Ren'Py Life as an Innocent Waitress [v0.4.1] [Frisson Studios]

[Hari Puttar]

That's only if you pay US$20 or US$30 per month though...

Even my minimal US$3 membership may not get the release going by what Frisson said.

If Frisson can't - or won't - even advise when the basic Tier 1 members will get the game, why the hell should I subscribe at all??

Makes no sense to me... they want support but no release date for Tier 1 Patrons... not happy Jan... I'll probably cancel my subscription and wait for it to be leaked here...

Not a very savvy business decision in my opinion.

Tier 1-2 will get Next year 11th Date, Tier 3-4 will get Maybe on 4-5th Jan And Tier 5-6 will get on Dec 28th, Only Tier 7-8 got it today. Also it's For Beta testing phase So maybe better wait for 28th if You buying it.

 

[caschque]

I read on Discord that the update is about 20 hours long (I was corrected see comments below), though I’m not sure if I misunderstood. I’m looking forward to it. And I think Tier 1 will get the game before every non-paying person, as mentioned on Discord about two hours ago. Ah it is also mentioned in the devlog. It's insanely long but here a teaser:

• 0.2.2 had around 45+ events
• 0.4.0 has almost 150 events

Lastly, I think it’s good that the link isn’t shared right away to support the developers. So stay at home heroes. At least for some time.

 

[Sp0tlight0]

It's definitely not 20 hours long OK, maybe if you don't skip the very same lines of text in the 20th new subway or bartender mini-game u need to go through again and again. A new playthrough is something like 6-8 hours. But thats fine.

My quick take: In terms of content, the update feels like it has polished a lot of the existing content, so the first playthrough perspective got a lot better. Probs for this. But at the same time, it has also added some content streams that weren't really needed imo and feel like too much diversification. It would be better to just focus on a few chosen paths and do these well, than opening dozens of paths right from the start of the development and not really progressing in any of these. This is some mistake a lot of developers make initially and we've seen multiple times on this page. Especially as all content paths need to be expanded in a kind of synchronous way. For example it wouldn't make much sense if she were the most corrupted soul being in content category A, but a hug were too much in content category B. The more categories/streams/paths are opened, the slower the overall progression will be and also increasing the development effort in each new update exponentialy.

Also some of the new minigames feel overloaded with mechanics that have no real effect. By the fifth time you've done them it starts to feel extremely stale and pointless, to the point where e.g. the subway minigame even gets annoying (and the new bartender game is similiar weird in it's current state), and I don't think they'll get any better just by adding new renders and scenes in follow-up updates, as it's more a design phylosophy for this games.

tldr; Overall good update, but please dear developers: Focus and prioritize more.

 

[johnyakuza1]

I read on Discord that the update is about 20 hours long, though I’m not sure if I misunderstood. I’m looking forward to it. And I think Tier 1 will get it before the free version, as mentioned on Discord about two hours ago. Ah it is also mentioned in the devlog. It’s insanely long but here a teaser:

• 0.2.2 had around 45+ events
• 0.4.0 has almost 150 events

Lastly, I think it’s good that the link isn’t shared right away to support the developers. So stay at home heroes. At least for some time.

Twenty hours of gameplay could be a bit of an exaggeration, let’s be honest. When 0.2.2 was released, I exhausted all the content within a two-hour timeframe, provided I used the existing saves from the previous version, which I expect to be the same case here with 0.4.1.

If 150 is the number of new events, excluding the previous ones, I’d say the incremental gameplay could add another 3 hours of additional content on top of the existing material, which I estimate to bring the total to around 5–6 hours at most. It’s worth noting that the Patreon versions now include built-in cheats, which will help you corrupt Angel faster than ever. Moreover, the gameplay length is padded due to the minigame-heavy nature, rather than the amount of content itself. Even the devs weren’t able to add a lot of the planned content due to the approaching deadline—The shower and school events being one of them.

 

[caschque]

It's definitely not 20 hours long OK, maybe if you don't skip the very same lines of text in the 20th new subway or bartender mini-game u need to go through again and again. A new playthrough is something like 6-8 hours. But thats fine.

[...]

tldr; Overall good update, but please dear developers: Focus and prioritize more.

Twenty hours of gameplay could be a bit of an exaggeration, let’s be honest. When 0.2.2 was released, I exhausted all the content within a two-hour timeframe, provided I used the existing saves from the previous version, which I expect to be the same case here with 0.4.1.

If 150 is the number of new events, excluding the previous ones, I’d say the incremental gameplay could add another 3 hours of additional content on top of the existing material, which I estimate to bring the total to around 5–6 hours at most.

I understand, so the tedious part takes up 1/2 to 2/3 of those 20 hours. But good to know. 6 to 8 hours is still plenty, and I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for the info anyway.

I also like the possible cheats, because it was really annoying to torture myself through till eternity.

 

[fmlx3]

provided I used the existing saves from the previous version, which I expect to be the same case here with 0.4.1.

Devs recommend a new play though due to events chains starting at lower corruption, they would feel weird at 400+ corruption you are now.

So tester playtime is probably also counting starting a new game from scratch.

 

[Frisson_Studios]

It's definitely not 20 hours long OK, maybe if you don't skip the very same lines of text in the 20th new subway or bartender mini-game u need to go through again and again. A new playthrough is something like 6-8 hours. But thats fine.

My quick take: In terms of content, the update feels like it has polished a lot of the existing content, so the first playthrough perspective got a lot better. Probs for this. But at the same time, it has also added some content streams that weren't really needed imo and feel like too much diversification. It would be better to just focus on a few chosen paths and do these well, than opening dozens of paths right from the start of the development and not really progressing in any of these. This is some mistake a lot of developers make initially and we've seen multiple times on this page. Especially as all content paths need to be expanded in a kind of synchronous way. For example it wouldn't make much sense if she were the most corrupted soul being in content category A, but a hug were too much in content category B. The more categories/streams/paths are opened, the slower the overall progression will be and also increasing the development effort in each new update exponentialy.

Also some of the new minigames feel overloaded with mechanics that have no real effect. By the fifth time you've done them it starts to feel extremely stale and pointless, to the point where e.g. the subway minigame even gets annoying (and the new bartender game is similiar weird in it's current state), and I don't think they'll get any better just by adding new renders and scenes in follow-up updates, as it's more a design phylosophy for this games.

tldr; Overall good update, but please dear developers: Focus and prioritize more.

Yes, if someone skips a lot of text and rushes through the content, it might be possible to finish in around 6 hours. However, playing the game properly, reading and enjoying the content, makes it virtually impossible to finish everything in under 12 hours.

During my own testing, even while partially skipping and focusing heavily on corruption paths, a single playthrough took around 13 hours, and I still did not reach all available content.

 

[Frisson_Studios]

Twenty hours of gameplay could be a bit of an exaggeration, let’s be honest. When 0.2.2 was released, I exhausted all the content within a two-hour timeframe, provided I used the existing saves from the previous version, which I expect to be the same case here with 0.4.1.

If 150 is the number of new events, excluding the previous ones, I’d say the incremental gameplay could add another 3 hours of additional content on top of the existing material, which I estimate to bring the total to around 5–6 hours at most. It’s worth noting that the Patreon versions now include built-in cheats, which will help you corrupt Angel faster than ever. Moreover, the gameplay length is padded due to the minigame-heavy nature, rather than the amount of content itself. Even the devs weren’t able to add a lot of the planned content due to the approaching deadline—The shower and school events being one of them.

150 is the total now, around 40 was the total in 0.2.2

 

[riddikk91]

Tier 1-2 will get Next year 11th Date, Tier 3-4 will get Maybe on 4-5th Jan And Tier 5-6 will get on Dec 28th, Only Tier 7-8 got it today. Also it's For Beta testing phase So maybe better wait for 28th if You buying it.

You obviously never read the end part of Frissons post on Patreon about release dates... I quote:

"To be clear: Tier 2 to Tier 8 will get the update during this release window. Tier 1 and free users will not receive it at that time.
We know this may feel wrong for some users, and we understand that. But there’s also a simple reality: we don’t eat air, we don’t live in the wilderness, and computers don’t run on good vibes. We need money to keep this going. To eat, to pay bills, and to keep improving the game.
We understand this may upset some people, but this is a reality for almost everyone.
So yes, tiers will now give a time advantage over other tiers. We are not sure when the update will be officially released for free or Tier 1, or even if it will."

Hence the reason what I said in my post above - why bother even being a Tier 1 supporter?

So if you wanna have the game on the 28th December you'll need to pay US$20... that's the reality. Looks like most of us will be waiting until it gets leaked here in early January once it hit's Tier 2.

 

[ravenclot]

You obviously never read the end part of Frissons post on Patreon about release dates... I quote:

"To be clear: Tier 2 to Tier 8 will get the update during this release window. Tier 1 and free users will not receive it at that time.
We know this may feel wrong for some users, and we understand that. But there’s also a simple reality: we don’t eat air, we don’t live in the wilderness, and computers don’t run on good vibes. We need money to keep this going. To eat, to pay bills, and to keep improving the game.
We understand this may upset some people, but this is a reality for almost everyone.
So yes, tiers will now give a time advantage over other tiers. We are not sure when the update will be officially released for free or Tier 1, or even if it will."

Hence the reason what I said in my post above - why bother even being a Tier 1 supporter?

So if you wanna have the game on the 28th December you'll need to pay US$20... that's the reality. Looks like most of us will be waiting until it gets leaked here in early January once it hit's Tier 2.

20 bucks is not much. We will probably have a leak before the new year.

 

[Frisson_Studios]

 

[riddikk91]

20 bucks is not much. We will probably have a leak before the new year.

US$20 in the US may not be much to those that live there but currency rates where I live almost doubles that amount!

Like you said, hopefully it leaks here after the 28th...

EDIT: Good to see that Frisson has updated what they said in their original Patreon post... at least now Tier 1 Patrons will get access to the game on 18th January. Thanks Frisson!

 

[Dark_covenant]

Am I right in assuming that many people here want to get half a year of developer work for free?
And the developer just asks you to wait a week for his work to pay off?

 

[riddikk91]

Am I right in assuming that many people here want to get half a year of developer work for free?
And the developer just asks you to wait a week for his work to pay off?

I agree about devs getting compensation for their games but do you really need to ask that being on a forum that pirates games??

Shock horror!!!!!! LMAO!!!!!!

 

[cdmax]

You obviously never read the end part of Frissons post on Patreon about release dates... I quote:

"To be clear: Tier 2 to Tier 8 will get the update during this release window. Tier 1 and free users will not receive it at that time.
We know this may feel wrong for some users, and we understand that. But there’s also a simple reality: we don’t eat air, we don’t live in the wilderness, and computers don’t run on good vibes. We need money to keep this going. To eat, to pay bills, and to keep improving the game.
We understand this may upset some people, but this is a reality for almost everyone.
So yes, tiers will now give a time advantage over other tiers. We are not sure when the update will be officially released for free or Tier 1, or even if it will."

Hence the reason what I said in my post above - why bother even being a Tier 1 supporter?

So if you wanna have the game on the 28th December you'll need to pay US$20... that's the reality. Looks like most of us will be waiting until it gets leaked here in early January once it hit's Tier 2.

officially yes, but unofficially everyone will get 28. Experience shows that piracy works quickly. even if the developer distributes it for free a little later. and this unfortunately forces many developers to abandon the free version altogether.

 

[Grakon]

Oh, I'm glad they're at least going to give the game to all their tier supporters. Why would you even have a tier one that costs money if you weren't going to give them the product. Just a "hey thanks for the money now get bent" tier. /shrug

 

[Sp0tlight0]

During my own testing, even while partially skipping and focusing heavily on corruption paths, a single playthrough took around 13 hours, and I still did not reach all available content.

I can't agree on that. I finished my full playthrough in exactly 5h 47min and had like 139 saves, as I like to save quite frequently. Also only skiped content that I already saw before. The grind is what takes most of the time in this game to a point where it becomes quite tedious. For this i have 3 points:

• U can trivialize the normal grind quite easily, by distributing the points in a planed way. E. g. initially the cleaning takes most of the played time, so only stack on these to get it done faster. And if ur concentrating on an corruption playthrough most other skills or game mechanics in general (e. g. money) do not have any impact on ur gameplay at all. So no need to focus on that as well.
• A lot of events are extremely repetitive. After seeing them the third time theres no need to artificially not skip them the fourth, fifth and 100th time
• The new mini games are extremely weird balanced and clumsy (and take a bunch of played time as well). The subway minigame become so tedious that i just pressed wait and skip all the time, as all other options barely have any effect at all. Similiar for the new bartender minigame, where u can ignore barely all other mechanics besides the main loop, as they do not offer anything content wise.

Yes, if someone skips a lot of text and rushes through the content, it might be possible to finish in around 6 hours. However, playing the game properly, reading and enjoying the content, makes it virtually impossible to finish everything in under 12 hours.

Beeing aware of how users using ur product is crucial for developers. I know this from personal experience. Most of the time end users won't be using ur creation in the way ur doing it while play testing urself. Especially if some mechanic do not add something substantial to someones enjoyment / content. There's no singular way of how to play and "enjoy" a game.

From my experience I'm a quite average user regarding playtimes to games. To give some perspective: My recent played game Clair Obsuce Expedition 33 had an play time estimate of 25-30h for the main story and 60-70h for 100% completion. My steam play time says I'm 71,2h in and I'm not fully finished so far.

 

[Frisson_Studios]

I can't agree on that. I finished my full playthrough in exactly 5h 47min and had like 139 saves, as I like to save quite frequently. Also only skiped content that I already saw before. The grind is what takes most of the time in this game to a point where it becomes quite tedious. For this i have 3 points:

• U can trivialize the normal grind quite easily, by distributing the points in a planed way. E. g. initially the cleaning takes most of the played time, so only stack on these to get it done faster. And if ur concentrating on an corruption playthrough most other skills or game mechanics in general (e. g. money) do not have any impact on ur gameplay at all. So no need to focus on that as well.
• A lot of events are extremely repetitive. After seeing them the third time theres no need to artificially not skip them the fourth, fifth and 100th time
• The new mini games are extremely weird balanced and clumsy (and take a bunch of played time as well). The subway minigame become so tedious that i just pressed wait and skip all the time, as all other options barely have any effect at all. Similiar for the new bartender minigame, where u can ignore barely all other mechanics besides the main loop, as they do not offer anything content wise.

Beeing aware of how users using ur product is crucial for developers. I know this from personal experience. Most of the time end users won't be using ur creation in the way ur doing it while play testing urself. Especially if some mechanic do not add something substantial to someones enjoyment / content. There's no singular way of how to play and "enjoy" a game.

From my experience I'm a quite average user regarding playtimes to games. To give some perspective: My recent played game Clair Obsuce Expedition 33 had an play time estimate of 25-30h for the main story and 60-70h for 100% completion. My steam play time says I'm 71,2h in and I'm not fully finished so far.

Yes, we already mentioned that the minigames are not meant to be permanent yet, but experimental. The goal was to test new interactions and improve the experience, not to make the game longer just for the sake of it. Making the game longer was never the intention.

The bartending minigame was added to bring some fresh air to the waitressing gameplay, which is why it only appears twice a week. If most players feel it is empty or pointless, we are open to making it optional, skippable, or reworking it.

The same applies to the subway minigame. We felt that a more active “fight” interaction fit better than simply picking lines and waiting, but it may be too long, repetitive, or tiring. That is exactly why we value honest and constructive feedback, as it helps us decide the next steps.

 

[Sp0tlight0]

Yes, we already mentioned that the minigames are not meant to be permanent yet, but experimental. The goal was to test new interactions and improve the experience, not to make the game longer just for the sake of it. Making the game longer was never the intention.

The bartending minigame was added to bring some fresh air to the waitressing gameplay, which is why it only appears twice a week. If most players feel it is empty or pointless, we are open to making it optional, skippable, or reworking it.

The same applies to the subway minigame. We felt that a more active “fight” interaction fit better than simply picking lines and waiting, but it may be too long, repetitive, or tiring. That is exactly why we value honest and constructive feedback, as it helps us decide the next steps.

From my POV the ideas are good, just the execution needs more polishing. Two things for that.

1) Just as you can add a button, does not mean you need to add it. The current bar minigame is a good example of a positive grind. It's easy to understand and operate, but just get tedious after u saw all the content. But thats the nature of a grind. The newer minigames u added are complex. U have a lots of buttons and during the first or 2nd time as a player, u experiment with them a little, but quickly come to the conclusion that most buttons besides the main loop do not have any real impact on ur experience or providing content (as in the normal bar game). So as player I really want to get it over fast and pick the options that are only half pain.

2) Also do not look at new things only from an micro perspective (just the single mechanic ur adding), but rather have the macro perspective in mind (what impact do an mechanic add to the overall gameplay loop).

Given a player that focus on a strict or hybrid corruption route: Money do not have any impact on his gameplay loop at all:

• You dont "need" to have enough money for the rent payment, as beeing short is the main drive for advancing the landlord storyline.
• You dont need to buy anything that the shop offers. The phone gives more money for the web game, but why focusing on that if you dont need money at the first hand? The matress gives more energy, but the only point of energy is to be able to earn more money.
• Why bothering to be able to get on time to work in the subway minigame. Why bothering too much with the mechanis of the other mini games. E. g. why trying to win the dart mini game, if it just gives u money. You see a pattern I hope

From my POV I would focus a bit on getting the main gameplay loop straight in the next update. I do not want to influence ur creative mind, but some of the stats or at least money needs to have an impact if u want players to focus on that. For money this could range from boring buying some special outfits to a "picking up returnable bottle minigame" where u annoy players so much, that they won't ever dare to ignore beeing short. Or Just make some items mandatory to progress for some specific events, etc.

I really like the premise of ur game and all the effort ur putting into it. So keep it up!

(ps: as I assume ur a dev in RL, I throw RICE into the ring. And maybe short agile sprints for [tier-based] real life play-testing of gameplay ideas without beeing forced to polish them at the first hand; just to get a faster feedback loop).

 

[Siyal ÇöL]

What's 50 dollars? Is your patient completely insane or mentally deranged?