We're all going to hell for this 😭
On my first run I kept getting the coin flip wrong, I only had 1 correct guess before I lost, and I thought you were trolling us big time since it's now April 1st.
But it turns out the time of worship was only postponed, and I'll jump into the pits of hell into a death drop / dip.
Besides finding every single new underwear, I completed this DLC and it was a pretty good addition!
Just for commentary and fun, here's my ranking of the battle minigames this game has to offer, based on my experience in the hardest battle:
The battles can get a bit long at the start, since you have to get through 1 minigame per enemy you haven't taken out and your attack power isn't great. The attack bar is a good concept, it can be tricky when it moves randomly, and just a matter of luck when the whole bar moves around like it's a YouTube video using all the tricks in the book to keep the attention of iPad kids.
The new underwear you have to get from the bandit is just additional grinding with the gold and resources you have to pay, and I unapologetically got around it with a save editor. The only grinder I am is a horny dude looking for a good time. I could have 5 dudes flaking out on me by the time I can afford one underwear.
Overall, I really recommend this DLC. It's more Robin Morningwood goodness, with extra pain. And of course you're into this. The new work minigames are challenging but fun, like taking a thick one without the pain in the ass. That'd be the Avoid minigame, and I wish I could avoid it. The new scenes and the overall artwork are great, and there's no going wrong with more orc content. You're just gonna have to work harder than in the base game for those scenes.
Honestly? I'm starting to lose hope.
Satyroom may have shared some Muscle Management scenes, eventually making it to here for people who bought the bundle to see, but I know he has his fair share of scapped projects. Maybe Demon's Dream is one of them and the team is working on the most PR way to say it. That would explain why we're getting 0 news on that project.
Maybe we'll just have to take the L and move on, after all we haven't had an announcement on itch for over 4 months now. The last time their Twitter was active was in late April. And wasn't a DD demo supposed to be released "by the end of the month" many months ago?
So maybe Muscle Management is happening, but Demon's Dream? Their Twitter's "working on the final orgy" could mean anything, and my belief in the project tells me it's all just on a document with not a single graphic element done. That'd explain why MM scenes keep being shared but DD has nothing besides the assets they shared as a sample to get you to buy the bundle.
I'm not saying we're being conned, but their estimates when it comes to when they'll be able to deliver content are fucked.
@ the devs if they even read this, sorry for being harsh but I don't think I'm being unfair. Giving delivery dates you don't match even months later creates more frustration than if you didn't give a date at all. Let us know you've made progress since late April. I know Satyroom got sick recently, but he can't be the only one setting the project in motion.
Maybe it's just an oversight if the game was only tested on the developer's version. Something must've gone wrong when the image files were encrypted into the RMMV format, used to prevent people from looking at the pictures without playing. After all, it's the image element that's "broken" according to the error
I think plugins, because of the additional variables they add to the game, do take some extra memory. Additional graphics can also end up loaded when they're not actually needed.
Leaving only the necessary files also makes the zip a lot lighter and therefore faster to download.
On top of that, you kind of end up leaking the contents of some paid projects by forgetting to take their graphics out of your other projects. By that, I mean there's Geeks VS Superhero CG in this game's files, for example.
Some comments on the sandstorm and cyber parts of the update.
Reaching the big building in the sandstorm only to find out that it's locked shut was very annoying, it's a guaranteed game over just for exploring the wrong part of the map towards what should be a point of interest. It could use some nearby shade.
The cyber part encourages save-scumming. One failure can set you way back, so the experience would be more fun if there were mid-map checkpoints.
A bit more on the nitpicky side, some events that have the appearance of animated sparkles don't have the "direction fixed" box ticked, which means if you interact with them from the right they'll turn into little smoke clouds.
Map-making tip when it comes to autotiles: when placing map tiles, hold shift to place a tile that looks like it's connected to the same one in all 8 cells around it. Changing one of these 8 cells (without holding shift) will only update the corresponding side of the tile in the center.
If a detail is hard to pull off in the area you're working with:
It's little things like broken roofs that can look better, or the corrupted and non-corrupted walls being disjointed between each other, but if you have time to go for these details your maps should look even better.
Great story, artwork, and narration.
However, I did take a look at the game files while the 860MB zip was being extracted, and I expected some gameplay. I thought that was the continuation of Geeks VS Superhero, and I was excited.
Unfortunately, most of these files had absolutely no use in the game, neither did the base assets... The zip could've been a whole lot lighter if you did away with everything you didn't actually use in this project.
Maybe the performance would've been better, because Blue Lightning's upper-body animations specifically made the game slow down a lot on my not-so-good PC.
I also remember seeing multiple spelling / grammar mistakes.
The art is good, but the game was not playtested secondhand and it shows.
I ended up fumbling around for some puzzles because there's very little to work with. As the one who designed them, some solutions are probably crystal clear to you. But hints could've been nice, because I decided not to finish the game at the room with 6 dials that have 6 positions each and a pad with 6 numbers. I'm not trying all the cominations to move forward, and the only clue we're left with are colored flames and a reminder of what the numbers are on a clock.
The platforming can be really annoying as well, sometimes setting you way back for missing a very tight jump when the character's hands did touch the ledge you had to grab onto. Near-perfect timing is sometimes required multiple times in a row, and the responsiveness of the controls doesn't help.
I like difficulty, and I wish more X-rated games had that, but damn. Some hints would've made the experience better.
Unless the game has been updated since the previous comments, I disagree. I got to the end of that fight on the first try, by choosing to heal every odd turn. The enemy plays before you and hits for a bit less than half of your HP, so the strategy was obvious.
Now for my personal comments about the game...
MZ's faceset generator is really bad, so there isn't much you could do about it except for finding faces somewhere else, which you did with one of the characters, however that made him clash visually with the others. Look into getting more facesets from outside sources, I think that's the right way to handle this. The town is decent, you've put in some details and I really appreciate that you've put some work into that. You did a really good job with the interiors as well, they were nice to look at.
The passage rules for street lamps weren't set up as well as they could've been, so the player can walk over the middle part but the top part doesn't allow passage at all. I'm only familiar with MV, but MZ is very similar and there should be a way for you to make both parts be displayed over characters. The top part of both types of trees has the same issue. There's a few tiles that should allow passage over them (patch of grass, mushrooms, flowers on the ground), instead they completely block it. Also, for some reason, pots can be walked over? This issue also happens with some houses, you can walk over the bottom part of the windows that don't have their blinds closed.
The passage options on MV are an O when passage is allowed, X when it isn't, and there's a 3rd option (a star) to say that a tile is to be displayed over characters and inherits the passage rules of the tiles below it. Otherwise, it could be that you've placed the elements on the same layers, if I remember correctly they brought back the layering from RPG Maker XP. If that's the case, you just have to pay attention to which layer gets which elements and the passage rules will apply as they should.
Also, here's a tip for placing tiles that automatically adjust to the same tile next to them: if you hold SHIFT while placing them, they won't change automatically. Instead, it places the tile as if all 8 cells around it were the same tile, and that will only update partially if you place something on one of those 8 cells without holding SHIFT. This way, you'll be able to keep the hedge wall around the house on the North-West of the town and have it surrounded by grass instead of being outlined by dirt, and the wall to the South of the town won't have the awkward outline of dirt around the parts that are 1 cell taller than usual.
If you can't pull it off that way, you can reproduce what you're trying to do on individual tiles somewhere else on the map, then right-click to copy them (hold to copy an area). Then, go where you want to paste what you made, hold SHIFT, and place it as if it was a tile.
Overall, playing around with the layer system will make your map prettier and cause less issues with passage. On XP, it was layer 1 for things that are below characters, layer 2 for the same level, and layer 3 for elements that are above. For the elements I noted above and some interior stuff:
| Element | Layer |
|---|---|
| Street lamp | 2 (bottom), 3 (middle and top) |
| Trees, weapon racks | 2 (bottom), 3 (top) |
| Grass, mushrooms, flowers | 1 |
| Pot, anvil, crates, some clothes mannequins | 2 |
| House wall | 2 (wall), 3 (windows, black tiles for when the door opens) |
What I really appreciated from the fight in this demo is that you couldn't get by with just spamming the Attack command. I don't know what the previous post is talking about, once of the first things you learn about in the game is the ability to save using the journal in your inventory, so there's absolutely a way to save before you start the event where you got beat before. You've got some solid dialogue going on, and you highlight what there is to find, which is a good thing because many makers forget that they know their game and its hidden stuff but other players just get lost because it's actually not obvious at all.
There's a lot of eventing issues in the game, for instance beating all the rats doesn't let the player finish the quest, some text is cut off by the dialogue window because you have to skip to the next line manually, the troll bridge event isn't working properly...
If you haven't dropped this project, I could help you with fixing these issues. I know my way around RPG Maker MV.
Looking alright so far.
I hope you'll soon add an identity to the player character, so that he's not just a heart icon in combat. On top of that it'll open up the possibility of adding more art, so far it's all VN portraits. Trust a thirsty guy when he says more saucy stuff will help you with getting more support.
The game was apparently uploaded 7 months ago, makes me wonder how long it'll take for you to complete it, given how far I could go with the paid version... I mean I haven't gotten to seeing anyone hard yet and a lot of NPCs don't have an appearance.
