itch.io

Finally, the time has come to release the hype from stasis...

This looks amazing. The remake seems well worth waiting for. The reflections on the swimsuit look great, and it adds a lot more depth.

I'm glad that you fixed the death claws, btw. They actually look like human hands now. I know hands are hard to draw/animate, so congrats on that.

Someone needs to teach MC the proper way to hold a knife though. ;P

I think you missed their point. They want the tutorial to be streamlined and focused rather than bloated with dialogue that does not move the tutorial forward.

Above, you have another person with a similar complaint, namely that you're mixing your narrative into the tutorial. 

At this point, you should be reflecting on what a tutorial is, and realize that it's better to keep humorous dialogue and character introductions in the story while making the tutorial as concise and short as possible.

The only CoD that matters. Cheers!

Your mental health comes first. If you need to take it slow, there's nothing wrong with that.

Don't worry too much about the players either. Miserable people tend to write miserable stories, so it won't serve anyone if you're forcing yourself to write when you're not feeling it. 

Best wishes to you and your mother.

Bug report, paste incoming...

```

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:

  File "game/n_events.rpy", line 742, in <module>

NameError: name 'Natalie_Path' is not defined

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

Full traceback:

  File "n_events.rpyc", line 742, in script

  File "renpy/ast.py", line 2131, in execute

  File "renpy/python.py", line 1097, in py_eval

  File "renpy/python.py", line 1090, in py_eval_bytecode

  File "game/n_events.rpy", line 742, in <module>

NameError: name 'Natalie_Path' is not defined

```

I'm getting the same on android. Since this error involves a bad variable call, a coding issue, we'll have to wait for a fixed update.

If you still have both installs, it should be possible to copy the save games from the old game's folder to the new one. Just open andoid/data with your file manager and look for the games' respective folders. No guarantees on the saves working though.

This became toxic the moment you posted that blatantly false summary. But sure, have a good day.

Funny how you say that after you posted a straw man summary that blatantly twists my words, isn't it?

0. I did not write this for you, and my opinion is not up for debate unless you are Caribdis. I will merely point out what you got wrong.

0. b) Your numbers don't line up. That's not conductive to proper debate. So, replying to both sets...

1. No, I am referring to the several accounts of actual torture of actual human beings that occurs during the war scene. Luna is literally demeaning and torturing a fellow human, inflicting pain for fun. But yes, Nancy's threat of torture is another point of contention. And if she knows it's wrong, and still stoops to doing it, then what does that make her but a hypocrite too weak to meet her own standards? 

2. I am appalled at the way they trample over weaker characters, but moreso at the pleasure they take in inflicting pain and humiliation. I didn't say they should not get the Gem. I am criticizing the manner of combat. That was not efficient combat in pursuit of a goal. It was showing off, in a cruel and inhumane way that was not necessary to obtaim the Gem of Doom, seeing how Orion just appears in the enemy base anyway. Do you need to torture and humiliate humans for a military distraction? No. In fact, it would be far more effective and less dangerous to bind the enemy forces in a defensive battle.

3. a) I am not criticizing that they almost got killed, but that they acted in a way that should have resulted in death, and that Caribdis chose to bend reality and make their enemies completely incompetent so they would not have to face the consequences of failure, rather than let them overcome a real challenge through struggle and competence. 

3. b) There is nothing theatrical or funny about torturing a human being. Do you consider war crimes comedy?

4. a) You are reversing my argument to detract from the fact that safe for a few exceptions, women are not held to moral standards at all, and how that makes their characters unsympathetic and weak. That is not civil debate. The bizarre joy Caribdis finds in killing, torturing, and humiliating male characters is a seperate issue that is quite honestly not as important as the fact that he's making the female characters less likeable by letting them get away with all the misdeeds and crimes they commit.

4. b) If no one thinks what they did is okay, why is Caribdis so reluctant to hold them accountable? Benjamin got killed, for real, after attempting to rape a girl. Maat has been habitually raping people, and no praetorian showed up to kill or even just ban her. Why the double standard?  So many men were intentionay portrayed as sleazebags as a pretext for inflicting inhumane levels of pain and humiliation on them before they even commit any misdeeds. But when you have a female sleazebag luring you to the locker and taking non-consensual dick pics, nothing happens. Why the double standard? It shows barely contained hatred for men, but moreso a deep contempt for women. After all, the only ones you would exempt from responsibility are the ones you do not deem capable of bearing it. It's clear nobody gives a damn about the demonization and abuse of men, but I'd expect people to have an issue with blatant misogynistic coddling of women.

5. a) I am not just mad that she conceded, but that she betrayed Orion out of weakness. She was not just abstaining or mediating, but actively talking bad about him. And if Gertrude is an idiot who is not worth clinging to, why would Nancy go so far as to turn on her own loved ones just to stay in her good graces? You say that it's okay because Orion didn't mind, but that's just another issue. He just got betrayed by a person he loved and trusted since he was a kid, and he's not hurt by it? He sees her cave in and turn on him out of weakness, but then goes along with her "strong woman" spiel and calls her his queen? If a loved one turns on you, it hurts. The whole interaction doesn't check out unless you are so deeply contemptuous towards women that you don't expect any sort of integrity or loyalty from them. Which simply can not be true for a strong mother figure that you love. 

Your summary is also false. This is not a matter of morals versus comedy, it's about Caribdis turning lovable characters into insane sociopaths, turning desirable women with good human motivations and a strong, kind personality into two-dimensional monsters that have no empathy for their fellow humans if it allows them to satisfy their vanity. He's defiling the characters he poured so much effort into building, and it pains me to see him do it.

I LOVE THIS UPDATE!!! KILL ALL THE MEN! TORTURE THEM! ALL WOMYN ARE QUEEN!

Or something like that? I mean, I love strong women. I've been looking forward to Nancy pushing Orion down and riding him for ages. So, why are these strong women suddenly so weak?

You've been writing a great story with strong and loveable women that are as dear to me as a set of renders can be. Why are they devolving into violent sociopaths with the mind of a twitter freak?

What is "Badass"? Is it slaughtering a bunch of incompetents without resistance? If a person is measured by the caliber of their opponents, what does it say about a character if they need to face off against noobs, and still would have died three times over if their opponents hadn't refused to take the shot? How about strong girls facing strong enemies and struggling to overcome them? You could do it for Chang's heist. A competent opponent who was three steps ahead, but the team won by being four steps ahead and utilizing all their strengths. Why not for the ladies?

Then there'a the matter of gratuitous violence and torture. Frankly, I found that obscene display of cruelty extremely disturbing and out of character for this cast of ladies that I adore. Making the opponents into misogynists to justify this sociopathic rampage isn't really helping either. How deranged do you have to be to enjoy torture? There is nothing that can excuse torture, no matter which words you put in the enemies mouth to justify it. I just can't see the cast as the loveable women they originally were after this.

Another issue is consistency. Nancy was a strong woman struggling to support her family, relatable and admirable. Then, she starts facing off against cardboard-thin foils ranting about women in leadership positions, which is just lazy. But I can tolerate a bit of sloppy writing, eyeroll and continue. What broke the camel's back was how this strong woman, who takes what she wants and does everything for her family, sees Gertrude falsely accusing Orion of transphobia - and immediately throws him under the bus to appease her. That's not strength and leadership, it's cowardice. She's not just not defending him, but outright betraying her loved one and siding with the bully out of fear that she might be the next victim. That also made the following interlude with Cicero so much more farcical. Where is the strong and caring Nancy that I loved so much? 

The spread of weakness is further observed when we see how no female character is held accountable for their actions, whether it's Maat, Regina, or the cast of heroines. Rape, sexual assault, torture, murder, invasion of privacy, sexism - all is permissible for the ladies, while men are fated to die a horrible death at the drop af a B-word. However, a strong character is one that faces the consequences of their actions, amd that acts with the consequences in mind. This bigotry of low expectations is more demeaning to the female cast than any of those cardboard misogynists could ever be.

But it's not just demeaning to not hold the women to basic standards of human decency - it actively creates hate. It's a common method of punishment to give one person unjust leniency, and see them isolated and punished by their peers. For authors, the more undue favoritism they show a character, the more they will estrange them from the reader. As paradox as it might seem, you need to be merciless to the characters you love.

Now, this will probably be downvoted to hell and back, because this story started as one of the best, and there will be many who don't want to acknowledge the flaws that are leading to its decline. Others might just not care about writing as long as the animations stay awesome as they are. Ironically, that manner of thought is going to accelerate the decline even further.

But I'm not writing this for the fans. I'm writing this for Caribdis, who started writing a wonderful story, and is hopefully wants to keep doing that. I hope this gets through whatever is clouding your mind right now. I love this story, and want it to be as great as it started, all the way to the end. Make your ladies strong again, make them human again, and make your story fun again. 

Well, you should know best about being self-absorbed and unable to admit your fault.  So far you only sound like "Ding-Dong, you're wrong, I'll suck my antivirus scam app's schlong." 

Just delete the game. Nobody's forcing you to play it, and you frankly don't deserve it.

Well, you can go into the settings, find the "skip" section and enable everything, then fast forward through the game.

 You'll still have to select choices and manually navigate a few sections, but you'll get through hours of gameplay in minutes. For certain riddles, you can just get the solution from the walkthrough.

That's probably the fastest way to catch up. Personally, I'd just replay the game though. There's always some details I forget between updates.

I think you mean "Once in a Lifetime".

False positives on Ren'Py are common enough that I've seen dozens of people reporting them on different games. You only think it's rare because you have a very small sample size, yourself.

But hey, if you really think your antivirus app actually analyzes code, maybe you deserve to miss out on this awesome game. 

I mean, look at the screenshot. Eternum isn't 53.8 MB, it's a 100 times bigger. There's three possible reasons for this: 

- You downloaded something else from a different site.

- Your antivirus app is a scam. 

- You're an incompetent troll who can't even fake a screenshot.

Yes, something is fishy: Your shovelware anti-malware app.

If the app actually claims to have "detected malicious code", you should uninstall it immediately, and get a refund if you paid for it.

It's common for bad antivirus software to give false positives on Ren'Py games. They can't tell the difference between Ren'Py and some virus that was probably packaged with some other Ren'Py game ages ago.

Frankly, a lot of anti-virus software on phones is trash (if not an outright scam), and will readily accuse anthing it doesn't have whitelisted as a virus - including simple programming exercises you wrote yourself and know 100% to be harmless.

I think you are overestimating your demographic relevance. There are many players, particularly when it comes to AVNs, who do download the PC version and run it with JoiPlay, or just use their PC. I have a mid-range phone and run this without any issues, both the compressed and regular version. Also, if you really think 3GB is a lot, you're falling behind the times.

And no, your phone is not "decent enough to run any game" otherwise you'd not be here complaining. Most mobile games are made low-spec enough to run on any potato device, and that works because most aren't meant to be pretty in the first place, only addictive. Others are limited to literal slideshows with some animation where it is most important. Your phone has only been keeping up because everyone else has slowed down for you.

Again, your phone is not "decent enough to run any game", even if it's otherwise powerful. Most phones are optimized for communication and utility, and not made for gaming. Some have all their power in the CPU and neglect the GPU, while others are skimping on RAM, and yet others have abysmal I/O speeds on their storage. You have to do your research to get a phone that actually "runs any game", and you clearly didn't.  

You're not a heroic defender of the "vast majority", you're that guy with a potato trying to downgrade the game for everyone because you couldn't be bothered to get a phone with an actual GPU. Do your research next time.

Holy Fuck, I must be dreaming. This is setting new quality standards for VNs. Absolutely amazing work.

This sounds a lot like compression is the reason animations freeze in the first place. 

A possible solution would be to make the APK at a lower resolution rather than compressing it too much, and recommend the PC version with JoiPlay. Which might need a bit of decompression too if PC users also have issues.

On the other hand, maybe this is just a few potato users getting potato performance. I'll download the compressed version too, and see how it runs. 

Edit: Playing up to the "find me" scene so far, I've had zero issues running the compressed version on a Moto G100. Now, that's not a weak phone, but it's no high-end device either. I think it really is just potato devices performing poorly.

If animations freeze, reducing the number of animations will not solve the issue. You'll just have fewer animations that still keep freezing. Unless you reduce compression or get a better phone, nothing will change.

Frankly, not every phone is suitable as a gaming device. If you decide to save money (or research) and get a potato, you'll have to expect and accept that some games just won't run smoothly. The same goes for PC, by the way: A netbook for example will struggle with most games and compressed video. Make sure to research benchmarks for your next phone, as there are relatively powerful and affordable devices for those who can find them.

The solution I'd suggest on the developer's side is an alternative low-res version with low compression for low-end devices - but that means you're not getting the high-quality animations those with decent phones and computers get.

However, before pestering for alternative versions, have you tried running the PC version under JoiPlay? With JoiPlay, you can play Ren'Py games regardless of size, because the app does not need to contain all the game files like a standalone APK does. PC versions usually have lower compression, which means smoother video playback.

Naturally, PC versions are big. Collecting games with over 10GB will quickly fill up most phones. So if you're running out of space, you can just get a nice terabite-sized external SSD that works with android to keep all your oversized PC versions and APKs. And movies. And Books. And everything.

That is false. I just patched mine.

Learn to read. I'm specifically talking about MANDATORY events and skips that DON'T affect the story.

And if it's wrong to trigger people, don't trigger me with trigger warnings and fake skips. See how that logic falls apart when you apply it equally? Check the fetish listing if you want to know what you're "signing up for", there's your fair warning. There's no need to ruin everyone's immersion mid-game for a few oversensitive snowflakes, and that is not part of the author's responsibility either.

Is it a free game? Nobody is paying him to make it? That Patreon is decoration then, hm? Get real.

It's not ungrateful to question whether the game will be done within a decade - not when it's already been four years and development is continuously slowing down. 

If you enjoy being blueballed for years, that's a weird fetish, but totally fine. You do you. However, it is just as fine to say that at some point, enough is enough. Learn to handle differing opinions, snowflake.

Awesome, a new Update! Wait...

So, between April 2022 and August 2023, this update took a full year and 4 months to come out. The earliest update I can see is episode 3 from August 2019, 4 years ago. The intervall between updates has also nearly tripled from the previous 3-4 months per update. How long for the entire game?

Would it be wise to download this, painstakingly replay the 9 episodes several times to find the optimal path again, get a few minutes of extra content, only to be waiting another year or two until the next update comes out? 

I'll pick this back up when it's done... if that happens before my balls get too wrinkly to work anymore. Ain't getting any younger over here.

Well, this one has pointlessly long traveling through identical-looking empty rooms, a bazillion unlabeled doors, and poorly implemented door transitions that cause you to go back through the door when you start walking, all owed to poor usage of the RPGM engine. Tip: make all door events like the ones on north walls. The others are just awful.

Then, in a RPGM game, NPCs should exist at all times and have a bit of dialogue when you talk to them. Here they just vanish until they are needed for a scripted event. If you're making a walkable world, it should be consistent.

Not an RPGM issue, but I'd also consider smoothing out the dialogue. There are too many passages where the characters seemingly forget how to form proper and separate sentences. It's okay to get help if english isn't your first language.

Hi! After following you, I've had a whole bunch of your ratings in my feed - and all of them 5 stars? Now, some of the games are great, but some are nowhere near deserving that rating, with objective issues in tech, animation, level design, and writing. You made this, so you should know the difference.

I get that there's this weird rating exchange thing going on between AVN creators on itch, but I think you could be more selective - or more accurate. Rating a mediocre or poor game with full 5 stars only serves to dilute the value of those ratings, and 4 stars is still a good rating that will set slightly more appropriate expectations.

Thanks for reading.

I agree with the main sentiment, but content warnings and skip prompts interrupt the flow of the story and ruin the moment by spoiling what's about to happen. That should never happen unless it serves the story somehow.

So I'd go a step further and say that if something is going to happen mandatorily, it's best to just show it. No skip, no warning, full immersion. 

And if there are content warnings despite their detrimental effect on immersion, there needs to be toggle to turn them off in the options. My only trigger are immersion-breaking trigger warnings.

That's not the same event though, even if you use deceptive variable lettering. There's quite a difference between the same event and the same outcome. 

And that's only if I was willing to accept the false idea that the outcome can be the same when you're clearly continuing on a path with a different history of events - which I'm not.

No, that would be optional, not alternative. And it still doesn't answer my question.

What's the point of just not seeing a scene if it still happened? You're still interacting with a character that did things you dislike so much you couldn't even see them, and you still know what they did. 

At that point, there's no reason to even make a skip, because the events happen either way. Your best choices are to save the effort entirely and just have the story proceed, or implement real skippable scenes.

That is the worst solution of all. It means that you will always miss out on one route, no matter how you choose. One of the main draws of harem games is that you're not forced to drop one route for another, that you can have all the girls and all the events if you want.

It's also the least flexible model of all. If you have events ABCD, then making A and C mutually exclusive allows only ABD and ACD paths, whereas optional routes allow AD, ABD, ACD, and ABCD. 

Now you've got me confused. If certain things must happen, aren't they neither optional nor alternative? 

Optional: You can have chocolate, or not. Also Vanilla, or not.

Altenative: You must choose between chocolate or vanilla, but only one.

Mandatory: You can't order without a cone, Sir. No, Sir, I'm not scooping it into your hand.

Something that must happen is just regular mandatory event, or am I missing something?

Umm... I kind of said the opposite though? Canonical skips are optional routes, that's not quite the same as alternative routes.  I was talking specifically about the fact that alternative routes would be detrimental to the game, but optional ones are fine.

Also, this is quite clearly a harem game, and that's a great thing. 

Reading the other comments, I see a lot of people advocating for just skipping content. That's good, as long as the skip is actually canon. If you skip content and it really didn't happen, that's fine. If you only skip the scene and the skipped events remain canon, it's pointless to even bother. 

This means that there should be a visible choice and at least a minimum of optional narration that ties the parts before and after the skip together, to establish a new canon where the skipped scene really didn't happen. Future events should acknowledge those events only if they happened, not if they were skipped.

Alternative sex scenes sound great at first [edit to clarify: they aren't], since it looks like you're giving the player something to make up for the missed content. But now you have two paths where one will always be missed, and that FOMO does not feel good, particularly in a harem game. I mean, harem games are specifically targeted at completionist players who don't want to drop one route for another. [Edit to clarify: Optional paths are great, forced choice between alternative paths is bad.]

I would wholeheartedly agree with having the skipped content in the gallery, so you can see it as a kind of fragment from that alternative timeline. If the scene contains important dialogue, make sure to include it.

[Edited for clarity.]

Consensual BDSM is a kink. Kinks are fine, because they are a choice, whether that choice is made by the player (preferrable) or their character (acceptable). Tying someone up and doing things to them without consent is a crime. 

So, the main issue with that Maxy scene was not so much the choice of kinks, but trying to sell a love interest that lacks basic respect for your human rights. Of course, something can be wrong and still hot. Just be aware that there is a point of no return, and it's usually reached far sooner for the reader than it is for the author. You managed to keep Maxy's actions in the "wrong, but I'll forgive it this once" zone for me, but that could easily have gone differently.

Now, this is your story. Write whatever you want, art should be free. So, If you want to write a villainous villain doing villainous things, please do. Heck, I can even see a female villain being sexually desirable while being hated as a person. However, actions have consequences. If your villain does damage, that damage will be done, and usually can't be undone.

A word of warning though: Stay consistent. Don't try to redeem inexcusable actions with poor excuses and sob stories. It will only end up destroying your narrative's credibility, and that's what carries the story. Poorly made redemption arcs are on on my personal top ten list of bad writing sins that even fairly decent writers still make too often, with fatal results for the story. 

(Columbo voice) Oh, one last thing: Expect to lose 99% of the audience if the scene with Cassandra and the villain turns out to be NTR or similar. It's the one thing you won't ever get away with if it wasn't on the box in big red letters from day one.

Dude. 

You just said pregnancy is not a thing, and then you said pregnancies are 99.9% girls. What is it now? On top of that, men not being needed does not imply that they are incapable of impregnating women, and clearly some women still have cycles.

Then, the fetish list contains the mention of "and many more". That does not tell anything about what those "many more" fetishes are. And it most certainly doesn't tell you how to avoid scenes with unwanted fetishes. 

If you're going to be a smartass, be sure to bring some smarts to the table. Otherwise you're just being an ass.

His critique seems solid. The replies are hating hard on criticism though. 

The criticism sounds valid, and I've seen no convincing retort in the replies. Thanks for the warning.

Some people say Postman was a bad movie. They were wrong. It just needed time to reach an era where competent and dutiful delivery men are the rarest breed of heroes.