Hah, glad you liked it. That section gets very mixed reviews, as some people have no problem navigating it, and others are totally unable to. Not completely sure why. Regardless, it was essentially a test to see if I could make something like that, with flashlight activated jumpscares and stuff. Sasha's story heavily revolves around that sort of stuff, so this won't be the last ghost hunt. Though the next one will have a VN version in it from the start instead of getting one almost a year later, and the sandbox version will work differently from the first one.
Hello Mr. Atemsiel. It's me again. I hope you remember me from my last really long comment a few months ago. I have just finished palying the current version of the game. I unlocked everything there is to unlock and got possibly every combination of choices i could think of. I have to say, my opinion of this game just keeps improving as the updates come.
I don't have much criticism this time around. Just one comment and two questions.
I really like your style of writing. The highlight of this update for me was the scene in which Olivia is getting pestered by Ashley and Paige. So far Olivia has been portrayed as an incredible bitch that is just a pain to be around. But in this scene we get to see her in her backfoot and being kinda of uncomfortable. It really does a lot to expand her character. I think one of the hallmarks of good writing is multifaceted characters. People aren't one dimensional and no one fits nicely into any specific box, so it's nice when characters in fiction are the same way.
What is the planned scope for the game? and how far along would you say it is, percentage wise? The game is already quite long (in terms of duration) and big (in terms of content) but where the story is right now, it makes me think we're not even a third of the way done. So how long is this supposed to be?
And last i wanted to formerly ask for a feature (which might be really hard to implement). And that is the possibility to jump to any point of the story and be able to choose all of the choices you could've made up to this point. Maybe like a screen with all the different choices that have happened up to that point and you could just pick the answers. The way the game is right now, it's really annoying to sometimes have to go back the entire game, sometimes, just to get a scene on a progression path i would otherwise have no interest on. And while this might be because the game is not finished, it kinda just wastes a lot of time with me just holding the CTRL key down to skip all the stuff i've seen already, just to get to the one part where i get to make a different choice. While this can be, and is, alleviated by having name saves, it still is a problem when one progression path relies on multiple choices. So if i have a save at one choice, but i needed to have made a different choice earlier and i don't have a save for that, i still need to go back all the way and skip through stuff.
But anyway that's all from me. Thanks for reading all the way.
I'm glad you like the scene with Olivia. She's probably one of my favourite characters simply due to her being a super bitch, which makes her fun to write, but that would get old quick if that were all she was. She's gonna be fun for me.
Scope is a bit nuts. I have no idea percentage wise but assuming I can afford to do so, I expect I'll be making this for quite some years yet. When I started making it I didn't start with "I want to make adult games" in mind. Instead it was more like "I want to make this game" and basically put my all into it. One of the goals for it is I want it to have a fairly ridiculous amount of content by the time it's done. The actual midgame starts once you're on a route with all the girls, so right now we're still in the early game. It won't be a quick game to make at all.
With regard to your feature request, while technically possible I expect it would be a massive pain to actually include just based on the way the game is actually built. I'd have to restructure a lot of it to make the feature work, when in theory the only people using it would be people who want to see all the scenes, but aren't aware that there's a gallery unlocker right at the end. The game isn't really designed with the FOMO crowd in mind, and is instead intended for multiple playthroughs once it's done. I might include a feature like this at some point, but not while I'm still putting all of my available time into making the actual content.
There's no 0.22.07 due to the new versioning. Instead, next update is 0.23.1 which was meant to be released in December. Unfortunately, life happens, so the update didn't. I'm hoping to get it released to patrons later this month. Finishing off the last sex scene for it now, and then I have various things to fix and polish. It's as shorter update than the last one because updates are now being split into smaller updates with detailed changelogs so people can decide whether it's worth it for them to play and update, or wait for the next one.
Some vn authors really are out there giving the mc's the most depressing back stories just for them to turn all the women in a school into sex slaves bruh
welp with his mother out of the way, when will his sister that has been locked away since birth because of a super misterious superpower, get introduced and how long will it take till we can fuck her?
This usually only happens if you're using a save that was made prior to 0.22. However, once the 0.22 content starts (At the start of day 11) it will fix itself. If this describes your situation, then you'll either need to basically just not use the character profile screen until the morning of day 11, or start a new save.
"Enjoy the game, and if you like it, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. Or don't. Times are tough right now (written in 2022, let's hope things get better.)
(Update in 2023, things did not get better, good god)"
Love the variety in how the girls look, but it feels kinda surface-level. Like, they all seem to have the exact same body type... Now, I'm not gonna say "where's the muscles and fat girls," since I know that can be difficult for a lot of artists, but it just would've been nice to see a greater variety in breast size and butt or hips.
That said, this is a great inclusion of nuances in scenes mattering and casual LGBT identities. <3
Heh, yeah this is intentional. It's not really intended as a "something for everyone" game, but rather a game intended for people who like the same stuff as me. This is why all the girls are 18 to mid 20s, slim, relatively short with small to what I'd call "realistically large breasts". (Sasha and Taliya really. Not massive chests, but I think it would be wrong to call them medium)
I prefer to try to differentiate the characters through their personalities, though how successfully I do that is up for debate.
Hey, understandable. I'm an erotic writer and my preference is big booba (despite being flat-chested myself). When I write more two-person romance stuff, I tend to stick to a curvy, busty leading lady. But when I write a larger cast, I try to give more variety both because it helps me differentiate the characters better and because I can write more variety of scenes involving things that might be unique to the different body types. But that's just what I do, and what I prefer, and I would never begrudge anyone for writing or creating what they like or are comfortable with.
And hey, props to you for properly recognizing the concept that is "medium-sized breasts."
Any plans for a android version? Would love to try it.
EDIT: ended up playing it on my pc. I can see why there is no android version. But all that aside the game looks great and i like the humor. Also just love how chill the dad is.
Great game, and I will say, I really like your casual inclusion of LGBT+ identities, with Cassie being openly bisexual and Riley being demisexual. As a queer person myself, I think you did a really good job with those inclusions, so a big thumbs up there. It's definitely a top notch VN regardless, but those aspects being so well handled is an even bigger bump in my personal enjoyment of the game.
Glad you liked it, it's always gonna be a bit of a contentious matter regarding the handling of that sort of stuff, given it's a porn game and it's very easy to slip into the realm of fetishisation rather than representation. I'm essentially trying to do both. I wanted lesbian scenes in the game, but figured that if I was gonna do it, I have to at least have it make some sense by having the characters actually identify such that they would be into it. The important thing for me is that characters who are something, are still that thing even if they player makes choices that result in it not really being explored. The exception to this is that because it's a porn game, it's likely that if the player pushes the plot in this direction, the canonically straight girls will end up not so straight. This is of course ridiculous by real world standards, but it's a porn game, and doing this means I can have a lot more scene variety and potentially interesting relationship dynamics between the characters, so whatever.
I generally just wanna try to be as respectful as I can to any nationalities or sexual orientations I happen to include, whilst keeping it very much in the realm of dumb porn game logic. That is to say, we're probably not gonna be seeing Sasha riding around on a bear drinking vodka, and we're probably not gonna see any non straight characters suddenly turn fully straight due to exposure to MC's magic protagonist dick or whatever. I wanna at least keep it somewhat consistent.
You've done a great job, honestly. It didn't feel forced or pushed down your throat or anything of the sort, it was just .. there. Like a normal thing, which it is. Didn't distract from the main story, didn't take up 3 plot lines to cover, it was just a thing.
Very good so far. Good characters, great dialogue, SUPERB goofy comedy (very big W) and the story seems interesting so far. Im also surprised by how similar it sounded to The Headmaster, Yet how it was very different (in a great way). I hate when these games make you act like the bad guy or make you do something stupid, so being able to NOT do some things is a huge win for me personally. Dont like seeing the MC's face but other than that? Great game. (p.s *spoiler*.............................................................................................................. Great now could we get more ghost hunting? i actually really liked that part, very spooky scary)
Hah, thanks man. The game was always kinda intended to be like how the headmaster would be if I were making it. I love the concept, but I'd have made many changes if it were me, so here we have Stormside. I figured there would be no point in making a game that was just the same thing, because if that's what I wanted, then I might as well just play the Headmaster. MC's face is something I would likely remove if I were making certain parts of the game again, but instead I'm just showing it less from now on. And yes, more ghost hunts on the way. The next one is planned to be more extensive than the previous, though I don't know exactly when that'll be coming out. Glad you liked it :D
The game's plot develops very quickly, and content appears very often and in unexpected places. And it is often very original and interesting. And there is a lot of content, I played 18 hours, and if you judge by the gallery, I only completed 40% (but I read slowly). I recommend 👍
Actually kind of incredible. The game seems far from being finished, but even so it's probably one of the best of these types of games I've played. Looking forward to future updates.
Wow I've stumbled onto a real gem here. My only problem with the game is that we see the mc which kind of ruins the immersion for me, any chance well get an option to change that in the future? The amount of choices and quality of life options we already get are great so this would be the icing on the cake. Other than that though great job man and I'm exited to see where this game will go :)
Unlikely that the 3rd person perspective will be removed simply because it allows for more interesting camera angles, and also half the sex scenes are almost unwatchable in first person in this case. However, I decided a couple versions ago to significantly reduce how often his face shows up the way it does near the start of the game (It does still show up sometimes though). If I had time, there are many things I'd change about the start of the game, but I prefer to spend the time I have on making new stuff instead. But yeah, sometimes I gotta use 3rd person for sex scenes some positions really just don't look very good at all in first person. Like imagine a pronebone where MC has the girl in basically a chokehold. Your view would be like, maybe an extreme closeup of the back of her head or something. It's also useful for when MC is doing something that requires him to be behind a girl, but I wanna show the girl's face for whatever reason. So yeah, it's not likely to be a feature I add, sorry about that.
That aside, I'm glad you enjoyed the rest :D More choices and probably quality of life stuff on the way in future versions too. Currently working on a way to let people filter save files based on which route you're on in that save. The same way the scene gallery filter works, except it'll be like "Show me all saves where I'm on Hikari's Romance route, but Riley's Submission route". Considering how many options there are, I wanna make it as easy as possible for people who like to experience everything to keep their saves organised. For now, we just have the save hover thing.
Yeah that makes sense. In fairness I don't mind when I just see the back or side of his head, Its just the close ups of his face which are slightly annoying in my opinion, but good to hear that it will be less frequent.
Also having saves separated by playthrough would be awesome, I wish more games did that. There's already so many quality of life features which are fantastic though. I really like how much description there is for the choices. And the option to remove lesbian content is a great feature. The more options the better so everyone can enjoy. Great to see a dev that really cares about their game :)
I play a lot of these kinda games, and more often than not I find myself disappointed. This however is not one of those times. Character designs, animations, sound, my guy you have nailed them all. story and setting is a tiny bit on the weak side but given the plot I totally get it. I see much potential for this to be something even more awesome in future, and i honestly cant wait till you complete the project. honestly i wish i had found it once you were done cuz id probably have finished it in one sitting lol. job very very well done bud, cant wait to see what the future holds
Hah, thanks man :D The whole point of the game when I started making it was to make a game that was basically the sort of thing I already liked, just with none of the stuff I don't like. Namely, lack of animation, sound, choice. All that stuff. I figured it couldn't be all that hard to do, so I just decided to try it. I was right, it isn't that hard technically, but it does take ages.... I have no idea how devs who are making multiple games at the same time do it. Just one is plenty lol.
I like the whole punishment school thing, so kinda just wanted to do my version of it. Originally this was just gonna be a fuckfest game, so I didn't even really have a plan for a main plot or whatever, but I found after the first release that I kinda wanted to change that, so I made one up. Turns out writing is pretty fun, lots of fun stuff planned.
Great game so far. Any plans of adding more to sex stats? Maybe a count of how many times they have been fingered or received cunnilingus? Or even a count of how many lesbian encounters they have had?
No current plans. When I first implemented them it was because I just figured it might be fun, but then I decided to implement them into the gameplay itself. Despite how obviously BS the science behind the collars and chips must be, I think I kinda set myself a limit for what would actually be recorded with them. I didn't really want it to get too specific. Plus, it's kinda nuts how much people read into these stats so if I were to add new ones I'd have to think about historical data. I don't really wanna deal with people losing their minds over things that happened before the game again, so for the most part I just let players fill in the gaps themselves or with context provided by the game. (Such as the Riley/Cassie stuff. You don't know how many times they've fooled about in the past, but it also doesn't really matter.)
Fair enough. I just figured the lesbian counter would be kind of hot or could possibly lead into more story content. Like if one of the characters had a number, then it could be something we question and lead into a girl's background story, like if they had a previous girlfriend or something.
Didn't realize people had problems with the stats when they could just erase it when they get a new phone. Thanks for the answer though.
Yeahhhhh it's a little nuts to me how hung up on the fine details some people get. That's not the only reason though. It's also a UI thing. Adding more would mean reconfiguring the UI somewhat because making the font smaller would make it quite hard to read imo. With regard to the lesbian thing specifically, I prefer to have that sort of thing come up through the story. I don't really like to label characters as potentially lesbian or bisexual just for porn game reasons. Instead, there's gotta be a plan for why they swing that way from a story perspective. It's hard to explain without spoilers, but basically I don't really want to treat bisexuality as a fetish, instead I just want to feature any characters who happen to not be straight just as characters who happen to be that way, and portray that aspect of them when needed outside of just using it as a justification for lesbian content. Easier said than done since I'm not a writer, but it's what I want to do long term anyway. Whilst I do think it's fun to give little bits of story through the sexual stats, I don't want to form too complete of a picture with them, or at least not yet. Who knows for future? Certainly not me...
Of course, it's still a porn game so it's also planned that if you push for it you can get basically any of the girls to engage in lesbian type stuff, which does complicate my plan for the portrayal of bisexuality, but I'll tackle that at a later date.
I hope the time where we can collar someone comes soon!
Also, please let us give Logan some love! Doesn't have to be with Akemi or Hikari, but why not with one of the second year girls? Just imagine, someone does something bad, and you offer them the out of going out with Logan to not be punished. It'd be hilarious for the dude to be happy, without registering the implication that being with him counts as a punishment haha
Heh, I've gotta admit this is a first xD. Nobody tends to want Logan to get anyone, mostly because of how he is. Admittedly, he's probably not gonna end up with any of the existing characters, but that's not to say a character won't be introduced specifically for him, who won't stick around long enough for the player to really get attached. No current plans, but I think if he were to end up with someone, it would have to be someone the player hasn't had any opportunity to become attached to.
Also, you can actually collar both Sasha and Riley by the end of 0.22, so we're getting there ;D
Hi, I know in the intro you warned about scrolling forward causing issues. I noticed that I may have incurred a flickering in overlay (like when the onion is found, screen flickering to black background)
It may be an artifact of my graphics card, its drivers, or that I maxed out VRAM usage in the settings.
Oh that's not about the scrolling, that is a graphical issue relating to alpha masks, which are only used in the game for the onion animation.
One potential fix though, press shift-G in game, and change the renderer to angle2. After that, close the game and try again. I've heard this fixes it in most cases, but I'm unsure what other effects it has. The flickering issue is unfortunately hardware specific as far as I know.
I believe it is either caused by incompatibility on the graphics side with Ren’Py.This is unlikely, IMO, unless you approached the overlay differently than other people have, as I don’t see the same artifact in their animations, and they certainly use animated overlays and containing alpha.
Alternately, I noticed that this issue was emergent; for the first 6 or 7 onions it was fine, then started to be an issue. This points to it being a garbage collection or memory issue. Thinking back through the use leading up to the behavior, I did review the onion images a number of times. Moreover, when it started to happen on the 8th onion, I scrolled back before the onion to the phone and the onion was still flashing and animating which seems to indicate a possible scripting issue, I think with triggered events.
Hmmm, an interesting problem. I have only ever had this reported when it comes to alpha masks for videos, but generally speaking the difference is that you either have one, or you don't. It's possible that the actual file format of the video makes a difference. I'm using webm, so maybe it makes a difference for mp4 or something along those lines. I don't get these issues at all though so it's quite hard for me to test.
Ren'Py is meant to handle garbage collection by itself, and unfortunately doesn't have a massive amount of tools to debug something like that, but what I may do in future to avoid this is just create an ATL version of the same animation (Basically a simple version that can be played as an alternative) that people can swap to if they start to get issues with the animation on their system. It's one of those things I could probably pour 20 hours into and not fix, so instead I think I'll just make a setting to allow people who get the issue to essentially disable it. I'll likely do that for 0.23. Thanks for the report, and I hope that aside from the flashing issue that you've been enjoying the game so far.
Yeah, it’s been an interesting take, given the disparate paths for content.
One interesting thing I noticed that pointed to some sort of memory issue (though likely not exclusively garbage collection) is that, since the emergence of the flashing to black background on the onions, there has also been a sing flash to a girl’s static picture, in a pose from earlier, near the beginning of a sex scene with said girl. Though Python doesn’t handle these the same way it seems like a single frame during playback is referencing the incorrect memory location. I’ll follow up in your discord if I can localize ift for you.
When you say near the beginning of sex scenes, they wouldn't happen to be right as an animation of some sort starts, would they? Usually that's a case of the video being called, but not actually loading immediately, resulting in it removing the current image and showing the one below for a brief moment before the animation starts. Ren'Py isn't great at playing video, but I hear there's some new updates out that help with that, so I'm looking into converting it at the moment.
i get this in a lot of games. i always thought of it as if the frame hadnt unloaded, and was still in the background (kinda how gifs can be layered in the background), which then flicks up on screen when loading a new scene takes more than a split second
Turns out there's actually a 2GB limit on android builds, so I straight up can't do it. I do hear that joiplay works though. I may still make a version for android at some point, but you'd have to use joiplay for it to work.
Yep, there's a bug with that one at the moment, but it's fixed in the version being released in a week (Which also gives players the ability to unlock all onions at the end in addition to scenes)
I wouldn't worry too much though, that particular onion isn't that spicy.
Are there any plans or possibility to make the MC a choosable option. The already installed mc or a futa variant for those who prefer futa/fem characters?
Hi there. Currently no, and to be honest it's very unlikely, mostly because I'm personally not into futa stuff, and it's hard to motivate yourself to make content you're uninterested in. (That's ignoring the significant increase in work that'd require.)
Hopefully this isn't a dealbreaker for you, but if it is, I understand.
Heh, glad you like what you've played so far. Flynn is a good guy. Like how my characters have shown up in his game, at some point some of his will be showing up in mine, so that'll be fun. (Not yet though. Flynn works waaaaay faster than me. I can't keep up lmao)
Hello Mr. (or Ms.) Atemsiel. I have just finished playing your game and i gotta say i really enjoyed it. This kind of game where the story can change drastically based on your choices is one of my favorite types of games. Specially if there are delayed consequences to your choices, so you can't just try out all of the alternatives and see everything. It really makes you think what the possible consequences of making a choice could be. It's really fun when you come back around for the second time and a completely different interaction happens if you just choose to say something different. But it must be a pain in the ass to write. That said i have some constructive criticism to make.
The first one is my only problem with the writing so far. I think that Hikari warms up to you a little too fast. Even if you choose the most lovey dovey options for her available i still don't think it makes sense for her personality type. On top of that i specially don't think it makes sense for her to initiate that kiss at the end of her date. For a girl that is so shy and has never had a boyfriend before i don't think it makes sense for her to be this brave and this forward. It kinda took me out of it a little bit.
The second problem is the performance. The perfomance was really poor in most of the scenes with animations. I don't know if this is something you can fix but it looks like the game primarily uses the CPU to handle the 3d graphics, which might be the cause of the bad performance.
And my last problem is with a softlock that can occur. If you end up getting to Sasha's punishment scene and you said to Riley that you don't want to go to the party, no matter how you choose to play out Sasha's punishment the game just breaks. Every time you finish the scene it goes back to the beginning to play out again and it just keeps repeating. The only way i found to get out of it was to go back to a previous save and just tell Riley you want to go to the party.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings! Really excited for the next update!
Heh, glad you liked it. Next update shouldn't be long now. Patrons should get it before the end of the month, so it should show up here about 2 weeks after that. I'll respond to the criticisms because I think they're fair, but I have some things to say about them.
With regard to Hikari, I actually agree with you to a certain extent. The issue I have is that for her actual personality type, writing her totally realistically would mean that you basically get no Hikari content for ages. At its core, this is a fuckfest game, lots of sex scenes, so sometimes I end up having to write things in certain ways to facilitate that. It's a balancing act really. On one hand, it doesn't make too much sense for her (Or any of the other girls) to become interested in MC as quickly as they do, but on the other hand, people will get bored if nothing happens with the girls for ages. Hikari's actions in that scene make a bit more sense if you have the same info I have about the future of the game, but obviously players don't have this, so it can't be used to justify it. The update to update development cycle doesn't help too much with this because it can mean that players following each update will have to wait months for some potential justification, while players in the future playing let's say version 0.9 or 1.0 may not have the same issue, as they'll have access to the full picture right away. Either way, if that was the only writing criticism you had, then I'll take it, Heh. Thanks.
The performance is an odd one. Some of the early scenes I did accidently have multiple videos playing over the top of each other, which I fix in the next version, but the later ones shouldn't have this issue. Unfortunately due to the game being a Ren'Py game, there isn't much I can do to improve performance beyond making sure that only one video is running at a time, because during animated scenes, that's basically all it's doing. Just playing a video file. You could potentially get better results by pressing shift-G in the game and selecting a different renderer option, but it may or may not do anything. Ren'Py is known to be pretty bad at playing video in general, and due to the amount of them that I have (As well as the way it transitions between them), I think it's fair to say that Stormside may have higher recommended specs than most other Ren'Py games. What those specs are though, I have no idea. It's very CPU based though, but that's just Ren'Py in general as far as I can tell.
The softlock. Yeah I just checked and I can see why this happens. Fixed in the next version. Thanks. I don't think I'll have time to make an actual scene for this specific instance, so instead the next day just starts, but if I get time I may make one at some point. I think the overwhelming majority of players do choose to go to the party with Riley though, so I might just sneak it into another version some time if I end up doing it. Though in fairness, the only thing that actually follows Sasha's punishment if you choose not to go to the party with Riley, is the end of the update, so I suppose it's not as though it softlocks you out of the rest of the content of the update, but instead it softlocks you out of that "Thanks for playing blah blah blah" bit at the end.
Either way, glad you liked what you played so far. 0.22 isn't far off at this point, and is currently the largest update. Somewhere between 15 and 20 animated sex scenes (I haven't updated the gallery yet, so I dunno exactly how many), 5000+ renders, 400+ animations, etc. Should be fun. At least until I hear from the "But why can't we get all the scenes in one playthrough crowd?" again.
In regards to the girls getting interested in the MC too quickly, i didn't find it weird for anyone else except Hikari. For Riley it makes sense since she's had a crush on him for years at this point so it's completely justified. For Cassie i think that her general behavior and her explanation that, she had been hearing about him for a year so she feels as if she'd known for a lot longer, are justification enough. Cassie is just generally very extroverted and easy to get a long with, so i didn't think it was weird. And for Sasha, i just thought she was a bit of weirdo so i didn't think about it too much. Hikari was the only one that rubbed me the wrong way.
A suggestion i have to deal with this (although it might be too late for that) is to make her relationship with the main character non-linear. As in, it starts slow at first but as soon as things get romantic/sexual it goes a lot quicker. I think it makes sense for her to be slow to trust people at first but get attached very quickly.
Also i had some questions i wanted to ask.
What was the correct typing of the ghost? I guessed 4B because it split up Sasha and I using an illusion, type 4. And it let itself be seen many times before it tried to attack, category B. But judging by the ending i got i guess i was wrong. So it left me wondering what the correct type was.
Will it actually be possible to achieve a game over state where you are replaced by Professor Brown as the magistrate? During the few punishment scenes that is something the main character keeps mentioning, so i assumed it was kind of a nudge to the player "you might not want to be too lenient cause the threats of being replaced aren't just threats you know". I wonder if it will be possible to continue being too lenient and eventually get a game over or if you'd rather force the player to be more strict so that doesn't happen.
Will there be any benefit to telling Cassie that she can't mess around with Riley? She asks that question no matter what route you choose at the beginning so i imagine it has long standing consequences. And although i did get every scene at the end, on my main playthrough i said no just because i thought to myself "the game probably wants me to say yes so i will say no". Will there be any scenes or maybe unique dialog that is a consequence of saying no to this?
And lastly, did you use google translate for the japanese in the few scenes where Akemi and Hikari are talking alone? I know a little bit of japanese and although the japanese text doesn't stay for very long it sounded kind of unnatural. Not something that an actual japanese person would write.
Howdy. Yeah, it's a bit late to make changes to Hikari's stuff, but that's ok. With her I'm hoping that her quick interest will start to make more sense as you learn more about her, but obviously with the fact that people get to play the game as it's being made, every now and then there'll be times where things will appear unintentional because there's no explanation for them currently in the game. I guess we'll see.
I haven't actually revealed the correct type of ghost anywhere. It's not even in the game files. What I will say is that there's no difference to the actual end of the ghost hunt regardless of whether you get it wrong or right, so there's truly no way to know at this stage. (The only difference is that the actual kill animation is different depending on what type you pick, as different chemicals produce different coloured flames. My personal favourite is the magnesium one.) The actual consequence for getting it wrong isn't planned to have massively negative effects, so I wouldn't worry about it too much if you got it wrong. Whether you did or not will be revealed after the update containing the consequences. Nice logic though. That whole section has been very divisive, and many players aren't even able to navigate it, much less actually try to take a real guess at what the ghost is. Unfortunately, fixing the navigation would basically mean redoing it, at the expense of new content, so instead I've made a VN version of it for the next update that players can pick if they want to basically experience the ghost hunt, but with the game itself controlling which room you go into, and where you shine the light.
No, I have no plans to actually let Professor Brown or Logan become the Magistrate at the moment. Even if I do make it possible, under no circumstances are either of them to be allowed to actually get their hands on the girls, partially because my core audience hates that sort of thing, and partially because I just don't want it to happen. I do like to tease consequences though. I don't really want to include game overs because in my mind they're a bit pointless in a game like this. It just forces a player to reload a save and do things differently, which I'm hoping they'll do just to see everything, rather than being forced to due to a game over. Additionally, I don't want to force players to do punishments if they're not interested in that. Punishing the girls primarily changes your character dynamic with them, but the effects of doing so will start to become more apparent later in the game. Telling Cassie not to mess with Riley is only really there as a choice for players who don't want to see lesbian content. You'll end up getting the choice for basically every combination of girls, because maybe some people want Riley for themselves, but would be fine letting Cassie and Taliya play or something. Hell, in the next update, there's even a way to tell Cassie she can play with Riley, but tell Riley she can't play with Cassie, which will result in Cassie getting rejected and being confused next time she tries something. The choice does affect dialogue in many cases as well, but it's primarily there as a lesbian content toggle, per character combination. If you wanna see lesbian stuff, there's no reason not to allow it. While the game will branch a bunch, there'll be no weird stuff like an ending where Cassie steals all the girls or whatever.
Yep, all that Japanese is just google translate, specifically because I knew it was only gonna appear very briefly, and while it was possible that someone might actually read it and notice that it's super unnatural, it wasn't really worth the time for me to get it properly translated. The fact that you're the first person to ever actually mention it kinda proves my point xD. I do change some of them sometimes to remove unnecessary watashis or whatever, but it depends on time. Some of them are just outright wrong. I think there's one somewhere where the English line is something like "He quickly warmed up to the idea." and I just slapped it in google translate and ended up with "He quickly understood the concept of heating" or something. Considering there are 4 different versions of that conversation, and all the new lines have to be done manually due to how the effect works, I just decided that drawing out the process further by making sure all the translations were accurate and natural would have been a poor use of time.
Despite this, non English languages in general are something I aim to represent well, but for some of them that isn't possible at the moment. (For example, for a side character I have coming in future updates, I'd need professional Indonesian translation for her dialogue, but I don't have access to that yet. Translation can get expensive.) I still like to include characters from various places though, as part of their actual character, rather than just so I can say "I have a Japanese character. She's a ninja, because of course she is."
Sasha for example isn't meant to be a Russian caricature who drinks loads of vodka and has a pet bear or whatever. She just happens to be Russian, and I'm hoping some of the her more Russian traits her will shine through over time without them being just stereotypical traits. Little mannerisms and things. (Let's ignore the fact that she accidentally calls "hypothermia", "hippophobia" despite hypothermia being basically the same word in both languages. I just did that for fun.) Luckily for me, I have a Russian guy in my Discord who's super helpful when it comes to making Sasha sound more natural, as well as educating me on various Russian culture topics that I can use for her character. For example, the ghost guide that she wrote for the player uses British English. This is because apparently when Russians are taught English in any official capacity like school or whatever, they're taught British English rather than American English. Self taught Russians may learn American English as it's a lot more common in media, so whether or not someone uses British or American spelling may give a bit of a hint as to how they learned English. Sasha uses British, so it implies that either she learned her English in school, or that she copied that guide from someone who did. The latter being the more likely of the two, as the English in the ghost guide doesn't include as many English mistakes as Sasha makes, so it's likely that it's something she copied from somewhere, possibly something her mother wrote once. Obviously, this is unimportant to the plot, and I doubt anyone will really notice, but that's fine. I like little things like this.
I may go back and make the Japanese statements more correct at some point, but it's more likely that I'll address the length of them, because they're kinda supposed to be roughly the same length as the English sentences, so that the translation effect applies properly. Otherwise it looks a bit odd. In hindsight, I could have just made a random kanji generator and have it match the English characters exactly, which is similar to something I use in the next update, but I decided instead to have them at least be kind of the right sentences. The effect is purely there to show that their conversation is taking place in another language, but the player needs to be able to understand it. (Which isn't always the case. If a non English language isn't translated in game, and a character doesn't then tell MC what was said, it means it wasn't important enough for the player to need to know.)
I really appreciate you adding a VN version of the ghost hunt. I don't really like horror stuff but i didn't want to skip it so i was shitting my pants the entire time. I did find the navigation confusing but it wasn't too bad. I just meant i had to look at the map after every step until i got my bearings and could go where i wanted without needing to check the map.
I don't find it surprising that nobody noticed the japanese stuff, this is the kinda bullshit that only really i notice. I am really detail oriented so i look for this kind of stuff almost unconsciously. Another example of some bullshit detail that i noticed and i doubt any one else has, is that, in the scene where Riley goes to the sex shop alone the sound effect of Raven's footsteps don't match what she's wearing. It sounds like she's wearing high heels but when she turns around the corner she's wearing sneakers. I just sat there looking at her shoes thinking "why would you deceive me like this?" but i recognize i doesn't actually matter so it's not that big of a deal.
Also at the very end of the update, unless the ghost is staring at you from a closet inside the room, i'm pretty sure the positioning of the bed in the room is incorrect. The bed is touching the left wall with the foot of the bed facing the door, which is not how it was positioned in the previous scene.
Actually, whoever's watching them at the end is doing so from outside the window, so the the door is just to the left of the bed, but it's obscured by the curtains. If you reject Riley, it will show you a different animation that kinda shows it a bit more. (But don't reject Riley because that would make her sad, and she's best girl.)
Not officially at the moment, but I've bumped it up in my priority list, and I'm hoping to be able to release 0.22 as an android version when it comes out. (Not guaranteed. I haven't finished making the content for the update yet)
Full harem, but with solo routes technically supported. (Though playing the game for solo routes will massively decrease the amount of content you get, even when the game is eventually finished. It's designed to be a harem game primarily.)
Heh, yeah, there's quite a few downloads because people requested different file hosts, and the game is too big to have itch host it. Hope you like it now that you've find your right link.
First nice game love it second fuck and sasha you need to make horror games to holy shit you legit dont know whats about to happen im saying like this cause i dont want to spoil it but hint for those who cant find the key. Gamers never look up all i can say
I'm not currently working on an official mobile version, since it's taking enough time already just to make the regular version of the game. (Might become a possibility if I get to go full time at some point).
However, I've heard reports that the game does work with joiplay, and that some people have used that successfully to play through the whole game on mobile. I haven't tried it myself, so I'll just paste below what one of these people said on my Discord.
"Hey it does run! To whoever is reading this and unable to run the game on Joiplay (crashes during startup), check if Joiplay and the Renpy plug-in is up to date. The app on Google Play was last updated 2 years ago, so go grab both the app and the plugin on Joiplay official website or Patreon."
Hopefully this gives you enough info to get it working :D
IT WORKED! I AM ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME IN MOBILE USING JOIPLAY!
All I did was download the Windows version of Stormside and then extracted the file while putting it in the "Downloads" folder.
The next thing I did was to download Joiplay and the Renp'y Plug-in for Joiplay.
After that, I opened the Joiplay app, clicked the "+" symbol, clicked the "Downloads" folder, clicked the Stormside Game File, and then, voila~! I accepted this and that AND FINALLY~! I CAN PLAY THE GAME ON MOBILE NOWWWWW~! WOOOHOOOOO
Thank god you told me about this sir/mam. I wouldn't be able to continue my journey in your amazing AVN if you didn't tell me about Joiplay T_T
Well, that's all for me. Imma become a Patreon of yours along with some of my other favorites Honey Select Devs when the time comes. (I'm poor for now and saving for a new laptop T_T)
Extra Note: I hope my comment can also hep some of y'all if you're in a similar situation to mine.
Hehe, great news. If you get any crashes or whatever feel free to let me know. I don't really test or make the game for mobile, so I don't know what issues you might face, but we'll see. (If you make it to the ghost hunt, make sure you save before, because I can't really work out how it would be playable on mobile, but it's skippable)
Speaking of, I don't know how far through you are, but if you haven't got to the conversation at the cafe yet, just know that there's an error there which will mention something about sayer waitress. Just press ignore on this error. It's fixed in 0.22 (When that comes out)
From what I understand, it does work, but you need to have the latest version of joiplay, as well as the renpy plugin. Apparently the version on the google store is 2 years old.
I haven't tested joiplay or any mobile builds in general, so I don't know how well it works. This is just what someone in my Discord has told me.
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Atemsiel. That ghost hunting part was awesome. I didn't expect the sandbox to be so detailed. It was like a completely different game!
Hah, glad you liked it. That section gets very mixed reviews, as some people have no problem navigating it, and others are totally unable to. Not completely sure why. Regardless, it was essentially a test to see if I could make something like that, with flashlight activated jumpscares and stuff. Sasha's story heavily revolves around that sort of stuff, so this won't be the last ghost hunt. Though the next one will have a VN version in it from the start instead of getting one almost a year later, and the sandbox version will work differently from the first one.
Hello Mr. Atemsiel. It's me again. I hope you remember me from my last really long comment a few months ago. I have just finished palying the current version of the game. I unlocked everything there is to unlock and got possibly every combination of choices i could think of. I have to say, my opinion of this game just keeps improving as the updates come.
I don't have much criticism this time around. Just one comment and two questions.
I really like your style of writing. The highlight of this update for me was the scene in which Olivia is getting pestered by Ashley and Paige. So far Olivia has been portrayed as an incredible bitch that is just a pain to be around. But in this scene we get to see her in her backfoot and being kinda of uncomfortable. It really does a lot to expand her character. I think one of the hallmarks of good writing is multifaceted characters. People aren't one dimensional and no one fits nicely into any specific box, so it's nice when characters in fiction are the same way.
What is the planned scope for the game? and how far along would you say it is, percentage wise? The game is already quite long (in terms of duration) and big (in terms of content) but where the story is right now, it makes me think we're not even a third of the way done. So how long is this supposed to be?
And last i wanted to formerly ask for a feature (which might be really hard to implement). And that is the possibility to jump to any point of the story and be able to choose all of the choices you could've made up to this point. Maybe like a screen with all the different choices that have happened up to that point and you could just pick the answers. The way the game is right now, it's really annoying to sometimes have to go back the entire game, sometimes, just to get a scene on a progression path i would otherwise have no interest on. And while this might be because the game is not finished, it kinda just wastes a lot of time with me just holding the CTRL key down to skip all the stuff i've seen already, just to get to the one part where i get to make a different choice. While this can be, and is, alleviated by having name saves, it still is a problem when one progression path relies on multiple choices. So if i have a save at one choice, but i needed to have made a different choice earlier and i don't have a save for that, i still need to go back all the way and skip through stuff.
But anyway that's all from me. Thanks for reading all the way.
Also when does 22.07 drop? 👀
Hi there, sorry for the late response.
I'm glad you like the scene with Olivia. She's probably one of my favourite characters simply due to her being a super bitch, which makes her fun to write, but that would get old quick if that were all she was. She's gonna be fun for me.
Scope is a bit nuts. I have no idea percentage wise but assuming I can afford to do so, I expect I'll be making this for quite some years yet. When I started making it I didn't start with "I want to make adult games" in mind. Instead it was more like "I want to make this game" and basically put my all into it. One of the goals for it is I want it to have a fairly ridiculous amount of content by the time it's done. The actual midgame starts once you're on a route with all the girls, so right now we're still in the early game. It won't be a quick game to make at all.
With regard to your feature request, while technically possible I expect it would be a massive pain to actually include just based on the way the game is actually built. I'd have to restructure a lot of it to make the feature work, when in theory the only people using it would be people who want to see all the scenes, but aren't aware that there's a gallery unlocker right at the end. The game isn't really designed with the FOMO crowd in mind, and is instead intended for multiple playthroughs once it's done. I might include a feature like this at some point, but not while I'm still putting all of my available time into making the actual content.
There's no 0.22.07 due to the new versioning. Instead, next update is 0.23.1 which was meant to be released in December. Unfortunately, life happens, so the update didn't. I'm hoping to get it released to patrons later this month. Finishing off the last sex scene for it now, and then I have various things to fix and polish. It's as shorter update than the last one because updates are now being split into smaller updates with detailed changelogs so people can decide whether it's worth it for them to play and update, or wait for the next one.
Some vn authors really are out there giving the mc's the most depressing back stories just for them to turn all the women in a school into sex slaves bruh
Certainly does help reduce the amount of messages I get asking when MC is gonna bang his own mother though.
welp with his mother out of the way, when will his sister that has been locked away since birth because of a super misterious superpower, get introduced and how long will it take till we can fuck her?
I really enjoy the humour in this game, can't wait for the update
Would this work in the joiplay app for android?
Love it can't wait for next update
Cant install for some reason sadly... was really looking forward to this game
try re downloading it, worked for me after that.
可以弄一个安卓版本吗 谢谢你 很喜欢这种类型
can you and a itch app compatible download
W Game so far! Hikari trying to do a pushup was funny asf.
Keep up the good work :D
I can't open the character bios and I'm too stupid to understand Ren'Py :(
This usually only happens if you're using a save that was made prior to 0.22. However, once the 0.22 content starts (At the start of day 11) it will fix itself. If this describes your situation, then you'll either need to basically just not use the character profile screen until the morning of day 11, or start a new save.
Oh, okay, thanks :) That's pretty much my case. I started playing 0.21 and then I noticed there's a 0.22 already so I continued there
i cant extract game it says its invalid im on pc
never mind fixed it somehow lol
"Enjoy the game, and if you like it, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. Or don't. Times are tough right now (written in 2022, let's hope things get better.)
(Update in 2023, things did not get better, good god)"
Relatable.
Hope everything goes smoothly here on out. This game sounds similar to this other game hope its giod
Love the variety in how the girls look, but it feels kinda surface-level. Like, they all seem to have the exact same body type... Now, I'm not gonna say "where's the muscles and fat girls," since I know that can be difficult for a lot of artists, but it just would've been nice to see a greater variety in breast size and butt or hips.
That said, this is a great inclusion of nuances in scenes mattering and casual LGBT identities. <3
Heh, yeah this is intentional. It's not really intended as a "something for everyone" game, but rather a game intended for people who like the same stuff as me. This is why all the girls are 18 to mid 20s, slim, relatively short with small to what I'd call "realistically large breasts". (Sasha and Taliya really. Not massive chests, but I think it would be wrong to call them medium)
I prefer to try to differentiate the characters through their personalities, though how successfully I do that is up for debate.
Hey, understandable. I'm an erotic writer and my preference is big booba (despite being flat-chested myself). When I write more two-person romance stuff, I tend to stick to a curvy, busty leading lady. But when I write a larger cast, I try to give more variety both because it helps me differentiate the characters better and because I can write more variety of scenes involving things that might be unique to the different body types. But that's just what I do, and what I prefer, and I would never begrudge anyone for writing or creating what they like or are comfortable with.
And hey, props to you for properly recognizing the concept that is "medium-sized breasts."
Android pls
Android version please?!
Any plans for a android version? Would love to try it.
EDIT: ended up playing it on my pc. I can see why there is no android version. But all that aside the game looks great and i like the humor. Also just love how chill the dad is.
Great game, and I will say, I really like your casual inclusion of LGBT+ identities, with Cassie being openly bisexual and Riley being demisexual. As a queer person myself, I think you did a really good job with those inclusions, so a big thumbs up there. It's definitely a top notch VN regardless, but those aspects being so well handled is an even bigger bump in my personal enjoyment of the game.
Glad you liked it, it's always gonna be a bit of a contentious matter regarding the handling of that sort of stuff, given it's a porn game and it's very easy to slip into the realm of fetishisation rather than representation. I'm essentially trying to do both. I wanted lesbian scenes in the game, but figured that if I was gonna do it, I have to at least have it make some sense by having the characters actually identify such that they would be into it. The important thing for me is that characters who are something, are still that thing even if they player makes choices that result in it not really being explored. The exception to this is that because it's a porn game, it's likely that if the player pushes the plot in this direction, the canonically straight girls will end up not so straight. This is of course ridiculous by real world standards, but it's a porn game, and doing this means I can have a lot more scene variety and potentially interesting relationship dynamics between the characters, so whatever.
I generally just wanna try to be as respectful as I can to any nationalities or sexual orientations I happen to include, whilst keeping it very much in the realm of dumb porn game logic. That is to say, we're probably not gonna be seeing Sasha riding around on a bear drinking vodka, and we're probably not gonna see any non straight characters suddenly turn fully straight due to exposure to MC's magic protagonist dick or whatever. I wanna at least keep it somewhat consistent.
Well, from my point of view, you're succeeding at that goal so far. So good job there. 👍
You've done a great job, honestly. It didn't feel forced or pushed down your throat or anything of the sort, it was just .. there. Like a normal thing, which it is. Didn't distract from the main story, didn't take up 3 plot lines to cover, it was just a thing.
Very good so far. Good characters, great dialogue, SUPERB goofy comedy (very big W) and the story seems interesting so far. Im also surprised by how similar it sounded to The Headmaster, Yet how it was very different (in a great way). I hate when these games make you act like the bad guy or make you do something stupid, so being able to NOT do some things is a huge win for me personally. Dont like seeing the MC's face but other than that? Great game. (p.s *spoiler*.............................................................................................................. Great now could we get more ghost hunting? i actually really liked that part, very spooky scary)
Hah, thanks man. The game was always kinda intended to be like how the headmaster would be if I were making it. I love the concept, but I'd have made many changes if it were me, so here we have Stormside. I figured there would be no point in making a game that was just the same thing, because if that's what I wanted, then I might as well just play the Headmaster. MC's face is something I would likely remove if I were making certain parts of the game again, but instead I'm just showing it less from now on. And yes, more ghost hunts on the way. The next one is planned to be more extensive than the previous, though I don't know exactly when that'll be coming out. Glad you liked it :D
The game's plot develops very quickly, and content appears very often and in unexpected places. And it is often very original and interesting. And there is a lot of content, I played 18 hours, and if you judge by the gallery, I only completed 40% (but I read slowly). I recommend 👍
ok ph. Your character seems nice though. Actually I'm making one same kind of game myself lol...
Actually kind of incredible. The game seems far from being finished, but even so it's probably one of the best of these types of games I've played. Looking forward to future updates.
Wow I've stumbled onto a real gem here. My only problem with the game is that we see the mc which kind of ruins the immersion for me, any chance well get an option to change that in the future? The amount of choices and quality of life options we already get are great so this would be the icing on the cake. Other than that though great job man and I'm exited to see where this game will go :)
Unlikely that the 3rd person perspective will be removed simply because it allows for more interesting camera angles, and also half the sex scenes are almost unwatchable in first person in this case. However, I decided a couple versions ago to significantly reduce how often his face shows up the way it does near the start of the game (It does still show up sometimes though). If I had time, there are many things I'd change about the start of the game, but I prefer to spend the time I have on making new stuff instead. But yeah, sometimes I gotta use 3rd person for sex scenes some positions really just don't look very good at all in first person. Like imagine a pronebone where MC has the girl in basically a chokehold. Your view would be like, maybe an extreme closeup of the back of her head or something. It's also useful for when MC is doing something that requires him to be behind a girl, but I wanna show the girl's face for whatever reason. So yeah, it's not likely to be a feature I add, sorry about that.
That aside, I'm glad you enjoyed the rest :D
More choices and probably quality of life stuff on the way in future versions too. Currently working on a way to let people filter save files based on which route you're on in that save. The same way the scene gallery filter works, except it'll be like "Show me all saves where I'm on Hikari's Romance route, but Riley's Submission route". Considering how many options there are, I wanna make it as easy as possible for people who like to experience everything to keep their saves organised. For now, we just have the save hover thing.
Yeah that makes sense. In fairness I don't mind when I just see the back or side of his head, Its just the close ups of his face which are slightly annoying in my opinion, but good to hear that it will be less frequent.
Also having saves separated by playthrough would be awesome, I wish more games did that. There's already so many quality of life features which are fantastic though. I really like how much description there is for the choices. And the option to remove lesbian content is a great feature. The more options the better so everyone can enjoy. Great to see a dev that really cares about their game :)
I play a lot of these kinda games, and more often than not I find myself disappointed. This however is not one of those times. Character designs, animations, sound, my guy you have nailed them all. story and setting is a tiny bit on the weak side but given the plot I totally get it. I see much potential for this to be something even more awesome in future, and i honestly cant wait till you complete the project. honestly i wish i had found it once you were done cuz id probably have finished it in one sitting lol. job very very well done bud, cant wait to see what the future holds
Hah, thanks man :D The whole point of the game when I started making it was to make a game that was basically the sort of thing I already liked, just with none of the stuff I don't like. Namely, lack of animation, sound, choice. All that stuff. I figured it couldn't be all that hard to do, so I just decided to try it. I was right, it isn't that hard technically, but it does take ages.... I have no idea how devs who are making multiple games at the same time do it. Just one is plenty lol.
I like the whole punishment school thing, so kinda just wanted to do my version of it. Originally this was just gonna be a fuckfest game, so I didn't even really have a plan for a main plot or whatever, but I found after the first release that I kinda wanted to change that, so I made one up. Turns out writing is pretty fun, lots of fun stuff planned.
Glad you enjoyed!
Hi there,
Great game so far. Any plans of adding more to sex stats? Maybe a count of how many times they have been fingered or received cunnilingus? Or even a count of how many lesbian encounters they have had?
No current plans. When I first implemented them it was because I just figured it might be fun, but then I decided to implement them into the gameplay itself. Despite how obviously BS the science behind the collars and chips must be, I think I kinda set myself a limit for what would actually be recorded with them. I didn't really want it to get too specific. Plus, it's kinda nuts how much people read into these stats so if I were to add new ones I'd have to think about historical data. I don't really wanna deal with people losing their minds over things that happened before the game again, so for the most part I just let players fill in the gaps themselves or with context provided by the game. (Such as the Riley/Cassie stuff. You don't know how many times they've fooled about in the past, but it also doesn't really matter.)
Fair enough. I just figured the lesbian counter would be kind of hot or could possibly lead into more story content. Like if one of the characters had a number, then it could be something we question and lead into a girl's background story, like if they had a previous girlfriend or something.
Didn't realize people had problems with the stats when they could just erase it when they get a new phone. Thanks for the answer though.
Yeahhhhh it's a little nuts to me how hung up on the fine details some people get. That's not the only reason though. It's also a UI thing. Adding more would mean reconfiguring the UI somewhat because making the font smaller would make it quite hard to read imo. With regard to the lesbian thing specifically, I prefer to have that sort of thing come up through the story. I don't really like to label characters as potentially lesbian or bisexual just for porn game reasons. Instead, there's gotta be a plan for why they swing that way from a story perspective. It's hard to explain without spoilers, but basically I don't really want to treat bisexuality as a fetish, instead I just want to feature any characters who happen to not be straight just as characters who happen to be that way, and portray that aspect of them when needed outside of just using it as a justification for lesbian content. Easier said than done since I'm not a writer, but it's what I want to do long term anyway. Whilst I do think it's fun to give little bits of story through the sexual stats, I don't want to form too complete of a picture with them, or at least not yet. Who knows for future? Certainly not me...
Of course, it's still a porn game so it's also planned that if you push for it you can get basically any of the girls to engage in lesbian type stuff, which does complicate my plan for the portrayal of bisexuality, but I'll tackle that at a later date.
I hope the time where we can collar someone comes soon!
Also, please let us give Logan some love! Doesn't have to be with Akemi or Hikari, but why not with one of the second year girls? Just imagine, someone does something bad, and you offer them the out of going out with Logan to not be punished. It'd be hilarious for the dude to be happy, without registering the implication that being with him counts as a punishment haha
Heh, I've gotta admit this is a first xD. Nobody tends to want Logan to get anyone, mostly because of how he is. Admittedly, he's probably not gonna end up with any of the existing characters, but that's not to say a character won't be introduced specifically for him, who won't stick around long enough for the player to really get attached. No current plans, but I think if he were to end up with someone, it would have to be someone the player hasn't had any opportunity to become attached to.
Also, you can actually collar both Sasha and Riley by the end of 0.22, so we're getting there ;D
Hi, I know in the intro you warned about scrolling forward causing issues. I noticed that I may have incurred a flickering in overlay (like when the onion is found, screen flickering to black background)
It may be an artifact of my graphics card, its drivers, or that I maxed out VRAM usage in the settings.
Oh that's not about the scrolling, that is a graphical issue relating to alpha masks, which are only used in the game for the onion animation.
One potential fix though, press shift-G in game, and change the renderer to angle2. After that, close the game and try again. I've heard this fixes it in most cases, but I'm unsure what other effects it has. The flickering issue is unfortunately hardware specific as far as I know.
I believe it is either caused by incompatibility on the graphics side with Ren’Py.This is unlikely, IMO, unless you approached the overlay differently than other people have, as I don’t see the same artifact in their animations, and they certainly use animated overlays and containing alpha.
Alternately, I noticed that this issue was emergent; for the first 6 or 7 onions it was fine, then started to be an issue. This points to it being a garbage collection or memory issue. Thinking back through the use leading up to the behavior, I did review the onion images a number of times. Moreover, when it started to happen on the 8th onion, I scrolled back before the onion to the phone and the onion was still flashing and animating which seems to indicate a possible scripting issue, I think with triggered events.
Thank you for the workaround though, I’ll keep it in mind.
Hmmm, an interesting problem. I have only ever had this reported when it comes to alpha masks for videos, but generally speaking the difference is that you either have one, or you don't. It's possible that the actual file format of the video makes a difference. I'm using webm, so maybe it makes a difference for mp4 or something along those lines. I don't get these issues at all though so it's quite hard for me to test.
Ren'Py is meant to handle garbage collection by itself, and unfortunately doesn't have a massive amount of tools to debug something like that, but what I may do in future to avoid this is just create an ATL version of the same animation (Basically a simple version that can be played as an alternative) that people can swap to if they start to get issues with the animation on their system. It's one of those things I could probably pour 20 hours into and not fix, so instead I think I'll just make a setting to allow people who get the issue to essentially disable it. I'll likely do that for 0.23. Thanks for the report, and I hope that aside from the flashing issue that you've been enjoying the game so far.
Yeah, it’s been an interesting take, given the disparate paths for content.
One interesting thing I noticed that pointed to some sort of memory issue (though likely not exclusively garbage collection) is that, since the emergence of the flashing to black background on the onions, there has also been a sing flash to a girl’s static picture, in a pose from earlier, near the beginning of a sex scene with said girl. Though Python doesn’t handle these the same way it seems like a single frame during playback is referencing the incorrect memory location. I’ll follow up in your discord if I can localize ift for you.
When you say near the beginning of sex scenes, they wouldn't happen to be right as an animation of some sort starts, would they? Usually that's a case of the video being called, but not actually loading immediately, resulting in it removing the current image and showing the one below for a brief moment before the animation starts. Ren'Py isn't great at playing video, but I hear there's some new updates out that help with that, so I'm looking into converting it at the moment.
i get this in a lot of games. i always thought of it as if the frame hadnt unloaded, and was still in the background (kinda how gifs can be layered in the background), which then flicks up on screen when loading a new scene takes more than a split second
Haunted jail part killed the game for me
too bad their is still no android
Turns out there's actually a 2GB limit on android builds, so I straight up can't do it. I do hear that joiplay works though. I may still make a version for android at some point, but you'd have to use joiplay for it to work.
sure
Rpa is the only way to solve the 2gb limit its still useful ask zanith or f lord they help u how to or in youtube there tutorial on it
The 14th onion in the hallway with Akemi and Hikari isn't showing up and i know i don't have the picture https://gyazo.com/22964476c7fb98ca65b1eee7319aacf2 https://gyazo.com/56151269facf08e0c44045a38bfaa813
Yep, there's a bug with that one at the moment, but it's fixed in the version being released in a week (Which also gives players the ability to unlock all onions at the end in addition to scenes)
I wouldn't worry too much though, that particular onion isn't that spicy.
Are there any plans or possibility to make the MC a choosable option. The already installed mc or a futa variant for those who prefer futa/fem characters?
Hi there. Currently no, and to be honest it's very unlikely, mostly because I'm personally not into futa stuff, and it's hard to motivate yourself to make content you're uninterested in. (That's ignoring the significant increase in work that'd require.)
Hopefully this isn't a dealbreaker for you, but if it is, I understand.
First things first:
Found your game through the Dev from Stray Incubus.
I haven't played long but TAKESHIS CASTLE?!
Already in love!
Oh and the animation in the background at the beginning? SICK
Heh, glad you like what you've played so far. Flynn is a good guy. Like how my characters have shown up in his game, at some point some of his will be showing up in mine, so that'll be fun. (Not yet though. Flynn works waaaaay faster than me. I can't keep up lmao)
agree'd. the intro animation would perfectly suit my pc as a screensaver right now
Hello Mr. (or Ms.) Atemsiel. I have just finished playing your game and i gotta say i really enjoyed it. This kind of game where the story can change drastically based on your choices is one of my favorite types of games. Specially if there are delayed consequences to your choices, so you can't just try out all of the alternatives and see everything. It really makes you think what the possible consequences of making a choice could be. It's really fun when you come back around for the second time and a completely different interaction happens if you just choose to say something different. But it must be a pain in the ass to write. That said i have some constructive criticism to make.
The first one is my only problem with the writing so far. I think that Hikari warms up to you a little too fast. Even if you choose the most lovey dovey options for her available i still don't think it makes sense for her personality type. On top of that i specially don't think it makes sense for her to initiate that kiss at the end of her date. For a girl that is so shy and has never had a boyfriend before i don't think it makes sense for her to be this brave and this forward. It kinda took me out of it a little bit.
The second problem is the performance. The perfomance was really poor in most of the scenes with animations. I don't know if this is something you can fix but it looks like the game primarily uses the CPU to handle the 3d graphics, which might be the cause of the bad performance.
And my last problem is with a softlock that can occur. If you end up getting to Sasha's punishment scene and you said to Riley that you don't want to go to the party, no matter how you choose to play out Sasha's punishment the game just breaks. Every time you finish the scene it goes back to the beginning to play out again and it just keeps repeating. The only way i found to get out of it was to go back to a previous save and just tell Riley you want to go to the party.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings! Really excited for the next update!
Heh, glad you liked it. Next update shouldn't be long now. Patrons should get it before the end of the month, so it should show up here about 2 weeks after that. I'll respond to the criticisms because I think they're fair, but I have some things to say about them.
With regard to Hikari, I actually agree with you to a certain extent. The issue I have is that for her actual personality type, writing her totally realistically would mean that you basically get no Hikari content for ages. At its core, this is a fuckfest game, lots of sex scenes, so sometimes I end up having to write things in certain ways to facilitate that. It's a balancing act really. On one hand, it doesn't make too much sense for her (Or any of the other girls) to become interested in MC as quickly as they do, but on the other hand, people will get bored if nothing happens with the girls for ages. Hikari's actions in that scene make a bit more sense if you have the same info I have about the future of the game, but obviously players don't have this, so it can't be used to justify it. The update to update development cycle doesn't help too much with this because it can mean that players following each update will have to wait months for some potential justification, while players in the future playing let's say version 0.9 or 1.0 may not have the same issue, as they'll have access to the full picture right away. Either way, if that was the only writing criticism you had, then I'll take it, Heh. Thanks.
The performance is an odd one. Some of the early scenes I did accidently have multiple videos playing over the top of each other, which I fix in the next version, but the later ones shouldn't have this issue. Unfortunately due to the game being a Ren'Py game, there isn't much I can do to improve performance beyond making sure that only one video is running at a time, because during animated scenes, that's basically all it's doing. Just playing a video file. You could potentially get better results by pressing shift-G in the game and selecting a different renderer option, but it may or may not do anything. Ren'Py is known to be pretty bad at playing video in general, and due to the amount of them that I have (As well as the way it transitions between them), I think it's fair to say that Stormside may have higher recommended specs than most other Ren'Py games. What those specs are though, I have no idea. It's very CPU based though, but that's just Ren'Py in general as far as I can tell.
The softlock. Yeah I just checked and I can see why this happens. Fixed in the next version. Thanks. I don't think I'll have time to make an actual scene for this specific instance, so instead the next day just starts, but if I get time I may make one at some point. I think the overwhelming majority of players do choose to go to the party with Riley though, so I might just sneak it into another version some time if I end up doing it. Though in fairness, the only thing that actually follows Sasha's punishment if you choose not to go to the party with Riley, is the end of the update, so I suppose it's not as though it softlocks you out of the rest of the content of the update, but instead it softlocks you out of that "Thanks for playing blah blah blah" bit at the end.
Either way, glad you liked what you played so far. 0.22 isn't far off at this point, and is currently the largest update. Somewhere between 15 and 20 animated sex scenes (I haven't updated the gallery yet, so I dunno exactly how many), 5000+ renders, 400+ animations, etc. Should be fun. At least until I hear from the "But why can't we get all the scenes in one playthrough crowd?" again.
Hello again, thanks for replying!
In regards to the girls getting interested in the MC too quickly, i didn't find it weird for anyone else except Hikari. For Riley it makes sense since she's had a crush on him for years at this point so it's completely justified. For Cassie i think that her general behavior and her explanation that, she had been hearing about him for a year so she feels as if she'd known for a lot longer, are justification enough. Cassie is just generally very extroverted and easy to get a long with, so i didn't think it was weird. And for Sasha, i just thought she was a bit of weirdo so i didn't think about it too much. Hikari was the only one that rubbed me the wrong way.
A suggestion i have to deal with this (although it might be too late for that) is to make her relationship with the main character non-linear. As in, it starts slow at first but as soon as things get romantic/sexual it goes a lot quicker. I think it makes sense for her to be slow to trust people at first but get attached very quickly.
Also i had some questions i wanted to ask.
What was the correct typing of the ghost? I guessed 4B because it split up Sasha and I using an illusion, type 4. And it let itself be seen many times before it tried to attack, category B. But judging by the ending i got i guess i was wrong. So it left me wondering what the correct type was.
Will it actually be possible to achieve a game over state where you are replaced by Professor Brown as the magistrate? During the few punishment scenes that is something the main character keeps mentioning, so i assumed it was kind of a nudge to the player "you might not want to be too lenient cause the threats of being replaced aren't just threats you know". I wonder if it will be possible to continue being too lenient and eventually get a game over or if you'd rather force the player to be more strict so that doesn't happen.
Will there be any benefit to telling Cassie that she can't mess around with Riley? She asks that question no matter what route you choose at the beginning so i imagine it has long standing consequences. And although i did get every scene at the end, on my main playthrough i said no just because i thought to myself "the game probably wants me to say yes so i will say no". Will there be any scenes or maybe unique dialog that is a consequence of saying no to this?
And lastly, did you use google translate for the japanese in the few scenes where Akemi and Hikari are talking alone? I know a little bit of japanese and although the japanese text doesn't stay for very long it sounded kind of unnatural. Not something that an actual japanese person would write.
Howdy. Yeah, it's a bit late to make changes to Hikari's stuff, but that's ok. With her I'm hoping that her quick interest will start to make more sense as you learn more about her, but obviously with the fact that people get to play the game as it's being made, every now and then there'll be times where things will appear unintentional because there's no explanation for them currently in the game. I guess we'll see.
I haven't actually revealed the correct type of ghost anywhere. It's not even in the game files. What I will say is that there's no difference to the actual end of the ghost hunt regardless of whether you get it wrong or right, so there's truly no way to know at this stage. (The only difference is that the actual kill animation is different depending on what type you pick, as different chemicals produce different coloured flames. My personal favourite is the magnesium one.)
The actual consequence for getting it wrong isn't planned to have massively negative effects, so I wouldn't worry about it too much if you got it wrong. Whether you did or not will be revealed after the update containing the consequences. Nice logic though. That whole section has been very divisive, and many players aren't even able to navigate it, much less actually try to take a real guess at what the ghost is. Unfortunately, fixing the navigation would basically mean redoing it, at the expense of new content, so instead I've made a VN version of it for the next update that players can pick if they want to basically experience the ghost hunt, but with the game itself controlling which room you go into, and where you shine the light.
No, I have no plans to actually let Professor Brown or Logan become the Magistrate at the moment. Even if I do make it possible, under no circumstances are either of them to be allowed to actually get their hands on the girls, partially because my core audience hates that sort of thing, and partially because I just don't want it to happen. I do like to tease consequences though. I don't really want to include game overs because in my mind they're a bit pointless in a game like this. It just forces a player to reload a save and do things differently, which I'm hoping they'll do just to see everything, rather than being forced to due to a game over. Additionally, I don't want to force players to do punishments if they're not interested in that. Punishing the girls primarily changes your character dynamic with them, but the effects of doing so will start to become more apparent later in the game.
Telling Cassie not to mess with Riley is only really there as a choice for players who don't want to see lesbian content. You'll end up getting the choice for basically every combination of girls, because maybe some people want Riley for themselves, but would be fine letting Cassie and Taliya play or something. Hell, in the next update, there's even a way to tell Cassie she can play with Riley, but tell Riley she can't play with Cassie, which will result in Cassie getting rejected and being confused next time she tries something. The choice does affect dialogue in many cases as well, but it's primarily there as a lesbian content toggle, per character combination. If you wanna see lesbian stuff, there's no reason not to allow it. While the game will branch a bunch, there'll be no weird stuff like an ending where Cassie steals all the girls or whatever.
Yep, all that Japanese is just google translate, specifically because I knew it was only gonna appear very briefly, and while it was possible that someone might actually read it and notice that it's super unnatural, it wasn't really worth the time for me to get it properly translated. The fact that you're the first person to ever actually mention it kinda proves my point xD. I do change some of them sometimes to remove unnecessary watashis or whatever, but it depends on time. Some of them are just outright wrong. I think there's one somewhere where the English line is something like "He quickly warmed up to the idea." and I just slapped it in google translate and ended up with "He quickly understood the concept of heating" or something. Considering there are 4 different versions of that conversation, and all the new lines have to be done manually due to how the effect works, I just decided that drawing out the process further by making sure all the translations were accurate and natural would have been a poor use of time.
Despite this, non English languages in general are something I aim to represent well, but for some of them that isn't possible at the moment. (For example, for a side character I have coming in future updates, I'd need professional Indonesian translation for her dialogue, but I don't have access to that yet. Translation can get expensive.) I still like to include characters from various places though, as part of their actual character, rather than just so I can say "I have a Japanese character. She's a ninja, because of course she is."
Sasha for example isn't meant to be a Russian caricature who drinks loads of vodka and has a pet bear or whatever. She just happens to be Russian, and I'm hoping some of the her more Russian traits her will shine through over time without them being just stereotypical traits. Little mannerisms and things. (Let's ignore the fact that she accidentally calls "hypothermia", "hippophobia" despite hypothermia being basically the same word in both languages. I just did that for fun.)
Luckily for me, I have a Russian guy in my Discord who's super helpful when it comes to making Sasha sound more natural, as well as educating me on various Russian culture topics that I can use for her character. For example, the ghost guide that she wrote for the player uses British English. This is because apparently when Russians are taught English in any official capacity like school or whatever, they're taught British English rather than American English. Self taught Russians may learn American English as it's a lot more common in media, so whether or not someone uses British or American spelling may give a bit of a hint as to how they learned English. Sasha uses British, so it implies that either she learned her English in school, or that she copied that guide from someone who did. The latter being the more likely of the two, as the English in the ghost guide doesn't include as many English mistakes as Sasha makes, so it's likely that it's something she copied from somewhere, possibly something her mother wrote once. Obviously, this is unimportant to the plot, and I doubt anyone will really notice, but that's fine. I like little things like this.
I may go back and make the Japanese statements more correct at some point, but it's more likely that I'll address the length of them, because they're kinda supposed to be roughly the same length as the English sentences, so that the translation effect applies properly. Otherwise it looks a bit odd. In hindsight, I could have just made a random kanji generator and have it match the English characters exactly, which is similar to something I use in the next update, but I decided instead to have them at least be kind of the right sentences. The effect is purely there to show that their conversation is taking place in another language, but the player needs to be able to understand it. (Which isn't always the case. If a non English language isn't translated in game, and a character doesn't then tell MC what was said, it means it wasn't important enough for the player to need to know.)
I really appreciate you adding a VN version of the ghost hunt. I don't really like horror stuff but i didn't want to skip it so i was shitting my pants the entire time. I did find the navigation confusing but it wasn't too bad. I just meant i had to look at the map after every step until i got my bearings and could go where i wanted without needing to check the map.
I don't find it surprising that nobody noticed the japanese stuff, this is the kinda bullshit that only really i notice. I am really detail oriented so i look for this kind of stuff almost unconsciously. Another example of some bullshit detail that i noticed and i doubt any one else has, is that, in the scene where Riley goes to the sex shop alone the sound effect of Raven's footsteps don't match what she's wearing. It sounds like she's wearing high heels but when she turns around the corner she's wearing sneakers. I just sat there looking at her shoes thinking "why would you deceive me like this?" but i recognize i doesn't actually matter so it's not that big of a deal.
Also at the very end of the update, unless the ghost is staring at you from a closet inside the room, i'm pretty sure the positioning of the bed in the room is incorrect. The bed is touching the left wall with the foot of the bed facing the door, which is not how it was positioned in the previous scene.
Actually, whoever's watching them at the end is doing so from outside the window, so the the door is just to the left of the bed, but it's obscured by the curtains. If you reject Riley, it will show you a different animation that kinda shows it a bit more. (But don't reject Riley because that would make her sad, and she's best girl.)
android?
Not officially at the moment, but I've bumped it up in my priority list, and I'm hoping to be able to release 0.22 as an android version when it comes out. (Not guaranteed. I haven't finished making the content for the update yet)
is this one girl kinda deal or an harem?
Full harem, but with solo routes technically supported. (Though playing the game for solo routes will massively decrease the amount of content you get, even when the game is eventually finished. It's designed to be a harem game primarily.)
Sorry this may be a stupid question, but which download is the optimal download? There are so many. Windows is what I am on. Thanks!
Edit: Nevermind hahaha read the patch post.
Heh, yeah, there's quite a few downloads because people requested different file hosts, and the game is too big to have itch host it. Hope you like it now that you've find your right link.
First nice game love it second fuck and sasha you need to make horror games to holy shit you legit dont know whats about to happen im saying like this cause i dont want to spoil it but hint for those who cant find the key. Gamers never look up all i can say
Ahaa, I'll assume that means some of the jumpscares got you ;)
Glad you like it. More to come. Thanks for the kind words.
Sir Atemsiel, when will we get a Mobile version for this? I wanted to continue playing this but... my laptop broke T_T
I've got no money to buy a new one for now... So I'm curious when this will have a mobile version since I only have a gaming phone.
I'm not currently working on an official mobile version, since it's taking enough time already just to make the regular version of the game. (Might become a possibility if I get to go full time at some point).
However, I've heard reports that the game does work with joiplay, and that some people have used that successfully to play through the whole game on mobile. I haven't tried it myself, so I'll just paste below what one of these people said on my Discord.
"Hey it does run! To whoever is reading this and unable to run the game on Joiplay (crashes during startup), check if Joiplay and the Renpy plug-in is up to date. The app on Google Play was last updated 2 years ago, so go grab both the app and the plugin on Joiplay official website or Patreon."
Hopefully this gives you enough info to get it working :D
Thank you for replying~!
Hmm, I might try this Joiplay thing. Not sure how to use it though since I'm not very familiar with it...
IT WORKED! I AM ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME IN MOBILE USING JOIPLAY!
All I did was download the Windows version of Stormside and then extracted the file while putting it in the "Downloads" folder.
The next thing I did was to download Joiplay and the Renp'y Plug-in for Joiplay.
After that, I opened the Joiplay app, clicked the "+" symbol, clicked the "Downloads" folder, clicked the Stormside Game File, and then, voila~! I accepted this and that AND FINALLY~! I CAN PLAY THE GAME ON MOBILE NOWWWWW~! WOOOHOOOOO
Thank god you told me about this sir/mam. I wouldn't be able to continue my journey in your amazing AVN if you didn't tell me about Joiplay T_T
Well, that's all for me. Imma become a Patreon of yours along with some of my other favorites Honey Select Devs when the time comes. (I'm poor for now and saving for a new laptop T_T)
Extra Note: I hope my comment can also hep some of y'all if you're in a similar situation to mine.
Hehe, great news. If you get any crashes or whatever feel free to let me know. I don't really test or make the game for mobile, so I don't know what issues you might face, but we'll see. (If you make it to the ghost hunt, make sure you save before, because I can't really work out how it would be playable on mobile, but it's skippable)
Speaking of, I don't know how far through you are, but if you haven't got to the conversation at the cafe yet, just know that there's an error there which will mention something about sayer waitress. Just press ignore on this error. It's fixed in 0.22 (When that comes out)
Recommended, give it a try!
Many thanks, glad you like it :D
Why doesn't it work in Joiplay?
From what I understand, it does work, but you need to have the latest version of joiplay, as well as the renpy plugin. Apparently the version on the google store is 2 years old.
I haven't tested joiplay or any mobile builds in general, so I don't know how well it works. This is just what someone in my Discord has told me.