Posting it here in case it finds its way to Majalis
I wanted to post feedback on this game because I *really* really love it and I really want to offer it more support because the art is awesome and the scenes are really well written but there's a HUGE glaring gameplay issue that I need to offer feedback on because it's been a consistent issue. The hunger mechanic is really really REALLY not fun as it currently is in the game.
Each tick you travel takes about 5 hunger, it also takes 5 hunger to scout, 5 hunger to increase stealth level, and 5 hunger to heal 5 HP. So it takes hunger to do literally *anything* on the map and it is your only healing resource (aside from potions, but having an empty stomach drains health and you need it to do anything anyways). If you run out of hunger (which you WILL), you lose some HP and enter an event where you get a little food for free (sometimes this results in a debuff, such as getting drunk or losing some mental stats), you lose a bunch of mental stats (dignity and willpower) but gain a little fullness back (and I think drop to 0 HP because time passes and you're starving), or you can buy food,. Let's go over each of these outcomes in turn:
Firstly, getting free food, this is obviously the best outcome but it also has caveats. First is the fishermen event which gives ~45 hunger and gets you drunk--being drunk drops a bunch of stats, and your stats already drop from a LOT of sources (being low HP, being cum-filled, etc...) so that makes it even more annoying to pass checks since you now need to overstat yourself. Secondly is the foraging outcome which I think gives about 25 hunger back. The first annoyance with these is that as "good" outcomes, they're rare. I don't know the percentages but I ALWAYS stack perception (Which it apparently scales off of) and the perk that makes it so foraging outcomes are better but it never seems to matter, I have to saveload 5 or 6 times just to get a good event most runs.
The second problem with these is that it's not enough. Early game you can probably clear fights without losing but mid to late game I will often be run down to 5-10 HP after most of the harder fights like the wasp and the vampires, or even mid-game fights like the beastmistress which will necessitate resting which necessitates hunger. And with a max of about 60 HP, but about 20-40 food per event, that means I'll need to rest x4, saveload event, rest x4, saveload event. But that's not all, because most encounters on the map you will auto-fail if your scouting or stealth aren't high enough so then I need to saveload MORE to get enough hunger to bring the levels up high enough that I can actually get to play the encounter (oh and being drunk drops your scout and stealth levels too so that eliminates the fisherman option for most scenarios).
Second is the "fail-state". This happens if you reject an event that could give you food when you're starving (such as not sucking the guy off) but I will also count this as sucking the guy off or the pet scene since functionally they are the same. You take a hit to dignity and willpower, but get some food in the process. Now aside from making you cumfilled most of the time which gives you a debuff, dignity is important--there's a HARD late-game enemy that you just insta-lose to and get a bad end if your dignity isn't high enough. It makes you fail checks, it's nearly impossible to get back, and I always end up getting some but try to keep it in moderation so I can experience all the content without running into bad-end stonewalls, so this is right out.
Third are money-based hunger checks. I will lump resting at the inn (which you can technically do for free but again, you might not want to suck dick every time for the dignity hit), the merchant event, and buying food in store here too because this ties in with money as an issue in the game. Money is SCARCE. You do not get money from a lot of encounters, barely any really. And the bulk of the money you start with should go to the stat equipment (shoes and gloves) needed to loot the spider dungeon outside of the town of Monsters, so you really can't afford food. Even if you could, buying food or resting at the inn gives you around 8-40 hunger which is STILL not enough seeing as how you need about 15 hunger to scout up to full, 15 hunger to stealth up to full, and 60 hunger to heal up from 0. Even if you take a loan out from the bank, which you can do infinitely, it adds an extra enemy on the map that can give you a game over if you run out of money and lose a fight so it's just not worth it since there are so few sources of money you'll never pay it back anyways. Even if there were more money, there are too few places to turn that money into large amounts of food since there are only 2 guaranteed settlements in the early game but the map stretches out way way further than you could reasonably reach them. (This also makes it so traveling back to Silajam for quest purposes is a pain in the ass since you basically wasted all the hunger you used getting to that point).
Now, are there events in the game that can give you hunger? Yes! There's the dryad, there's the lake elf, there are food caches, there's the hunger charm which slows loss. But these are not random events that benefit you, these are just events that can stave off you needing to constantly saveload since even if you play THE most optimal build in the game (which to my understanding is spamming armor sunder with high STR) you will STILL bleed HP and run out of hunger inevitably. And these events often also have an opportunity cost! You just don't get any of the elf's sex scenes if you drink from the lake, the dryad deals damage to you, and the hunger charm is RNG and is in chests which could contain mimics or tentacles, but is literally essential if you don't want to spend half your playsession saveloading. There's also a perk that lets you gain hunger from swallowing cum but what if I don't want to swallow cum from every single monster I pass and just want to play as an adventurer for a little bit and only flirt with monsters that I click with? It's not fun just to autolose every fight even if you're playing the damsel submissive just to swallow cum for hunger because there are bonus scenes for winning.
This is actually a game-ruining issue to me. It makes it so the mid-late game is just spent on a single tile grinding out beneficial hunger checks over and over and over again. The game has lots of things that could use tweaking. Like I mentioned, money is pretty bad, the upgrade system is confusing, some enemies are nearly impossible with certain builds, the stat demands are too high across the board for most checks like getting Kyrlia on the team, combat HEAVILY favors STR based melee fighters, magic is pretty bad, the fact that sleeping in your tent ALWAYS spawns a goblin even if you have companions makes it so I've never actually slept because I just end up HP-negative, but the hunger problem is the worst. It makes it so I actually don't want to support the game because I don't give a shit about playing the new build every month because no matter how sexy the content is, saveloading for 2 hours is just awful.
I always like to be a constructive criticizer so I'm going to offer some potential fixes:
-Make money more frequent: winning money after every fight, even if it's like 10-20 gold, makes it actually worth stocking up on food in town and taking the merchant random encounters, which would reduce a lot of the headache from needing to reroll until you get one that doesn't require money.
-Make actions take less hunger: reducing the scouting, stealth, and camp actions to 1 or even 3 hunger would do a great deal for allowing the player to heal back up after fights, which is necessary to play the game, and allowing them to get their stats up if their passives don't cover it. It would make the 20-ish food you get from the free event not put you at a standstill.
-Make foraging feats more powerful: Perception and Forager should give massive bonuses to foraging or potentially even add entirely new events or double the amount of food you get from foraging. This makes it so it's still a necessary feat but it actually gives quality of life benefits.
-Increase the amount of food: You could easily double, triple, or even quadruple the amount of food that can be bought in shops, earned at the inn, and gained from foraging, and it would not negatively impact the mechanic in any way whatsoever.
-Remove the hunger mechanic entirely: This is the most extreme, I'll admit, but why is there a hunger mechanic? It's not like it's thematically appropriate for a fantasy action exploration RPG with no other survival mechanics. I understand it serves as a limiting factor for stealthing, scouting, and healing infinitely, but it's an arbitrary limiter since it's still infinite as long as you're willing to take the dignity hit and waste your time. The starving events don't even have fun sex scenes or pretty art, it's just a sceneskip with text and a generic photo. This would make the game easier, sure, but it's already a HARD game. I've struggled through most enemies at max HP on most characters, but learning the combat is sort of like an engaging puzzle, and worst case you get a fun sex scene. Managing your hunger is not challenging, it's just frustrating and boring.
I love the game but I seriously put off playing more of it because I find this aspect so distasteful. I think it would warm me and a lot of others on it if it were tweaked in some way. Thanks for reading! (Also Alma and the Fire Elemental are best girls).
