Ren'Py Refuge of Embers [v0.18a] [Escape Sauce]

[Perfect S]

On average a scene or background takes about 16 hours, a fully animated h-scene takes about 28 hours, and a character sprite takes about 10 hours.

Assuming this is true, this is probably the reason the game feels so short despite the ~3 years dev time.
It's probably an unsurmountable barrier to overcome, and that art bottleneck will forever hold the rest of the game back, pretty much guaranteeing the game is never even close to being finished. Even more so since it's a "side project".
Something about that would have to change. Even AAA game studios would struggle with those times.

 

[Raurosfalls]

I wish Eryn had some h-scenes... ah well, someday.

 

[Professor Black]

hmmm that many years to make all that, when 90% of them were reused assets in the game. Maybe preproduction(rough designs and concepts) were included within that 3 years?
What I'm trying to say is that dev coulda made the updates longer by extending the story using the same existing assets until new animations/new bg or splash image are done and not just show 10mins of gameplay to show

 

[Totally_not_me]

What's the pregnancy content?

Will you be able to impregnate one girl or multiple? Will pregnancy be in the game? We will be able to live the births with the mothers? Will the player be able to see the baby? I want it

 

[Escape Sauce]

I wish Eryn had some h-scenes... ah well, someday.

Should be about 3 more months. We have a couple more major story events to get through before we shift our focus to the romance paths. I'm guessing Eryn is going to be the first character our supporters vote on.

What's the pregnancy content?

Will you be able to impregnate one girl or multiple? Will pregnancy be in the game? We will be able to live the births with the mothers? Will the player be able to see the baby? I want it

Pregnancy content is planned for all love interests and a few side characters, and will be fully implemented towards the second half of act 2. In the current public release there's one impregnation scene in the intro sequence, and all of the pregnant character sprites with a few stages each are already in the game and viewable in the gallery. It's going to be a major element of the game.

 

[Raurosfalls]

Should be about 3 more months. We have a couple more major story events to get through before we shift our focus to the romance paths. I'm guessing Eryn is going to be the first character our supporters vote on.



Pregnancy content is planned for all love interests and a few side characters, and will be fully implemented towards the second half of act 2. In the current public release there's one impregnation scene in the intro sequence, and all of the pregnant character sprites with a few stages each are already in the game and viewable in the gallery. It's going to be a major element of the game.

I have high hopes. Godspeed!

 

[TKJM1234]

Probably just empty promises well im out of here cya in thousands of years I guess...
Its like waiting for a manga chapter

 

[Anczej]

Damn, nice fucking game. So far features likeable characters and has some major plot potential, it's not just "seduce everyone in your village/city" kind of story, which is a big plus, and of course, godly graphics. For now it's too short to give a proper review, but still, I have high hopes and I can still comment a little about what I saw so far.

I understand why everyone simps to Eryn. I mean, she got the most screentime out of all the characters except MC, so people get attached to her the most. And yeah she seems to be the only girl with major main plot role after all. But honestly? Lena captivated me the most. Mainly because she seems to have a lot of potential when you get over her shyness, meeting her family and getting to know the situation with the arranged marriage, discovering what she actually wants to do in life, I sure as hell want her and Eryn to get to know each other and become friends too, Rithe can be a fun wingman as well, I just see a lot of stuff to explore. I mean, compared to others, Lucine is a basic milf-ish girl that just has her own problem free life (feel free to prove me wrong, but other than just keep visiting, having small talk and sex I just don't see where it could lead) and Raisa is a bit of a troublemaker also living her own life without major problems. Sure, her father is a pain in her ass to her, but that's really nothing in comparison. Lastly, Rithe. I certainly hope we get to see more of him, I hate when games feature only a single male, the MC, so having actual male frienships with other guys in the game's universe seems cool, especially that again, he seems to at least somewhat share Lena's potential for plot development with his family situation.

Finally, as for sex scenes, well I only have two wishes made only to fit my own preferences, so I don't expect them to be met, but would still be grateful. I certainly hope we get to turn the tables on Raisa, I didn't like the "you belong to me" and "beg me" stuff, so a little rivalry who gets to dominate in each encounter sounds cool. And I hope we get to top and dominate Rithe, and like, exclusively do that, because the only scene for now had Rithe in control, while him being so twink-ish gave me the opposite impression and hopes. Well, thanks in advance I guess and good luck with the game!

Oh. There's one more thing I wanted to address, reading the old replies in the thread. I might be shooting myself in the foot here if I want my wishes to be met, but I understand Ioriya's approach a little. I am one of the guys that observed the development of Yandere Simulator, Milfy City, Waifu Academy, Monster Girl Island and probably a few more devs/projects with devs being uh, a little dishonest about their work, so I've grown bitter and skeptical of game devs in general. I certainly hope I'm wrong, so I'm giving this project the benefit of doubt, especially that again, what I saw so far interests me and I'm yet to see if the developer is lying, taking forever to release underwhelming updates and so on. What I'm trying to say, I hope you understand it's sometimes hard to put trust into game devs when some turned out to be basically leeches.

 

[Mokalover]

Can we just stop and appreciate that Murfi's vote is currently sitting at 6.9%

 

[Huskeylord]

Can anybody tell me of there are any cheats yet or what the mysterious options do.

 

[TigerWolfe]

Lmao I did not get anything

Same.

 

[frogbert]

Can we just stop and appreciate that Murfi's vote is currently sitting at 6.9%

Some men prefer a girl with a thick juicy ass, but many feel udder-wise.

 

[nzn]

in my time here and in the scene in general I've seen some games have small updates. never have i seen one as small as this. perhaps 15min of reading with minuscule progression, full breaking of a previous system, and a semi cliffhanger to boot. to say i'm disapointed would be an understatement of the decade if not century. it is kind of sad since i've seen quite the potential in the game.
since the changelog semms to be intentionaly misleading my faith in the developers integrity was clearly misplaced and that is a bit sad.

another game down to the pyre. a fitting name tho

 

[InfamousGuy]

in my time here and in the scene in general I've seen some games have small updates. never have i seen one as small as this. perhaps 15min of reading with minuscule progression, full breaking of a previous system, and a semi cliffhanger to boot. to say i'm disapointed would be an understatement of the decade if not century. it is kind of sad since i've seen quite the potential in the game.
since the changelog semms to be intentionaly misleading my faith in the developers integrity was clearly misplaced and that is a bit sad.

another game down to the pyre. a fitting name tho

This has to be a completely insane take on this game. An initial release that makes it clear from the jump that this is strictly a hobby is quite refreshing considering how many devs take advantage of folks who fiscally support them.

To say that the content small for an intital release is, again, insane as they have to introduce us to the this world that they have created. From the interesting beginnings that setup our main plot, to world and relationship building, and then moving our plot along from where we started, this release was great. This is without even mentioning the quality of love interests in this game. It checks off everything that an initial release should.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how the devs choose go from here.

 

[nzn]

This has to be a completely insane take on this game. An initial release that makes it clear from the jump that this is strictly a hobby is quite refreshing considering how many devs take advantage of folks who fiscally support them.

To say that the content small for an intital release is, again, insane as they have to introduce us to the this world that they have created. From the interesting beginnings that setup our main plot, to world and relationship building, and then moving our plot along from where we started, this release was great. This is without even mentioning the quality of love interests in this game. It checks off everything that an initial release should.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how the devs choose go from here.

this was less about the initial release and more about the update from it.
i can deal with infrequent updates. i can not abide by misleading change log tho.
while i would like the dev to prove me wrong, i'm not holding my breath anmore

to be fair i probably should have just faded without my 2 eurocents but for some reason i didn't.

 

[The D0n]

this was less about the initial release and more about the update from it.
i can deal with infrequent updates. i can not abide by misleading change log tho.
while i would like the dev to prove me wrong, i'm not holding my breath anmore

to be fair i probably should have just faded without my 2 eurocents but for some reason i didn't.

Well you also have to factor in the fact that they are soon doing a Steam release and that they just had a kid so expect a bit of a "break" as real life takes over.

If you are unsure they are doing a Demo release on Steam soonish.

 

[nzn]

Well you also have to factor in the fact that they are soon doing a Steam release and that they just had a kid so expect a bit of a "break" as real life takes over.

If you are unsure they are doing a Demo release on Steam soonish.

ok fair but that was not what i read from update notes.
will see with time i guess...

 

[mazzjazz]

are the patches still needed for all of the content?

 

[Escape Sauce]

ok fair but that was not what i read from update notes.
will see with time i guess...

Everything in the changelog is accurate, the previous posts in this thread with people talking about the changelog were before I broke it down into a full itemized list, for v0.10 I had originally posted an abridged format version instead of the way I've been doing it.

Steam demo version is basically just a souped up version of 0.10 with some new UI updates, tweaks, and additions like Steam Achievements that we've been working on in parallel with the new version we're releasing this week. When we tried to publish the demo build for Next Fest Valve sent us a much longer laundry list of things to change than we expected so we're probably still a few weeks away from that going live.

In terms of story we still have to set the stage for the events that follow the end of Act-I and introduce a few more characters and locations, but we're going to switch our attention 100% over to romance routes when we finish wrapping those up. Some of the story scenes we're working on are pretty complex with a lot of layers and movements for characters so the next few updates will be pretty small while we work through them. Artist and I both have extra dev time this summer so we're targeting 30 day releases instead of 60 to finish all of this setup around September.

 

[Gizmogobum]

Wait, really that it? Remember playing this in 2021, and even after nearly 3 years of development, we are just now finishing the prologue?

The art is really great, the writing is cogent, the story is pretty good from what little I've seen, but let's hope this does not turn into summertime saga or seeds of chaos stuck for years on end in dev hell.