itch.io

I’m afraid I’m catastrophically awful with UI design. I wonder which functions do you use most often? I tried to keep everything important in action at the right side, however I see that the “pause” button is on the left (and I personally use it quite often). If this is the issue - I can try moving it to the right side of the screen too.

Right now I’m trying to improve the UI (to have space to add skills and spells and more equipment slots) but it’s in early stage, so it’s the perfect time to apply other changes too :)

Thank you! :D I’m still not back at full capacity, but hopefully will get more efficient :)

Died on level 51 due to the bug (failed to guess correctly) :) Unrewarding :)

Got another bug with zeroes not filled properly:

Ok, I guess this is the most interesting take on minesweeper I’ve seen in years. I’m afraid I’m quite sleepy today so couldn’t enjoy it fully with my eyes closing by themselves :D But overall - a very cool idea on solving stalemates.

A few minor issues I’ve noticed:

1. After maybe even an hour of playing I still don’t fully get the rules of how lower level clears up the upper one. Sometimes it does… but occasionally it doesn’t. Unless it’s a known bug, because it looks like a bug: the lower level “should have been cleared” but the upper level stays there and can no longer be cleared by any means except by solving (or rather guessing the solution) it. EDIT: it seems like this happens when all the upper level is “over zeroes” for the lower level.

2. Also now accidental clicks become extremely dangerous. Clicking guaranteed safe tiles can suddenly click the newly uncovered layer below, well, definitely not in the place it should have been clicked :) Also it’s the only version of Minesweeper where wrongly marking a mine results in gameover, still didn’t get used to “not counted free tiles marking them in the process”.

3. The music is … annoying :) An option to turn it off could be welcome.

Highscore for today :)

Quite fun. Special kudos for GoDot :) I didn’t get anything special, but maybe I’ve missed some subtle hint? Managed to get > 1000 meters and > 3000 candies (>5000 total) and felt quite sleepy :D Souls also seem to stop spawning as soon as you have 3, so doesn’t seem like any special event for collecting 4-5? Maybe some special combination of items was necessary?

Small notes (and very imho :))

1. Switching between lanes is very insensitive. Had to mash the button like crazy to quickly swap between the two, because the second (and third, fourth, fifth and next) click usually doesn’t register.
2. Golden and copper candy look way too similar.
3. No pause? My cat wants to eat :)
4. Wearing maid hat unlocks maid outfit even if it’s already unlocked.
5. Doesn’t seem to be anything to spend candies on. Everything is very cheap, the only (not very) expensive thing - dress is unlocked automatically… Nothing to grind for.
6. Also maybe further increase difficulty may be an option… as soon as one gets the rhytm it can just go on forever. Eventually I just died on purpose (no pun intended).

Thank you! :D And yes, we need vacuum… things… but a bit later :D

Thank you! :D

I’m using Castle Game Engine :) Also free and open source but not as famous :)

Ah, this time unfortunately I can’t say I was busy with a big task - September didn’t feel well and made very little progress unfortunately :( Now better, aiming to make some update soon :)

Super happy for you! It’s a really exciting hobby to have :) Just don’t start with something too big - one step at a time and it’ll work out!

Thank you! :D

Hmmm… I didn’t think about adding more rubber/latex/glue things - but amorphous things aren’t too hard to draw, so makes good sense to add more in the future! Good idea!

Oh, and whats the chance of adding WASD support for PC?

I’m planning adding keyboard/controller/touchpad support, but not in the nearest future. Now focused on adding species/poses support. Maybe after that? Anyway, that won’t happen this month, and most likely not the next one either.

Thank you! :D

Sorry for the delay. Took me a week to get to publish a new build - finally ready. To “rearrange” the prisoners on the level you need to:

1. Without loading the save game (don’t press “Continue”), open Options.
2. Set the desired difficulty level (on Easy level there can be only one girl trapped on a dungeon level, on Extreme - up to 5 on deeper levels (e.g. 2 at levels 5-9)). Can be set temporary just to sort the prisoners better.
3. Scroll down and at the very bottom there is a “End Current Run” button.

What will happen:

• It will mark all characters that are not in the settlement as captured (that means if your current character is on some dungeon level - she’ll get captured there)
• It will sort all characters between dungeon levels so that there is no more than maximum allowed prisoners per level, depending on difficulty level (always 1 on Easy, up to 5 on Extreme)
• If there are too many characters to distribute properly in the dungeon explored floors, they will go to deeper dungeon levels (e.g. you have 12 characters captured at level 7 - it’ll be able to redistribute only 7 of them on Easy difficulty, then the remaining 5 will go to levels 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12)

Oh, indeed, the fix affects “new girls” but not the old ones. I’ll try to make a “debug option” to fix old girls (no pun intended!) as soon as possible (busy today, but maybe will manage in the evening). (You should have reported it earlier, I could have fixed it long ago :) I just didn’t realize this is something that indeed can happen)

Weird, I can see it. Let me check the settings, but it should be visible to all by default. No, it’s perfectly visible for me - even as an unregistered user. Let’s make sure: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/1324 this is the one, right? I’ll have a look into that, looks like a bug to me.

Hmmm, interesting! I’ll need to test this kind of resting - because patrols are exactly meant to discourage player from resting near the exit. And indeed finding a secluded corner should be the way to go. I’ll see how to fix that, at least one idea I wanted to experiment for quite some time - some patrols will “enter and leave”, so that the map will not get overran by monsters, and some organized monsters group can be avoided altogether.

Is there a lore explanation for enemies that have improved vision for clothed targets?

Yes, it’s in the same numiniscence article (last two paragraphs), however, indeed the explanation is not good enough. I’ll need to work on it more (I have a lot of notes, now I need to sit down and put them all together into a human readable text :)). Plus right now both nude/dressed vision are not working exactly as they were supposed to - I want eventually to implement “proper sensory organs” both for player characters and monsters, but didn’t get to rework this feature yet.

Now what’s the best way to keep the feedback organized without an ever growing tree of threads?

Personally for me the best way is through GitLab issues: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues - you’ll need an account there, but you can then easily comment on issues, start new ones and track their progress. E.g. you can see the two issues at the top I’ve added yesterday according to your feedback :) Note that some of your feedback hits already existing issues.

I can reliably fully restore my stats on any level that has one

Oh, I don’t think that’ll work :D So far in “real game” I’ve managed to encounter only one sleeping bag, and while indeed they give a great “risk/reward” ratio, but still the risk is way too high (primarily because one has to put off a weapon, which will most likely be picked up by a Vacuum Cleaner in a few seconds of resting).

everything had been done organically so far.

Indeed, but as I’ve mentioned, not all of the game systems are in-place yet. First of all now we’re lacking crafting and lift, which while more or less ok for “short game” but can become boring for longer sessions. That’s why I highly recommend starting from deeper levels :) Arghhh… I just need to add at least one boss monster and ability to unlock elevator endpoints. It’s not trivial but shouldn’t be too hard and it’s hurting at the moment :)

That one girl must always be stuck as deep as possible?

Yes, overall there will be one point where the girl can return from without getting captured. But it’s the very end-game, before the final boss. Also “missions” will also have “success” condition when all participants will return to the settlement on success. I really hope I’ll start making missions this year.

“Way to move girls back a few floors/flee from the dungeon(Like in The Enchanted Cave)”

Ah, the Enchanted Cave was one of the core inspirations for this game :D No, my primary idea is that (almost) every run ends in capture (with a few exceptions I’ve mentioned above). However, I wanted ability to add “items storage between runs” and ability to send excess good items to the settlement. But that’s for later.

Or a way to get a nice camp that acts as a display of the player’s skill, rather than a monument of their repeated failure?

Yes, overall the whole game will be organized a bit differently. There will (hopefully) be a way to build the settlement - housing, crafting stations, training grounds. Also there will be originally girls to rescue in the dungeon, around 10, I guess. Also each heroine will have a different set of skills (now we just have XP - level), I want a more Skyrim-like skills system including crafting, cooking, etc. More experienced characters will be able to train less experienced ones. And eventually even fall in love with each other :)

Like lock-on or lurking behind corners when an approaching enemy is known?

I’m honestly not yet sure how to deal with stealth attack problems. I’ve mentioned fixing two bugs - and that should dramatically improve both rolls and stealth attacks. But will not fully remove their drawbacks. I guess let me fix those (hopefully I’ll fix “invisible wall” bug very soon, remaking the map generator will take more time unfortunately) and then we’ll see how to improve it.

Would probably makes Will-o-wisps a lot less scary

Note that currently I indeed want to nerf this one https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/1320 — it is literally a boss level monster now, it should be just a regular one. It doesn’t need that much health or see the player almost at the end of the vision range.

Attack from a Wrapper seems to have caused an unrecoverable freeze

As I’ve mentioned I’ll look into it ASAP. There is one thing that can fail there, hopefully I’ll be able to fix it quickly.

I also get random red errors from Wisps, but those aren’t fatal.

Yes, indeed. Those are minor errors in navigation system. However, those are errors (they spawn where they shouldn’t have spawned (inside a wall I presume) or they try to go to Player character but miss and go into a wall) and I must eventually find time and clean those up. But it doesn’t seem like it causes any serious consequences.

Turns out sleeping bags are very common.

I believe it was just a random fluctuation. They are as common as every other item - i.e. finding a sleeping bag chance is exactly the same as finding a kukri knife. Only some items have a lower chance of spawning (amulets, armlets, glasses, etc.).

Note while catsuits indeed also have lower spawn chance - as there are two variants, “any catsuit” spawns almost as often as every other item (40%+40% = 80% weight, while most other items have 100% weight).

but it seems to be so that wearing shoes is now a bad idea in general

Indeed, some boots, especially High Boots are very noisy. So on some levels depending on the monsters composition I send the heroine barefoot to buff stealth. The health drain from wearing no footwear is noticeable, however the health saved by not getting hit is usually larger :)

Now since there is no inventory, I guess you will not really be able to take sleeping bags with you?

You can use roll while in the sleeping bag. It costs double stamina, but eventually can relatively easily move anywhere this way.

And yes, eventually there will be a (limited) way to carry additional things with, including “carry any item in hands”, not only weapon. But this is for a bit later.

Now getting the restraining sleeping bag into my Vinculopedia will probably be a challenge

Yes, I am very worried about this too. The problem is indeed that getting a locked sleeping bag requires a rare combo. I think I’ll just allow more monsters to lock the sleeping bag, I have already an idea how to make that without too big changes to monsters behaviors.

It requires a room to have both a catsuit and living suits

Note that if you want to try things out, it’s perfectly ok to use debug menu to add some things to the game. On Desktop (Windows/Linux) you can open it by pressing F1, on mobile - go to Pause and press 5 times in top-left corner of the screen.

From there you can add some monsters/items like loose_catsuit and living_suit (note that names there differ a bit from what you see in game).

Also note that after playing many times lower levels become too boring, so using GO TO MAP option there is also a valid thing to do. In the final game there will be unlockable ability to start at 10-20-30… level (it will require defeating a boss - but bosses are not ready yet). It also softly relies on one more not implemented mechanics: girls left at the settlement will do some crafting and depending on their skills will be able to make some much better gear. I’m still thinking of making some “quick temporary solution” for both of those mechanics, because this is the way the game is intended to be played. After beating 10 levels, you should be able to start deeper.

Horribly sorry for the delay. I’ll try to catch up now :)

On my first save file, I got 6 girls stuck on floor 7, which meant that I had to face 6 guards before I could rescue them

Yes, this is not how it’s supposed to work. Currently a lot of systems are in “temporary” state, and several characters captured per level is one of those. My overall idea is that when a character is captured at a level where there is another prisoner - the heroine will be moved up a level, maybe more. This way “more than one prisoner per level” will be rather a fallback than a regular situation.

Actually, I guess it’s already time to implement this feature. That shouldn’t be hard.

Do shoes really have to be obliterated when worn off?

Overall I wanted to be a “small but important micromanagement”. But eventually I absolutely agree - this feature is instead just annoying. I’ll change it asap.

often rolling into the completely wrong direction or getting stuck on nothing

Indeed, this is a very very annoying bug, or rather a set of bugs. I hope I’ve finally found the reason for “stuck on nothing” bug - it’s not too quick to fix it, but the fix itself hopefully will be relatively trivial. The map also should be much “smoother”, this will leave less places for the character to get stuck on - but this requires a bit different generation algorithm (I’ve got it planned, but first I want to make the basic gameplay systems right).

Resting is currently very annoying

Yes, I’m aware of that. And not yet sure what to do with this issue. First the resting should be dangerous and “fully rested” next to impossible, and it works. Second, resting should be next to impossible on some levels, and it also works. But in the end on average instead of being fun - it’s rather annoying (because requires wasting a lot of time, instead of exploring a new map - fighting on an already explored one). I’m not yet sure how to fix this issue. Ideas are welcome :D

a bug where sometimes all enemies will just stand in front of you and wait while you are resting

Yes, I know about this bug, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it so far :)

Thanks again for your feedback!

(Now for your more recent posts…)

Thank you a lot for your reply! I’m horribly sorry for the delay (I know I promised over a week ago “in a few hours :D). I’ll try to go and reply in detail asap.

Indeed, I’ve also had a freeze with Wrapper during my tests - but I thought it was a known (and extremely rare) freeze that sometimes happens when the character is blindfolded. I’ll try to see ASAP what could have gone wrong there.

Huge thank you! :) I’m very busy right now, I’ll try to reply in detail a bit later. In short: indeed, you’ve mentioned most of the issues that I really want to fix, I’ll try to be more specific in a few hours.

Thank you!

Thank you! :D

Thank you! :)

Don’t expect too frequent updates now. Poses and body shapes will still take some more time, a lot of time :)

And there will be another complicated slow and tedious update in the future, most likely still this year : game rebalancing, but it will be a bit later.

I’m not sure if rendering upgrade will be slow too, but another good candidate for “a few months of slow updates”

Those are big tasks and they just “can’t be delivered in small chunks” - need to be done from start to end.

Thank you! :)

Thank you! :)

Thank you! :D

Thank you! :)

Thank you! :D

Oooops, uploaded a broken build. Sorry. Fixed!

Hello there! Yeah, more or less fine. Working on characters species/poses and it goes very slowly. I’m almost sure it won’t be finished this week, however I hope to release a small update with a new monster or two somewhere soon.

Thank you! :D

Thank you! :D

Thank you!

Thank you! :)

Благодарствую! :)

In the background I’m slowly but not steadily working on character species, poses and customization UI :)

Thank you! Yeah, I hope too :D

Thank you! :D

I’m not really good - that’s the reason behind the delay with update :) Having some legal issues here, nothing too big but it takes a lot of anxiety to solve those so was out of inspiration for a few days.

Дякую!

Так обов’язково треба додати редактор персонажа… я все “боюся” братися за цю справу (бо зле мені UI йде), але треба набратися сміливості й таки зробити :) Не так вже там й багато роботи, щоб кожен раз “відкладати на наступний тиждень”.

Додати переклади - планую, але не приоритезую. Тобто, на відміну від редактора персонажів - це десь так на “через рік”. Хоча, якщо мовний бар’єр заважає грати - то можна це “раніше” штовхнути :)