VN Ren'Py Abandoned Strange Gift [v0.12] [Amaraine]

2.50 star(s) 2 Votes

BigEffinPerv

Member
Sep 22, 2017
464
411
Why does the Lust bar disappear on some girls ? is there a limited number of girls whose Lust you can raise ?
 

nakonnako

Member
May 1, 2018
293
163
wonder what to do with girl with negative lust. heck I've seen some with -196 and decreasing a lot more
 

ThunderRob

Devoted Member
May 10, 2018
9,497
26,590
if you try to get a blowjob in public and you get caught by police..lust bar plummets..she is moritifed and you'll have to work to get her back up to where she'll do that again
 

BigEffinPerv

Member
Sep 22, 2017
464
411
if you try to get a blowjob in public and you get caught by police..lust bar plummets..she is moritifed and you'll have to work to get her back up to where she'll do that again
Actually my problem is just that the Lust bar just disappears on some girls and never shows up again ; without even getting caught.
 

Bagger288

Active Member
Jul 11, 2017
945
614
Why does the Lust bar disappear on some girls ? is there a limited number of girls whose Lust you can raise ?
I haven't seen it disappear, but it does drop over time (as does affection) - especially once the spy comes in. However, this seems to only apply to some of the girls.

The game is currently several hours long with a few minutes of content. There are infinite girls, raising submission and researching spells is very slow, and the spells are nigh useless. Of the submission commands, I couldn't figure out what the 30 point one does, but the important one seems to be the 20 point one that lets you get blowjobs (increasing submission and progress). It's not fun - yet.

I noticed a few scrollback bugs - sometimes a scrollback would switch the girl you're looking at to a different one, or somehow lead to an error.

For suggestions, I'd at least like to see the "wrong" discussion options disappear once you discover the correct one, and maybe to have instant travel until you talk to someone.
 

Amaraine

Member
Game Developer
Jun 7, 2017
203
145
wonder what to do with girl with negative lust. heck I've seen some with -196 and decreasing a lot more
Lust won't go so negative (and except in a few odd cases, won't go below zero) in the next version -- I really appreciate the feedback. The Lust bar disappears whenever Lust <= 0.
 
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Amaraine

Member
Game Developer
Jun 7, 2017
203
145
I haven't seen it disappear, but it does drop over time (as does affection) - especially once the spy comes in. However, this seems to only apply to some of the girls.

The game is currently several hours long with a few minutes of content. There are infinite girls, raising submission and researching spells is very slow, and the spells are nigh useless. Of the submission commands, I couldn't figure out what the 30 point one does, but the important one seems to be the 20 point one that lets you get blowjobs (increasing submission and progress). It's not fun - yet.

I noticed a few scrollback bugs - sometimes a scrollback would switch the girl you're looking at to a different one, or somehow lead to an error.

For suggestions, I'd at least like to see the "wrong" discussion options disappear once you discover the correct one, and maybe to have instant travel until you talk to someone.
Thank you. This is useful. I'll follow up on the suggestion about "wrong" discussion options. Not so sure about the instant travel, because while it's frustrating to be at a location where you can't do anything, it's also not great game play if you feel you have to visit every location to find the ideal one each time period -- that would make many people's play experiences last longer, even if they win in fewer game-days. For similar reasons you will no longer to be able to flirt and kiss every girl at a location -- which yes, increased what you did each turn, but actually also increased game play, as one tended to do lots of clicks for small benefit (like flirting and kissing the non-magical girls.) I hope that makes sense.

When I test, I keep track of time, and if the game is taking me about an hour and a half. That's still not great for the ratio of content, and obviously there are reasons why I might play it faster. But I'm keeping track of time element and my goal is to add content without increasing time-to-play unless the content really justifies it. Since the reboot each version has added content while keeping time-to-play constant or reduced.
 
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Bagger288

Active Member
Jul 11, 2017
945
614
Not so sure about the instant travel, because while it's frustrating to be at a location where you can't do anything, it's also not great game play if you feel you have to visit every location to find the ideal one each time period -- that would make many people's play experiences last longer, even if they win in fewer game-days. For similar reasons you will no longer to be able to flirt and kiss every girl at a location -- which yes, increased what you did each turn, but actually also increased game play, as one tended to do lots of clicks for small benefit (like flirting and kissing the non-magical girls.) I hope that makes sense.
Instant travel would let you call a girl and then go to her - I think currently that is only possible from home.
I never encountered a location where there were no girls - the minimum was 1.
Making it so you can only flirt with one girl would make the research/flirt/sex choice an actual choice, but it would also make the infinite girls problem more frustrating: new girls would explicitly take game-time away from your established targets.

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sakuyas_mmaster

Well-Known Member
Feb 12, 2018
1,237
1,565
I messed around with this game a little bit. Wanted to see what's in it and what the mechanics are. Not gonna write anything about amount of content. It's rebuild and people shouldn't be surprised if content is limited.

The mechanics need some refinement though. As far as I understand it you're supposed to be flirty with the girls until they are either willing to fuck you or help you with their magic (or both). So you basically shuffle your attention between the girls and learning spells. Then you fuck them or cast spells with them when you have influenced them enough. Either way you push back Loki.

Now I noticed once you got the girls' affection high enough you can always invite them to your home in the morning. There you can talk to them for more affection and make out with them for more lust. And you don't forward time in the process (unless you fuck them). So effectively you can invite all girls every morning and farm affection and lust. Only exception is one girl, that always seems to trigger a little event. Afterwards you can run around the locations and farm more lust (and later submission) from the girls there. So it's only a matter of time until you have all girls maxed. Is that intended? Seems a bit strange to me.

Also noticed, that the non-magical girls disappear after a while. And once you pushed out Loki's influence from all locations by making out with all the girls Loki doesn't send in new girls either. Or at least that's what it seemed like to me. Not sure if that is intented either.

As for the negative lust. I had 2 girls spawn with extremely negative lust. One had about -300 and the other something like -150. Takes a while to get them out of that, but since the mechanics allow you to make out with them up to 7 times a day it's really not much of a deal.

I know this is an early version. It has a BDSM tag so I needed to check it out. ;) Thought I'd leave my observations in the comments.
 
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Amaraine

Member
Game Developer
Jun 7, 2017
203
145
Instant travel would let you call a girl and then go to her - I think currently that is only possible from home.
I never encountered a location where there were no girls - the minimum was 1.
Making it so you can only flirt with one girl would make the research/flirt/sex choice an actual choice, but it would also make the infinite girls problem more frustrating: new girls would explicitly take game-time away from your established targets.
All good points. By "can't do anything" I meant "can't do anything you feel like doing" -- but yeah, there's always something. It is possible, but not very likely, for a location to be empty.

I agree it would be nice to call a girl and then go to her from locations other than the home. If I can figure out a way to do that, that doesn't also allow you to visit every location to check it out(simply because I don't want people feeling that best play involves doing something that tedious), I will do so. And yes, currently you can do that from home. I intend for there to be an option to "make a date" at some point, that may also address some of that.

My experience from testing, is that the change to "flirt with just one girl" decreased the grind, which I think is the games biggest problem. I'll be interested to see what you think, if you choose to try it out -- I intend to release a new version Monday. The flow of new girls does stop around day 25, but you're right -- if you've got a decent bunch of girls on the way to serving your needs, you're going to be less interested in the girls that appear late in the game. I think some of the changes I'm making (lust should go up a bit faster, and won't go down as low when it goes down, for instance) will make it so you're more likely not to need to interact with your established girls quite as often, but I think it's still an issue. I always want to increase the number of actual choices, so I want paying attention to the new girls to be a reasonable choice, at least some of the time.
 
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Amaraine

Member
Game Developer
Jun 7, 2017
203
145
I messed around with this game a little bit. Wanted to see what's in it and what the mechanics are. Not gonna write anything about amount of content. It's rebuild and people shouldn't be surprised if content is limited.

The mechanics need some refinement though. As far as I understand it you're supposed to be flirty with the girls until they are either willing to fuck you or help you with their magic (or both). So you basically shuffle your attention between the girls and learning spells. Then you fuck them or cast spells with them when you have influenced them enough. Either way you push back Loki.

Now I noticed once you got the girls' affection high enough you can always invite them to your home in the morning. There you can talk to them for more affection and make out with them for more lust. And you don't forward time in the process (unless you fuck them). So effectively you can invite all girls every morning and farm affection and lust. Only exception is one girl, that always seems to trigger a little event. Afterwards you can run around the locations and farm more lust (and later submission) from the girls there. So it's only a matter of time until you have all girls maxed. Is that intended? Seems a bit strange to me.

Also noticed, that the non-magical girls disappear after a while. And once you pushed out Loki's influence from all locations by making out with all the girls Loki doesn't send in new girls either. Or at least that's what it seemed like to me. Not sure if that is intented either.

As for the negative lust. I had 2 girls spawn with extremely negative lust. One had about -300 and the other something like -150. Takes a while to get them out of that, but since the mechanics allow you to make out with them up to 7 times a day it's really not much of a deal.

I know this is an early version. It has a BDSM tag so I needed to check it out. ;) Thought I'd leave my observations in the comments.
Thank you very much for your observations -- and pointing out the home exploit. I'll do something about that -- it was one of those things where I as a dev thought of the game as being played a certain way, and didn't see the issue.

As I mentioned in another comment, in the next version you won't be able to make out with three characters a time period, so you won't have them all maxed. Loki does have a chance of sending a second girl, but yeah, pushing out Loki's influence from all locations is currently conceived of as the end of the game. The end in later versions will look a bit different, so it's a provisionary goal for now.

Very helpful! Thanks!
 
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sakuyas_mmaster

Well-Known Member
Feb 12, 2018
1,237
1,565
Good luck. Gonna try out future versions as well.

One question though: what is the point of reading the book? Is that just a time sink? Or is that supposed to increase a stat which is not implemented yet?
 

Amaraine

Member
Game Developer
Jun 7, 2017
203
145
Good luck. Gonna try out future versions as well.

One question though: what is the point of reading the book? Is that just a time sink? Or is that supposed to increase a stat which is not implemented yet?
It is mostly for future implementation, but if you read a book and there are librarians present, they gain a small amount of affection for you. :) It's mildly better than "Pass Time" in the current version, but in the next version it's just a bad option 99% of the time, so I'll comment it out in the next version until I'm doing more with it. Thank you.
 
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ThunderRob

Devoted Member
May 10, 2018
9,497
26,590
lost bedroom to darkness..lost church to darkness..areas i have never seen..i've pushed back the darkness everywhere i am able to access..are these placeholders for future content?..or have i missed a special dame that opens those areas?
 

nakonnako

Member
May 1, 2018
293
163
lost bedroom to darkness..lost church to darkness..areas i have never seen..i've pushed back the darkness everywhere i am able to access..are these placeholders for future content?..or have i missed a special dame that opens those areas?
I don't think church and office area and other area you never seen released yet, I mean if you using cheat and enable it (for testing purposes), it will just crash the game.
 

ThunderRob

Devoted Member
May 10, 2018
9,497
26,590
no...its "red text" above the top then a message in the normal text box area that they have fallen to the darkness and are no longer available...no cheating
 

Amaraine

Member
Game Developer
Jun 7, 2017
203
145
no...its "red text" above the top then a message in the normal text box area that they have fallen to the darkness and are no longer available...no cheating
Thank you! Players always do things with my games that I don't think to do in testing, including playing them longer than I would. So, when I've tested, I've generally felt "done" when I've gotten all the areas in the game to 0 -- at which point the game should mention that you've pushed back the darkness "everywhere." At that point I make changes and test again. So I've never gotten to the turn when those places would get taken over. There is indeed no way you can get to the Church right now, and I'll make it so the game doesn't give you that message in the next version.
 

fulcrum

Engaged Member
Feb 2, 2018
3,470
2,014
Is there a real rule what maledom actualy depicts? I've seen both in stories and games tagged with mdom.
 
2.50 star(s) 2 Votes