Ren'Py The Bite: Revenant [v0.9302] [madmate.games]

[desmosome]

Alright. I played it. People are quick to say that every game has potential, but I don't throw around that term lightly. This one really does have potential. It hits all the spots for the VtM crowd. People who like Rebirth will definitely enjoy this as well. The writing is actually even better than Rebirth, on a technical level. The prose is quite excellent, reading a bit like a novella. It treats the setting seriously, and the tone has this Noir feel to it. Gritty, cynical, sarcastic. MC is portrayed really well so far. Not simpy, not a pushover, a cynical dude, but not an overt asshole. It's a great place for the MC to start before we shape him in whatever direction. He also behaves quite believably to being turned.

Don't quote me on this, but I have a feeling this dev will treat sex in a more mature way than what we usually see. The immediate a one night stand scene from a bar hook up is a nice indication that the dev won't mess around with bullshit stairway to heaven progression just to delay penetration.

I am wondering if we will end up with a game over if we keep lowering humanity? If we are following the source material that inspired this game, humanity is easy to lose, but incredibly difficult to gain back. Once you reach 0 humanity, you cannot play the character as the "beast" takes over entirely. So the fact that we can lose humanity so easily right now makes me wonder what outcomes we can expect from this stat. Hopefully, the version of humanity here is not something similar to a 0-10 scale. I am already at -3 humanity (starting at 0), and some points were just gained by being enthusiastic to drink blood lol. It normally takes something more than this to lose humanity.

Other than that, the plethora of different stats are an RPG player's wet dream. Let's see how well it translate to a VN.

And finally, this was a great trip down memory lane as a 90s kid. Eagerly waiting for more. Good luck.

edit: Oh the gothic font is a bit hard to read. Also, the stat screen borders and UI gives off a bit of an amateur feel to it, if you know what I mean. It's nothing important, but maybe a little touch up to make it look more slick could be nice.

 

[Carefree247]

The start is interesting and sorta ok, I get it has the semi blank character vibe simillar to how Shepard from ME was made, which is unique considering most devs leave it blank or make one on the spot.

Gameplay wise the gain/loss of humanity, energy bugs me, I mean am I supposed to act like Ken Kaneki, refuse to accept the brutality in life first and then be raped by Jason to turn into a badass who understands the working ?
Just drinking blood or wanting to makes me loose humanity is weak gameplay mechanic plus the vast skill points we have around makes me wonder if it'll be a pain in the ass for you later down the line or not. I think you should iron out the game mechanics before it is too late since it'll cut into development time later on like what happened to "The Deluca Family" and "Seeds of Chaos" where it took/taking them years.

I find it funny that the MC model looks similar to Jamie from BaDIK considering what's been happening with him.

 

[D3xzalias]

Ok i have played this game now

The first part of this game has very distinct feeling of a certain game by a certain developer
Be careful with that madmate.games

Over al great game renders look good, story is good, (seems a bit of copy of something) little to no spelling mistakes
Wish you the best in the future

 

[Canto Forte]

These are the mind games of the fallen ... demons will rape, they do not need to enjoy it.
Gurls will fkk with strangers, does not mean they are humaine or loving or caring or into anyone.
When anything is handed willy nilly out of your hands right to you, you are not prepared.

Every new vamp had to sate his/her hunger 1st on their own resolve before they can be somebody.
Otherwise, mindless beasts they stay, be it man/woman/vamp.

 

[ohhiimfox]

Looks promising. good luck to the dev.

 

[LightmanP]

An interesting game so far, looking forward to the next updates.
This render struck me as weird, though:


madmate.games Spotted a typo in hunting_lessons.rpy on line 24:
Z "Not that it matters, most of use lose appetite for that sort of excitement after transformation..." use -> us.

 

[Yoru]

Very nice renders!
Good luck dear dev~

 

[Robert Arctor]

Really nice start. I enjoyed the story and the characters, and look forward to seeing where this goes.

Glad you like it, and yeah, one of the inspirations was VTMB

VTMB was a great game, glad to see that as a reference

VN with sandbox elements. Will try to fix the tags.

I'm a fan of story-driven VNs, I don't really care for sandbox games - but that's just my own preference. I usually lose interest in anything more than the occasional free-roam.

Just want to provide as many options as possible. Wouldn't you love to talk a guard into getting you through, or jumping over the fence behind the house, or pointing at him while proclaiming he's already dead?

A threshold system is designed to deprive players of possibilities. If there were no stats or checks, we could always choose to do any of those things, freely determining which way we want the story to go, and what defines our character.
Think Mass Effect, it's popular again these days: failing to pick the same kind of dialogue disables options down the line; this forces you to pick specific dialogue options just to raise the points of the same stat because doing otherwise deprives you of options later, even though a specific choice may not really represent your vision of your own character. This discourages roleplaying and character development, and breaks immersion.

Just as important, from the developer's perspective: the more stats you're using, the more work you set up for yourself, exponentially. A stat system is designed to balance abilities between different classes; in single-player this only provides a different experience for different play-throughs, in multi-player it's necessary to balance player 'fun' at the table. You still have to create all the content for every class - or 'option', as you call it - but if you use thresholds, a single player can only experience a shrinking subset of that content in any one playthrough. Every update ends up feeling smaller than the last, and players end up feeling like they put points in the wrong skills if there isn't the same amount of content for all of them. It's also exponentially easier to create e character that doesn't have enough points in any stat to pass a skill check you create later.
How many times are those 'science' points going to get used if we spend our nights on the streets fighting people with swords, really? Do we really need brawl AND melee AND agility AND firearms AND driving? How many locks are we really going to pick, and how many times are we really going to need medicine if most of the time we talk to people with no pulse?

My personal advice would be to just track main story decisions, like those tied to humanity, and maybe which major powers the player chooses to pick up if that's something you're considering. All those other stats, I would personally advise against in a VN.

Best of luck anyway

 

[Vidal the king of Pervert]

Ok i have played this game now

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[Canto Forte]

It is hard to steer clear of vamp tropes when the inteview movies, vanhelsing movies and series,
underworld movies and anything diaries related series in between explored all the ins and outs.

About disgusting, we all live with the disgusting act of exhaling C2O, secreting all kinds of juices, gushing out all kinds of substances resulted from our digestion or activity

We have ta see the good beyound, not dwell in the inevitables of life on Earth.

 

[Vidal the king of Pervert]

It is hard to steer clear of vamp tropes when the inteview movies, vanhelsing movies and series,
underworld movies and anything diaries related series in between explored all the ins and outs.

About disgusting, we all live with the disgusting act of exhaling C2O, secreting all kinds of juices, gushing out all kinds of substances resulted from our digestion or activity

We have ta see the good beyound, not dwell in the inevitables of life on Earth.

I actually don't mind vamp tropes I actually missed the classic vampire when was the last time we saw a vampire. That was afraid of crosses

I think people are too obsessed about showing a new interpretation of vampires. Classic vampires are being forgotten

I think classic vampires can be pretty cool if they're done correctly do you all remember Buffy those are classic vampires with tiny differences

 

[Ragnar]

Another vampire game to follow. I hope this one doesn't need vamp pills to get hard like some others

 

[Canto Forte]

Anyone can be neo and use the fingers of justice or the fists or redeaming.

Another vampire game to follow. I hope this one doesn't need vamp pills to get hard like some others

Remember those pills are humans and Akasha needed a whole town of them to party.

 

[Canto Forte]

So .. we got this amazon bombshell with a huge sword about in this game ...

Spoiler: MC can dream up some powers to help her unwind

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ANybody have their own dreams of that feisty amazon babe
they would like to share?

 

[madmate.games]

I am wondering if we will end up with a game over if we keep lowering humanity? If we are following the source material that inspired this game, humanity is easy to lose, but incredibly difficult to gain back. Once you reach 0 humanity, you cannot play the character as the "beast" takes over entirely. So the fact that we can lose humanity so easily right now makes me wonder what outcomes we can expect from this stat. Hopefully, the version of humanity here is not something similar to a 0-10 scale. I am already at -3 humanity (starting at 0), and some points were just gained by being enthusiastic to drink blood lol. It normally takes something more than this to lose humanity.

edit: Oh the gothic font is a bit hard to read. Also, the stat screen borders and UI gives off a bit of an amateur feel to it, if you know what I mean. It's nothing important, but maybe a little touch up to make it look more slick could be nice.

Humanity is a different beast in The Bite, when compared to VtM. I might rename it to avoid confusion. But to answer your question, there are no end game screens based on your humanity. There are however consequences that could range from being inconvenient to quite devastating further down the line.

Spoiler

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I am still searching for a better font. Some of the old ones I used were even worse sadly.
I am aware of the jankiness of the screens. This is the first implementation and hopefully as times go on I'll find the knowledge and patience to fix it all up so it all looks nice. I'm a noob at that part of game making so any change is hard and frustrating to implement.

The start is interesting and sorta ok, I get it has the semi blank character vibe simillar to how Shepard from ME was made, which is unique considering most devs leave it blank or make one on the spot.

Gameplay wise the gain/loss of humanity, energy bugs me, I mean am I supposed to act like Ken Kaneki, refuse to accept the brutality in life first and then be raped by Jason to turn into a badass who understands the working ?
Just drinking blood or wanting to makes me loose humanity is weak gameplay mechanic plus the vast skill points we have around makes me wonder if it'll be a pain in the ass for you later down the line or not. I think you should iron out the game mechanics before it is too late since it'll cut into development time later on like what happened to "The Deluca Family" and "Seeds of Chaos" where it took/taking them years.

I find it funny that the MC model looks similar to Jamie from BaDIK considering what's been happening with him.

I'm afraid I'm not that familiar with other people's work (which is something I definitely should pay more attention to!), but in this universe rules are relatively simple and should be (if I do my job right) intuitive.
Also, and I don't mean to judge or anything, but wanting to drink other people's blood is kind of fucked up, at least to me.

These are the mind games of the fallen ... demons will rape, they do not need to enjoy it.
Gurls will fkk with strangers, does not mean they are humaine or loving or caring or into anyone.
When anything is handed willy nilly out of your hands right to you, you are not prepared.

Every new vamp had to sate his/her hunger 1st on their own resolve before they can be somebody.
Otherwise, mindless beasts they stay, be it man/woman/vamp.

Just wanted to say I love this.

An interesting game so far, looking forward to the next updates.
This render struck me as weird, though:
View attachment 1242352

madmate.games Spotted a typo in hunting_lessons.rpy on line 24:
Z "Not that it matters, most of use lose appetite for that sort of excitement after transformation..." use -> us.

Spoiler

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Thanks for spotting the error, I'll fix it promptly!

Really nice start. I enjoyed the story and the characters, and look forward to seeing where this goes.

VTMB was a great game, glad to see that as a reference

I'm a fan of story-driven VNs, I don't really care for sandbox games - but that's just my own preference. I usually lose interest in anything more than the occasional free-roam.

A threshold system is designed to deprive players of possibilities. If there were no stats or checks, we could always choose to do any of those things, freely determining which way we want the story to go, and what defines our character.
Think Mass Effect, it's popular again these days: failing to pick the same kind of dialogue disables options down the line; this forces you to pick specific dialogue options just to raise the points of the same stat because doing otherwise deprives you of options later, even though a specific choice may not really represent your vision of your own character. This discourages roleplaying and character development, and breaks immersion.

Just as important, from the developer's perspective: the more stats you're using, the more work you set up for yourself, exponentially. A stat system is designed to balance abilities between different classes; in single-player this only provides a different experience for different play-throughs, in multi-player it's necessary to balance player 'fun' at the table. You still have to create all the content for every class - or 'option', as you call it - but if you use thresholds, a single player can only experience a shrinking subset of that content in any one playthrough. Every update ends up feeling smaller than the last, and players end up feeling like they put points in the wrong skills if there isn't the same amount of content for all of them. It's also exponentially easier to create e character that doesn't have enough points in any stat to pass a skill check you create later.
How many times are those 'science' points going to get used if we spend our nights on the streets fighting people with swords, really? Do we really need brawl AND melee AND agility AND firearms AND driving? How many locks are we really going to pick, and how many times are we really going to need medicine if most of the time we talk to people with no pulse?

My personal advice would be to just track main story decisions, like those tied to humanity, and maybe which major powers the player chooses to pick up if that's something you're considering. All those other stats, I would personally advise against in a VN.

Best of luck anyway

I don't think a threshold system must deprive players of possibilities. I think, if done properly, having or lacking certain stats may unlock different options, lock them, or even alter them. I also don't think there needs to be a progressive difficulty in challenges as the game progresses. A rusty garden lock shouldn't require 50 lockpicking just because your character is in the endgame. Also, I don't think skills must necessarily have the same weight (as far as usability goes). Someone who always uses force to deal with his problems will definitely have more use of brawling than someone who really likes science, but a science guy may discover a major boon that nobody else could. Those are just two extremes, of course, but as you said, this is a single player game, so balancing is not that much of an issue. Not every skill has to have the same perceived usability as all others.

I actually don't mind vamp tropes I actually missed the classic vampire when was the last time we saw a vampire. That was afraid of crosses

I think people are too obsessed about showing a new interpretation of vampires. Classic vampires are being forgotten

I think classic vampires can be pretty cool if they're done correctly do you all remember Buffy those are classic vampires with tiny differences

A vampire that was afraid of crosses? Why, BBC's Dracula, of course! And it's really fresh as well! It also successfully mimics the astronomic rise and catastrophic demise of Game of Thrones show in just 3 episodes, but still. Definitely a classic interpretation of a vampire, at least in the first episode.


Just as a note, and I realize how it may look like that is the case based on what is shown so far, but VtM is not the only inspiration for this work (for example, as hinted by the title screen, True Blood was also a major inspiration). It's understandable that people are drawing direct parallels, but there are some major differences in the lore, behavior and other stuff when directly compared to VtM.

 

[desmosome]

Humanity is a different beast in The Bite, when compared to VtM. I might rename it to avoid confusion. But to answer your question, there are no end game screens based on your humanity. There are however consequences that could range from being inconvenient to quite devastating further down the line.

Cool cool. The way you worded it, it seems like it's strictly a bad stat? I mean obviously, it's "bad," but would intentionally decreasing your humanity be a viable way of playing the game for people who like the more hardcore and fucked up stuff? Letting the MC be more dominant, more selfish, more predator...ish... you get the picture. Basically, are there "evil" options that open up with less humanity that doesn't result in strictly worse outcomes for the MC?

 

[juan palote]

VN with sandbox elements. Will try to fix the tags.

Damm, i was going to try this game, but i got fed up with sandbox games so i avoid them completely now. Good luck with it, let me know if in the future for some reason you give the option to avoid the sandbox elemenets completely like other game Devs have made.

Make sure you tag it appropiately, i almost downloaded it untill i decided to search for sandbox since many Devs are "forgetting" to add the tag lately

 

[grohotor]

at least the MC in this ain't a limp dick.

I hope you reconsider on the sandbox elements and get rid of most of the stats. While in a rpg i very much enjoy having lots of stats in this it will end up being a nightmare.

 

[FMK42]

Is MC name change to be added?

 

[Vidal the king of Pervert]

Humanity is a different beast in The Bite, when compared to VtM. I might rename it to avoid confusion. But to answer your question, there are no end game screens based on your humanity. There are however consequences that could range from being inconvenient to quite devastating further down the line.

Spoiler

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I am still searching for a better font. Some of the old ones I used were even worse sadly.
I am aware of the jankiness of the screens. This is the first implementation and hopefully as times go on I'll find the knowledge and patience to fix it all up so it all looks nice. I'm a noob at that part of game making so any change is hard and frustrating to implement.

I'm afraid I'm not that familiar with other people's work (which is something I definitely should pay more attention to!), but in this universe rules are relatively simple and should be (if I do my job right) intuitive.
Also, and I don't mean to judge or anything, but wanting to drink other people's blood is kind of fucked up, at least to me.


Just wanted to say I love this.

Spoiler

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Thanks for spotting the error, I'll fix it promptly!

I don't think a threshold system must deprive players of possibilities. I think, if done properly, having or lacking certain stats may unlock different options, lock them, or even alter them. I also don't think there needs to be a progressive difficulty in challenges as the game progresses. A rusty garden lock shouldn't require 50 lockpicking just because your character is in the endgame. Also, I don't think skills must necessarily have the same weight (as far as usability goes). Someone who always uses force to deal with his problems will definitely have more use of brawling than someone who really likes science, but a science guy may discover a major boon that nobody else could. Those are just two extremes, of course, but as you said, this is a single player game, so balancing is not that much of an issue. Not every skill has to have the same perceived usability as all others.

A vampire that was afraid of crosses? Why, BBC's Dracula, of course! And it's really fresh as well! It also successfully mimics the astronomic rise and catastrophic demise of Game of Thrones show in just 3 episodes, but still. Definitely a classic interpretation of a vampire, at least in the first episode.


Just as a note, and I realize how it may look like that is the case based on what is shown so far, but VtM is not the only inspiration for this work (for example, as hinted by the title screen, True Blood was also a major inspiration). It's understandable that people are drawing direct parallels, but there are some major differences in the lore, behavior and other stuff when directly compared to VtM.

I am absolutely in love with this game so far and I love that the MC has a conscience and

. He's not just automatically okay with feeding on people I love that you showed that it bothers him

I hope that I will be able to choose who I feed on and who I do not and I hope I won't be forced to rape anyone

you know what I mean hypnotizing a girl to sleep with me against her will

and I hope you don't mind me asking but can I play him like a hero you know a good guy

and do I have the freedom to choose who I sleep with and who I do not