Greetings to you as well, I wrote a lot of feedback because I am genuinely interested in seeing this game reach final and paying for it. However, I’ve long since learned my lesson about betas and am not in a rush to get burned again. I’m not expecting your team you say “This is 100% right, do everything he said!” but rather wanted to explain what it was I would like to see addressed if I’m going to spend money on it.
Regarding your response points:
1. All of my information about your project comes from Itch. I’m too old to be messing with pirated software anymore.
2. I have no metrics beyond my own impression so I have to take your word that Itch isn’t representative of your community’s feelings as a whole.
3. VN’s are generally “over-clicky”, I had more of an issue with the overall loop’ed systems than the clicking any loop required.
4. I liked the interactive-ness of the Minerva scene. Not everyone likes [insert-sex-act] and maybe they’d rather see [insert-other-sex-act]; the interaction providing some variation sprinkled throughout the entire story focused on major characters is an excellent changeup, I think. What I thought was strange is why in the HP Universe with so many choices you decided to use a 70-year-old (granted the artist tried to make her not look that old but that character is at least 70) for the only H-Scene. I definitely don’t want 5-minute challenges, there’s H-sites with plenty of images for that, this is a VN; besides Daphne is much hotter than Hermione. :)
5. The Waifu problem is a small part of the bigger problem of leaving in the content that occurs after what you removed, without filling that hole first.
6. Sonya comes off as a “nice to have” add-on to a completed project and shouldn’t detract from work on the core material but it seems your team has already put her aside for later so hey, cool.
7. Earnings system revision would be welcomed, thanks. Any plans on enhancing how stats are presented and used so people have an idea on where they should be?
8. Daphne’s Halloween scene was literally the only time the game encountered an error for me, other than that it ran great.
To answer your questions:
1. Can you give an example of a bad dialogue or a plot twist in the game?
There were three types of plot/dialog issues in my opinion:
A) Conversations with no guiding context, an example would be Xandria. It would seem there’s no getting past her and the conversation is just be able to have some fun with her. That’s cool but the problem is there’s a lot of discussion branches and no indication of progress leaving me to just try them all many many times which I found out by chance is what you have to do. Dead-end branches should just be removed or possibly use colored text to indicate the other character is reacting positively/negatively to that branch. In the last 24 hours I’ve seen Lord Rattlesnake get kicked in the groin way more times than I needed to.
B) Filler conversations that are needlessly long, examples would definitely be the insane amount of dialog with Snape and Little Sally. The first part of the story is spent basically locked in the Headmaster’s Office which when you realize it takes several real hours to progress beyond that point you spent the majority of it in very long conversations with those two about things that matter little to none to anything in the story and is basically background information.
C) Over-arch/subplot balance. In the first portion there’s a decent balance between the bigger story in the prison about delving into the greater mystery (could use more in my opinion though) and the various subplots in the past that are being explored. By the time you reach the content you left in after the part that was removed it’s pretty much non-existent. I really had no connection anymore as to what this whole thing was about, there was no reason to go back to the prison (got tired of trying to figure out the Xandria dialog sequence) and I was just running around doing small fetch quests to just check off the list in the journal.
2. Explaining more: At this time there appear to be 3 content sections; [Section 1] Content up to where you help the prefects with their problems, [Section 2] Missing, seems is being rewritten, and [Section 3] from where you pick a Waifu and end up reaching the end of 8.5b. If you’re going to remove section 2 you should also remove section 3 until 2 is ready to be reinserted. Leaving section 3 in is very disorienting and presents poorly overall. I feel you didn’t want to also remove section 3 because it would appear as though development was going backwards and there being less tangible content to see would hurt.
3. I saved the game prior to enabling the cheats but have found out that doesn’t help. However, I know exactly which scenes were unlocked for the main 4:
Daphne: None. I chose her as the Waifu so she was gone. 0 scenes for the one I wanted to see the most scenes of… see the issue?
Hermione: 1, the Halloween Event.
Luna: 2, Drinking Surprise & Halloween Event.
Susan: 3, Drinking Surprise, Inner Rod Punishment, & Halloween event.
My guess is that a lot of the scenes are triggered in section 2 (the missing one) or are a result of buying gifts that I had no intention of grinding coins to afford.
Thanks for replying, hopefully this provides you some helpful insight and I wish you success in the project. Would really like to check back and see a final release to buy.