itch.io

Hey Kinderfeld. You haven't replied here in a while, but I'm hoping you see this.

You missed the mark when trying to fix the issues that appear when the player is on Kallie's path and not Laura's. I mean, what you did works for that specific scene in chapter 12, but there's a bunch of other places where the dialogue is still messed up because the script was—is—consistently checking if ch10_tell_Laura == "yes" to see if the PC told Laura that he's in a relationship with Kallie, but that variable isn't set to "yes" except in the branch where he's also intimate with Laura. You just need to fix that (and undo the change you made to the conditionals in the ch12 scene) and all the issues will be taken care of.

It's curious how the issues that parts which others are complaining about are the parts I find strongest. Your worldbuilding is great; your exposition of the world's metaphysics in particular is what sold me on this story. Luther, Cymhen, and Rane are all interesting, well-developed characters.

In my opinion, your weakness is the story's women. They're too simple, and Rane's relationship with them is progressing too quickly. Orlaith is supposed to be deeply traumatized, but rarely loses her composure and never much struggles to reach her objectives in her path to healing. There doesn't seem to be much to Aerion's personality beyond her desperate need for affirmation and the rather tropeic contrast between her physique and her personality. Leala is supposed to be a potentially troublesome manipulator but consistently comes across as both reasonable and sincere, and because this is a harem game and they're all destined to have good relationships with Rane, it is difficult to seriously suspect that her entire presented demeanor is a well-crafted lie. Bael and Fiadh would have been more interesting characters if Rane hadn't more or less immediately—and in Bael's case, somewhat inexplicably—figured out what was truly going on behind their masks; there doesn't seem to be much room left to develop them now, personality-wise. Even the Grym women seem to all be slightly different refractions of the same basic personality: kind, playful, and slightly mischievous.

I don't know how long you plan for the final game to be, but I'm guessing there's plenty of time to slow the pace of the intimacy and add more facets and depth to these characters. I'd like to see that.

Okay, thanks, got it. That's somewhat obscure, although you are correct that I have used that before in other games, and I don't want to complain about things that I just wasn't clever enough to figure out by myself. I would, however, suggest that section of the changelog explain what you need to do. In fact, I would copy that section into the readme, which is where I looked for it before posing the question (and where I expect most others to expect it).

You are correct that I find that ending much more dramatically satisfying. I do wonder why it is necessary, after entering episode 13, to complete the first ending before you can return to normal gameplay. I also wonder what the in-universe explanation for this is. (Simone uses pure dramatic power to trigger Final Exception without a compact?)

But like I said earlier, this is an exceptionally well-made game. Thanks for it.

I… don't think so? But if there's a way to obtain Lasca's or Senet's compacts, I haven't found it.

I certainly understand the disinterest in players farming love—I get the impression that combat isn't truly supposed to be a challenge, and Alouette's level doesn't really seem to matter anyway. Still, it is weird that said monster (the one that later becomes a slime Allouette) runs the love-dispensing check when denied a broken heart and indeed dispenses it.

As for the beer situation, I'd actually already completed that event when I asked the question, but didn't think to check whether that meant I could now buy alcohol. D'oh. Thanks for the help.

An excellent game featuring compelling, nuanced characters; a sophisticated narrative (and meta-narrative); and humor that doesn't overstay its welcome.

It seems to me that some world-building and story elements were overwrought or ballooned beyond the author's control. For example, I feel like Purity of Heart became a less and less coherent concept the more I saw of it, and the fact that cycling through episode at the end merely resulted in a cutscene that Simone could neither learn from nor retry was… underwhelming. I also found the ending unsatisfying; Simone's, Allouette's, and Mercy's stories all felt like they hadn't truly reached a conclusion. Frankly, it feels like the developer(s?) became impatient with how long development was taking and pushed to a conclusion before the story had fully ripened.

Also, hard mode was too easy in my opinion. The only times I was challenged by the combat were my first foray into the deep Dark Forest (which I attempted and completed without Lasca—oops) and the fight against Canasta during the first iteration of the Final Battle. I don't really expect to be challenged by RPGMaker games after how much time I've spent playing Sierra Lee's, so I was pleased to find any challenge at all, but… I don't know, maybe that feedback will be useful to you for the next game.

Still, playing this (and Quantum Entanglement, which I played immediately before this) was the most fun I've had playing a video game in… years, I suppose. Thank you for that.

I'll have more comments once I complete the game, but for now, I have a question and an exploitable bug report.

The bug report is that if you feed the monster in the park garden enough broken hearts to make a heart, then interact with it and select the option to keep your broken hearts, it will spit out another heart. This can be repeated as many times as the player's patience permits.

The question is whether the beer is permanently missable. I bought a beer from Naomi while she was clerking, then went and did something else, and Eva stole my beer overnight. Now Dianne is back to permanent clerk duty and I can't find another place to obtain one, so I'm wondering if I need to load an old save.

Si jueges en Windows, busque %appdata% en la barra de búsquedas abajo a la izquierda de su pantalla, luego seleccione RenPy, y borre la carpeta LuckyParadox. Hay carpeta similar en Mac, pero no sé dónde está.

Not bad. A little too much grind and characters are a little shallow, but much better than most RPGMaker games.

Take as long as you want. There's a reason Wayfarer is in a class of its own.

Has Caribdis played Crown of Exile? The Ishari feel like they have too much in common to be a coincidence.

Because you indicated you were hoping for feedback when you made the two chapters public: it seemed like an oversight that I could thwart the alliance with the nomads by murdering my duel opponent and then it… just not come up again. At all.

It's possible I've forgotten hints, but that's not at all how I read things.

This game only has one ending, for whatever that's worth.

Despite having the broken guitar, I can't interact with the guitar strings and don't know why.

Well, this totally missed the mark for me. Maybe I'll understand it after I've had an ugly relationship.  Maybe I'm not romantic enough. Not sure. Not sure why I commented either, but maybe somebody will find this interesting. On to the next thing, I guess.

No.

Are the entries being judged on quality, or will the winners be randomly selected?

He is. This is mentioned very early in the game.

Abandoned?

Well, I'd meant that you should include a link in the page description, but I guess this works.

Would you link to your Patreon here? I don't currently have the game downloaded, and would rather not need to just to navigate to updates.

It's permanent.

Well, there are some chinks that need worked out. The text speed should be faster, or at least adjustable, because I read much faster than the text loads, so I need to click the arrow twice for every slide. Also, a feature to skip text (or at least previously read text) would be helpful, and in the second round, if you vote "no one", the screen just flashes red and doesn't allow you to pick another option, soft-locking you. Despite the polish issues, the writing is excellent. Good work.

You've reached the end of the current content. There's nothing else to do, unless you want to start a new playthrough.

Is Spanish localization not properly implemented? I tried to switch to Spanish, but it just removed all the text everywhere, which of course bricks the game.

A brilliant gem of a game. You have a great eye for detail; I was especially delighted to discover that NPCs will step around you if you stand in their way. I only wish you had the option of playing Missy a little more defiantly (e.g., to try to fight back against Poppy when she rapes you in the bathroom, or to tell Miss Paris that you keep wearing the wrong underwear because you enjoy the feeling of empowerment you get from defying someone who wants to break your will).

Reproduction is a foundational element of life. It is inconceivable that any sexed species, nevermind an intelligent sexed species, could evolve without developing an awareness and concept of a biological phenomenon that is integral to sexual reproduction: that individuals come in two types with differing roles, one of each being necessary. This need not imply anything else: things like grammatical gender and gendered behavioral norms need not necessarily follow from sexual differentiation. But they would surely be aware of such differentiation and have a vocabulary to describe it.

It feels like the author decided they wanted a non-binary species for political reasons without considering what that actually means. They could have created a species where biological sex simply does not matter beyond the rudiments of sexual reproduction. Members of such a species would not self-identify as non-binary: they would self-identify as male or female and barely give the matter further thought. Self-identifying as non-binary is a conscious denial that the binary applies to you, which would be insane if referencing biology; it only makes sense as a rejection of something else, namely, norms associated with a person's sex. An entire species would self-identify as non-binary only if they first developed gendered norms, then chose as an entire species to deny those norms, and were still living in the shadow of that denial. I should like an explanation of how such an event came to pass, although I doubt anyone could create one that I'd find plausible.

Of course, I doubt that was really the author's intent; they probably just wanted a species without gender norms. It is ironic that they chose to do so by making it "non-binary," as that very concept implies said norms and therefore perpetuates the species' subjugation to what the author was trying to eliminate.

"There are some dragons who lay eggs, and some dragons who fertilize them."

So, there are still males and females, the author just isn't calling them that anymore.

I don't get it. 

Trying to download this game for Windows for the first time in a couple of years, and the installation executable keeps failing upon reaching a file named peaceful[...]. The error message provides no explanation as to the nature of the problem.

Currently, it does nothing but set a variable. Eventually, it will do something... probably.

There's no penalty for doing that. All checks so far require sufficient power OR skill, so as long you keep up on skill, you can forego the power gains from corruption.

They increase the amount of resources a character earns when performing certain jobs (the job description says which skills it uses) and are sometimes used in pass/fail skill checks.

The lastest version was released to subscribers on Patreon two days ago. It will be here within a week.

You don't need the horn, and I would recommend against it. If you make all the right choices, you can max skill, which is all you need.

Note that none of the shop items do anything yet.

Yes. I think it is already implemented.

Also, money in this game does not do anything, apart from a few chances to spend it for relationship points in Amber's route.

Yes