"...I'm confused, is this game alleging that corn cob/jellyfish/fox dreams are not normal? I have those every Thursday."
Well I'm glad I'm not alone! Just... Don't interact too much with that dream, okay? Don't eat too much of that corn and stay the hell away from the Jellyfox. Speaking from experience here.
Back with a proper reply here.
"Regarding the changes to the intro, it's not exactly where I would have gone, but I wonder if part of that is because some changes were intended for the overall dynamic between Chris and Sam as well"
I know - as I said, I like the original prologue better, at least the odd nature of how the MC and Sam met. It was flawed and silly, but it had a surreal edge to it that I personally vibed with. As previously stated, it was something that came to me, and I just went with it. It was changed to make things more believable. I guess I changed a bit more than I should have, to be honest, yielding to various ... critiques.
What we have now is what we have.
"...this version of the story seems to be stamping down on the accelerator to get the romance going"
"- Kinda wish you had turned Chris' "horny" setting down just a notch or two. Like I know it's half romance half horror and we all want to get the fox's pants off at some point and all but it was just a bit distracting at times. "
I can't reveal exactly why I did that, but I'll say that I'll work on finding a balance in upcoming releases. I agree, it might be a bit much.
"...why does Sam keep talking in the first house about how he feels responsible for Chris being there? If it's a spoiler (like if the foxes secretly created the Jellyfish Dimension and Sam isn't being entirely transparent about that), you don't have to say, but I'm wondering if these lines are holdovers from the first draft that should be removed."
That does indeed sound like a holdover. I wonder if I missed a section in my edits, although I thought went over everything. I can say that The foxes are not responsible. Sam is as much a victim of circumstances as the MC is.
I'll have a look at this.
"- I accidentally initially skipped past the dream sequence, then went back when I felt like I missed something. It may help to put in a pause here, at least for a few seconds, to make sure readers know that there's a video there and don't just skip past it thinking it's regular dialogue. I think something like " $ renpy.pause(delay=5, hard=True) " would prevent readers from clicking out for 5 seconds so they at least see part of it."
This is extremely useful advice. I'll very likely be doing exactly this!
- The compass seemed much more natural in the "wine" route where Goat gave it to Sam. Given Sam's other actions in the "beer" route, I found it hard to believe that he would've let Chris take it for any reason.
Going on the assumption that the compass will likely lead them somewhere they do not want to go, given the untrustworthy source, would you rather have a device that's either an 'agent of evil' or otherwise devious, or no means of navigation at all?
I know that I'd rather have some control over the situation and try to change the outcome to my advantage.
- I found Sam's actions overall less believable in the "wine" route.
I can appreciate that. I was on the fence about it. It sort of wrote itself, so I let Sam have his madness. He was unnerved, of course, but the character traits he displayed feel like they belong more with the MC than with Sam, I am aware of that.
- I absolutely hated the Goat/Chris SA scene, which I at least hope was part of the point. I wonder if a "skip scene" option would be appropriate for that, or at the very least a disclaimer at the beginning of the game or something that the VN contains graphic depictions of sexual violence.
Sorry! :D
Yes, that was kind of the point. I'm trying to set the writing free, to let it be as unbounded as possible. Sometimes, that leads to stuff like this - because sometimes, bad things happen.
I'll look into doing at least one of those two things.
"Not sure why we're treating the goat serving lamb as "cannibalism"? Lamb is sheep, not goat, so not sure if this was more intended just to indicate suspicion of an herbivore eating meat?"
As I see it, they belong to the same subfamily, they can even mate with each other, in the same way horses and donkeys can - producing a sterile (I think?) mule. I'd say that qualifies as being - loosely - kin.
"- When looking at Goat's balls: "the amount of semen they might contain". Chris may need to review his reproductive anatomy and physiology."
Chris is a horny, slightly twisted SOAB and you'll have to forgive him for that.
I felt like the writing overall in this version was an improvement - your style can still be a bit on the verbose side but I thought it was much clearer this go around.
My biggest annoyance with my writing is that I think it falls short of being elegant enough to qualify as poetry in any sense, or even really solid writing. It gets the message across, but it doesn't rise to greatness. I'd say I can write better in my language. ...Not saying which country I live in other than Northern Europe :)
- Some proofreading errors throughout. Might just want to do another run to check for incorrect capitalization, typos, missing tags for characters speaking, etc.
I still need to incorporate a ton of corrections from my friend who helped me with this. The reason it wasn't done for this release, was that he did not highlight them, so I can only import the whole script - and hope there are no game-breaking changes to the 'coding' (it's scripting, let's be honest).
- Italicization for Chris' internal thoughts is inconsistent. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.
I'm not surprised. I had a clear idea that it should all be italicized and bold, but I half changed my mind and that's why it's not completely consistent.
"- When Chris throws his phone and it hits Sam, Chris says "it hits Sam on the side of his maw" even though we don't know Sam's name yet."
Thanks, I'll fix that!
- I'm not sure why we don't learn Sam's name yet to begin with? It's only a couple lines of interaction at the start of Day 2 so I don't know why the name exchange can't happen way sooner. Like the first time Chris calls him "fox".
It's just a social 'dance' thing. Sam doesn't open up much before he feels it's appropriate.
"- Not sure what the point of the little face image in the dialogue screen is or why it only appears after we learn Sam's name. The expression doesn't change, so it's not conveying that, and there are only like three characters so far so we don't really need it to distinguish who's who."
It's there, along with the text colour - so there's absolutely no doubt who's speaking.
"- On the wine route, before Chris leaves the table to go to the restroom, Sam's sitting sprite is at like eye level with the table and it looks kinda awkward."
Oops -I'll fix that!
"- Also on wine route, when getting into bed with Sam, Sam's sprite disappears and there's super tiny text on the screen that looks like it might be an error message."
Nice catch again, sounds like I'm calling on a sprite that doesn't exist. I'll fix that.
- After leaving the house on the beer route, there's kind of a comical disconnect between Sam's words and the closeup sprite chosen where it looks like:
Sam: "NO. NEVER. Never have I seen anything like that before."
Also Sam: :)
That's not right. WIll be fixed as well!
"- "I AM A GOOFY FUCKING IDIOT AND I HATE MYSELF" I felt this line on a deeply spiritual level. -_-"
Hahah.. We all - well, most of us - feel like that at times.
As before, please don't take anything in this comment as discouraging you from continuing - any criticisms I have are intended to be solely constructive. I think the level of effort you're putting into this project is both impressive and self-evident, and I really hope you see this through to the end.
Keep up the good work <3
Your comment was super helpful and much appreciated.
Rest assured, I will keep working on this. Right now though, it is 'resting' or on hiatus. I simply have too much other stuff I have to do. Since public deadlines pull the rug out from underneath me, I can't say when I intend to get back to working on it, and only give very vague statements about the next release. Thanks for reading <3