VN Ren'Py Completed Milky Touch [Final] [Studio Kuma]

[qazxsw80]

Yeah, also following might be divisive among people, but I'd say reduce the number of LIs and keep the cast of characters more tight.

For instance, MT had the issue of there being too many ladies with separate arcs going on in it, with the cast as following:

Personally, I don't see the point of reducing the number of female characters. It wouldn't lower the cost of making the game neither it would make the game more popular.
Let's imagine for a minute that Milky Touch hadn't had any other characters but Claudia, Octavia and Riley. So what? Sure, those three characters would have had a couple more scenes, but would have it made Milky Touch a better, more popular game or lowered the costs from 4500 dollars (Kuma's break-even costs)? I doubt it. The artist woundn't have needed to draw those avatars of the other characters, but it is a pittance, really.
Basically, without all those additional girls the game would have been just a few updates ahead compared to the current situation. But is Milky Touch going to make 4500 dollars a month after a few updates? Considering the history of Kuma's Patreon account I'm quite sure it won't.
On the other hand, those people who like other female characters, such as Katelyn or Ashley wouldn't have supported the game without them in the cast. As you can see from my signature, those two were my favourite characters. I have been expecting new content with them since forever, and it seems like I'll never see any. To be honest, probably, I woundn't even have followed this game at all without at least some promise of some new content with them.

As far as I can see, many female characters don't lower the costs or make a game less popular, but they do prolong the development of a game, which is actually a good thing for a game on Patreon, if it makes enough money for its developers. The longer you develop a game the more money you receive from patrons. Your next project can always be less successful.

Voice acting is a whole different story. Personally, I think it should be some sort of bonus. Let's say adding it after completing the game and before releasing it in Steam or some other platform. But I really like Claudia's voice nonetheless. I think it is the best voice acting in any adult game I have played.

 

[Arnav Dasari]

... On the other hand, those people who like other female characters, such as Katelyn or Ashley wouldn't have supported the game without them in the cast. As you can see from my signature, those two were my favourite characters. I have been expecting new content with them since forever, and it seems like I'll never see any. To be honest, probably, I woundn't even have followed this game at all without at least some promise of some new content with them.

You kinda have a point here, but a game cannot have a character for every taste there is. (Unless the game in question is Summertime Saga.) MT has a "roster" of nine female characters, but would the game interest you if it didn't have Katelyn and Ashley? Nope, you wouldn't support it. Now, imagine their new game having, say, 10 female characters, and you'd be interested in only one out of them all. With 5 scenes every two months it would take 4 months (or two updates) to give every character one scene. Now the question is; would you be willing to support a game knowing that you'd get three scenes with a character you like in a year. That's if you're lucky. And if you will answer "yes" to that - well, patience is a virtue, but not everyone is as patient as you are.

That's why I believe the most wise thing to do is to scale down the characters list to three or maximum four romanceable characters - but make these characters appealing to the widest audience possible. Would you like Milky Touch if it had four characters - but one of them was Katelyn? So Neon Touch (in my opinion, obviously) should have three(four) very different characters - to cover the majority of gamers' expectations and desires.

Evidently, out of all MT characters Claudia, Riley and Octavia were the most popular with people, therefore Neon Touch should have at least one character like that - for the romance route. Instead of having a separate corruption route for the same character(s) there should be a second character for a, lets call it, a manipulation/domination route - someone like Karen or Katelyn. No idea about a third hypothetical character. Who do people like? Action girls, like Lara Croft?

Voice acting is a whole different story. Personally, I think it should be some sort of bonus. Let's say adding it after completing the game and before releasing it in Steam or some other platform. But I really like Claudia's voice nonetheless. I think it is the best voice acting in any adult game I have played.

The thing with the voice acting is that you have only few characters voiced and all the others being mute it kind of feels off. If you have one or two girls fully voiced in your game you're kinda saying to the players - "yeah, these are the main heroines, their routes are the canon."

I'd rather have voice overs for everyone - but only for the sex scenes. No spoken words, just moans and groans.

For Neon Touch to interest me, I guess it would need to have one hell of a crazy great story, as well as some gameplay mechanics for interaction to set it apart from others.

That's an interesting idea, but what sort of gameplay mechanics? Something like minigames?

Yeah, having a different gameplay experience other than reading text and watching pictures could help NT to stand out from all the other VNs. But adding that is also a dangerous path, because it's a very ambitious path. One example is FOW's Subverse - guys had a lot of money and a lot of time and yet the SHMUP and the tactics sections are very barebones. Another example is David Balsamique's Vega Hunters with its cards minigame - yeah, it's there. And that's all one can say about it. And let's not forget the lockpicking game from MT.

So a minigame for NT shouldn't be grindy, it shouldn't lock a lot of content behind itself and it shouldn't require a lot of work from the coders. And it should be fun to play. Any suggestions?

 

[qazxsw80]

Evidently, out of all MT characters Claudia, Riley and Octavia were the most popular with people, therefore Neon Touch should have at least one character like that - for the romance route. Instead of having a separate corruption route for the same character(s) there should be a second character for a, lets call it, a manipulation/domination route - someone like Karen or Katelyn. No idea about a third hypothetical character. Who do people like? Action girls, like Lara Croft?

Claudia, Riley and Octavia are partly more popular because other characters have almost no content at all.
What came first the chicken or the egg? Those three charaters are popular and so they have a lot of scenes or those characters have a lot of scenes and so they are popular?
For example, Ashley. That sister-brother stuff is extremely popular in adult games. But there is not a single scene with her (except that out of nowhere masturbation scene, that was reposted from Patreon). More than that there is no relationship between her and the MC. There is no story. Of course people don't like Ashley, because there is no Ashley in the game, only her avatar picture, or whatever it is called.

You kinda have a point here, but a game cannot have a character for every taste there is. (Unless the game in question is Summertime Saga.) MT has a "roster" of nine female characters, but would the game interest you if it didn't have Katelyn and Ashley? Nope, you wouldn't support it. Now, imagine their new game having, say, 10 female characters, and you'd be interested in only one out of them all. With 5 scenes every two months it would take 4 months (or two updates) to give every character one scene.

From the beginning Milky Touch was positioned as an incest game. So, it makes sense to have a mother, a sister, an aunt. Add there a teacher (almost everyone's fantasy) and the MC's friend's mother. For me it would be enough. Five. Some people like Riley. I don't understand it since in my opinion it is extremely boring, all that banal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Just fucking dowload Tinder and you have it in your life. But fine. Six.
But three is not enough. You are proposing to make them as much appealing to a wide audience as possible. It can easily backfire. They will be so common, so boring, so typical that none will want to play the same crap again that they have played a thousand times in different games.

The thing with the voice acting is that you have only few characters voiced and all the others being mute it kind of feels off. If you have one or two girls fully voiced in your game you're kinda saying to the players - "yeah, these are the main heroines, their routes are the canon."

I don't understand this argument at all. This is how it has always been in visual novels and always will be. Since forever. Play any adult Japanese VN and you can see that only important female characters are voiced. And what's wrong with saying to players that you don't have enough money so you decided to voice only your favourite character? Personally, I think only Claudia should be voiced.

Now the question is; would you be willing to support a game knowing that you'd get three scenes with a character you like in a year. That's if you're lucky. And if you will answer "yes" to that - well, patience is a virtue, but not everyone is as patient as you are.

I learn from my mistakes. I never support any games on Patreon anymore. This all Milky Touch situation proved it once again that I was right in not supporting it. Back then I wrote to the developer that I was not going to support but would buy it once it completed. Unfortunately, the way I see it, Milky Touch is never going to be completed. A huge dissapointment to me.

So a minigame for NT shouldn't be grindy, it shouldn't lock a lot of content behind itself and it shouldn't require a lot of work from the coders. And it should be fun to play. Any suggestions

Well, it is the developer who should make suggestions, not us, since he decided to abandon the current game in order to start something new and better.

 

[JJJ84]

Personally, I don't see the point of reducing the number of female characters. It wouldn't lower the cost of making the game neither it would make the game more popular.
Let's imagine for a minute that Milky Touch hadn't had any other characters but Claudia, Octavia and Riley. So what? Sure, those three characters would have had a couple more scenes, but would have it made Milky Touch a better, more popular game or lowered the costs from 4500 dollars (Kuma's break-even costs)? I doubt it. The artist woundn't have needed to draw those avatars of the other characters, but it is a pittance, really.
Basically, without all those additional girls the game would have been just a few updates ahead compared to the current situation. But is Milky Touch going to make 4500 dollars a month after a few updates? Considering the history of Kuma's Patreon account I'm quite sure it won't.
On the other hand, those people who like other female characters, such as Katelyn or Ashley wouldn't have supported the game without them in the cast. As you can see from my signature, those two were my favourite characters. I have been expecting new content with them since forever, and it seems like I'll never see any. To be honest, probably, I woundn't even have followed this game at all without at least some promise of some new content with them.

As far as I can see, many female characters don't lower the costs or make a game less popular, but they do prolong the development of a game, which is actually a good thing for a game on Patreon, if it makes enough money for its developers. The longer you develop a game the more money you receive from patrons. Your next project can always be less successful.

Voice acting is a whole different story. Personally, I think it should be some sort of bonus. Let's say adding it after completing the game and before releasing it in Steam or some other platform. But I really like Claudia's voice nonetheless. I think it is the best voice acting in any adult game I have played.

Well, I'm no expert on the matter so I can't say anything definitively, but I'll say this; the whole Chinese restaurant story and Linda scene with MC itself felt like a waste of resources.

Was the sex scene with the MC hot? Yes it was, not gonna lie. But her character had a paper thin plot (thinks husband cheated on her, so clings onto and sex with MC), and immediately after the sex scene, her story got thrown away, abandoned.
If that storyline continued to be developed I guess the point of her character could have been justified, but it was not.

I really would have wished for time and effort spent developing that part to be spent further developing other characters, or spent developing LIs which lacked focus compared to others.

Also, games like Chasing Sunsets is showing that a game can work even with just 2 main LIs (that game has Jaye and Mallory as main girls, even though there are few side girls MC fools around with sometimes) compared to the normal LI counts games around this site generally has, so I'm curious to see if something like that will work out if Dev would give it a go.

That's an interesting idea, but what sort of gameplay mechanics? Something like minigames?

Yeah, having a different gameplay experience other than reading text and watching pictures could help NT to stand out from all the other VNs. But adding that is also a dangerous path, because it's a very ambitious path. One example is FOW's Subverse - guys had a lot of money and a lot of time and yet the SHMUP and the tactics sections are very barebones. Another example is David Balsamique's Vega Hunters with its cards minigame - yeah, it's there. And that's all one can say about it. And let's not forget the lockpicking game from MT.

So a minigame for NT shouldn't be grindy, it shouldn't lock a lot of content behind itself and it shouldn't require a lot of work from the coders. And it should be fun to play. Any suggestions?

Well, it's really gonna depend on what sort of opportunities there are for gameplay mechanics to be inserted in.
Would the story involve gun fights? Melee hand-to-hand combat? Driving and Chase sequences? etc etc

Various things would come into factor.

One thing I would say for sure is that there should always be option to turn on and off the gameplay at any time (it should never be forced upon everybody).
And yes, with gameplay grind should be as minimized as possible (not sure 100% eliminating grind is possible, but I'm okay with grinding if it is on a mild level, not taxing).

For examples of combat, well the short combat simulation against the goblin in the game "My Real Desire" could possibly work if it's going for real time QTEs.
Or it could be turn based like Ataegina with the system being reinterpreted for cyberpunk instead of fantasy.

Not sure I can think of anything for driving though.

Unsure how above gameplay examples wil fare in terms of coding resources and efforts, but regardless, just some examples I'm throwing around heh.
As I said, it's all gonna come down to what sort of action there is.

From the beginning Milky Touch was positioned as an incest game. So, it makes sense to have a mother, a sister, an aunt. Add there a teacher (almost everyone's fantasy) and the MC's friend's mother. For me it would be enough. Five. Some people like Riley. I don't understand it since in my opinion it is extremely boring, all that banal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.

Well, would have to disagree there.
For me, it would depend on how natural each character feels with the flow of story, and how likable they are. And in both of those cases in my opinion I'd say Riley and her arc did it better than Claudia and her arc (This is not to say Claudia is a bad character in any way, I just felt more connected with Riley's arc than Claudia's even before the whole Mossland mess).

And in terms of critiquing originality, well I'd have to say I don't feel the whole incest relationship being any more original than the boyfriend-girlfriend relatonship tbh.
Perhaps I would feel that way if MT was the first ever incest game title that I played, but it's not (with this site offering smorgasbord of incest games with varying qualities, heh). MT wasn't my first incest title, and it won't be the last (same with the whole boyfriend-girlfriend titles)

But different strokes for different folks I guess (shrugs).

Well, it is the developer who should make suggestions, not us, since he decided to abandon the current game in order to start something new and better.

Well yeah, of course. But for some bizarre reason I sort of find it therapeutic

 

[xXlotus0]

How do I install the Android version? There's no apk file inside the zip

 

[DankCornelius]

Well, I'm no expert on the matter so I can't say anything definitively, but I'll say this; the whole Chinese restaurant story and Linda scene with MC itself felt like a waste of resources.

Was the sex scene with the MC hot? Yes it was, not gonna lie. But her character had a paper thin plot (thinks husband cheated on her, so clings onto and sex with MC), and immediately after the sex scene, her story got thrown away, abandoned.
If that storyline continued to be developed I guess the point of her character could have been justified, but it was not.

In general, I think a lot of the deviations off from the story, shouldn't have been done until the actual main story of the game was complete. There's a lot of tertiary sex scenes now looking back on the in-between development, for example the entirety of Day 17 is a sideplot of the player meeting Shirley, who has really no real content before or after that. That day and scenario could have been used for any other main character, such as Karen or even Katelyn, and furthered either one's relationship with MC.

But even with main characters, like Octavia, her Day 15 titjob scene is a premature bad ending route, which seems like a missed opportunity seeing that it could probably have been used to further along the corruption route arc with her. In retrospect, if the team just made sure to focus on completing content for the main story, even for just a few character's arc, instead of sidetracking to multiple different characters or scenarios unneeded for the main plot, they could have probably efficiently wrapped the story up by their current deadline for stopping the game development AND have had enough tertiary content to be spliced into the game.

 

[Arnav Dasari]

Claudia, Riley and Octavia are partly more popular because other characters have almost no content at all.
What came first the chicken or the egg?
Those three charaters are popular and so they have a lot of scenes or those characters have a lot of scenes and so they are popular?

So I counted. Counted the number of scenes in the first half of the game, the first ten in-game days - the period when gamers were supposed to get acquainted with the characters and decide on their personal preferences. Here's the statistic:

14 scenes total;
6 Claudia's scenes (there's a lot of stuff on Day 10, but I counted only the scenes worth of fapping to);
2 Octavia's scenes;
1 Riley's scene (in which she just plays her violin).

On one hand, the large number of scenes with Claudia shouldn't surprise anyone - she is the mother in an incest game. (And a very lovely and beautiful character in her own right.) On the other hand the second place on the number of scenes goes to Karen. She has whooping three scenes - which is the same as Octavia and Riley combined. And yet she lacks the popularity of the "lovely trio"; I'm not 100% percent sure, but I believe that the most popular is Claudia, then Riley, then Octavia or, big maybe, Karen. If it was merely about content, as you imply, then Karen should be far more popular than Riley. I think there was a survey on the Patreon page somewhere about who the supporters prefer - I can try to find it to back up my claims, if you want. If I fail to find it, we can always have such a survey right here on F95.

From the beginning Milky Touch was positioned as an incest game. So, it makes sense to have a mother, a sister, an aunt. Add there a teacher (almost everyone's fantasy) and the MC's friend's mother. For me it would be enough. Five.

When it comes to frugality, five is excessive. An aunt is a pale substitute of a mother, the same goes for a mother's friend. A mother, a sister and a teacher - that's the holy trinity of the schoolboy porn games. The rest is entirely optional.

Come to think of that, Riley fits the "sister" archetype quite nicely - except lacking the whole taboo aspect, which is not a universally bad thing.

Some people like Riley. I don't understand it since in my opinion it is extremely boring, all that banal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Just fucking dowload Tinder and you have it in your life. But fine. Six.

I'm one of these people. And I like her, like her a lot, because - a self-revelation moment here, pls no bully - I missed out on the whole teenage love experience. I never had this stereotypical "first love"; something pure and exciting and, most importantly, reciprocal. So my only way to cope with that is listening to "Tool", pumping iron at 3 AM, crying into a pillow and playing porn games. Tinder just isn't the same.

But three is not enough. You are proposing to make them as much appealing to a wide audience as possible. It can easily backfire. They will be so common, so boring, so typical that none will want to play the same crap again that they have played a thousand times in different games.

That really depends on how these characters would come out to be. As I just said I like MT characters a lot - take Riley, for example. Her character type is quite standard - a good shy unexperienced girl who falls for MC. You find it boring. I, and many other guys, find her route captivating - because of how she's written, the details of her as a character, not her basic archetype.

So what I'm proposing for NT is to have LIs that would fall into popular archetypes, not making the character themselves to be walking cliches. The characters that would embody these archetypes should be, of course, lovely and lively and detailed and nuanced, not boring and typical - and judging by MT I'm not really concerned in that regard. Your personal mileage may vary, of course.

What archetypes I'm talking about?
- A type akin to the three most popular characters of MT, which for the lack of a better term I would describe as "sweet". Please note, that while COR - all three of them - do fall into the same archetype, each one of them has a specific flavour to their sweetness. Claudia is double sweet, balancing it out with a bitter taste of taboo breaking. Octavia has her sweetness toned by the the sour coercion undertone. Riley is very vanilla and fresh - a true classic. People love loving lovelies, as we have established in the beginning of this post.
- A type that no player would feel guilty dominating or exploiting. The bitchy archetype. Once again, Karen, Katelyn, Shirley and Ashley - all of them could be described as "a bitch" (of various degrees of coldness or hotness), but all of them are different characters, sharing only the archetype. Again, people love fucking bitches.
- A third type for a third hypothetical character. Don't really have an idea, my own needs are satisfied by the first two archetypes. But that's not about me, it's what the majority of gamers would like. Thus I'm suggesting an action-girl archetype, because I believe a lot of people would like such a character. Also the setting fits.

So - three different archetypes, three different characters. Also, along with the differences in personality and looks, they probably should belong to the different age categories - one youngster girl (18-22), one middle aged lady (25-35) and one MILF (35-50).

I don't understand this argument at all. This is how it has always been in visual novels and always will be. Since forever. Play any adult Japanese VN and you can see that only important female characters are voiced. And what's wrong with saying to players that you don't have enough money so you decided to voice only your favourite character? Personally, I think only Claudia should be voiced.

Argumentum ad numeram doesn't prove that some practice is proper. "That's how it always have been", "that's how everyone's doing it" - yeah, well, but is it the most efficient way? Ideally, developers should abstain from forcing their personal preferences on players. "Here's your childhood friend, she's the only one who's voiced, she has the most content, her ending is the true ending. Enjoy." Well snap, what if I want to fuck her hot milf mom? Too bad, you don goofed, here's your meager three scenes with the milf and a bad ending where you commit sudoku, your friend commits sudoku, and her hot milf mom commits sudoku. Many such cases!

Well, you could say that the hot milf Claudia was going to get most content anyhow by the virtue of being MC's mother in an incest game. But I don't really think that NT is going to be an incest type of game or a game with any sort of central female characters - I would be very surprised if NT's MC, for example, would have a wife right from the start. My brows would really freaking rise.

 

[Arnav Dasari]

Well, it is the developer who should make suggestions, not us ...

Well yeah, of course. But for some bizarre reason I sort of find it therapeutic

As I put it on their Discord, "at this point I'm just channeling my frustration from MT demise into something productive".

...
Well, it's really gonna depend on what sort of opportunities there are for gameplay mechanics to be inserted in.
Would the story involve gun fights? Melee hand-to-hand combat? Driving and Chase sequences? etc etc
...

Well, the devs have already stated that they're going to design weapons, so guns would play a role at least plot-wise - as the cyberpunk setting demands.
I have to say that I didn't play "My Real Desire" or "Ataegina", but I just can't imagine a proper real time action experience in a RenPy game. Something turn-based - may be.
After giving it some thought I think the optimal choice for an "action" minigame would be hacking. Since no one knows how hacking would look like in the future, it gives the developers a lot of freedom in depicting it visually and gameplay-wise. It could be as simple as their MT's lockpicking minigame - just click the LMB at the right time. A very basic setup that they already have some experience in.

I think it could take the place of MT's "magic massage", which gave orgasms to every woman MC touched. I'm not sure it should be used on the main LIs, though - I'd like to gradually conquer them for the proper feel of achievement; not using shortcut cheats to see scenes with them (like the massage felt at times). It could be used on side characters like prostitutes or girls to pick up for one night stands. Like the charm dialogue skills in VTMB - if you're a real cyberscum just hack someone's brain to make them suck you off in the bar's bathroom stall, or to make a prostitute think you've already paid her. Fulfill your male fantasies, that's what video games are for.

... In retrospect, if the team just made sure to focus on completing content for the main story, even for just a few character's arc, instead of sidetracking to multiple different characters or scenarios unneeded for the main plot, they could have probably efficiently wrapped the story up by their current deadline for stopping the game development AND have had enough tertiary content to be spliced into the game.

Well, for better or for worse they now have the opportunity to make everything right from the start. Speaking of tertiary content - I guess it's time for another repost of my another Discord suggestion:

I'd like to expand my thoughts on the "less routes - more content" suggestion I've made earlier. As I repeatedly stated, I do find Milky Touch characters' routes compelling and its plot interesting enough. But let's be honest; a lot of players - perhaps the majority of them - doesn't give two shits about plot or characters, they just want to get instant gratification - they want to see dem titties. I think there's a way to cater to their needs and in the same time have meaningful and beautiful romances with the main cast of heroines. The answer is prostitutes/one night stands. This way you can have full-fledged sex scenes right in the very first chapter. Just give the MC an opportunity to rent a call-girl for an evening or pick up a random girl at a bar. Meanwhile the main heroines should remain "pure" for the first couple (3-4) chapters, not going further than a kiss with MC. (I'm talking about romance routes here.) So the amount of sex MC can get would be distributed more or less even between the early and the latter chapters - early in the game he would screw random NPCs, but as the plot progresses he would bed his love interests.

 

[Deleted member 3581761]

too many long worded posts. Here is a short one, good game.

 

[JJJ84]

When it comes to frugality, five is excessive. An aunt is a pale substitute of a mother, the same goes for a mother's friend. A mother, a sister and a teacher - that's the holy trinity of the schoolboy porn games. The rest is entirely optional.

Come to think of that, Riley fits the "sister" archetype quite nicely - except lacking the whole taboo aspect, which is not a universally bad thing.

It is certainly excessive yes, but I think probably the bigger problem was the way some of these character archtypes were utilized (or wasn't even utilized for that matter lol).

Take Ashley for instance. Her (barely existing) storyline in MT has been nothing more than support for the bigger storyline, a.k.a. Aunt's (Katelyn's) storyline. The game made her Katelyn's assistant so Ashley's character didn't have any legs to stand on her own feet, and her storyline was just completely dependent on Katelyn.
That I found to be an issue.

If I take an example of another game as for comparison, let's compare MT with the dev Caribdis's game "Once in a Lifetime" (a game that I'd recommend everyone on this site should try playing with it now completed).
That game, has the incest patch which turns 4 characters into family or relatives of the MC, and the game flows better that way.

Basically with the incest patch,

- Carla becomes mom
- Lauren becomes sister (same age as MC)
- Judie becomes little sister (1 yr younger than MC)
- Iris becomes cousin (same age as Judie)

In addition, there's also

- Rebecca, who is MC's teacher.

and 2 other LIs.

I mean one might just question "Isn't this excessive?" with the above cast, but it really is not the case in OIAL.
Each of the sisters have their own arcs, and is not dependent on another for their storylines (same goes for mom) because they do their own thing in several instances (despite at times sharing scenes).
And while Iris's character does depend on Judie's arc a lot, Iris is a pretty minor character in that game, and she almost always hangs around with Judie being best friends which in a lot of ways justifies the dependency (having said that, the game does give a little bit of side events for Iris at times too).


Regarding Riley from MT, I think it's the fact that there is no taboo factor in it that felt like a breath of fresh air to me.
Pretty much almost all characters have a degree of taboo factor in it, some much more than others (Claudia, Katelyn, Ashley), some to moderate degree (Karen, Octavia etc).
But amidst all these characters screaming "taboo!" all over, here was this character who I felt had an incredible arc and had a very likeable personality. Some may argue that it's boring and she sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to others, but I just don't agree with that opinion.

Her story was sweet and in ways heartwarming, like Riley's character herself.

Well, the devs have already stated that they're going to design weapons, so guns would play a role at least plot-wise - as the cyberpunk setting demands.
I have to say that I didn't play "My Real Desire" or "Ataegina", but I just can't imagine a proper real time action experience in a RenPy game. Something turn-based - may be.
After giving it some thought I think the optimal choice for an "action" minigame would be hacking. Since no one knows how hacking would look like in the future, it gives the developers a lot of freedom in depicting it visually and gameplay-wise. It could be as simple as their MT's lockpicking minigame - just click the LMB at the right time. A very basic setup that they already have some experience in.

I think it could take the place of MT's "magic massage", which gave orgasms to every woman MC touched. I'm not sure it should be used on the main LIs, though - I'd like to gradually conquer them for the proper feel of achievement; not using shortcut cheats to see scenes with them (like the massage felt at times). It could be used on side characters like prostitutes or girls to pick up for one night stands. Like the charm dialogue skills in VTMB - if you're a real cyberscum just hack someone's brain to make them suck you off in the bar's bathroom stall, or to make a prostitute think you've already paid her. Fulfill your male fantasies, that's what video games are for.

I wanted to upload a screenshot of combat gameplay of "My Real Desire", but that part of the save is lost so not much I can do about it.

But here is a screenshot of Ataegina combat:

Spoiler

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Yeah, it's fantasy, but still I'd say the system is still applicable in Cyberpunk theme.
And add in elements like "take cover" etc for gun fights etc could work.

 

[qazxsw80]

When it comes to frugality, five is excessive. An aunt is a pale substitute of a mother, the same goes for a mother's friend. A mother, a sister and a teacher - that's the holy trinity of the schoolboy porn games. The rest is entirely optional.

Come to think of that, Riley fits the "sister" archetype quite nicely - except lacking the whole taboo aspect, which is not a universally bad thing.

Frugality? The one major source of costs is the artist. His salary is so-called fixed costs. No matter how few or many characters are in the game, he is still going to get the same amount of money. Since we deciced that there should be no voice acting, there are no additional costs here depending on the number of characters. The same situation with coding and writing. It doesn't matter how many characters here. The only problem with many characters is that supportes need to wait more time for the character they like to appear the game. But is there such a difference in waiting between 5 and 3 character? In my opinion, there is not. But additional characters can attract additional people to the game. For, example, Our Red String has 9 female characters! And more than that, just imagine it didn't have that blonde girl and the girl with glasses, I'm quite sure the game would lose the third of its support. More than that, you never know which characters are gonna be liked before you add them into the game.
Three is not enough. Adding just three characters will be a major risk and possibly a major mistake. What if people won't like one or two of them? There will be no support for the game since there will be only one likeable character. Let's imagine Milky Touch didn't have Riley and Octavia. Only Claudia, Karen and Ashley. Would you like the game the same way? Probably not. That's what happens when you have only few characters - you never know which ones to choose to put into the game. People didn't like Karen and the developer stopped making scenes with her. But if she was one of only three characters in the game? And what if people woundn't have liked Ashley. There would have been only Claudia left.

Argumentum ad numeram doesn't prove that some practice is proper. "That's how it always have been", "that's how everyone's doing it" - yeah, well, but is it the most efficient way? Ideally, developers should abstain from forcing their personal preferences on players. "Here's your childhood friend, she's the only one who's voiced, she has the most content, her ending is the true ending. Enjoy." Well snap, what if I want to fuck her hot milf mom? Too bad, you don goofed, here's your meager three scenes with the milf and a bad ending where you commit sudoku, your friend commits sudoku, and her hot milf mom commits sudoku. Many such cases!

Basically, what you are saying is PEOPLE ARE STUPID. Other developers did it all wrong for 30 years and I know how to do it right.
Then you are saying about some "ideal" way of doing things. Ideallly for who? I personally think that developers should develop the game the way they really want, they are passionate about. This way the result in almost all cases will be better. The second choice is there should be some polls where developers ask their patrons. Like, "What character do you want to be voiced? One, two, three, four, five or none".

The answer is prostitutes/one night stands. This way you can have full-fledged sex scenes right in the very first chapter. Just give the MC an opportunity to rent a call-girl for an evening or pick up a random girl at a bar. Meanwhile the main heroines should remain "pure" for the first couple (3-4) chapters, not going further than a kiss with MC. (I'm talking about romance routes here.) So the amount of sex MC can get would be distributed more or less even between the early and the latter chapters - early in the game he would screw random NPCs, but as the plot progresses he would bed his love interests.

It would be an enormous waste of time and resources. People here are talking about concentrating resources, what a stupid choice was to make a scene with Linda (or whatever her name), that there are too many characters and so on. But at the same time you are proposing of adding lewd scenes with no story, no emotional connection and so on. I haven't seen even one game where such stuff is popular among supporters, adds anything to the story or is exciting in any way. If you want lewd pictures with no story, just go to e-hentai. There is a lot of that stuff overe there.

I'm one of these people. And I like her, like her a lot, because - a self-revelation moment here, pls no bully - I missed out on the whole teenage love experience. I never had this stereotypical "first love"; something pure and exciting and, most importantly, reciprocal. So my only way to cope with that is listening to "Tool", pumping iron at 3 AM, crying into a pillow and playing porn games. Tinder just isn't the same.

That is what I said. Some people love that boring stuff for teenage girls or bored housewives.
Personally, I think it was one of the major problems with Milky Touch. You and patrons like you did everything possible to make it as vanilla as possible. I think the developer had had a much more exciting story when he started Milky Touch. Love stories and no multiple penetration, no sister, no corruption, no Victor, no NTR, no IR , no anything. Sure, current supporters are against it and so it shouldn't be implemented. Right? In my opinion, wrong. Yes, it fits current patrons, but new ones are not attracted to the game, since there is no spicy stuff in it. It has become dull. And dull games get very little support. As some of the guys here has already said, he and other people support it just because of the nice pictures. That's it. No excitement in the game.

Yeah, it's fantasy, but still I'd say the system is still applicable in Cyberpunk theme.
And add in elements like "take cover" etc for gun fights etc could work.

Oh, come on. People here were not able to go through that lockpicking mini game and now you are proposing this...

 

[lordfridge9]

Frugality? The one major source of costs is the artist. His salary is so-called fixed costs. No matter how few or many characters are in the game, he is still going to get the same amount of money. Since we deciced that there should be no voice acting, there are no additional costs here depending on the number of characters. The same situation with coding and writing. It doesn't matter how many characters here. The only problem with many characters is that supportes need to wait more time for the character they like to appear the game. But is there such a difference in waiting between 5 and 3 character? In my opinion, there is not. But additional characters can attract additional people to the game. For, example, Our Red String has 9 female characters! And more than that, just imagine it didn't have that blonde girl and the girl with glasses, I'm quite sure the game would lose the third of its support. More than that, you never know which characters are gonna be liked before you add them into the game.
Three is not enough. Adding just three characters will be a major risk and possibly a major mistake. What if people won't like one or two of them? There will be no support for the game since there will be only one likeable character. Let's imagine Milky Touch didn't have Riley and Octavia. Only Claudia, Karen and Ashley. Would you like the game the same way? Probably not. That's what happens when you have only few characters - you never know which ones to choose to put into the game. People didn't like Karen and the developer stopped making scenes with her. But if she was one of only three characters in the game? And what if people woundn't have liked Ashley. There would have been only Claudia left.


Basically, what you are saying is PEOPLE ARE STUPID. Other developers did it all wrong for 30 years and I know how to do it right.
Then you are saying about some "ideal" way of doing things. Ideallly for who? I personally think that developers should develop the game the way they really want, they are passionate about. This way the result in almost all cases will be better. The second choice is there should be some polls where developers ask their patrons. Like, "What character do you want to be voiced? One, two, three, four, five or none".


It would be an enormous waste of time and resources. People here are talking about concentrating resources, what a stupid choice was to make a scene with Linda (or whatever her name), that there are too many characters and so on. But at the same time you are proposing of adding lewd scenes with no story, no emotional connection and so on. I haven't seen even one game where such stuff is popular among supporters, adds anything to the story or is exciting in any way. If you want lewd pictures with no story, just go to e-hentai. There is a lot of that stuff overe there.

That is what I said. Some people love that boring stuff for teenage girls or bored housewives.
Personally, I think it was one of the major problems with Milky Touch. You and patrons like you did everything possible to make it as vanilla as possible. I think the developer had had a much more exciting story when he started Milky Touch. Love stories and no multiple penetration, no sister, no corruption, no Victor, no NTR, no IR , no anything. Sure, current supporters are against it and so it shouldn't be implemented. Right? In my opinion, wrong. Yes, it fits current patrons, but new ones are not attracted to the game, since there is no spicy stuff in it. It has become dull. And dull games get very little support. As some of the guys here has already said, he and other people support it just because of the nice pictures. That's it. No excitement in the game.


Oh, come on. People here were not able to go through that lockpicking mini game and now you are proposing this...

I'm soo sorry you're so angry about the existence of "vanilla" and it's paying supporters. But do not fret, since I've cancelled my support today, now's your chance splash the cash to show the devs how they're missing out on all that sweet sweet ntr trash

I'm frankly insulted at your belief that it's "their fault"

 

[Arnav Dasari]

It is certainly excessive yes, but I think probably the bigger problem was the way some of these character archtypes were utilized (or wasn't even utilized for that matter lol).

Take Ashley for instance. Her (barely existing) storyline in MT has been nothing more than support for the bigger storyline, a.k.a. Aunt's (Katelyn's) storyline. The game made her Katelyn's assistant so Ashley's character didn't have any legs to stand on her own feet, and her storyline was just completely dependent on Katelyn.
That I found to be an issue.

Well I feel very different about Ashley (and Katelyn). I think that she had a lot of potential as a character, and her route being intertwined with Katelyn's never felt like an issue to me. Usually in incest games the "older sis" character lives in the same house with MC, has a strained relationship with him (if not outright bullying him), but he conquers her heart with his I.M.P.R.E.S.S.I.V.E.C.O.C.K. While an aunt is a slut who's first to fuck with MC and usually kick-starts the whole incest thing in the plot. I played several games with this exact setup. So seeing the sister and the aunt in MT being so distant, cold and calculating felt very fresh and interesting to me.

I was expecting that with the plot's progression we'll see the return of the prodigal daughter, i.e. Ashley mending her relationship with her mother and brother and may be moving in back into Claudia's home - if MC doesn't do anything with Claudia, or, perhaps, is on the romantic route with Claudia. The other possibility I imagined was for the Katelyn's route - choose this one and Katelyn would use Ashley as one of the rewards for MC, possibly ending the route with some aunt-sis-MC threesome action. While if the MC would've chosen to corrupt Claudia, there could've been even daughter plus mother scenes. As I said, Ashley had a lot of potential from the start - alas, we won't see it unleashed, but it was there.

Her story was sweet and in ways heartwarming, like Riley's character herself.

Yep.

But here is a screenshot of Ataegina combat
...
Yeah, it's fantasy, but still I'd say the system is still applicable in Cyberpunk theme.
And add in elements like "take cover" etc for gun fights etc could work.

Looks complex. Not to play, but to put such a system into the game. If the devs would implement something like this I'd only be happy - but it does look complex.

 

[Arnav Dasari]

... The only problem with many characters is that supportes need to wait more time for the character they like to appear the game. But is there such a difference in waiting between 5 and 3 character? In my opinion, there is not...

One of the often cited issues with MT is that there's a lot of text and not enough different pictures in the scenes. If there would be less characters, the game can have more scenes per character (thus getting their routes to proper sex scenes faster) - or to have more pictures per scene. I'm fine either way. What would not be fine is devs doing the same things they did with MT and as the result the new game going the exact same route that MT went.

PEOPLE ARE STUPID. Other developers did it all wrong for 30 years and I know how to do it right.

The second choice is there should be some polls where developers ask their patrons. Like, "What character do you want to be voiced? One, two, three, four, five or none".

That's probably the most sensible way.

...It would be an enormous waste of time and resources. People here are talking about concentrating resources, what a stupid choice was to make a scene with Linda (or whatever her name), that there are too many characters and so on. But at the same time you are proposing of adding lewd scenes with no story, no emotional connection and so on. I haven't seen even one game where such stuff is popular among supporters, adds anything to the story or is exciting in any way...

I guess I have to explain my point further. I do subscribe to the opinion that in Neon Touch devs should concentrate their resources. Instead of starting a lot of routes - like Linda's - which, as MT shows, devs don't have the resources to fully expand and finish, in my personal opinion they should focus only on a handful of LIs. But in the first few updates we probably wouldn't see MC having sex with these LIs - and we shouldn't, because there should be a whole journey to that. Just like in MT, first scenes with LIs in NT should be something relatively "innocent", like voyeurism or a date with a kiss or something like this. But NT shouldn't be as much of a slowburner as MT was - and that's where optional sex scenes with unnamed NPCs would be useful. Lets say we would have 5 scenes in the first update. If there are just three LIs, we'd have an "introductory" scene for every one of them - an "innocent" scene, so to say; and we'd have 2 free scenes which could be utilized for proper sex scenes, honest to god benis in bagina scenes. Sex scenes with prostitutes/one-nighters. Shirleys instead of lindas. And the game should be very open about that - "hey, that's not a route start, it's just some sex on the side." This way the guys who came to fap would have something to fap to right in the first update. But when the game would get to the sex with the LIs, it should focus on them and their content. And it should do that relatively fast - I'd say around 1/3 of the planned plot length. NT should be a "middleburner".

Personally, I think it was one of the major problems with Milky Touch. You and patrons like you did everything possible to make it as vanilla as possible.

On one hand, I can assure I did the opposite. While I didn't ask for NTR, I did propose:
- Victor hatefucking Karen;
- Tombs hatefucking Karen;
- MC hatefu oh wait, that's already in the game;
- (light) BDSM scenes with Octavia at the "Mask";
- Karen watching Claudia and MC having sex at the "Mask";
- Katelyn and Ashley in a dom/sub lesbian relationship. With Ashley being the dom.
And probably a lot of other sick gutwrenching shit I cannot remember right now.

(I'm not proud of any of that btw, even if it may sound like I am.)

On the other hand, in my eyes the suburbian setting of MT rules out some of the more dark themes. It's just modern times city, it's not NMGD where the setting was a slavery-based ancient society in the midst of a civil war. MT has already pushed the boundaries with the whole "Mask" sub-plot and the corruption routes for Octavia and Claudia. In fact I was quite surprised that the devs did include Claudia's corruption option.

Now, Neon Touch is the whole different game. Unlike MT its setting does offer a lot of possibilities to explore the darkest shit imaginable. I don't know if such direction would be popular with people, but rest assured, I've already suggested some of the aforementioned dark shit to the devs.

 

[TheOneWithThePorn12]

But it is.

I cannot think or comprehend of anything more cucked than being a pimp. Honestly, think about it rationally. You are feeding, clothing, protecting and rearing a girl so she can go and get ravaged by another man. All the hard work you put into your beautiful little slut - reading her Kamasutra, making her practice strip routine, making sure she had a healthy diet, educating her, playing with her. All of it has one simple result: her body is more enjoyable for the men that will eventually fuck her in every hole.

Raised the perfect whore? Great. Who benefits? If you're lucky, a random man who had nothing to do with the way she was trained up, who buys her. He gets to fuck her tight pussy. He gets the benefits of her submissive personality that came from the way you raised her.

As a man who's a pimp, you are LITERALLY dedicating at least years of your life simply to make a product for another man to enjoy. It is the ULTIMATE AND FINAL cuck. Think about it logically.

This is hilarious and i cannot tell if you are serious or sarcastic.

 

[Deleted member 3581761]

This is hilarious and i cannot tell if you are serious or sarcastic.

its from the other meme

 

[CME1853]

But surely it must have translated into at least some amount of support that otherwise the devs wouldn't have, right? How come others are making good VN's with more or less the same level of support then?

You see, my point is that I dislike how it's being somewhat implied that MT being cut short is due to a lack of support or not enough support... because that's textbook shifting the blame from the devs to the supporters somehow.

I agree with JJJ84 and lordfridge9: this is more of a mismanagement of the game other than anything, and they also overestimated their game's quality. Just take a look at all of the objective 2-3 star reviews and they explain it pretty clearly.

So at least the devs should be upfront and say: "hey, we fucked up the game's management and spent a lot, and also we overestimated our game quality and the support that it would get (even tough we already get a considerable support...), so we're scrapping it up to try again with a new one". It's a huge red flag how they're blame shifting, and who guarantees that they won't mess up in the same way again?

There is no right or wrong answer that anyone here can prove about the early ending of Milky Touch - we'll all have our opinions, and insufficient facts to back them, as if proving a particular position about Milky Touch was possible.

Milky Touch is being finished (Not completed) in two more rev's, and then it is done, and it certainly won't be finished the way the Patreons supporting with $ wanted.

Reality - there were not enough Patreons supporting with enough $.

Anyone can sit here from on high, without seeing their actual costs, and say it was more game mismanagement than it was the lack of support gained from 'free marketing.'

So far, I have not seen a marketing study that translates F95 views into a $ estimate for any given AVN genre let alone a specific AVN like Milky Touch.

If you have - share the link in a response.

I'd love to see the actual valuation the 'free marketing' effect is supposed to provide, even by genre!

So - did 'free marketing' provide a significant impact, a minor impact? Who knows since there is no way to prove it and supposition + $1 still leaves you with just $1.

Whether the artist, the voice acting, the number of female characters (too many, just right, not enough to expand the Patreon audience), the story or the lack of a 'free marketing' effect were the real reason(s) for Milky Touch going away too soon will be irrelevant in less than 6 months.

At least Milky Touch will get some kind of ending, which beats what happens to a number of good to great AVNs - abandoned because they can't get the $ support to continue.

 

[Furabia]

Anyone can sit here from on high, without seeing their actual costs, and say it was more game mismanagement than it was the lack of support gained from 'free marketing.'

I won't even touch on the piracy vs exposure discussion; I vehemently disagree with you on that front as well, but I won't go there in this comment. My main point is that the mismanagement is indeed very clear regardless of support amount, meaning: they overshoot in terms of scope of their game and they overestimated the quality of what was already there, which directly resulted in their costs being too high compared to the lower $ support.

How can I know this as an outside observer? If you understand the basic economics concept of project costs, which applies to any kind of project, business or industry, not just games, then I think anyone can clear see it as well.

Every business has costs, and to keep a long story short and oversimplify things: you either have an initial investment that will keep you running for a certain X projected amount of time, OR you stay realistic about your current business cash-flow and reduce/adjust costs to match the fluctuating intake of $. In the case of MT, it's the latter case with the cash-flow obviously being the supporters on patreon.

Now imagine you own a restaurant: you expected to make $20000 a month to have a decent margin, but instead you're barely making half of that (which is lower than the cost of running it)... so what do you do? Do you go ahead and upgrade your industrial ovens just because? Do you replace all tables with fancier wood and seating? Do you renovate the inside with fancy decor? Of course not, you shouldn't do any of those things because that would be dumb business management. What you do is to get realistic: you cut costs wherever possible and tone down the scope of your business to keep it running.

Now think: why aren't you getting the amount of customers that you think you should be? Maybe your restaurant is in a shitty part of town or is hard to access? Maybe the main attraction, your food, is not that good actually? Or maybe the food is decent enough but you don't have a good variety of dishes? Maybe your staff is not that attentive or maybe even rude? Perhaps the front of your establishment is uninviting? Perhaps you didn't advertise enough so people don't even know about your place? Or if you did advertise it enough, maybe it was bad advertising and it didn't catch peoples attention or put them off? etc...

Those consideration are things that, as the owner and manager, you HAVE to be constantly aware of to be successful.

Because instead, imagine the owner of such establishment saying: "Well, we're not earning what we should because it's the fault of the hypothetical customers who aren't coming to my restaurant. If only they were coming to my most prestigious establishment, my costs would be covered, therefore it's not my fault, it's all the customers fault for not coming." As an owner, you just don't place the managerial burden towards the customers waiting for them to match your out of hand costs. No, you start small and increase your costs to make your business grow, as long as there is the projected DEMAND to match.

You don't need to be an insider to realize this; it's the logical conclusion from observation of the facts that we do know about and how they are presented. Facts: the developers themselves said that the reason was costs and "low" support; people agree that voice acting was a luxury; many 2-3 stars reviews denoting the game's weaknesses, including the writing and some characters.

I hope I explained the point clearly enough, but to summarize it: The Milky Touch dev's sustained an unrealistic cost expecting to quickly reach a certain $ support on patreon, but it never came. They could have reduced the scope of their game (thus cutting costs) or increase the overall quality of the game to attract more support (by listening to the feedback on the game's issues), instead they choose to cut the project way too short, more or less spitting in the face of the people who like the game while simultaneously shifting the blame towards hypothetical people that never supported them in the first place... which doesn't sit well with me at all. At the very least, they should admit to the mismanagement so that I can have hope that they won't repeat it on their next project.

 

[Arnav Dasari]

... they choose to cut the project way too short, more or less spitting in the face of the people who like the game while simultaneously shifting the blame towards hypothetical people that never supported them in the first place...

Your example with a restaurant sure makes sense, but:

A) Personally I find their decision to finish the game with two more updates - despite the lack of funds and the lead dev covering the losses out of his own pocket - to be the opposite of spitting in the face. It's a farewell gift and a deed of integrity.

B) I don't remember any of the devs blaming players for not supporting them enough.

 

[Arnav Dasari]

This is hilarious and i cannot tell if you are serious or sarcastic.

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