amelia project is now publicly available for free.
download links here >
PC VERSION:
You must be registered to see the links
MAC VERSION:
You must be registered to see the links
check full post for more info >
You must be registered to see the links
POST MORTEM:
hey everyone, Monsinne here, since this last release is such a big shift for the team (new artist, new ‘effective’ team lead, new project), I thought it might be interesting to do a short post-mortem of it for anyone who’s interested in that. I don’t see doing this as a consistent thing unless there happens to be a really big demand for it. More that I just wanted to let everyone know how the change in all those aspects has played out. I’ve never really done this before so I guess it’ll just be me saying a bunch for stuff loosely in the right order, here goes:
So obviously we had some issues with the previous team, Nomo basically now being unavailable. I won’t go further into that. When it became clear that that’s what was happening, I started looking for another potential artist, and I messaged Joy about it. I had some loose ideas of several different things Nds and I could do, some were my own ideas, but the consensus seemed that most people would be most interested in a KoD side thing - that worked fine, I had ideas, the characters are fun, and we have some assets for it already.
Then when it became clear that, yep, we needed a new artist 100%, I basically messaged Joy that very day and asked if he was still keen, he said yep, and then we started this project the next day, with only a very few loose ideas.
Some stuff went right, some stuff went wrong, let’s talk about it:
What went wrong?
A few things - mostly logistical and mostly my fault. Nomo had always been the effective ‘lead’ on the team. He was the one that was deciding most of the plots, quests, characters, art/scene composition, etc, all that stuff. Now it’s basically me as the effective ‘lead’.
Planning earlier would have been nice. Or maybe we could have taken a 2-3 week period of dedicated planning. We didn’t start this until it became 100% clear this was the way forward. So we only had a really loose plan, and mostly in my head. Having a general idea of the actual quest/characters/relevant locations we wanted to include before starting would have been a little better. We had to iterate on a few ideas and bits and pieces because of that, instead of it going a bit smoother.
I forgot to go over some logistics with Joy. Transitioning to the effective lead meant I needed to keep a lot more housekeeping stuff in mind that I flat out forgot to go over - mostly properly explaining sketch/hi-res reward packs with Joy, some of the other elements like what exactly we needed for sprites, UI elements, and stuff like that. I’d say I covered about 70%ish but there was certainly some stuff I missed, and that’s reflected in this first cycle with no hi-res art and no real sketch pack. I think I’ve gone over pretty much everything now with him though, so going forward this should be good and we’ll re-visit the reward tiers soon.
Missing some if:then stuff. I really dislike when some projects don’t cover various approaches to dialogue - for example, you might have an introduction with Character A, and a quest to talk to Character A. Sometimes, you’ll be able to get the quest dialogue before the introduction, and that reads weird. I forgot to cover this on some stuff (with Claer, the shopkeeper). So last minute, I had to go back and put in some extra stuff to make sure the dialogue flows well if you go talk to her with the food quest before visiting her a second time. Same with Willow. It’s maybe pretty minor, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. This sometimes happens but we usually catch it before release, and if not it’s something I usually fix up by the next patch.
What went right? Also a few things!
Art and sprites! Joy’s really great to work with, he’s fast and does awesome stuff. It’s great having multiple new sprites and backgrounds per cycle. Following that, we’re making a shift back to how earlier KoD scenes had a smaller number of ‘panels’, but this allowed us to have 2 completely different poses/pics in the scene, as well as a significant different in one of the panels in the second part of the scene (post-bang). I think this is a good move, but I’m open to hear what people think.
Teamwork - we worked really together. Joy hopped on and everything went really smooth.
Set-up, foreshadowing and some minor choices: Since we have a much more defined plan with this project (and it planned to be shorter), we already have an idea of where it ends. So we’ve already introduced some foreshadowing for events, characters and things that are going to be major plot points and stuff later in the game - as well as already including some choices that will pay off later.
Pacing, communication: this is a big one for me, I think. I’m REALLY happy with the pacing we had for this. Admittedly we did reuse some assets, but even still we went from vague ideas, no new art, no new sprites, and a new artist, to a finished intro patch with several new sprites, effectively 2 scenes and 2 backgrounds in a little over 2 months. Nds spend the rest of the time coding while I edited/fixed up any issues. Very happy with that. Additionally, I’m happy with the level of communication between us and everyone for this as well, that was a thing that was lacking before, and I want that to be fixed. I’m working on it, and going forward we’ll continue to be very communicative.
Quick run through of timeline>
First few days: brought Joy on, went over stuff, talked about things. Came up with a rough plan, did a couple of small votes on discord and whatnot to have a general quick consensus on a few minor choices (obligatory reminder to hop on our discord if you wanna interact with us more!).
Next few days: fleshed out the details more, made a definitive plan and some characters, spent a night looking through r34 for some refs and pose ideas and all that.
The rest of the time up until about the start of July was us doing the work. Did the sprites, did the background/art, did all the writing - not much to say here, we just did the stuff and the stuff takes some time.
A couple of days into July we sent all the stuff to Nds, he compiled it, and then realizing we had some extra time and Willow was a big screentime char for this, Joy did her sprite as well. Nds compiled it, gave it a few tests, and then sent it to us. We did a quick playthrough, noticed a few things, but nothing major, and everything worked well and that’s when we made the announcement post. We spent that work iterating and editing some of the small stuff, and then we released it for the appropriate tier on the 25th.
Going forward, we’ll only be announcing release dates when the patch is finished to a state of it being playable with no major issues.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it went, the end product, and looking forward I’m excited to continue and expand on this start.
Thanks, everyone."
TL;DR:
It was Nomo's fault, we did everything we could, we blame partially our inexperience (after >10 years of game developing lol), but we have something for you guys - you only have to wait for it!!!11!!1!!, give us money and you will get a more boring version of the initial game, lots and lots of glasing and grooming.
microskills
Newbie
- Apr 30, 2018
- 28
- 47
- 112
I don't doubt Nomo caused issues, if it caused friction with the writer before (allegedly) and was quite argumentative (according to a f95 user whose name I forgot, sorry), but yeah, I can't say I buy that it's Nomo's entire hustle—since again, why would you set it up so the artist has the final say, yet you can still run Hreinn Games
With HBomb situation once the artist left, the coder was shit-out-of-luck (mainly due to copyright but also because it seemed that they were nothing without the artist, do wonder what happened to that developer).
So either Hreinn Games was a shared venture (if one fucked off, the others could still pick up the pieces), or it was entirely owned by one of the owners; I wish Monsinne could at least be frank about that.
To be naïvely optimistic; I do hope they straighten up after this and who knows maybe get successful enough to hire a writer again.
Last edited:
Great730
Member
- Oct 3, 2019
- 237
- 269
- 187
sorry i don't know whether to laugh or cry this can literally be used as an example of what degradation is
RandomServant77
Newbie
- Jun 13, 2017
- 80
- 296
- 238
And that's why you don't use material with clashing art-styles if not specifically intended for artistic purposes. What's wrong with her face chrissakes
Yes, Monsinne, there's a big demand for it. We're here to laugh at you. Dance.
Ok, by now, you know the drill: i need to organize my thoughts and to do that i like to write them down. So here it goes.
First of all, I don't usually use the term "mid" in this way, but somehow that is a recurring thought for me now. A lot of "not bad at all, but...".
The writing: Monsinne is almost unrecognizable. The descriptions are nice, the style fits and he leaves his usual cliches at home this time. But... the characters are about as deep so far as the impact crater after a rain drop and the setting is basically every "MC moves into new town and starts managing brothel/inn/tavern/spa" you have seen before. There are also about a dozen minor typos, which should be fixed in the future.
The art is not bad at all, but the new artist's "rougher" style absolutely clashes with Nomo's "smooth" one. If someone knows more about art, please help me out with the proper terms. The character designs fit the settings very well, my favorite is Willow so far... but the background art is basically a placeholder with muted colors and low contrast.
The game play is simple. Visit locations, get to know the town and the people and occasionally acquire some optional items that can be used later on. Again, basic, but bug free and functional, so after KoD being burned by trying to add new mechanics in each patch, this was the right choice imho.
The Main Character. Amelia was not among my favorites in KoD, but i try to be objective. She was good for teasing funny reactions out of Sabia and keeping her off balance when she tried to blend in with the crowd. But now she is the protagonist, and what's more she turns out to be a succubus, so her being her causes almost every background character we meet to blush, giggle and stutter like a highschool girl. A notable exception is Not-Katarina who was established in KoD already.
I get why they did it, but this removes a lot of color from the interactions. Amelia will flirt with everyone, that is who she is, but the reactions to this could have given the new NPCs a lot of personality in the first few lines, but now almost everyone sounds the same. By trying to make the MC more interesting they accidentally made her dialogues more bland.
When it launched KoD had Nomo's full screen art, Sierra's writing, a unique setting and a bitchy but likeable protagonist who was dropped into a place which contradicted everything she knew before, creating a natural environment for exploration and growth.
KoD-A does not have that, and in my opinion, this is the main thing the devs have to decide and decide soon: what is the selling point of this game?
First of all, I don't usually use the term "mid" in this way, but somehow that is a recurring thought for me now. A lot of "not bad at all, but...".
The writing: Monsinne is almost unrecognizable. The descriptions are nice, the style fits and he leaves his usual cliches at home this time. But... the characters are about as deep so far as the impact crater after a rain drop and the setting is basically every "MC moves into new town and starts managing brothel/inn/tavern/spa" you have seen before. There are also about a dozen minor typos, which should be fixed in the future.
The art is not bad at all, but the new artist's "rougher" style absolutely clashes with Nomo's "smooth" one. If someone knows more about art, please help me out with the proper terms. The character designs fit the settings very well, my favorite is Willow so far... but the background art is basically a placeholder with muted colors and low contrast.
The game play is simple. Visit locations, get to know the town and the people and occasionally acquire some optional items that can be used later on. Again, basic, but bug free and functional, so after KoD being burned by trying to add new mechanics in each patch, this was the right choice imho.
The Main Character. Amelia was not among my favorites in KoD, but i try to be objective. She was good for teasing funny reactions out of Sabia and keeping her off balance when she tried to blend in with the crowd. But now she is the protagonist, and what's more she turns out to be a succubus, so her being her causes almost every background character we meet to blush, giggle and stutter like a highschool girl. A notable exception is Not-Katarina who was established in KoD already.
I get why they did it, but this removes a lot of color from the interactions. Amelia will flirt with everyone, that is who she is, but the reactions to this could have given the new NPCs a lot of personality in the first few lines, but now almost everyone sounds the same. By trying to make the MC more interesting they accidentally made her dialogues more bland.
When it launched KoD had Nomo's full screen art, Sierra's writing, a unique setting and a bitchy but likeable protagonist who was dropped into a place which contradicted everything she knew before, creating a natural environment for exploration and growth.
KoD-A does not have that, and in my opinion, this is the main thing the devs have to decide and decide soon: what is the selling point of this game?