HTML Unholy Arts [v0.4.6] [Deep Interactivity]

[Wyrtyn]

this sucks because the game had great potential
i never understood why the dev kept spending energy working on secondary features like the animations instead of just progressing with the story
at the end of the day, the sandbox days and especially the mini events at the beginning of the days are still the coolest part of the game

Animations i suspect had a couple of reasons. One it was done by a subcontracted dev and thus as the dev lost the ability to grind out hours into the project, it was a way to keep production up. For two some people complained that the game is too much jerking it to maths and thus some broader appeal net west cast.

Personally to me the animations and the various changes of that era were basically there to finish setting up the skeleton of the game, the balance, the visuals etc after which you could bat out story as it comes.

But that's my outside looking in estimate.

 

[Wyrtyn]

After the first adventure ("slime village") there is a second sandbox period with some new events (not quite as event-dense as the first ingame month, but still a lot of good stuff in there) and then there is the full intro to the second adventure (Nash's village), the second adventure has most of its sandbox elements already implemented but only a couple of events done before development was terminated.

I respect a lot that the dev didn't want to string the supporters along or get paid without being able to get work on the game done, but it is very sad that it came to needing to decisively end the game's development. This game was very special both in terms of its gameplay systems and story writing. I don't even think the pace of the game's development had been bad outside of the last few months either, a bad faith actor might say this was just a twine text-based game and it shouldn't take over a decade to be finished, but the vast majority of good indie adult games take at least that long even when having many rudimentary elements or also using "simpler" engines (The Last Sovereign and MGQ Paradox come to mind), and to me Unholy Arts was definitely up there as one of the good indie adult games.

I swear if I (metaphorically) ever win the lottery I'm going to open a publishing studio centered entirely around restoring dead indie adult games, there's a lot of incredible game design ideas and stories I have just never seen done anywhere else that unfortunely never got completed.

It's a bloody graveyard of good ideas but tbf that's an indie endeavour, not just adult games. You gotta celebrate the flames while they're around and scatter the ashes with your head high i guess.

 

[Wyrtyn]

Anyway ramblings aside i am glad this game was a part of my life, it's going to the special chest of games that clicked with me at a deeper level, there's only a couple dozen games there and this is the one adult one. Kudos to the dev for everything you did for us.

 

[tacosnap123]

are we going to get that final update here or is what poted here all were getting

 

[manscout]

are we going to get that final update here or is what poted here all were getting

Final update is on the Itch.io page. Content wise that's the final build of the game, might have more bug fixes in the future but that's it. Dev is still planning to write some posts detailing what they had penned for the rest of the story in the upcoming weeks.

 

[manscout]

Apparently dev started posting on

You must be registered to see the links

about their shelved plans. Only about the rest of what was planned for Nash's adventure so far, but an interesting read nonetheless, the boss battle at the end of it seemed like it would be a real damn menace.