Post by Arshu_12 in Just Friends 0.59 is Available on Itch, and Bimestral updates. comments

So, I'm sure gonna finish reading this someday, but I saw on one update that you need to get bond points on a certain route which you get from special dialogue choices. So I decided to just.....not until I find like, a guide or smthn cause this is getting confusing and I just wanna read the funny yaoi novel without having to check if I'm not the fun path, or on the uh-oh you killed your friend's parents path. Though, with the amount that I have played, (literally all of it was Wagner's route for like, I think until the beach scene with the lotion or sunscreen or smthn.) I can clearly see the effort and care this game has been given, and it shows in this really nice VN that I'm sure I could definitely rank higher than some others that I read. I just wanna get a good route that doesn't involve a 13-page chart (Tavern of Spear.....) to find out how to make his mother not explode! Will play again sometime.

Also, it's funny how the page content says there's no mobile version, but then you scroll down for a total of 0.2763 seconds and you find the android versions lol. (Trying it here since itch is being a bitch and not letting me snitch on the main page.)

yekkusu1 day ago(+1)

Hey there, thanks for your comment. There are no guides for now for public versions, only for supporters on Patreon, and even though since I work alone on this game I only update the cheat-sheet every year or so.

In the newer builds on Patreon, there's also a "Show Notification popup" system that tells you when your answer is good or bad, it essentially shows the reaction of the character towards what you're answering.

The game is not yet complete, there's a lot to do, so right now I usually encourage people to check all possibilities as much as they want :).

About the Android version: I totally forgot to update the main page, gonna do that as soon as possible.Thanks for your time.

Arshu_1220 hours ago (1 edit)

Ooooohhhh, that explains a good bit, and sorry if my past comment or if this comment seem a bit antagonistic, I am just really bad at wording lol. (If it's not obvious, I really do like this vn and I hope you get some help with developing it so you don't have to do it solo.) Honestly, I'm really surprised that you work on this SOLO, this is a really good VN, it's obvious even with the little I've read.

As a person who regularly plays turn-based games, I can traverse complex systems; routes and points are simple enough to find, so it really isn't a problem at all. Although, I do want to see the best route without worrying if I made a fuck-up 8 hours before at the first part of the route by accidentally saying the Slightly Wrong Option(tm) or getting one less point that screws me over! (No joke, I once made a small mistake at the beginning of a vn, and about 5 hours of reading later, I got a worse path for that one fuck-up since I had one bad point.)

This isn't just me either, a lot of people want some sort of indicator of their route in general, and this complaint stems purely from the fact that this game is great and people want to experience the best from it!

Two toggleable options to make it better are 1: an option that shows the route you're on without spoiling or revealing the other routes, or 2: an option that just shows when an important decision is being made and if you start going down a new route. (I know I keep saying route, but I do just mean general path or split even if temporary. And remember, it doesn't matter if those paths don't change things in the long run, it still matters to the reader.)

All in all, I can't wait to read this again! Despite the drawbacks, it really is a great novel that I WILL read through whenever my damn monkey brain can settle down for 20 simple minutes!

yekkusu9 hours ago

For now in the current version I have a few things to help people out without guides: There's the notification system, it tells you what your answer made the character feel with color coded words so you can know what was the best option (you need to save before answering anything), Path Finding, which is a simple feature that shows the face of a character on an option, this way you can see who you will meet when answering something.

When the game is released there will be an actual guide coded into the game's gallery, once you end the game with a Normal ending for any character, it will unlock the cheat sheet in-game so you can check on it at any time. (Although I'm considering creating a Datalog menu for that in the future).

Don't forget that Just Friends is right now on build 0.84 on Patreon while it's the version .59 for the public, so these new systems only exist on later builds.

And yeah, right now it's only me working on it, whenever I save enough, I pay for more art but that takes quite a good while. But I do my best to make the best possible story. Once the game goes out fully finished, like I said, there will be a system inside the game that will be unlocked as you finish the game, or as you play the game, I still need to figure out how to implement it . Overall though I'm focusing on writing all routes, right now, as of today, Just Friends is around 40% scripts done, and I update the game monthly.

Thanks for your suggestions, I'll keep them in mind too! And thanks for trying the game out it means a lot.

itch.io

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