Oh, thank you for taking the time to respond! My apologies if my comments came across as somewhat harsh, by the way; while I do believe the issues I raised are valid, I likely would have phrased them differently if I knew the author was going to read them.
You know, this post made me subscribe to this forum, this is the first approach to a game (I´m just an artist/animator) and is great to see that someone took the time to review it with so much care, this game is irregular mostly because I have no idea of how the "hentai game world" works, the game is free and uncensored now (and that was the idea from the beginning) so I will focus moreon the feedback.
Why Unity? hmm well I didn't know people hated it for V.N, the programmer is a friend who only knows Unity so, this being a really personal project born from some fanarts, didn't think it would piss so much people, I will try to change the platform but for that, probably I will have to change programmer and probably the price will rise. but is a good suggestion thanks!
If you don't expect to do anything more complicated than this, I really do think Ren'py would be better for the project; it's extremely simple to use, great for projects involving a lot of writing, free, and has all the functionality expected of a VN baked in already. Your friend shouldn't have any trouble switching to Ren'py, even if they aren't familiar with it previously - I'd go so far as to say that you could probably do it yourself, if need be. Take a glance at their website
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for more information.
The problem is that it's a real pain for other forms of gameplay - if you were planning on including an inventory system, fights, or anything else that adventurers do, then sticking with Unity might be less of a headache. If you do those in a VN-like structure (say, choosing from a variety of options as the fight progresses, attaching a value to each of them, and deciding whether they win or lose at the end based on the total value), it works out just fine, but adding an entirely new system... Usually doesn't end up working
well. It's very good at what it does, but trying to branch out of what it does ends up sticking out in a bad way, at least for a lot of the projects I've seen.
Even then, though, I might recommend dropping any planned gameplay in favor of the core VN, just because people
so often get Unity wrong for VNs when they try to rebuild the proverbial wheel. Take a fast forward button, for instance; if a game's just been updated, or the player wants to try a different branch, they have to go through a
lot of text to see the new stuff. That ends up becoming a real slog if there's no fast forward button, but plenty of devs don't consider that because it's not a problem for them when writing the game, and it's not included by default. Or they
do include a fast forward button, but don't have an easy way of distinguishing between previously seen text and new text, so the player ends up skipping things not realizing a scene was changed in an update or as a result of their decisions.
Why Disney princesses? well as I said it started as an idea for an illustration or a set of illustrations, people who follow me on social media liked the idea and kept telling me who should I add and with what kind of job. being famous characters gave the project a little boost even if their personalities arent exactly the same.
Every one of them has a backstory more or less inspired on their movies.
Aurora was sleeping for a hundred years and was the onlyone from her castle who woke up so she is looking for the witch that made the curse.
Jasmine's kingdom was taken by Jaffar who has her father as prisoner, she barely escaped just with the clothes she had at the moment and a bag that had inside a dusty lamp she had to learn how to steal to survive, now shes raising money (not from patreon) to get herself an army and save her home.
Ah, that does sound pretty neat, actually. I see a good amount of potential there later!
before they went into the dungeon there was another group that disapeared (like a team alpha and team bravo) there will be hints that show that it was indeed another group of female adventurers (one of them is Belle, the beast tamer)
there's a lot more but I´m no writer so, Im just sketching ideas with the person who helps me with this to make a cohesive story.
If I might make a suggestion, it might be better to elaborate on that more at the start - such as having one of the characters give more details about what the old team was trying to do, or talking a bit about how one of their friends (Belle, though I'm guessing that's supposed to be a surprise? Just talking about her without naming her should still preserve that mystery, if that's a concern) had gone missing on the expedition.
It's more difficult to get invested in what they're trying to do if we don't know much about it ourselves - we don't need a long scene about it, but a bit more detail about who went missing and why helps it feel more
real.
About the "fake decisions" That's my fault, I just wanted to tell a little story that went bigger the more the people on pateon and other social media told me. the game at some point was intended to be a CG release with texts and "vote for the decision" on twitter or patreon. (like some artist do) but I prefered to go with the visual novel because Akabur "Princess trainer" was an inspiration.
Just to be clear, "fake decisions" can still work as a mechanic, in moderation - even if both branches end in the same place after a paragraph, it can make an otherwise linear VN feel more dynamic, and let the player feel more investment in important scenes. The issue, specifically, is that the way it's done currently
negates the player's input by forcing them to go back and choose the other option after all.
If, for instance, the princess just said "No, I'm going to touch the flower anyway," that still
works, because the player feels like they at least tried to stop it; going back and being forced to pick "yes" is the problem here. At least, in my opinion.
About "include actually sexualized situations " well I think it's because it's kinda inspired on anime fanservice where is most about were the camera is or how a character falls with her open legs, I know it's not for everyone but it was the intention.
Yeah, just to emphasize the point, that's probably more of a "me" problem than a problem with the game; I tend to identify with the characters in the game, so the idea of just looking "myself" in an incidentally fanservicey pose... Doesn't do much for me. I mean, I could just do that at home.
The idea of
deliberately posing sexily because some unknown force is encouraging me to do so, well, that's hot... But I understand if that's not what the game is going for here
.
Why so short? hmm well... there's 2 reasons, I have little patience (maybe because i'm a 2D/3D artist) and Im used to see finished the things I do inmediatly, it's not a good thing but reading opinions and feedback keeps me motivated more than packing a 2 hour game for release after 10 months without knowing if people will like it... I upload an image and jump to the other, but planning a story, checking the dev team, find the music/voices, needs a change of pace. also I'm not sure what's the best way to release a game (my intention, based on nothing was to divide the dungeon in 3 parts and when they defeat the first boss and learn what happened to the last team putting all of them together like a manga volume) but hey that's just an approach.
This is just an idea, but one solution might be to put out regular "incremental builds" for your donors, while releasing larger public builds for everyone else. This would allow you to get the frequent feedback you're looking for from those who are very interested in your project, while those who are less interested can be assured that each update they see has a significant amount of content added.
Other than that, though, I would just like to mention that there's no option that really keeps everyone happy; some people are annoyed if there's not much new in an update, while others are annoyed if they go too long without seeing any progress. So long as you're making consistent progress, now that it's released, it's probably best to tune out comments regarding the update schedule.
