Seem to remember that in the most recent chapter there's a reference to Karder losing his virginity to a chambermaid at age 13 (and this is his thoughts so he's not making it up).
The most fun is when Karders arrogant enemies find that they have turned from hunter to hunted.
Vae Victis - Khan celebrated two years last February, so I’d like to take this opportunity and reflect on the previous year, what was accomplished and where do we go from here.
You can read this while you’re downloading the latest version (0.8) from my signature.
I’d like to start by saying that for me, VV “Year Two” was the year of gojira667 . Sometime around May 2022 he offered to help me with the problem of incompatible saves and I happily agreed. Yet, his contribution was not limited to save compatibility and has grown dramatically since then, including (but not limited to) the amazing Troops and Fiefdom screens, a complete overhaul of the game’s infrastructure, more flexibility in character names styling and many other improvements. For a seasoned programmer like him, working with a person with such basic coding skills like me must be frustrating.
In the world of startups, an investor will usually ask the entrepreneur “Is anyone else doing what your company does?”. An inexperienced entrepreneur might happily answer that no one does what his company does, but that is not the best answer. It is much more reassuring to an investor to learn that there are actually other companies doing something similar: it means there is a market for the product. The best answer, by the way, would be “yes, there are companies doing what we do but we have an advantage.”
There is no game out there like Vae Victis - Khan. It has AVN elements but it’s not an AVN, it has game elements which some players like and others less so and its unique and hybrid nature drives some players away but thankfully attracts many others. My task of understanding what makes this game fun and where should I invest more is not as clear as it was if I was developing an AVN about a dude coming home to his family of busty, yoga loving mom, bratty little sister and bitchy older sister. I have to invent things from scratch.
But I think I’m getting better at this.
The meta story is more important than I have realised so far, since it ties all the player’s actions into one narrative so starting in version 0.8, each update will include a meta story section. I’m also constantly fine tuning the metagame gameplay (metagameplay?), so in the last year we have seen several improvements to gameplay, from new screens, to the elimination of Subdue attacks in R/P/S combat, the addition of Fame mechanics and R/P/S animations and probably more.
In 2022 (actually, December 2021) I have also started adding original music to the game with the help of the talented composer Nits. We try to have each scene (or related scenes) their own theme and each fiefdom their own musical flavour. I love all the tracks we have in the game but some are simply amazing and I tend to listen to them even when I’m not playing the game. Give it a try!
I’m mostly a storyteller and art is not my strongest point but that doesn’t mean I’m not investing into improving in that department as well. I now know more about lighting and scene positioning than I did before and as of version 0.6 we also have animations in almost all sex scenes.
So, what will we see next year?
And now for some questions from the audience:
Thanks everyone for reading, playing, commenting, contributing and generally being one of the most polite and well behaved communities in F95. See you in June 2023 (I’m about to lose my real life job so I hope to have more time working on the game)!
You can read this while you’re downloading the latest version (0.8) from my signature.
I’d like to start by saying that for me, VV “Year Two” was the year of gojira667 . Sometime around May 2022 he offered to help me with the problem of incompatible saves and I happily agreed. Yet, his contribution was not limited to save compatibility and has grown dramatically since then, including (but not limited to) the amazing Troops and Fiefdom screens, a complete overhaul of the game’s infrastructure, more flexibility in character names styling and many other improvements. For a seasoned programmer like him, working with a person with such basic coding skills like me must be frustrating.
In the world of startups, an investor will usually ask the entrepreneur “Is anyone else doing what your company does?”. An inexperienced entrepreneur might happily answer that no one does what his company does, but that is not the best answer. It is much more reassuring to an investor to learn that there are actually other companies doing something similar: it means there is a market for the product. The best answer, by the way, would be “yes, there are companies doing what we do but we have an advantage.”
There is no game out there like Vae Victis - Khan. It has AVN elements but it’s not an AVN, it has game elements which some players like and others less so and its unique and hybrid nature drives some players away but thankfully attracts many others. My task of understanding what makes this game fun and where should I invest more is not as clear as it was if I was developing an AVN about a dude coming home to his family of busty, yoga loving mom, bratty little sister and bitchy older sister. I have to invent things from scratch.
But I think I’m getting better at this.
The meta story is more important than I have realised so far, since it ties all the player’s actions into one narrative so starting in version 0.8, each update will include a meta story section. I’m also constantly fine tuning the metagame gameplay (metagameplay?), so in the last year we have seen several improvements to gameplay, from new screens, to the elimination of Subdue attacks in R/P/S combat, the addition of Fame mechanics and R/P/S animations and probably more.
In 2022 (actually, December 2021) I have also started adding original music to the game with the help of the talented composer Nits. We try to have each scene (or related scenes) their own theme and each fiefdom their own musical flavour. I love all the tracks we have in the game but some are simply amazing and I tend to listen to them even when I’m not playing the game. Give it a try!
I’m mostly a storyteller and art is not my strongest point but that doesn’t mean I’m not investing into improving in that department as well. I now know more about lighting and scene positioning than I did before and as of version 0.6 we also have animations in almost all sex scenes.
So, what will we see next year?
- More meta story. You’ll see more of Queen Remy and Karder’s sisters Jada and Alyn as the enveloping story unfolds.
- I hope to get a slightly more sophisticated army combat system. Not a full blown tabletop wargame but something that will give you a little taste of moving forces across the board.
- More finetuning: eliminating death from army and R/P/S defeat, random world map events, children sired tracking, better handling of passing time on the world map (clicking “next turn” thirty times in a row is not the most fun experience), more scenes and adventures with past Wences and more
And now for some questions from the audience:
- “Art is decent, while I'm not a fan of elder ladies and exaggerated proportions (and about half or so of the cast is) I can appreciate what you've achieved so far. To improve on the renders a bit, I was going to suggest to add Depth of Field so that pics with open landscapes didn't feel as much as an amateur Sketchup model, but I also noticed some of the more recent renders do have DoF so that's a step in the right direction.” - As I wrote earlier, art is not my strongest skill. I think the art in VV-K is good and I always try to improve it but the strength of the game will always be the combination of several elements: story, metagame, multiple fetishes, multiple story paths to choose from, music and more. The effort needed to bring the art to the level of the best AVNs out there will probably take all the time and energy and eventually will yield low ROI in my opinion. To summarise: I’m going for good art, but not necessarily the best out there.
- “Still art-wise, it would be nice if we could take a bird's view of the places instead of plain maps, and see, for example, when we build something, similar to that option in the Civ games” - This is an interesting option to explore, but probably not in a screen dedicated to the fief but in the world map: build a temple, see a tiny temple icon on the fief.
- “Now gameplay wise, I had difficulties early on. While the whole thing is dutifully explained, the way you gain resources and the caps on troops make it a bit difficult to advance properly (and I've seen people complain about this). Gaining troops and gold based on RNG makes it difficult to plan ahead - sometimes I just went for reloading after wasting turns waiting for the meager troops/gold increase, as in those turns your enemies may throw raids or dissent to your territories, further delaying your growth.” - I think many players miss the importance of Morale. This is my fault for not explaining it better, but Morale almost directly affects production, so the higher your Morale, the less you’ll feel under-resourced. I hope the tips added in the CItadel for 0.8 will help with this.
- “the army cap means you either garrison the troops or move them to conquer - if you move em out, obedience may randomly drop and it can quickly snowball from there(sure, you got the shadow institute but you need gold to build it, and it takes several turns, turns in which all of the aforementioned can happen) and if you build them while there's unrest you may also lose it right away, just like it happened to the guy who spent 300 turns stabilizing his first 2 fiefdoms. My initial intention (before switching to LN mode lol) was to expand slowly but steadily, however the rate at which things can go bad overwhelms the rate at which you can gain countermeasures. There's force yield but I had expected it to be more of a desperate measure (conscription and expropiations often are).” - The Shadow Institute is a major tool for managing “indirect” resources like Morale and Obedience. I have played the game extensively in the last few weeks and I feel that by steadying your Khaganate before expanding and using the Shadow Institute actions you can control the random elements of the game.
- “Regarding attacking, I guess I was doing it wrong, as you're told to have more troops than the opponent, so I sat for X turns til I had higher numbers. However, if you attack and conquer, the most you can usually do is 5 or 10 more units than the queens (not counting situational quest buffs) and with luck you may have that many troops left after conquering... which leads to a lack in troops to garrison and the aforementioned snowball effect. Are we supposed to go for wars of attrition, slowly dwindling the enemy's numbers while gaining troops every few turns, seeing as enemy armies don't recover?” - I think I don’t stress this enough, but I get the best results when I attack another nation when my war chest is full: Lots of gold, high Morale and Obedience. This way I can use all sorts of Shadow Institute actions to restore Morale, Force Yield, enforce Obedience etc.
Thanks everyone for reading, playing, commenting, contributing and generally being one of the most polite and well behaved communities in F95. See you in June 2023 (I’m about to lose my real life job so I hope to have more time working on the game)!
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- Oct 14, 2020
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Can the main character actually be a friendly guy as well according to our choices? The dev notes make it pretty clear that the MC is apparently a sadistic asshole who loves abusing others but the general game description mentions "or seduce them to aid you with their skills and knowledge" which seems to imply that we can be nice after all. So... what is it? I personally really dislike playing the bad guy in games like this so I thought I'd ask before jumping in and being disappointed.
Karder will never be a care bear but for 95% of the encounters you can choose between an asshole to a more reasonable and even nice guy. The rest of the 5% you can skip the "bad" action if you don't like it.
In other words: you don't have to play the bad guy to enjoy the game.
You can influence how Karder acts quite far. If you don't want him to be a sadist, he won't be. I wouldn't go as far as to say that you can play Karder as a "good guy", but you can certainly avoid playing him as the bad guy. Basically, anti-hero morality.
This game is the wrong place to look for femdom content. There are dominant women, but it always ends up with Karder on top.
- Oct 25, 2017
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What a beauty indeed, my newest favorite waifu, but for some reasons my eyes are starting to bleed. Seems like they don't seem to share my sense of beauty =/
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Already love the game but now they even add more orcs than the one in the arena?! Nice! Orcs are always a win for any game
- Apr 15, 2021
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I've talked in my review before about how there's much to be learned from your game and your approach. And how inspiring it is to 'listen' but 'not bend'; to have a vision and maintain it while correcting the course as one learns.
I wish you the best of luck as I rejoice to see you hit your projected milestones.
And about your job, if the chips are to fall where they may, may they bring you fortune and a brighter future.
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- Apr 14, 2021
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Aw, I missed my chance to ask questions this time
.Art is a very difficult thing to learn. I mean, sometimes, you don't even know where to learn. For example, for a long time I asked about the art in Farmer's Dream, because the renders there look like oil paintings while certainly being Daz3d renders, but I never got an answer. When I made fan arts for Eternum, I asked people how they compared with the real thing and people told me they didn't look much like the real thing. You could look at the best arts in the world for as long as you can, and you still won't know how they did it.
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OK, I think I have run into some bugs.
1. I can not access the palace no matter what I do. It just keeps giving a random saying of some sort.
2. When I send the Parley request to Dhoyuen, I can advance time 2 days then it freezes.
Any ideas on how to fix these?
1. I can not access the palace no matter what I do. It just keeps giving a random saying of some sort.
2. When I send the Parley request to Dhoyuen, I can advance time 2 days then it freezes.
Any ideas on how to fix these?
