VN Ren'Py The Interim Domain [v0.29.0] [ILSProductions]

[botc76]

Yeah, all the complaints I've heard aren't "it's not like Now & Then", they're:

* It's very depressing for far too many hours at the start
* There is zero emotional connection to any of the girls for a very long time
* The disjointed nature of the girls' stories makes them feel totally disconnected from each other and from the MC (and that's by design!)
* The combined scenes with multiple girls are missable, and girls' stories inherently cannot rely on each other for anything important because the girls' stories are, intentionally and fundamentally, not connected to each other (since any girl can have passed on at any time of any other girl's story, except the few pairs of girls who are inextricably linked like Kaitlin and Anya)

So those are the primary complaints, and I haven't seen anything that fixes any of those.

ETA a note: the reason people compare it to Now & Then is because Now & Then does not have ANY of these problems. The depression and emotional connection with the girls is solved almost immediately by the Carol relationship growing right off the bat to offset the depressing setting. This game has nothing like that, and I consider the "choose a girl's story" mechanic to be a colossal failure.

Yeah, people DO NOT COMPLAIN because it's not the same game as "Now & Then," sure. Funny though that despite your claim, you yourself compare it to Now & Then, thereby showing that yes, people do indeed complain because the game is not the same as Now & Then.

Now & Then is a good game, but it had weaknesses on the same level this game has, but with a lot less character work and a far less interesting story. I can't remember how often I sped through even the h-scenes because it was so boring and repetitive, several character arcs were underdeveloped and some were never brought to a satisfactory ending.
And that doesn't mean it wasn't' t a fun game that I enjoyed playing through, but it definitely wasn't better than Interim Domain in any way, on the contrary you can see it in almost every scene how the dev has improved.


Also, I basically don't agree with ANY of your bullet points. On the contrary, I felt an emotional connection with most girls from the start and even with those I didn't at first, it was different later on or in the end.
You complain about how little the stories are interlinked, but that is down to the setting. It's not our reality, basically all girls have their own set of characters around them and the MC is injected in their webs.
Considering this, it's almost unrealistic that SO MANY of the girls' stories are connected at all. A mum and her daughter both NOT passing on, her teacher as well? In a dimension where basically all souls that haven't passed on live in the same "city" it would be completely understandable if NONE of the stories were connected.
The technique of having other important characters be part of one character's storyline, by showing only the interactions between them is tried and true, just because you don't like it, doesn't make it a non-valid way of storytelling.
This has to be considered an anthology type of storytelling but with an overarching narrative.
In the end, when the game is finished, you can just go and play a specific girl's storyline from beginning to end, or you could concentrate on getting through the overall setting as fast as possible.
You want the stories to be interconnected and due to that, you see their stand-alone nature as a weakness, but that isn't a failure on the game's side, that is YOU looking at it from an arguably wrong POV (wanting the game to be something it isn't and then thinking it is lesser because it doesn't fit your expectations).

 

[Tiur]

Yeah, people DO NOT COMPLAIN because it's not the same game as "Now & Then," sure. Funny though that despite your claim, you yourself compare it to Now & Then, thereby showing that yes, people do indeed complain because the game is not the same as Now & Then.

Yes. Because some of the things that this game does terribly, Now & Then did well. Comparing to another game is not the same as wanting the games to be identical, which is how the game's defenders keep mischaracterizing the complaints.

Since most of your disagreements are wildly subjective and amount to little more than that you liked the things I (and others) disliked, I'll just respond to the most egregious thing you said.

You complain about how little the stories are interlinked, but that is down to the setting.

Settings do not exist in a vacuum. This is not an already-established setting that the developer is adding a story into, to which the developer is not allowed to make changes.

The developer chose this story and created this setting. The developer chose for the stories to be disconnected from each other from the beginning, which is why I said it was "by design", and yes, I do find that to be a major flaw (and I find it to be a significant and fundamental flaw of most anthology-style games).

If you can remove 90% of the game's story (say, all the girls' stories) and the core of the remaining story continues to be narratively sound and unchanged? That 90% did not have a meaningful impact on the game. The only narrative purpose the girls' stories have on the core story is in gathering their Qi at the end to get the better endings. I consider that bad writing.

 

[PaxHadrian17]

I think we all have different takes on parts of TID based on who we identify with and our own life experiences.

I have female friends who gave up teaching for various reasons (one was assaulted in school and injured - she was reprimanded for trying to stop a fight instead of waiting for several male teachers to arrive to help. The female 16 year old that ambushed her got a 'stern' warning...).

I very much identify with Saaya and her story arc due to this.

botc76 talked about TID as an anthology and I think this is a good description, with different 'sets of baggage' holding each of the LIs back, with only minor bridges linking some LI stories to other LI stories.

I just finished the Kaitlyn and Anya story arcs, sending them on, and it was hard to send them on... for me - this was emotional even though I knew it was coming.

The small vignette once they were sent on was nice - a few pictures of Kaitlyn with some commentary on her journey, then the same for Anya.

I thought this was nicely done, a short epilogue for their journeys.

If their stories do not resonate with others, then I would not expect them to carry the emotional weight that they did for me.

I think TID is a very different experience depending on whether you played all 7 encounters each month or if you started it late and played different LI content at your chosen pace and in whatever order you preferred.

I missed a Mira/Allison event, so I went back about 100 days and redid TID from that event forward, only recently catching up to about v 0.26/27.

My experience was different, and better, than it was when I did the monthly playthrough.

I am especially enjoying the Mira/Apollyon relationships, where two eternal beings have chosen to invest in the MC and are enjoying their time with him.

I enjoyed N&T, I am enjoying TID and I am looking forward to the prologue and chapter 1 of Toxicity when it releases in mid-December.

I'm glad that they are different styles of AVNs and, if this helps keep the dev engaged and improves his creativity - even better!

Cheers!!

 

[DevinHesi]

Here is the latest Dev Log and October's release will bring us Many endings.

The Interim Domain 0.30.0 update #1
New
10 hours ago
ENDINGS ENDINGS ENDINGS!
And the last of Natalie's storyline. That's what we're working on for 0.30.0. Who all gets endings scenes?

• Natalie
• Robin
• Kara
• Sammy
• Apollyon
• Mira

And let me tell you that putting together the ending sequences has been a hell of a lot of work. I guess we shouldn't be surprised considering the endings for Now & Then required us to start working on them six months before we released that build. This is feeling like as much (if not more) work.
Based on some feedback, we did add Allison's path to the Story Replay mode, so if you failed to complete (or see both Mira's and Allison's sides of the story), you'll be able to do it now.
I will say one of the things I did enjoy doing the endings was creating the parents Michael meets when being introduced to the family. Yeah, some of them you don't spend a lot of time with, but others, like Marisa's mother, Helen, were fun to put together an older version who could feasibly be their parent.
Thanks for your interest and patronage,
-Kinderfeld

Cheers!!

 

[PaxHadrian17]

I'm playing my 4th ending now - Mina.

When the MC goes to look to see what happened to the other LI's, I always see Kaitlin in college and, the way she looks at the MC, it is like she Knows that he is special, but I am on a different path.

It's funny to me how Kaitlin resonates with me now (she did not early in TID), especially given the changes (so the MC is her age, and she is very healthy - never having been in that car accident).

I like the new world start where the MC begins in high school and he gets to decide who he wants/needs to be to find the love of his life, as chosen at the end when the Cycle resets everything.

This makes sense to me - both from a - time to develop into 'who you need to be' as well as providing some common background for each epilogue LI path (and being able to maintain one update/month which the dev has maintained like clockwork ).

There is a greedy part of me that wants to have a harem of like 8 - 10 of the women but I know that a harem is not part of this story ending (although I am still holding out hope for a Mira/Polly throuple ending with the November release).

I've played, and enjoyed, the endings for:

Kaitlin
Tina
Anita
Mina (WIP)

I have to say that all the women are better looking in the reborn world.

It is like the Interim Domain washed them out and they were less before being reborn.

The endings give the 'goodbyes' context and, for me, piece of mind - the MC did the hard work and now he gets the rewards.

No rewards would have absolutely sucked.

Now, I am heading back to Mina and the other women whose endings are ready to be enjoyed.

Cheers!!