aww. two in a row here where people calling it a masterpiece. It's a work in progress and I really do wanna up the ante on it a bit when I get a chance. I just wanna make sure the story works before I go back and rewrite the beginning. Thanks a lot tho <3
Ahh, a tip on that, I know the story is based a lot on personal stuff, and I don't really want to undermine that, but can you re-write some of it so that it doesn't sound as rapey?
As in like something that really struck me the wrong way, which is a spoiler so if you are new to the game skip the next paragraph
when Braden admitted to literally rape Zack, and it was brushed off, and not the type of the sexual assault that Zack did, but literally raping someone in their sleep.
I really took a problem in that, since I don't really think it should have passed with not much emphasis, or it not being a diverging point in the storyline.
BTW I haven't played much beyond that due to the shock and of it all, so IDK if this get redeemed.
Generally I was really impressed with the game writing wise, the characters felt like real characters, it was complex/weird/fucked-up and the narrative was superb, it was the first sexual game where it managed to feel more than the sexual part of it, and honestly pushed so much further in its little details, it was the best visual novel I have played regardless of it being framed as a "sex game", my only minor issue was the pacing, in some of the scenes it felt quite off, which can be due to the nature of visual novels as a whole.
Overall I wish you would take the feedback regarding the rapey feel into consideration, and good luck with the game development!!
Honestly, this is one of the things that I liked about the adult genre is because there are no limits with the narrative. It actually lets me take a lot of the tropes and sexual situations from other adult games that people are used to doing and actually make them play out more realistically. I think the scene has a lot of context to it and the characters talk at length about it given the purpose of that entire route comes back to communication and boundaries in relationships. I'll also note that that actual "rapey" tone of the game that your'e referencing only happens in one route based on what the player actually chose. So if you actually chose to touch him ("rapey" context of the pervy route) then the game assumed you were ok with the consequences of that. However, the game does flip that back around because there were consequences for that decision and the dialogue throughout the game actually shows that neither of the characters were ever down with it in the first place. There's even a line that Zack says after you make the pervy choice stating that it feels like someone else made the choice for him. I actually wanted the characters to fight back against the reader to some degree because it wasn't in their nature but if the reader forces that choice by selecting the pervy route then it becomes canon and everyone, including the reader, has to deal with the guilt and consequences of that. Most adult games don't have a consequence for your actions and I wanted to clearly show that while also showing a way for characters to try and talk out something terrible that they were truly sorry for in that specific route.