Looking for people to discuss my story with.

[Yazen_]

Hey, I'm looking for people to discuss and give me feedback about my passion project!

Let me give you a briefing about my game.

First and foremost, this is an intended corruption game but with extra steps. I mainly focus on the story as I'm much more of a writer than I am an artist and a programmer. And with that, I can say that this game would have a slow burn story with a plot that extends to a trilogy of a game.

ECSTASY'S ECLIPSE

Spoiler: TAGS

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As you can see, this is your typical corruption game with tags that revolve around heavier topics, so if this is a turn off, I understand. We all have different kinds of preferences. But if you're still interested in my game and want to provide a critique or suggestion then feel free to proceed along with me!

ECSTASY'S ECLIPSE is a story that revolves around a young man named Damien. His life turns upside-down when he encounters Sabrina doing depraved acts on a vulnerable woman, feeding her drugs in exchange for food. As fucked up as it is, Sabrina taught Damien on how the peaceful and loving town of Rosewind also has its ugly and dark side of the coin.

Spoiler: SYNOPSIS

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Spoiler: SYNOPSIS

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There are 3 types of drug that run the Underworld and one man to rule them all. "Lucky" Luca, the allfather of gang and drug distribution that nests in the remote town of Rosewind. Having his claw sunk in the government and hiding behind their back for protection, the drug ring has become more dangerous over the years exposing more and more innocent people from it.

Ecstasium, Obliviscense, and Neurafog.

A drug to increase sexual pleasure, a drug that can erase memories, and a drug that destroys the human brain.

...

Damien uncovers the truth behind these drugs the more he poke his hand around the people that almost destroyed his life.

STORY STRUCTURE (Up to 12 chapters for the first part)

The first part focuses on the story revolving around the characters. So I plan it to be a kinetic novel like the game Once in a Lifetime by Caribdis.

I'm still deciding whether to keep up this type of game structure for the second part or decide if it would be better to make it a sandbox as the second part is where the real corruption will start without involving any drugs.

 

[Yazen_]

.

 

[Jack Madrigal]

heya !

I have a couple of questions and thoughts if you want:

- When you mean a "town" you mean a small town ? because I don't see successful drug deal in a "small town" like a rural village, and a city is way too crowded to give a fuck about that "one delinquent" to be "infamous"

I see the interest of having a small place for peoples to live and interact with each others but you can't really make a busyness out of selling drugs to your 4 elderly neighbors

- Sabrina seem to be a great girl, is she really up to her reputation ? If the setting is some sort of "anime villain" that isn't really bad and that everyone seem to hate because of a haircut... instead of actual bad peoples that do bad things because they have no moral and/or empathy

from what I see your story is "immature" in the sense it look a lot like a manga, that talk about stuff the author never experienced before and/or as a naive stand on a subject (and I mean this with the most respect in the world)

what I try to get at is that it seem you want to tell a mature story with heavy subjects like drug abuse, delinquency, but it seem inconsequential (?) as they live normal student life (from what I can guess)

- Damien on the other hand seem like a complete asshole, either he's stupid or he as severe mental issues, 8 chapters before he decide to stop drugging his own family just to see how much damage he did ?

the drugs in your story are obviously not like cannabis, if it alter the comportment and ability of the user we're talking crack/heroin kind of drugs, theses are devastating, If you want to tell a story akin to "requiem for a dream" there must be some consequences, heavy life-destroying ones.

perhaps i get the tone of the story wrong but from what i've read it look a lot like a goofy "haha I ruin everybody's life, fucked my familly and made everyone around me miserable feeding them life-altering drugs, let's now move on and forget about everything"

make me kind of skeptical.

Again, maybe I got the tone wrong, I was reading this expecting something like "train spotting" "Gia" or again "requiem for a dream"

wouldn't you mind giving me some clarification ?

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

.

Why did you do this?

 

[Aquiledelrosa]

Why did you do this?

pb to bump.
I have done some threads that was unanswered too, it hurts, a lot, i will read op

 

[Aquiledelrosa]

nvm there is nothing

pb to bump.
I have done some threads that was unanswered too, it hurts, a lot, i will read op

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

pb to bump.

To bump what? I quoted the OP. If you want a reply, don't scrape your OP clean just 4 hours after posting.

 

[Yazen_]

heya !

I have a couple of questions and thoughts if you want:

- When you mean a "town" you mean a small town ? because I don't see successful drug deal in a "small town" like a rural village, and a city is way too crowded to give a fuck about that "one delinquent" to be "infamous"

I see the interest of having a small place for peoples to live and interact with each others but you can't really make a busyness out of selling drugs to your 4 elderly neighbors

- Sabrina seem to be a great girl, is she really up to her reputation ? If the setting is some sort of "anime villain" that isn't really bad and that everyone seem to hate because of a haircut... instead of actual bad peoples that do bad things because they have no moral and/or empathy

from what I see your story is "immature" in the sense it look a lot like a manga, that talk about stuff the author never experienced before and/or as a naive stand on a subject (and I mean this with the most respect in the world)

what I try to get at is that it seem you want to tell a mature story with heavy subjects like drug abuse, delinquency, but it seem inconsequential (?) as they live normal student life (from what I can guess)

- Damien on the other hand seem like a complete asshole, either he's stupid or he as severe mental issues, 8 chapters before he decide to stop drugging his own family just to see how much damage he did ?

the drugs in your story are obviously not like cannabis, if it alter the comportment and ability of the user we're talking crack/heroin kind of drugs, theses are devastating, If you want to tell a story akin to "requiem for a dream" there must be some consequences, heavy life-destroying ones.

perhaps i get the tone of the story wrong but from what i've read it look a lot like a goofy "haha I ruin everybody's life, fucked my familly and made everyone around me miserable feeding them life-altering drugs, let's now move on and forget about everything"

make me kind of skeptical.

Again, maybe I got the tone wrong, I was reading this expecting something like "train spotting" "Gia" or again "requiem for a dream"

wouldn't you mind giving me some clarification ?

Wow, thanks! I felt discouraged to even continue asking for help with this so I really appreciate your comment!

Honestly, I agree with you. I guess my story seems to be kind of inconsistent for a corruption game.

As for the small town aspect, for it to have big time drug dealers, it's supposed to be a plot device for them to keep a low profile. Like they export these drugs to the cities and stuff and produce it in the town itself.

About Sabrina, she isn't the main villain of the story. And I planned her to become Damien's love interest by the end of this first part. She's infamous because she does not attend her classes in the university known to be strict with their students to upkeep their clean reputation yet she hasn't been expelled yet. She was seen to hangout on shady places before. (Mainly just to smoke week and get drunk) but for a town that calls itself peaceful, it does not matter. She does cause some problems for them from time to time but nothing too serious. That's before Damien comes into her life.

And about Damien, you could say that he's a bit of an asshole for using drugs on his family. But he only ever used it on them. At the time, with his encounters with Sabrina and as he get to see more of the other side of the town, his morality become a little bit twisted. He's already got sexually repressed feelings towards his mother beforehand. Then develops one for his sister. I plan to show this in progression through his dreams as he starts to recollect some fragments of his memory. (E.g. he got a handjob from his mom when he was a child which opened up his interest in her body)

I wont shy away from telling these details now, no matter how goofy they sound xD

But yeah, to continue. In the second chapter, Damien just starts using these drugs on them on small doses because he's tempted to "do it". He gives his mother the pleasure drug believing that it would help her relax a bit more and open up her repressed feelings to feel like a woman again.

With Iriel, he won't use any drug on her until he obtained the memory drug. Her interactions with her by chapter 2 will be mostly teasing with both of them having sexual tension for each other. Once Damien starts drugging Iriel, it's because he became more power hungry and lustful towards them after realizing the power of these drugs. He makes Iriel forget their "play time" and enjoyed the taboo out of it. And yes, Iriel is sexually attracted to her brother by the time but both are morally conflicted about it. Iriel will of course try to resist but not in a way that she completely hates it. Damien forces Iriel to become his toy whenever he feels the urge and drugs her to forget anything happened and the cycle repeats again.

But even though Iriel is only drugged to forget, of course her body retains these sensations. That's why she'll grow more sexually. As well as the mom when withdrawals kick in. This is where Ophelia comes in, the Mayor's wife. She gave bigger doses of the drug to Damien and even introduced a drug to destroy the brain to him. Damien took them but also came to the realization of how dangerous this small game he's been playing so he decides to stop giving his mother and her sister these drugs and help tjem with their withdrawals by giving them lesser doses until none.

...

But to summarize, in my perspective. I don't intend to write Damien as a full time asshole since there are bigger and badder guys out there for him. The Mayor and his Father. His step-brother is the main antagonist of the first part of the story. He discovers about the Father's identity by the end of it, after not hearing from him in a long time, his revenge isn't exactly done yet.

Damien becomes power drunk and lustful as the story progresses but when he realized that he's becoming another puppet for Ophelia, he decides to take control of his own. He doesn't drug everyone since he's already charismatic enough to be able to fuck just about everyone in the story who either, has feelings for him, trusts him, and who's just interested in fucking him.

By the end of the first part Sabrina and Damien actually develops as a real couple without destroying much of their dynamic. As for the family, they'll become open to committing incest after the drugging phase but that's unbeknownst to Damien.

Iriel will start feeling lustful for his brother because "it fits and feels right" while Lyra started to take advantage of his body while he's asleep. Basically sleep raping his son. In a sense, the roles will he reversed by the end of the story where the MC is getting used by his family. Though I doubt he would mind that very much once he finds out.

For the second part, I plan to keep everything in reset. That's why I wrote it like this. No more drugs, just pure corruption. This is where Damien really commit on his urges for his family.

Sabrina does not mind Damien sleeping with other women by the way. (Best girl)

...

I could keep talking on and on about this, I still have a lot of ideas planned for the story and its progression. But thanks again for your response! I really appreciate it. I hope I cleared out some of your confusions

I know my writing is still in it's early stages hence the immature feel to it.

I do want to keep it in a mature tone but in a way that it does not become too heavy. Mainly because I'm just tired of games where the main character is just an asshole to everyone who breathes. He's only an asshole because he drugged and did things with his family. Everything else is fair game.

 

[Yazen_]

Why did you do this?

Yeah I felt discouraged so I kinda removed my thread out of shame... One dude face-palmed on my thread without even replying...

 

[firsttry51]

Yeah I felt discouraged so I kinda removed my thread out of shame... One dude face-palmed on my thread without even replying...

bitching on the internet is a full time job for some,
if you are going to create something you need to be able to tune out all the shit and focus on your creative process,
good luck.

 

[Yazen_]

To bump what? I quoted the OP. If you want a reply, don't scrape your OP clean just 4 hours after posting.

I guess I can bring it back. I was thinking to just push through on this project with or without anyone's help. I know I really do need help though, open my mind on more. It's just it feels bad when in reality I'm the only one who really cares about my story and I understand that.

The last thing I want is to be called stupid for creating something I thought is interesting and be shut down from creating my game as a step forward to becoming a VN developer. So I thought I'd be fine either way, just focus on creating it.

 

[Yazen_]

bitching on the internet is a full time job for some,
if you are going to create something you need to be able to tune out all the shit and focus on your creative process,
good luck.

Yeah I understand.

It's just I already feel like I made enough of these threads and now I'm just left feeling stupid because I don't know whether my idea would work or not.

I'll bring back the thread, thanks!

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

Yeah I felt discouraged so I kinda removed my thread out of shame... One dude face-palmed on my thread without even replying...

Yeah... you will have to learn how to tune out shitposts, and focus on constructive criticism, there's just no way forward without some thickness to your skin.

I hope that one substantiative reply was helpful for you.

 

[Yazen_]

Yeah... you will have to learn how to tune out shitposts, and focus on constructive criticism, there's just no way forward without some thickness to your skin.

I hope that one substantiative reply was helpful for you.

It did helped a lot. It gave me back the courage to put the thread back up. Thanks to you guys.

 

[Yazen_]

the drugs in your story are obviously not like cannabis, if it alter the comportment and ability of the user we're talking crack/heroin kind of drugs, theses are devastating, If you want to tell a story akin to "requiem for a dream" there must be some consequences, heavy life-destroying ones.

I forgot to reply to this but yeah, I've never really wrote any serious consequence for the drugs affecting the MC's mother and sister. I want to chalk it up to them being drugged briefly that's why there's no any lasting consequence but I did write it how the mother and sister's actions completely changed by the end of the story. Personally, I would still like to milk the taboo part of it for the second part even though some lines were already crossed in this one.

For other people exposed to those drugs for prolonged periods of time though, non-important side characters, their scenes will portray how devastating those drugs could be. (In Ophelia's arc)

Jack Madrigal

 

[firsttry51]

nothing wrong with the concept in my opinion, the execution is always the tricky part,
storytelling, pacing, erotic writing on the sex scenes, interaction/dialogue between the characters, and the quality of the 2dcg/3dcg images.
there are a lot of factors on what makes a VN enjoyable.

 

[Jack Madrigal]

I'm glad you decided to post it back, I though for a moment that I've been a jackass again :x

Thanks for the clarification, it's not particularly my cup of tea that kind of story with "porn logic" but dark depraved settings with mentally broken peoples can be hard to apprehend, sensitive audience will avoid it without giving it a try, and it's definitely not something everyone can jerk off to.

Nonetheless I still believe that you can't be "a good person" if you do that sort of things, the idea to have Damien justifying himself under the pretend of good deeds is typical of peoples unassuming that can't honestly condone their own actions, there's a lot to dig on that specific subject.

perhaps i'm overthinking it but if he's not an asshole then he's just falling victim to his desires, which makes him kinda pathetic, it's a matter of preferences of course, some peoples like to feel ashamed, but I would prefer someone that will own his actions and not look for excuses.

now about the execution, if you do it on renpy just do the entire game, the engine is really easy to use, write all the dialogues with visual placeholders if you need to, just don't wait for someone to provide you with the artworks you need as an excuse to delay progresses (unlike some other clowns).

If you manage to finance your project you can always retroactively put some artwork here and there, just don't think too big, good artwork isn't cheap and take some time, scale down your expectation, perhaps you can request simple stills, basic lineart, eventually with flat colors, that kind of request should be relatively inexpensive, and have them completed over time.

 

[Yazen_]

I'm glad you decided to post it back, I though for a moment that I've been a jackass again :x

Sorry about that, I removed my post just before sleeping so I didn't even notice that anyone had commented haha.

Thanks for the clarification, it's not particularly my cup of tea that kind of story with "porn logic" but dark depraved settings with mentally broken peoples can be hard to apprehend, sensitive audience will avoid it without giving it a try, and it's definitely not something everyone can jerk off to.

Of course, it's just I've been exposed to these kind of things a lot often when I first started my VN consumptions. They're not as bad as some out there that does inflict moral dilemma when you play those games. I guess being an anime fan for the longest time, my brain was just wired to think that these "depraved" type of story telling is a far cry from actual rape scenarios where the victim screams for help while the character takes what they want from them.

I'm not much of a vanilla type of person but I do like some perfectly written sensual scenarios. I don't like games where you just put a person through so much pain just for the pleasure of it. Personally, I also value close relations in these games despite having the fantasy of doing something taboo with them. I could call this just another porn game that caters for incest fans and some with a bit heavy themes that you would not normally see in reality. That's what makes it fun for me. I don't wanna preach whether I'm right or wrong though, everyone has their preferences.

But while I do like including realistic elements to my story, in the end this is still just a game where people can get off to with those scenarios presented in front of them. And I don't think people should take this seriously because if I really wanted to create a dark story without any filter then I could have just not made a porn game but a manga instead.

Nonetheless I still believe that you can't be "a good person" if you do that sort of things, the idea to have Damien justifying himself under the pretend of good deeds is typical of peoples unassuming that can't honestly condone their own actions, there's a lot to dig on that specific subject.

Yeah, he isn't a good person or a saint. He gets swayed by his temptations and is by no means a perfect person despite his character being built to become an achiever with a competitive attitude. Honestly I think he's the least fleshed out character in my roster right now. I'll go back and reconsider some things about him before I fully commit to write my chapters.

But of course, this is still a corruption game where Sabrina corrupts Damien and Damien gets to corrupt his sister and take advantage of his own mother. For the rest of the characters, Damien doesn't show that side of him and he's still putting on a mask in front of them, although he's become more assertive to get what he wants or give what they want from him.

perhaps i'm overthinking it but if he's not an asshole then he's just falling victim to his desires, which makes him kinda pathetic, it's a matter of preferences of course, some peoples like to feel ashamed, but I would prefer someone that will own his actions and not look for excuses.

His character is supposed to be a dominant kind of guy. Even before the story kicks off, he's already got something going on at the back of his mind. The event will just transform his character in ways that he wasn't comfortable of being before. Still, I gotta think behind his motivation for wanting to take revenge or even why did he even care so much to begin with.

Sure his enemy in this part is his step-brother that tried to ruin his life by getting him expelled from their University. His dad also had abandoned their family for the past 20 years. His father who happened to own the biggest drug tycoon in that world. The drug that almost ruined his life but also the drug that he tried on numerous occasion on other people especially on his family. Why? He wanted to take something he normally couldn't have taken because of the taboos behind it.

Eventually he realizes that he's just gonna be another one of those victims that fell into this rabbithole.

now about the execution, if you do it on renpy just do the entire game, the engine is really easy to use, write all the dialogues with visual placeholders if you need to, just don't wait for someone to provide you with the artworks you need as an excuse to delay progresses (unlike some other clowns).

Yeah I'm using Ren'py. I'm probably gonna try and prioritize the writing and coding aspect of it before I make the art and include some music and sound design. I can draw but it really takes me a long time to finish an art piece since I always try to go for the polished look. But for a project as big as this, I could either use DAZ or HS2 once I figure out how to use their studios.

If you manage to finance your project you can always retroactively put some artwork here and there, just don't think too big, good artwork isn't cheap and take some time, scale down your expectation, perhaps you can request simple stills, basic lineart, eventually with flat colors, that kind of request should be relatively inexpensive, and have them completed over time.

This is actually an interesting strategy to finish my game, thanks!

 

[Yazen_]

I tried sketching Damien but I'm starting to think that using HS or Daz is much better than this style lol.

 

[Jack Madrigal]

you can totally make it work

look I'm randomly throwing darts here to give you examples, maybe you'll get a good idea out of it, but you can use a rather "naive" style of artwork, I took the liberty to redraw your character


I used the exact same colors keeping it as simplistic as possible, with just the use of basic cell-shading you can totally make it work with just half an hour, and then later if you're not happy with it you can always commission art to replace your own.

Daz and other similar software are not "easy fix solution" that require no work, hate to tell you but it's not something you can improvise either, at best the result will look generic , It IS an alternative, but the time it will require you to learn and make proper use of it could be employed somewhere else

better focus on your strong points, the writing, make your game focusing on what you're good at, do your part, and then fill in later.

a good idea would be to releases episodes every month, and while you release chapter 1 you're already working on chapter 3