OK Well I've just finished first play through up through Ep6 so I figured I'd give some hopefully constructive feedback. Please do not take offense at anything I mention here that I do not like. For one thing, it's your art, your game, and opinions are like a**h****, everyone has one. I do hope anything negative I write here is taken as meant to be constructive and not overly critical. Overall I'm very impressed with this VN so far, and I realize it's still a work in progress.
Characters - Love most of them. Emily especially. She's an absolute doll. The characters express realistic emotion and are relatable. This doesn't really even feel like a porn game, at least not in the route I'm taking, it feels more like a Rated R drama movie to me. That's not a bad thing, actually, I think it's great that you want to write a story about people who aren't porn stars who act like real people. That's very cool and appreciated.
I really dislike Ash in the current way I've managed that relationship, she just comes off as a jealous, manipulative, friend-(ab)using "Queen B" for reals. I may try to replay again to get on her good side at the cost of probably Emily's friendship but just to see if I hate her completely or just when on the Em road. At any rate, KUDOS for actually making me feel something in a VN, even if it's hate, it's an emotion, and that means your writing has impact.
Samantha - smoking hot MILF with a heart of gold, what's not to love about her? Was really hoping for a "Mommy dearest" thing with her, but so far I have failed. Will definitely be trying for that in another run.
I was OK with the main character, maybe even he was likable, up until Ep6. Then he got too over the top in trying to be cute/funny/charming. In my version so far, he's for all I know still a virgin, but he acts like he's Casanova. It is kind of starting to get irritating, like he has to make some kind of flirty or funny response to everything, even when it's completely inappropriate.
Also if a character flat out asks the MC a question, that should have to get at least get a "doesn't matter" response from the player. In other words, if you're going to railroad the plot, at least fool me into thinking I'm making the choice, even if all the choices lead to the same spot. I get that this game is not yet complete, and my advice to make it better would be to concentrate on adding some more choices for the player to make to keep them glued to the story. Even if those are actually choices that do not matter to the plot.
And sometimes more choices do matter. Like for example, at the hospital scene when talking to the doctor there is no freakin' way that I would have ever chosen to take her along with us on the lunch date with Emily. In fact when he agrees to let her tag along I was yelling at my monitor "NO, you IDIOT!" First of all, even if he is romantically interested in the doctor, when he's out with Emily she should be his focus. I would expect at this stage in Em & MC's relationship (in my playthrough) he'd be dying for a chance to get her alone away from the other characters for a conversation that actually means something. At least, that's what I was hoping for.
Relationships - these feel pretty realistic. A few feel a bit glossed over a bit, like Lou I've spent a total of maybe an hour of time with but we're best buddies. That's fine, I'm not playing this for a bromance, but it did feel like he warmed up to MC a bit too easily. The writing for most of the relationship stuff has been excellent. It feels like Emily has a real connection with MC but is afraid to express her true feelings. If I can read that much emotion into writing on a screen, well, you've accomplished your goal, I think!
Artwork - absolutely fantastic. This is some of the best quality VN art I've seen before. Definitely doing A+ work on this department.
Sound - Really good, loving most of the music background, and especially that opening song at the main menu, that sets the tone perfectly. Some of the sound effects have been great also.
Story - Feels a bit like it's stalling out at this point, to be honest. I guess I'm accustomed to stories in this kind of game moving at Cheetah (Cheater?) speed, but this one is moving along at its own pace. It's not boring, don't get me wrong, but I think something needs to change in Episode 7 or it's going to feel too drawn out. I think when I play through again I'm going to pick different choices and see how fast the pace goes on other routes, it may just be the route I've chosen.
Overall - This is a superb work of interactive fiction in the making. I really feel like this could truly be a great game. It is definitely quality work so far. Really looking forward to more, and I'll check out your Patreon soon as well.
TL/DR: Recommend adding more choices for the player, even if they aren't real choices at all (ones that branch the story). Recommend speeding up the pacing for the rest of the story. Recommend making the MC less of a wanna-be ladies-man and a bit more serious, at least with Emily. Less dick shots, more bush. :)
Thanks for reading all of this if you managed to do that, haha. Congrats on making something worth talking about! :)
Beautiful renders, the characters look really good. Im at episode 5 and there seem to be a storyline developing and I do hope so. This game is too beautiful looking to be wasted on simply being just a "harem" game.
Although I understand it's is MC's personality but I'm starting to find MC to be a little too gabby and on the dumb side. Getting annoying. Maybe tone it down a little but that's just my opinion.
Looking forward to updates and thank-you for not having oversized breast!!!
Have to say that while the story was deep and involved, something rare to find in most games of this type, the single choice prompts just threw off the whole flow of the game for me. What is the point of having the player press a prompt that has no effect on the story at all? It doesn't make them feel any more a part of the game. In fact it does the opposite pulling them out of the experience for a needless mouse click.
Okey, for some reason I've been looking at this game multiple times but never actually downloaded it for some reason. Yesterday however I did just that, I downloaded it and started playing. I have to admit that I think it'd s great game, a bit slow maybe bet great. Keep it up
I really want to encourage you AZ to continue to take all the time you need to develop each episode of this game into exactly what you want it to be and envision for it, and to not allow everyone's excitement and antsy, impatient attitudes to make you feel like you need to curb the prior and just instead put out a lighter, shorter episode to appease. That's detrimental to true creative flow, and the only way you'll be able to truly look back say 10 years from completion on this epic game and think "damn, I am so proud of that game, I did a killer job on it!" is if you go with your own flow and enjoy creating it as you want to. You'll be outputting only the best, most epic episodes and game by doing that. So I highly encourage you to keep doing what you're doing, ignore all those impatient people whining, begging, pushing and even hating and know that ignoring them and not giving in is the right choice.
I love this game, and your writing in it is insanely good. It's actually legitimately impactful, and makes it fully relatable on a lot of levels. You absolutely nailed the psychology of people that have the backgrounds that these characters in the house do, even down to the most nuanced detail. It's wild to see that, especially in a lewd based game haha. It just makes it that much more incredible and impressive.
To be fair, I originally would've never dared to download or try these kinds of games as they're WAAAAY outside of my comfort zone, mainly do to the influence of how I was raised (which I am still trying to kick to the curb). So one evening I said "fuck it" and I went and downloaded this game and a few others, and I am glad I did.
This is one of three of them I could not be more happy that I did. I never believed a game like this could actually contain super quality story, character development and have so much attention to detail in regards to people and how they'd think & act depending on their histories. But you've proven to me that it in fact happens, even if in intensely rare cases, like this game of yours right here. Thank you for making it, taking so much time out of your likely busy life to make this, and, not even necessarily making much money from it, either.
I am extremely excited to see more of your work in action in the coming episodes. Keep up the insanely great work, AZ! Hope you have a killer day/night. Be sure to enjoy yourself while creating this, too! -Danny
Edit: realized I accidentally typed out realizable and not relatable so I fixed that :P
Hey man, I just played the game and I gotta say I had a great time immersing into the story. So I just wanted to ask if you have a discord server or something so I can keep myself somewhat updated on mthis project of yours. Once again, great work man. Keep it up!
but seriously Great game AZ, and I nearly unlocked all the scenes, but can't find the Rider kick scene and the Hollis Nightmare scene. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I have reinstaled a cople times now and it keeps sayingg: "...\\Halfway_House-EP5-pc\\lib\\windows-i686\\Halfway_House.exe: Could not open "... "Halfway_House-EP5-pc\halfway_House.py." That file doesn't exist anywhere and I don't have the problem solving skills to figure this out send help (i'm on widows).
For people that are too lazy to look at AZ patreon:
EP6 ETA:
Fuck it. What can I say other than I suck. Ep6 is getting there. ATM just about to finish a big scene (80-100 renders). After this one there's another two big scenes to do before this one reach the end.
Sometime earlier I said it might be done mid April and later I said I would try to get it done before the next billing cycle... well I'm now far past the first ETA and closing on the second one and I'm not gonna make that either.
Might make the last two scene shorter to get it done sooner if it takes too long. Or just make them simpler... we'll see.
Anyways, sorry. I make no excuses. I'm slow.
: End of post. So give the man a break. Shit like this take time, and we all sometimes go over a deadline. So let the man work and we can see a good fucking chapter 6. Which we all know we all want to see what happens next.
Dude, we are waiting for Episode 6. You said it would be out by mid April. Its 24 April already and we haven't even gotten a slight update of when its gonna release. Atleast give us an Update ASAP.
I really enjoyed trying this game with gamcore. Now I'm on Itch.io but it won't let me install game. It says "incompatible third party website"? In fact several other games say the same thing. Is this because of Itch.io hosting it or something with my settings? I have no problem install others.
A porn game without porn scenes.. lol... 5 Episode without a sex scene. You see more a fat guy naked (louis) than the girl. All sex is self-masturbation... Good graphics, too many words blablabal.. no sex at all.
i know new update is available via mega in patreon but why dont you make it available over here in itchio because google drive download aint the best .mega is much better
Hello. I have a question, I downloaded ep5 and it also download which I'm good, but I'm wondering how I will get episode 6? Will I come here and download it or is it some kind of automatic update? Thanks,also when is the next update?
I'm not 100% sure on if you can reply the scenes but i usually just create a save before i choose which option i want that way if you move to far forward and can't rollback to the start of the scene you at least have the option to load the save file.
I love the story of this novel but it is the worse digital blue balls I have ever seen. 5 episodes and not one sex scene, not even a shot of a bare vagina. Just 2 semi BJ scenes and a couple sexy lingerie poses (and like 3 or 4 topless scenes). I'm telling ya, great game, but blue balls...
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OK Well I've just finished first play through up through Ep6 so I figured I'd give some hopefully constructive feedback. Please do not take offense at anything I mention here that I do not like. For one thing, it's your art, your game, and opinions are like a**h****, everyone has one. I do hope anything negative I write here is taken as meant to be constructive and not overly critical. Overall I'm very impressed with this VN so far, and I realize it's still a work in progress.
Characters - Love most of them. Emily especially. She's an absolute doll. The characters express realistic emotion and are relatable. This doesn't really even feel like a porn game, at least not in the route I'm taking, it feels more like a Rated R drama movie to me. That's not a bad thing, actually, I think it's great that you want to write a story about people who aren't porn stars who act like real people. That's very cool and appreciated.
I really dislike Ash in the current way I've managed that relationship, she just comes off as a jealous, manipulative, friend-(ab)using "Queen B" for reals. I may try to replay again to get on her good side at the cost of probably Emily's friendship but just to see if I hate her completely or just when on the Em road. At any rate, KUDOS for actually making me feel something in a VN, even if it's hate, it's an emotion, and that means your writing has impact.
Samantha - smoking hot MILF with a heart of gold, what's not to love about her? Was really hoping for a "Mommy dearest" thing with her, but so far I have failed. Will definitely be trying for that in another run.
I was OK with the main character, maybe even he was likable, up until Ep6. Then he got too over the top in trying to be cute/funny/charming. In my version so far, he's for all I know still a virgin, but he acts like he's Casanova. It is kind of starting to get irritating, like he has to make some kind of flirty or funny response to everything, even when it's completely inappropriate.
Also if a character flat out asks the MC a question, that should have to get at least get a "doesn't matter" response from the player. In other words, if you're going to railroad the plot, at least fool me into thinking I'm making the choice, even if all the choices lead to the same spot. I get that this game is not yet complete, and my advice to make it better would be to concentrate on adding some more choices for the player to make to keep them glued to the story. Even if those are actually choices that do not matter to the plot.
And sometimes more choices do matter. Like for example, at the hospital scene when talking to the doctor there is no freakin' way that I would have ever chosen to take her along with us on the lunch date with Emily. In fact when he agrees to let her tag along I was yelling at my monitor "NO, you IDIOT!" First of all, even if he is romantically interested in the doctor, when he's out with Emily she should be his focus. I would expect at this stage in Em & MC's relationship (in my playthrough) he'd be dying for a chance to get her alone away from the other characters for a conversation that actually means something. At least, that's what I was hoping for.
Relationships - these feel pretty realistic. A few feel a bit glossed over a bit, like Lou I've spent a total of maybe an hour of time with but we're best buddies. That's fine, I'm not playing this for a bromance, but it did feel like he warmed up to MC a bit too easily. The writing for most of the relationship stuff has been excellent. It feels like Emily has a real connection with MC but is afraid to express her true feelings. If I can read that much emotion into writing on a screen, well, you've accomplished your goal, I think!
Artwork - absolutely fantastic. This is some of the best quality VN art I've seen before. Definitely doing A+ work on this department.
Sound - Really good, loving most of the music background, and especially that opening song at the main menu, that sets the tone perfectly. Some of the sound effects have been great also.
Story - Feels a bit like it's stalling out at this point, to be honest. I guess I'm accustomed to stories in this kind of game moving at Cheetah (Cheater?) speed, but this one is moving along at its own pace. It's not boring, don't get me wrong, but I think something needs to change in Episode 7 or it's going to feel too drawn out. I think when I play through again I'm going to pick different choices and see how fast the pace goes on other routes, it may just be the route I've chosen.
Overall - This is a superb work of interactive fiction in the making. I really feel like this could truly be a great game. It is definitely quality work so far. Really looking forward to more, and I'll check out your Patreon soon as well.
TL/DR:
Recommend adding more choices for the player, even if they aren't real choices at all (ones that branch the story).
Recommend speeding up the pacing for the rest of the story.
Recommend making the MC less of a wanna-be ladies-man and a bit more serious, at least with Emily.
Less dick shots, more bush. :)
Thanks for reading all of this if you managed to do that, haha. Congrats on making something worth talking about! :)
Really a fantastic game! I'm waiting for new episodes.
What happened to the skip button as of the Chapter 6 release? It was a great feature for replaying and making different choices.
What's the name of the song that plays during the start menu?
Seconded, that song is amazing. I haven't even started playing yet and I already love this game.
From below:
http://www.marisalaw.ca/#music-section
Thank you very much
Beautiful renders, the characters look really good. Im at episode 5 and there seem to be a storyline developing and I do hope so. This game is too beautiful looking to be wasted on simply being just a "harem" game.
Although I understand it's is MC's personality but I'm starting to find MC to be a little too gabby and on the dumb side. Getting annoying. Maybe tone it down a little but that's just my opinion.
Looking forward to updates and thank-you for not having oversized breast!!!
Awsome story, Awsome looking Char's, Cant wait for the completion!!
Have to say that while the story was deep and involved, something rare to find in most games of this type, the single choice prompts just threw off the whole flow of the game for me. What is the point of having the player press a prompt that has no effect on the story at all? It doesn't make them feel any more a part of the game. In fact it does the opposite pulling them out of the experience for a needless mouse click.
I'm hoping these are placemarkers for actual choices to be added at some point?
how often is this game updated
Hey im getting this error and if i ignore it like 20 times it goes away but also skips a lot of pictures and lines..
It only happened in episode 3 so far.. and this is the third time;
https://prnt.sc/st19sj
Missed so much lines and pictures but was able to understand it. Would be glad if it gets fixed and if its my problem tell me how to fix it... THX!
is there only 6 episodes or is there more coming out
Wait. There are only 5...
Is it normal that there is no sound in the android version? Like no music?
Same
This is a great game and an interesting story
And emily is the cutest of the cutest i love her expressions
And thanks for not planning any NTR please no NTR in the future
and keep going with the story
Okey, for some reason I've been looking at this game multiple times but never actually downloaded it for some reason. Yesterday however I did just that, I downloaded it and started playing. I have to admit that I think it'd s great game, a bit slow maybe bet great. Keep it up
Does anyone know the name of the song when the game begin?
I spend a while figuring this out myself, but eventually I found there answer here:
https://f95zone.to/members/azrd79.150306/#profile-post-comment-25193
It is Will You Wait by Marisa Law.
You can find the song here:
http://www.marisalaw.ca/#music-section
Thank you so much
Thanks!
i don't have music or anything, did I install it incorrectly?
I really want to encourage you AZ to continue to take all the time you need to develop each episode of this game into exactly what you want it to be and envision for it, and to not allow everyone's excitement and antsy, impatient attitudes to make you feel like you need to curb the prior and just instead put out a lighter, shorter episode to appease. That's detrimental to true creative flow, and the only way you'll be able to truly look back say 10 years from completion on this epic game and think "damn, I am so proud of that game, I did a killer job on it!" is if you go with your own flow and enjoy creating it as you want to. You'll be outputting only the best, most epic episodes and game by doing that. So I highly encourage you to keep doing what you're doing, ignore all those impatient people whining, begging, pushing and even hating and know that ignoring them and not giving in is the right choice.
I love this game, and your writing in it is insanely good. It's actually legitimately impactful, and makes it fully relatable on a lot of levels. You absolutely nailed the psychology of people that have the backgrounds that these characters in the house do, even down to the most nuanced detail. It's wild to see that, especially in a lewd based game haha. It just makes it that much more incredible and impressive.
To be fair, I originally would've never dared to download or try these kinds of games as they're WAAAAY outside of my comfort zone, mainly do to the influence of how I was raised (which I am still trying to kick to the curb). So one evening I said "fuck it" and I went and downloaded this game and a few others, and I am glad I did.
This is one of three of them I could not be more happy that I did. I never believed a game like this could actually contain super quality story, character development and have so much attention to detail in regards to people and how they'd think & act depending on their histories. But you've proven to me that it in fact happens, even if in intensely rare cases, like this game of yours right here. Thank you for making it, taking so much time out of your likely busy life to make this, and, not even necessarily making much money from it, either.
I am extremely excited to see more of your work in action in the coming episodes. Keep up the insanely great work, AZ! Hope you have a killer day/night. Be sure to enjoy yourself while creating this, too! -Danny
Edit: realized I accidentally typed out realizable and not relatable so I fixed that :P
You can allow third_part install on your smartphone config menu.
When is Ep6 & Ep7 going to be able to downlown on Android love the storyline so far
Hey man, I just played the game and I gotta say I had a great time immersing into the story. So I just wanted to ask if you have a discord server or something so I can keep myself somewhat updated on mthis project of yours. Once again, great work man. Keep it up!
Best adult Visual novel I have played!
I want to live in that house..^_^"
but seriously Great game AZ, and I nearly unlocked all the scenes, but can't find the Rider kick scene and the Hollis Nightmare scene. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
When talking to hollis dont forgive him and it will cause both to happen.
Thanks!
no problem
does anyone know when the developer is releasing more episodes, im addicted to this game!
I have reinstaled a cople times now and it keeps sayingg: "...\\Halfway_House-EP5-pc\\lib\\windows-i686\\Halfway_House.exe: Could not open "... "Halfway_House-EP5-pc\halfway_House.py." That file doesn't exist anywhere and I don't have the problem solving skills to figure this out send help (i'm on widows).
Is there a ReadMe.txt that i'm missing?
For people that are too lazy to look at AZ patreon:
EP6 ETA:
Fuck it. What can I say other than I suck. Ep6 is getting there. ATM just about to finish a big scene (80-100 renders). After this one there's another two big scenes to do before this one reach the end.
Sometime earlier I said it might be done mid April and later I said I would try to get it done before the next billing cycle... well I'm now far past the first ETA and closing on the second one and I'm not gonna make that either.
Might make the last two scene shorter to get it done sooner if it takes too long. Or just make them simpler... we'll see.
Anyways, sorry. I make no excuses. I'm slow.
: End of post. So give the man a break. Shit like this take time, and we all sometimes go over a deadline. So let the man work and we can see a good fucking chapter 6. Which we all know we all want to see what happens next.
question If I install this do I get episode 1-5 even tho it says "Halfway House EP5"?
its all ep 1 through 5
Thank you for the reply
np just helping you out with your question
Yes u get it all
Thank you
Dude, we are waiting for Episode 6. You said it would be out by mid April. Its 24 April already and we haven't even gotten a slight update of when its gonna release. Atleast give us an Update ASAP.
Dont be an ass and wait
I really enjoyed trying this game with gamcore. Now I'm on Itch.io but it won't let me install game. It says "incompatible third party website"? In fact several other games say the same thing. Is this because of Itch.io hosting it or something with my settings? I have no problem install others.
If the creator uses mega as the file transfer site the itch.io app cant access i.
Okay, so why then would Itch.io put it on their lists to play if we can't? lol
they're a place to promote your games its not like theyre telling you that you cant have it. literally just go to the browser version and download it.
Do i need to start from beginning for each new episode ?
A porn game without porn scenes.. lol...
5 Episode without a sex scene. You see more a fat guy naked (louis) than the girl. All sex is self-masturbation...
Good graphics, too many words blablabal.. no sex at all.
can u send me save file ?
Do you know how to edit the save file to unlock the scenes? Played through all of it, but didn't unlock all of them.
i know new update is available via mega in patreon but why dont you make it available over here in itchio because google drive download aint the best .mega is much better
Hello. I have a question, I downloaded ep5 and it also download which I'm good, but I'm wondering how I will get episode 6? Will I come here and download it or is it some kind of automatic update? Thanks,also when is the next update?
He is still working on it
>Last Update: 41 days ago
>Dev says the release cycle is 45 days
I hope and pray I get episode 6 in 4 days. This is remarkable, and Emily is basically perfect.
hey u should make a discord
Great game, love the characters. Your game along with the developer of the Deluca Family are my favorites.
how can you replay the sex scenes? at some points you cant go back to select other choices in the game
I'm not 100% sure on if you can reply the scenes but i usually just create a save before i choose which option i want that way if you move to far forward and can't rollback to the start of the scene you at least have the option to load the save file.
Where to download episode 1-4? I only see episode 5 for android.
Episode 5 has all of it.
Nice, thanks!
itll play through all chapters
Will bonus scenes eventually become public?
This being the first game of this type I've downloaded, I'm hooked. Doing an awesome job all around.
I love the story of this novel but it is the worse digital blue balls I have ever seen. 5 episodes and not one sex scene, not even a shot of a bare vagina. Just 2 semi BJ scenes and a couple sexy lingerie poses (and like 3 or 4 topless scenes). I'm telling ya, great game, but blue balls...