Ren'Py Under Your Spell [v0.4.0p] [Shady Characters]

[Illustrivity]

How did I only JUST find peak

Shut the fuck up, paid actor.

 

[Percipere0]

What peak? 2 years of development, and there is absolutely no lewd content. That is peak for you? Lol)

This one is still peak. There's tons of other games to whet one's appetites in the meanwhile, so impatience in this case is generally uncalled for. I've seen other games that went longer without making significant ground, and still ended up delivering, eventually. Two years is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, especially when there's so much to consume elsewhere.

 

[Percipere0]

Do you still have to focus on a single stat without any explanations or hints on what to do or is the gameplay somewhat corrected now?
I don't want to play stat simulator.

It could probably become a less tedious mechanic if they made a trade-off where the stats rise somewhat slowly, but there's no decay. My main gripe with that would be the decay, especially with how it sets in so quickly. More hints would work, too.

 

[tortlll]

Okay, so I started playing this thinking that perhaps all the complaints about stat growth being limited/grindy were just perhaps overblown, but after getting absolutely nowhere in the first Cup event (I got to room 4!) despite having 39 (a decent number, I thought) in knowledge, and multiple other stats in the 30s... No, it's an extremely valid complaint about the gameplay.
And I LIKE this kind of grindy gameplay, so long as it's actually somewhat transparent or fair.

From what I'm seeing, if you want to do well in both the first test and the first cup event, you have to seriously grind one specific stat, and you don't have much room for error.
If I'd have to compare this gameplay/stat system to any, it'd be to Pokemon Academy Life Forever (which is amazing), which has a similar system of time management, especially with Level caps for types based on the classes you go to, where you initially should focus on 3 classes.
However, that game gives you a TON more agency in what you can do than this game, and because of that, the gameplay is much fairer. I'll explain, in depth, below.

Spoiler: More in depth reasoning

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If Spell took some of PALF's design philosophies, I think it could be an absolute 5/5 game. But with the current gameplay, I really can't put it higher than 1/5, which is so enraging to me.
I don't tend to write comments to this length very often, but this game, man.
I think the absolute highest priority for this dev should be to fix the gameplay, before doing ANYTHING else, because in the current state, it is an unacceptable base, and when he inevitably needs to change it, all existing save files would need to be invalidated. This should be done sooner than later, in my opinion, because it will be far more painful to do down the line, rather than immediately addressing and getting the castle built on something that isn't sand.

 

[FineUser123]

This one is still peak. There's tons of other games to whet one's appetites in the meanwhile, so impatience in this case is generally uncalled for. I've seen other games that went longer without making significant ground, and still ended up delivering, eventually. Two years is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, especially when there's so much to consume elsewhere.

 

[Karnewarrior]

This one is still peak. There's tons of other games to whet one's appetites in the meanwhile, so impatience in this case is generally uncalled for. I've seen other games that went longer without making significant ground, and still ended up delivering, eventually. Two years is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, especially when there's so much to consume elsewhere.

There's "patience" and then there's "2 years into development of the porn game there's precisely 1 scene of porn". That's not taking their time, that's making a SFW VN and then mislabelling it to fool people. It's scummy, and should be called out.

2 years should be about half the game's development time for a project of this scale, maybe a little under if you're expecting a 5 or 6 year development cycle, which is on the longer side. This would be fine, if we had half the game present. But we don't. Instead we have an early alpha that, given the tags, wouldn't be acceptable even if it was the first release!
Again, if you mark your game as porn, put porn in it!

People have been saying this since the game came out, and while the art is spectacular and this WOULD BE peak were it to include what people are clicking on the thread for, the fact of the matter is it just doesn't have what it needs. Imagine a game advertised as a First Person Shooter that had one gun and spent 2 years developing the in-game farming and crafting mechanics. Sure, it could be awesome later, but after 2 years the fucking CORE SYSTEMS are still not implemented. That is not a healthy way to develop a game, and it's scummy to advertise a game without porn as a pornographic game.

 

[Fist0fKhonshu]

There's "patience" and then there's "2 years into development of the porn game there's precisely 1 scene of porn". That's not taking their time, that's making a SFW VN and then mislabelling it to fool people. It's scummy, and should be called out.

2 years should be about half the game's development time for a project of this scale, maybe a little under if you're expecting a 5 or 6 year development cycle, which is on the longer side. This would be fine, if we had half the game present. But we don't. Instead we have an early alpha that, given the tags, wouldn't be acceptable even if it was the first release!
Again, if you mark your game as porn, put porn in it!

People have been saying this since the game came out, and while the art is spectacular and this WOULD BE peak were it to include what people are clicking on the thread for, the fact of the matter is it just doesn't have what it needs. Imagine a game advertised as a First Person Shooter that had one gun and spent 2 years developing the in-game farming and crafting mechanics. Sure, it could be awesome later, but after 2 years the fucking CORE SYSTEMS are still not implemented. That is not a healthy way to develop a game, and it's scummy to advertise a game without porn as a pornographic game.

As a VN I actually quite like it despite it's snail-like progress and at times infuriating grindfest, but as an NSFW game it does kinda just fail at every measure, there's not even a single scene yet that’s worth pulling down my pants , let alone me gooning to it

 

[Percipere0]

There's "patience" and then there's "2 years into development of the porn game there's precisely 1 scene of porn". That's not taking their time, that's making a SFW VN and then mislabelling it to fool people. It's scummy, and should be called out.

2 years should be about half the game's development time for a project of this scale, maybe a little under if you're expecting a 5 or 6 year development cycle, which is on the longer side. This would be fine, if we had half the game present. But we don't. Instead we have an early alpha that, given the tags, wouldn't be acceptable even if it was the first release!
Again, if you mark your game as porn, put porn in it!

People have been saying this since the game came out, and while the art is spectacular and this WOULD BE peak were it to include what people are clicking on the thread for, the fact of the matter is it just doesn't have what it needs. Imagine a game advertised as a First Person Shooter that had one gun and spent 2 years developing the in-game farming and crafting mechanics. Sure, it could be awesome later, but after 2 years the fucking CORE SYSTEMS are still not implemented. That is not a healthy way to develop a game, and it's scummy to advertise a game without porn as a pornographic game.

What I tend to focus on, is the general logical fallacy (in some cases) behind judging a game (that is currently in development, not released) for content it does not yet have, and using somewhat arbitrary metrics for how fast that content should be developed, independent of contextual details behind the artists' or developers' lives. I am no stranger to frustration over how long the process often takes. Especially given that I also follow a number of webcomics online. The sheer number of webcomic artists that started off strong with projects that I really liked, only for them to fizzle out and die, and the artists themselves to just drop off the face of the planet with no news.... I just try now to see the reasons behind the pacing, now, given that a high percentage of creators (webcomics, porn games, etc...) do fizzle out and abandon their works.

One thing I noticed as a common factor shared by such artists and developers is that invariably, this is a vulnerable position to be in. Not everyone can be like Dark Cookie, coasting off his unfinished game's retooling at a glacial pace, while his viewership and subscriber count continues to inexplicably grow by the month, despite his legendary milking of them. Most artists have to divide their time pretty severely between what they want to make, and their real world obligations, like bills and food....

I do agree with some of the substance of what you are saying, though, like having a porn game be without porn. Just saying that some of the commenters here are weird. Someone called me cringe for saying that we should just be patient. Maybe I shouldn't be using my own experiences to judge others, but it seems (to me) like it's just normal to focus on other things while waiting for games like this, instead of getting heated over an unfinished project. Do I want to already be playing some of the more hotly anticipated games, like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, Elder Scrolls 6, and Fallout 5, to give a few examples? Yeah! Will I be getting bent out of shape because I feel like they should be here already? No. There's like a hundred other games and activities I can take up my time with while I wait. I have a backlog of games still to play through, or books to read, so I just go do that, for now, while occasionally checking up on the games I like on this site.

Also, given the site we are on, it's strange to me how sometimes the most vocal critics of these games are the one cadging the games without paying for most of them. I can see the criticism hitting more deeply and more accurately from those who paid for the unfinished content, but, seeing the most vocal and persistent criticism come from the part of the crowd that's not paying for some of these games strikes me as odd. Anyways, I've seen you around on other threads here, and I typically tend to like the content of your comments. Just wanted to outline some of my thoughts on this matter. I hope you have a good holiday season!

 

[Peter Denger]

Butting in, the problem I have with your answer is that in unintentionally avoids the point.
You gave a detailed and justified explanation as to why these kind of games take time because it's often not the author's job, paying the bills, but just a side project.
We all know that, and I don't think anyone here complains about progress speed in and of itself.
The issue is that in two years the author hasn't even tried to address the main criticisms that players made -those being gameplay and lack of sexual content. And time constraint isn't a valid excuse in that regard. Setting the [number of days before stat decay] parameter to 20 would take 5 minutes tops, and solve one of the most frustrating issue players have with the game. Instead, look at the changelog. More events -none of them sexual- more spells, a dressing room... Things I am pretty certain most people won't even see because the game as it stands will make them quit long before they even reach these events.

How can one keep trust in an author when they present an early version of their game, are told what's wrong, then months later haven't done anything about it and instead keep making more of what is not important?
Even more so when the game is so misleading, the more time passes, the more it looks like a trap.

Someone called me cringe for saying that we should just be patient. Maybe I shouldn't be using my own experiences to judge others, but it seems (to me) like it's just normal to focus on other things while waiting for games like this, instead of getting heated over an unfinished project.

First, as you said, lots of games get abandoned for lack of time, or because the author had some big dreams for their game only to realize it was too big to handle. So we have to be cautious about our expectations. Very slow progress can indicate the author in in over their head.
Second and more importantly, the question is : considering what the game provided so far, the progression rate and how its author answered criticisms, is it reasonable to believe the end product CAN be any good?
I think the most likely answer is no. I would love to be wrong, but no progress on the main issues in months? That's not a good sign.
I tried this game because, just like you, I saw the potential. Real and beautiful art instead of generic AI, focus on story, that could be good. That potential is the reason why, once the infuriating game design made me uninstall the game, I wrote a detailed review with suggestions on how to correct this. That's why I keep watching this thread from time to time to see if there's any hope left.
But I'm sorry, if we're being objective about it, there is no reason to expect a good outcome. Karnewarrior said it best : the art is the ONLY thing this game has for it, but apart from that the core of the game is trash.
It is presented as a porn game. There is no porn. The game part is utter failure.
I can be patient with a game that makes slow but good progress. If I have reasons to believe the author only need more time. But don't you think that, when the early sketches miss every mark, and it never gets better, there's a time to say "ok, that game won't ever be fixed"?

Also, given the site we are on, it's strange to me how sometimes the most vocal critics of these games are the one cadging the games without paying for most of them.

I tend to agree that we (or at least I) are at fault for playing games without paying, and I'll connect that with what you said earlier about abandoned project. We are part of the problem, more games would be finished if the authors got paid.
However, you're also missing the full picture.

This is a different system than say Steam, with very different games. Here we don't get finished games with 3D characters and amazing graphics. This is a system where authors present early, unpolished versions of their amateur game. Freeloaders play it, becoming free testers, and if the game is any good, a portion of these players will support the author on patreon or similar platforms. It won't bring much money home, but let's be honest, compared with the standard quality of "normal" games, no game here is worth much money either.
Now they are many flaws with this system, but ultimately we have every right to criticize a free game, so long as the criticisms are proportionate to what we can expect from a free, amateur game.
That's why we don't complain about slow progress, or a school game without a perfect 3d-rendering of the entire school and dozen of animations per characters. But we can ask the author why he doesn't correct the unfair games mechanics. Or why he puts this as a porn game, with a cover image showing multiple girls fighting over the MC, on a porn site, when there is pretty much no porn content.

 

[nzn]

What in the name of everything that's holy possessed the dev to disable save-anywhere and rollback?

Place the attached file into "game" directory if you want basic 21 century functionality back. Console's also no longer locked.

excuse me, what? i'm not sure i want to get in to this game then... thanks for the immesurable help with the patch (and i'm pretty sure even 90s games had some these features making it 20th century tech)

 

[hoshimota]

I checked game files and found only naked character models with a default pose, a few tame pics with upskirts/nudity, and one voyeur scene with some girl and dude gives her cunnilingus, and that's all. Maybe I missed something, but something tells me that there is absolutely nothing in terms of lewd content. Thank God, I checked first before wasting time on this bugged, tedious mess without any enjoyable content)

Upd. Checked one more time; for everyone wondering if the game is worth your time, here is everything I found that can be referred as lewd/adult content.

View attachment 5538432 View attachment 5538433 View attachment 5538434 View attachment 5538435 View attachment 5538436 View attachment 5538437 View attachment 5538438 View attachment 5538439 View attachment 5538440 View attachment 5538441

Not all heroes wear capes!!!

...Now can you do this for all the decent-looking newish games for us lol... so much time gets wasted trying to give new stuff a chance only to realize there is nothing really there.

 

[dsadsadastree]

Don't usually comment here but I have to say I get the frustrations going on with this game. I'm a big fan of the harry potter adjacent direction it's going for, but the lack of clear direction and the eventual realization that there is also a lack of content just.. sucks? It's one of those games I like thinking about but don't want to actually play.

The game not having much sexual content yet is fine, honestly. But, couple that with events being sparse and stat building being completely directionless (until it suddenly isn't) you're just playing a HP themed clicking sim. This is one of those games that will probably be really cool in a couple of years when they sort all of this out. Good premise, great art, wildly boring execution.

 

[Percipere0]

Butting in, the problem I have with your answer is that in unintentionally avoids the point.
You gave a detailed and justified explanation as to why these kind of games take time because it's often not the author's job, paying the bills, but just a side project.
We all know that, and I don't think anyone here complains about progress speed in and of itself.
The issue is that in two years the author hasn't even tried to address the main criticisms that players made -those being gameplay and lack of sexual content. And time constraint isn't a valid excuse in that regard. Setting the [number of days before stat decay] parameter to 20 would take 5 minutes tops, and solve one of the most frustrating issue players have with the game. Instead, look at the changelog. More events -none of them sexual- more spells, a dressing room... Things I am pretty certain most people won't even see because the game as it stands will make them quit long before they even reach these events.

How can one keep trust in an author when they present an early version of their game, are told what's wrong, then months later haven't done anything about it and instead keep making more of what is not important?
Even more so when the game is so misleading, the more time passes, the more it looks like a trap.



First, as you said, lots of games get abandoned for lack of time, or because the author had some big dreams for their game only to realize it was too big to handle. So we have to be cautious about our expectations. Very slow progress can indicate the author in in over their head.
Second and more importantly, the question is : considering what the game provided so far, the progression rate and how its author answered criticisms, is it reasonable to believe the end product CAN be any good?
I think the most likely answer is no. I would love to be wrong, but no progress on the main issues in months? That's not a good sign.
I tried this game because, just like you, I saw the potential. Real and beautiful art instead of generic AI, focus on story, that could be good. That potential is the reason why, once the infuriating game design made me uninstall the game, I wrote a detailed review with suggestions on how to correct this. That's why I keep watching this thread from time to time to see if there's any hope left.
But I'm sorry, if we're being objective about it, there is no reason to expect a good outcome. Karnewarrior said it best : the art is the ONLY thing this game has for it, but apart from that the core of the game is trash.
It is presented as a porn game. There is no porn. The game part is utter failure.
I can be patient with a game that makes slow but good progress. If I have reasons to believe the author only need more time. But don't you think that, when the early sketches miss every mark, and it never gets better, there's a time to say "ok, that game won't ever be fixed"?


I tend to agree that we (or at least I) are at fault for playing games without paying, and I'll connect that with what you said earlier about abandoned project. We are part of the problem, more games would be finished if the authors got paid.
However, you're also missing the full picture.

This is a different system than say Steam, with very different games. Here we don't get finished games with 3D characters and amazing graphics. This is a system where authors present early, unpolished versions of their amateur game. Freeloaders play it, becoming free testers, and if the game is any good, a portion of these players will support the author on patreon or similar platforms. It won't bring much money home, but let's be honest, compared with the standard quality of "normal" games, no game here is worth much money either.
Now they are many flaws with this system, but ultimately we have every right to criticize a free game, so long as the criticisms are proportionate to what we can expect from a free, amateur game.
That's why we don't complain about slow progress, or a school game without a perfect 3d-rendering of the entire school and dozen of animations per characters. But we can ask the author why he doesn't correct the unfair games mechanics. Or why he puts this as a porn game, with a cover image showing multiple girls fighting over the MC, on a porn site, when there is pretty much no porn content.

You've got some really good points there, yet I still get stuck on the part where the complaints about the progression are almost purely subjective, as is the expectations of the porn content. I saw another game on this site dealing with similar issues, called Ilias: Alcyone Legends. Where people kept calling it a porn game, and expecting more porn in it already, but the developer said, and I'll quote here, "For the umpteenth time, we're not positioning ourselves as a porn game..... We're a visual novel first and foremost. If we wanted to make a porn game, there were plenty of porn scenes in 0.1. We are emphasizing on the story and actionsim part, after the renovation all these things will be more elaborated and visible." That was for a game that does already have a little porn in it, but the developer's expectations were made clear several times over, that while they do plan on including porn elements in the game, they are focusing on the other stuff first and foremost. But it's inclusion on this site probably alters the commenters' expectations of the amount of porn that should be in it...

This developer is similar, at least from what I can glean of the stuff I read over this thread. Here's a quote from Shady Character 1 from last year at July 9th. "Wouldn't it be bad if people download the game for something that is in the tag, but isn't in the game yet? Me personally, I would rather underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around. But I am not really familiar with the rules and standards here in particular. As for the slowburn. Definitely not our intention. But we are still just a two-person team who does this in our spare time." This was in response to people wanting the dev to put tags in for planned content. Perhaps there is a divide between what the developers expect to deliver, and what the commenters expect from this game already, especially given the particulars of how some games arrive onto this site to begin with.... Also, this is explicitly their side project, and has been, for a while. I am not surprised at the current lack of porn elements following this thread.... I wouldn't therefore consider this a trap, or a failure. To do so, would be somewhat like planting an apple tree, and getting mad that it doesn't have apples yet by the end of year 2. It's still an "apple tree", even if it does not yet have apples growing on it, in much the same way as a planned "porn game" will have porn, eventually. Either one of two things will happen to that apple tree. It will eventually bear fruit, or it will be cut down or wither prematurely. Let's wait and see which will happen.