itch.io

Very cute game, and better art and writing than I admittedly originally expected! And the eyes are very, very creepy. 

I'm only in Chapter 1 so far, but some notes from a new player: 

• The pacing to the first 50 or 100 affection is pretty slow. I think it especially feels that way because there isn't much to do. Note that cooking is basically not an option, strangely enough. 
• It took some time to figure out what the bar to the side of the playing card game is, roughly. 
• The game seems to forget key bindings the moment you load a save file. 
• I did have the game crash once, when trying to save immediately after the first time. 
• I accidentally picked some decisions I didn't intend, by pressing the interact button through the text too quickly. (From reading the text faster than the automatic text speed.) If no button is highlighted by default during a decision, that could help.   

But yeah, great game overall! It seems like there's a lot more content and interactions for players to unlock, once they put the time into it. 

Looks fixed, thank you!

It still looks like the free build requires a purchase, when I view it in either the browser or the itch.io app. I was able to get an older free build from your patreon, though. 

Whichever settings you have for After Thunder appear to separate the purchase and demo successfully. Not sure what the difference is. 

I think the free builds are currently also gated behind purchasing the game. I'd like to try it out!

Thank you for writing up all those big, relatable, familiar feelings; they resonate for me and no doubt for many other people as well. Best of luck over there. 

Your AC could have been dripping refrigerant, rather than water, FYI!

Great list of action items and links. Thank you! Here's to making some change. 

What if we also want romantic dates in the 18+ version?

That sounds promising! It’s great to hear you had that ‘eureka’ moment. Hope it goes well!

If it helps at all, IMO it's better to have no animations over bad animations. And for me, a variety of movement between stills and strong writing is more effective than almost all animations.

Well, just to toss in one opinion - I'm already expecting to replay the game because you've mentioned game-wide balance changes in prior devlogs. (Amount of energy recovered, likelihood of events, etc.) I'd personally say you should feel free to change events if that would be easier to write.

Very nice game! You've got great art and animations, making the characters feel more alive than in some other games. 

A few miscellaneous observations: 

• I struggle with timing during the sex game, with a difficult time maintaining a higher pace and trying to match the beat. I'd often face a major loss of speed, and oftentimes I defaulted to focusing solely on pace.
• With a will of 70 or so, I couldn't get the player to cum during sex if I wanted to. Which is unintuitive?
• The first time I opened the game, it rendered as a tiny window of the game that I couldn't fully interact with. It opened in fullscreen the second time.
• The Charisma stat description mentions it helps with sweet or dirty talk. Does that apply to other actions during sex? 

Write dev logs as often as you'd like! Readers probably prefer a regular pace so that they know roughly when a dev log is coming. I'd personally say that writing once a week is a lot, but if you want to, feel free!

I found that you can sell things by entering the shop menu, going to your inventory, and right-clicking your item.

I found that you can sell things by entering the shop menu, going to your inventory, and right-clicking your item.

You might want to put a version of this on the main page for the game, otherwise people will miss it! Maybe in a current features section. 

Both download links lead to a 404 file not found error. Is this still available on itch.io?

Quick note: Playing attack cards is a little annoying if you need to click on the target after every card. Perhaps consider having the user click a target, highlighting them, and then every attack card deals damage to the highlighted target. 

Man, you have an excellent game here. Lively and novel characters, unsettling imagery and situations, and intrigue boiling under the surface. I get the sense that there's a method to the madness, and I have my guesses which are probably wrong! And the people feel real and their failings feel real, too. And it all looks great. This game goes above and beyond what Illusion probably imagined when they built their game engines.

Some specific spoiler-free impressions: 

• My only game criticism would be that, it looks like a sandbox but pursuing all character events is actually mandatory. But you're already making that easier in the UI with the next update.
• Anne: Man, that word choice makes so much sense in hindsight.
• Hanako: :(

Weird bug report before I forget. In version 0.10.0, I have now seen the Sam event "Pornographic Visual Representation" a second time. I first saw it a number of in-game days ago, and I think it was just on its own. This time on Monday morning, I saw the main event "Hide and Seek" for the first time and then PVR a second time.

What might be relevant is, I'm pretty sure the first time I saw PVR I had 20 Hanako affection but had not resolved either version of "I Trust You" at the time. "Hide and Seek" played out the branch with "I Trust You". I checked my older save files and can confirm that I saw "PVR" without seeing "Hide and Seek". The story made perfect sense that time, though, and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary back then.

100% agreed that the point values feel way too low for the costs required. If there was some skill element where you could earn more points, that could work, but as it stands it would take about 40 minutes of non-stop sex to unlock the new location, nevermind any outfits.

Thank you, that worked! I've been looking to try this game for a while.

Hi! I'm running into an error when attempting to run the game on a Mac. Full error below. When I navigate to .../autorun/game/track, I do not see a folder named "covers". The "track" folder only contains a file named "Put Music Files Here". Maybe this folder is supposed to be generated and it isn't?

Thanks in advance!

[code]

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:

  File "game/manualtracks.rpy", line 5, in script

    init python:

  File "game/manualtracks.rpy", line 7, in <module>

    import ost

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/private/var/folders/4f/4mrcm_hj7056n7fpq02hr7xm0000gp/T/AppTranslocation/269F4791-9DCC-4D3A-88AE-84A31DAA0CC0/d/detached.app/Contents/Resources/autorun/game/track/covers'

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:

  File "game/manualtracks.rpy", line 5, in script

    init python:

  File "/private/var/folders/4f/4mrcm_hj7056n7fpq02hr7xm0000gp/T/AppTranslocation/269F4791-9DCC-4D3A-88AE-84A31DAA0CC0/d/detached.app/Contents/Resources/autorun/renpy/ast.py", line 823, in execute

    renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)

  File "/private/var/folders/4f/4mrcm_hj7056n7fpq02hr7xm0000gp/T/AppTranslocation/269F4791-9DCC-4D3A-88AE-84A31DAA0CC0/d/detached.app/Contents/Resources/autorun/renpy/python.py", line 1178, in py_exec_bytecode

    exec(bytecode, globals, locals)

  File "game/manualtracks.rpy", line 7, in <module>

    import ost

  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1007, in _find_and_load

  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 986, in _find_and_load_unlocked

  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 664, in _load_unlocked

  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 627, in _load_backward_compatible

  File "/private/var/folders/4f/4mrcm_hj7056n7fpq02hr7xm0000gp/T/AppTranslocation/269F4791-9DCC-4D3A-88AE-84A31DAA0CC0/d/detached.app/Contents/Resources/autorun/renpy/loader.py", line 876, in load_module

    exec(code, mod.__dict__) # type: ignore

  File "python-packages/ost.py", line 660, in <module>

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/private/var/folders/4f/4mrcm_hj7056n7fpq02hr7xm0000gp/T/AppTranslocation/269F4791-9DCC-4D3A-88AE-84A31DAA0CC0/d/detached.app/Contents/Resources/autorun/game/track/covers'

macOS-10.16-x86_64-i386-64bit x86_64

Ren'Py 8.2.0.24012702

detached 0.10.0

Tue Apr  9 07:38:38 2024

[/code]

Cool game! I appreciate the different take to combat, although it tends to focus on matching numbers of orbs. I couldn't tell why characters dealt random numbers of damage from turn to turn. But, every part of this proof of concept game looks great; can't wait to see more!

It’s actually a pretty good premise. Massage based games are rare. 

Neat game! I was able to solve it all blind, although entering the server reboot threw me for a loop. I couldn't figure out what to do after reopening the game after completion, though... but I'm happy to leave it there. 

There are some parts which feel like they were not translated very well, which interfere a little bit with understanding. It makes me wonder if there's additional details about what's happening in the narrative that I couldn't understand. But, I'm happy to break the equation and call the game done.

That town music is a lot of fun!

No idea, but it's what I did too!

Man, this game has a wonderful aesthetic and vibes, but the bartending and conversations feel very slow and grindy. Being asked a person's height but both options being 0.1 feet apart isn't a very exciting conversation or set of choices. Hope to see some updates there one day, because again, the art is great!

Impressive game! I appreciate that the combat system is simple but still has interesting choices. It takes some time to understand many of the available talents and especially the residents' abilities, but the game has a very strong beginning and it's good to introduce these details gradually.

Yeah, it was not anywhere near that fast :D

Take your time! And, I can share my save file and character if you're interested or if you think something might be overpowered. It's primarily just a bunch of earth abilities, with slightly fewer ongoing effects due to the increased activation costs in this version.

I enjoyed the big brawl at the Deepwood Heart! (Version 0.26.) I was able to do it at level 29, one below the recommended minimum level, without serious optimization. Looking forward to the aftermath!

Excellent work on the game! Natural characterization, superb visuals, and especially an excellent user interface! The social media and camera systems are very impressive, and it's clear that a ton of work and heart was put into this. I really like the UI transition when the player takes the Elevator, it's so good. And you've snuck in some good tutorials for various systems which no doubt will be used later in the game.

Some small points of feedback: 

* Scanning a QR code is very difficult, primarily I think because the player needs to drag around two sliders rather than dragging a box on the image itself. 

* I missed the entire social media section before visiting Sara at the coffee shop and felt bad that I didn't accept her friend request! I didn't even realize there was more to the social media system until she commented about it.

* I primarily didn't buy the girl cigarettes because I wasn't sure how much money I needed to save for the rest of my shopping. I also got confused when shopping, expecting that Ekaterina would send a shopping list and I was concerned I'd get the shopping wrong.

It's kind of difficult to tell what kind of game it is from just the itch.io page, though, and I could've easily missed it if I didn't choose to try it out. I'd recommend adding a screenshot for the social media system and the map, to demonstrate that you have more features than a visual novel. You might also consider describing how the game expects players to be a bit more observant, and won't always give everything to the player directly. (Such as when shopping for Mariya's birthday gift.) This could help draw more players in to your very impressive game.

Good luck!