I've been waiting for this for a long time. I remember voting on Nergal's poll so long ago when he proposed one of three different games to start development. Clearly he had put the most thought into this one of the three from the blurbs given, and the sci-fi setting definitely set itself apart, so this choice definitely got my vote. When I saw Nergal had gotten Witchking on board my excitement knew no bounds. I'm glad to see the demo has shown a good balance for the characters so far. Nergal's games always did have good story progression.
I played in windowed mode on "high" quality and didn't have slow loads or crashing that others seem to be reporting.
I've seen some other comments having difficulty with where to go. I think that adding an outline like SS does to interactable objects would go a long way for that. A comment on the backgrounds as well, it looks like the ship backgrounds were drawn by Witchking, but the planets backgrounds were created by someone else? I'm wondering if the plan is to have Witchking do all the background in the end? I think having consistent art style background is almost as important as consistent art style characters, whomever it is that does the backgrounds. I think Withcking's much more clear and distinct background could also help with navigation in those places people seem to be getting lost.
I'd like to share my other thoughts in reply to
NergalsNest comments.
I didn't even realize dialogue choices could prevent the player from hooking up with the Red Queen. She just asserted herself onto me (not that I minded mind you). Perhaps there could be a tracker to show the player the "points" they're building up with characters to know when we're on the right track to romancing our ladies?
I became somewhat worried when I saw the immensity of the star systems gathered in the demo. I cannot fathom what purpose they serve if the focus is supposed to be on the story. It's glaringly obvious that the space navigation is inspired by Mass Effect, but I think a larger map access so we can see where the star clusters and systems are in relation to each other would help, Mass Effect did have that option when going to the relays as I recall. If the focus were supposed to be on the story then I'd think that just selecting the next planet to go to, similar to Knight of the Old Republic, would serve that purpose best.
I also question the wisdom of putting in so much "empty" content at the beginning of development that does not yet serve a purpose. However, I can also see how dramatic the community would become if such systems were being introduced in the middle of development, "taking away" from development of the story and sex scenes. I just hope it sees positive use at some point.
I do hope you can be as consistent as you plan on being. If what you say is true it's certainly easy to see that overwork can burn you out, balance is incredibly important. I must admit that from my perspective your development has seemed spotty, but I look forward to you showing us all you can release this gem consistently.
So long as I can bone all the ladies, and boning one doesn't stop me from boning another I'll be happy. I don't need to have them all in a big dogpile on top of me at the end of the game (though I definitely wouldn't say no to that either). I understand your concern about maintaining realism in personalities, and most women don't want to be with a guy that sleeps with every pair of tits he sees, but a porn game is all about fantasy, and certainly for myself (and I think I speak for many others here), when I play a porn game, I want to be able to sleep with everything with a nice pair of tits. Realistic girls are fantastic only until their realism gets in the way of that fantasy.
Instant text sounds great!
I look forward to much more of this game.
