Post by AgentBoogeyman in Build 0.5 General Discussion

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Wow, this was really really good! I've definitely enjoyed this long, winding ride so far, good work!

I actually hadn't played since build 0.2, and though it's probably old news to everyone who didn't completely forget about this VN's existence in the interim, I want to personally shake the hand of whoever came up with the idea of allowing the player to completely skip that particular scene in Luke's introduction. That whole sequence is probably the only negative thing I have to say about the whole dang project, so I'm just getting it out of the way first. Thankfully most of the later content with Luke allowed me to warm up to him more, but the mild desire to take a shower any time he was on screen never fully went away. The dude's just kind of straight up gross, not gonna lie. By the end he was actually pretty endearing, sure, but still kinda gross.

As for everything else, wow, where do I even start? This has some seriously solid writing, and even though the Hinterlands chapters at first felt like they completely stalled the story, by the time Hinterlands III rolled around I was beginning to see how both narratives dovetailed into one another. The payoff was definitely worth it. I really enjoyed Storm and P's road trip adventure during chapter III and it contributed a ton to my positive disposition towards both characters. Do have to say Hinterlands IV felt kind of superfluous though, unless there's missable content tucked away in that chapter or something. Could probably omit it and lose nothing in the process, or roll it straight into Hinterlands V without bouncing around the narrative so much. Still, the story definitely would NOT be the same without those chapters, as the great majority of the world building happens within them. Even if it DOES mean putting off going on dates with best Husbando Asterion for like, an hour of gameplay.

I also noticed there was more varied music in this installment. Usually a problem most VN's have is very repetitive music, but thankfully this one has some decently varied tracks, and being able to switch tunes during Hinterlands III was kind of a cute touch.

I'll probably pop over to the spoiler thread to really get into some of my favorite aspects of this story, but for now, just know you're doing a great job. I'm definitely invested and unfortunately that means I now have to wait like all the rest for the next installment. I definitely want to replay it to at least see what's up with the character I didn't manage to recruit (For me it was the wolf), but sad to say, like Undertale's Genocide route, there will be no Ruthless playthrough for me. Don't think I could bring myself to do it.

Also, I actually forgot this was going to eventually have more NSFW content in it, the story just sucked me in that thoroughly. I came for porn, but received something I didn't know I actually wanted, Ha!

Minoh Workshop2 years ago(+1)

Hi, AgentBoogeyman. Thank you for your comment, reading it was very enjoyable and I'm glad you liked the game so much.

About Luke, we actually plan on returning to that scene sometime soon and tinkering with it. Looking back I still appreciate it in a number of levels, mainly how it conveys a lot about Luke, but we're very aware that it really didn't work for a lot of readers. So, while I'm proud of it, I also recognize it's probably the single weakest point in the game for a lot of people.

Truth be told, when we wrote it we were under the impression that our readers would be a lot hornier, so it was (an extremely pleasant) surprise to see just how everyone got engaged with the more complex elements of the story! Back then we were trying to balance out a lot of things, like Asterion's story and the guests' and bits or the setting and world building, and in the end we put too many chips in the adult side of things. So, you know, lesson learned, we've adjusted our course since.

As a broader idea, we also want the SFW version of the story to be more SFW. Some scenes have censored nudity, which is just OK enough while straddling the line, but the narration is often too adult as well so we should change that too.

As an aside, we made this whole decision about how to tinker with Luke's NSFW scene based on all the survey responses we got. That was supremely useful to figure out how to improve things.

About Hinterlands IV... It actually has a few purposes in the story but they are not apparent.

On the basest of levels the Hinterlands sections pull the narration from the post-scarcity, healing community of the hotel down to the struggling lives of people who were somehow denied chances in life. They "reset the palate", in a way, and this applies to all Hinterlands segments.

Now, speaking specifically about Hinterlands IV, we had a very good reason to put it in but it's a bit arcane. Telling it would spoil the fun of playing detective. What I can say is that there's a subtle but revealing change that can trigger if a condition was met in Hinterlands III and that Hinterlands IV is placed in a very deliberate moment in the game.

And have fun in the spoiler threads! It should give you an idea of the important things that happen in the Ruthless Route, if you want to learn about them.

itch.io

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