itch.io

The stool wobbled a bit - but yeah it looks like we're safe again for now.

You've struck some valid points that others have pointed out as well. I hear you. I'm glad you liked it in spite of those things, and thanks for reading!

You never know XD

Really appreciate how much you're engaging with the feedback not just from me but from everyone commenting :)

Absolutely, man. I try to be as present as possible. If there's one thing I respect, it's when people give their time to read the story and comment on it. The vast majority of comments have been helpful, and even if some elements may have changed a bit too much with the feedback, I still appreciate the engagement.

"The compass:..."

Makes sense. I'm not entirely sure what I would have done. I'm sure I would be so out-of-it that I would not be thinking clearly.

"Sam in the Wine route:..."

Well now that very much depends on the beer! And the wine!

Ah, yes. "This game's got rapey porn in it" A disclaimer like that will work it's way into the next release for sure.

"Goats, Sheep, and You:..."

That'll do it. I don't personally see the big distinction, but what do I know.

"Writing style:..." "Not enough elegant poetry out there about animal person nutsacks, really."

Totally agree. Like it's not worthy...

No I'm going to focus on telling the story, and the writing might improve a little over time, with the exercise.

"Discord:"

Another helpful soul on here, has helped me set one up :) Check the top comment or the page description for more details.

"Timelines:"

I'm terrible at this. If I announce a date, I'll be sure to miss it. At the very least, it will haunt me. I'm the sort of guy who's always on time - neurotically so - but a project is different.

Welcome :)
I've come to like Sam quite a bit as well.

Interloper now has a DISCORD channel.
https://discord.gg/XmjRFqF7kS

This is a great place to go if you'd like to discuss the project, have feedback, bug reports, etc.

A BIG THANK YOU to "Mema" for setting this up :)
They will also be moderating the forum when time permits.

Sounds good! Look up redlevity_64534
I don't expect you to do any kind of moderation or anything like that.

Sam is a good boy for sure.

It's on hold right now. I need a break after working on the project for 4 months straight, and I have many other things to do atm.

He'll be back :)

The song is meant for a scene that would mark the end, and a climax of sorts for Chapter 2 :)

Yeah Sam is sexy, isn't he.

I don't. Do you think it would get any engagement? I'm a discord n00b, I admit. I don't use it. It's a good idea - might do it.

"As stated in a comment below this one, You (The main character) are a bit too horny with comments"

The first version had no real thoughts/internal dialogue from the MC, and compensating for that, I may have overdone it slightly.

"...and while comedy is good in keeping the mind from reeling into insanity and helping to keep a firm ground under the feet, it feels...a little too forced and obfuscating(bewildering)."

Noted. It can be a difficult balance. The horrific things should be horrific, not a joke. The jokes should be realistic interactions that real people might have, even in harsh circumstances.

The psychedelic scene gave me a good idea of what it is like to be drugged, even though I never want to experience that personally.

I draw from personal experiences, although I have never been unwillingly drugged by someone else, and I hope that never happens!

I do suggest putting a content warning in the game for the rape scene, or at least having the option to remove it if people don't want to see it in the options. 

I will be doing something about it. It's rough!

But i feel it's placed well, and doesn't overstay it's welcome too long."

Good to know.

"I cannot wait for the next update for chapter two to finish out so we can see chapter three. I figure you might be just one person working on a passion project, but you are doing an amazing job."

I'm glad to hear that :)

Before I'd even written anything, I had a vision for chapter 3. I'm personally curious about how I'll manage to realise it, if that makes sense.

"And I leave with a singular question about Sam: Are all his sprites and animations done with motion capture? He looks like vtuber model."

Motion capture is what would have been necessary previously. But no - it was done with prompting (so AI), and a lot of trial and error+patience.

Thank you so much for your kind words and your positive rating - it really helps me out :)

That's what I like to hear! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

"...I'm confused, is this game alleging that corn cob/jellyfish/fox dreams are not normal? I have those every Thursday."

Well I'm glad I'm not alone! Just... Don't interact too much with that dream, okay? Don't eat too much of that corn and stay the hell away from the Jellyfox. Speaking from experience here.

Back with a proper reply here.

"Regarding the changes to the intro, it's not exactly where I would have gone, but I wonder if part of that is because some changes were intended for the overall dynamic between Chris and Sam as well"

I know - as I said, I like the original prologue better, at least the odd nature of how the MC and Sam met. It was flawed and silly, but it had a surreal edge to it that I personally vibed with. As previously stated, it was something that came to me, and I just went with it. It was changed to make things more believable. I guess I changed a bit more than I should have, to be honest, yielding to various ... critiques.

What we have now is what we have.

"...this version of the story seems to be stamping down on the accelerator to get the romance going"

"- Kinda wish you had turned Chris' "horny" setting down just a notch or two. Like I know it's half romance half horror and we all want to get the fox's pants off at some point and all but it was just a bit distracting at times. "

I can't reveal exactly why I did that, but I'll say that I'll work on finding a balance in upcoming releases. I agree, it might be a bit much.

"...why does Sam keep talking in the first house about how he feels responsible for Chris being there? If it's a spoiler (like if the foxes secretly created the Jellyfish Dimension and Sam isn't being entirely transparent about that), you don't have to say, but I'm wondering if these lines are holdovers from the first draft that should be removed."

That does indeed sound like a holdover. I wonder if I missed a section in my edits, although I thought went over everything. I can say that The foxes are not responsible. Sam is as much a victim of circumstances as the MC is.

I'll have a look at this.

"- I accidentally initially skipped past the dream sequence, then went back when I felt like I missed something. It may help to put in a pause here, at least for a few seconds, to make sure readers know that there's a video there and don't just skip past it thinking it's regular dialogue. I think something like " $ renpy.pause(delay=5, hard=True) " would prevent readers from clicking out for 5 seconds so they at least see part of it."

This is extremely useful advice. I'll very likely be doing exactly this!

- The compass seemed much more natural in the "wine" route where Goat gave it to Sam. Given Sam's other actions in the "beer" route, I found it hard to believe that he would've let Chris take it for any reason. 

Going on the assumption that the compass will likely lead them somewhere they do not want to go, given the untrustworthy source, would you rather have a device that's either an 'agent of evil' or otherwise devious, or no means of navigation at all?
I know that I'd rather have some control over the situation and try to change the outcome to my advantage.

- I found Sam's actions overall less believable in the "wine" route.

I can appreciate that. I was on the fence about it. It sort of wrote itself, so I let Sam have his madness. He was unnerved, of course, but the character traits he displayed feel like they belong more with the MC than with Sam, I am aware of that.

- I absolutely hated the Goat/Chris SA scene, which I at least hope was part of the point. I wonder if a "skip scene" option would be appropriate for that, or at the very least a disclaimer at the beginning of the game or something that the VN contains graphic depictions of sexual violence. 

Sorry! :D

Yes, that was kind of the point. I'm trying to set the writing free, to let it be as unbounded as possible. Sometimes, that leads to stuff like this - because sometimes, bad things happen.

I'll look into doing at least one of those two things.

"Not sure why we're treating the goat serving lamb as "cannibalism"? Lamb is sheep, not goat, so not sure if this was more intended just to indicate suspicion of an herbivore eating meat?"

As I see it, they belong to the same subfamily, they can even mate with each other, in the same way horses and donkeys can - producing a sterile (I think?) mule. I'd say that qualifies as being - loosely - kin.

"- When looking at Goat's balls: "the amount of semen they might contain". Chris may need to review his reproductive anatomy and physiology."

Chris is a horny, slightly twisted SOAB and you'll have to forgive him for that.

I felt like the writing overall in this version was an improvement - your style can still be a bit on the verbose side but I thought it was much clearer this go around.

My biggest annoyance with my writing is that I think it falls short of being elegant enough to qualify as poetry in any sense, or even really solid writing. It gets the message across, but it doesn't rise to greatness. I'd say I can write better in my language. ...Not saying which country I live in other than Northern Europe :)

- Some proofreading errors throughout. Might just want to do another run to check for incorrect capitalization, typos, missing tags for characters speaking, etc.

I still need to incorporate a ton of corrections from my friend who helped me with this. The reason it wasn't done for this release, was that he did not highlight them, so I can only import the whole script - and hope there are no game-breaking changes to the 'coding' (it's scripting, let's be honest).

- Italicization for Chris' internal thoughts is inconsistent. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.

I'm not surprised. I had a clear idea that it should all be italicized and bold, but I half changed my mind and that's why it's not completely consistent.

"- When Chris throws his phone and it hits Sam, Chris says "it hits Sam on the side of his maw" even though we don't know Sam's name yet."

Thanks, I'll fix that!

- I'm not sure why we don't learn Sam's name yet to begin with? It's only a couple lines of interaction at the start of Day 2 so I don't know why the name exchange can't happen way sooner. Like the first time Chris calls him "fox".

It's just a social 'dance' thing. Sam doesn't open up much before he feels it's appropriate.

"- Not sure what the point of the little face image in the dialogue screen is or why it only appears after we learn Sam's name. The expression doesn't change, so it's not conveying that, and there are only like three characters so far so we don't really need it to distinguish who's who."

It's there, along with the text colour - so there's absolutely no doubt who's speaking.

"- On the wine route, before Chris leaves the table to go to the restroom, Sam's sitting sprite is at like eye level with the table and it looks kinda awkward."

Oops -I'll fix that!

"- Also on wine route, when getting into bed with Sam, Sam's sprite disappears and there's super tiny text on the screen that looks like it might be an error message."

Nice catch again, sounds like I'm calling on a sprite that doesn't exist. I'll fix that.

- After leaving the house on the beer route, there's kind of a comical disconnect between Sam's words and the closeup sprite chosen where it looks like:

Sam: "NO. NEVER. Never have I seen anything like that before."

Also Sam: :)

That's not right. WIll be fixed as well!

"- "I AM A GOOFY FUCKING IDIOT AND I HATE MYSELF" I felt this line on a deeply spiritual level. -_-"

Hahah.. We all - well, most of us - feel like that at times.

As before, please don't take anything in this comment as discouraging you from continuing - any criticisms I have are intended to be solely constructive. I think the level of effort you're putting into this project is both impressive and self-evident, and I really hope you see this through to the end. 

Keep up the good work <3

Your comment was super helpful and much appreciated.

Rest assured, I will keep working on this. Right now though, it is 'resting' or on hiatus. I simply have too much other stuff I have to do. Since public deadlines pull the rug out from underneath me, I can't say when I intend to get back to working on it, and only give very vague statements about the next release. Thanks for reading <3

Very much so. Especially in Chapter 2, depending on the route.

Thank you for this extremely useful and very observant comment :)
I will return at a later time with a longer response once I've had a proper look at each of the mentioned points. It might be a little while. I'm also waiting to see if anyone else has feedback for things that needs to be looked at.

Yeah I secretly like the old prologue better as well. It was a bit unhinged but I liked it. Objectively - the new one is more solid, more realistic. It's a better-built house. It's a fine line, walking between realism and intrigue - keeping my own flimsy design or listening to others. If I'd kept the old prologue, the whole story might have felt like it balanced on a barely tenable concept. It might have become a problem, or might not have.

The basics of the new prologue were kindly suggested to me, and I am thankful for it, even if it is a departure from the original plot.

With how I usually do things, often I can't really vocalise exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing. In my own way, I think I can make them work, though. I'm not the sort of person who has a grand plot on the drawing board before I start writing the first bit of narrative. I make it up as I go.

I do have lots of things planned for this story, and lots of assets already made for Chapter 3.

I take your criticisms with open eyes and a bit of nodding in agreement, but we're moving forward from what things are now :)

Oh you saw the jellyfish in the chair, did you? I tip my hat to you! Did you notice other things, I wonder?

Some questions will be answered, but not all.

Thanks for reading :)

Alpha 2 / Chapter 2 released. Please see devlog for details.

Keep in mind that Jpg doesn't support transparency.

webp does. Lossy and lossless.

- Ah, I think you're right. I ran into some issues with that since Renpy doesn't support it without the workaround I mentioned.

Good article :)

Keep in mind that Jpg doesn't support transparency. For sprites in a more lightweight engine like Ren Py, PNG's are the only choice. In my game, I have been impressed with the WebM format - I have lots of 5-10 second videos that are very decent looking at high resolution, and actually take up less space than a PNG still image with a smaller resolution. As long as you don't have a lot of moving particles, it's practically magic. Example: 3520x1152 (extra horizontal resolution is for alpha layer) 30fps 5 second video compressed with WebM at Quality setting 80 - takes up 815kb, since the black background is not rendered. Original PNG still (with half the width) is around 1,5MB.

At some point 'soon' I will make an announcement for those who follow me (not just a comment here). 

This is a big project... Or I'm just slow.

Animated sprite count for Sam has grown from 79 to over 230. Even so, I am often missing just the right one and have to make more.

I have a couple of friends testing/proof reading Chapter 2 when it's done, and after corrections, I'll release it.
It's is coming along but as there are multiple routes, things take more time. This post is just a small life-sign for the curious.

Chapter 2 will feature NSFW content.

That's it for now.

As usual, no dates (sorry).

Hi Lexowolf

There's no doubt you have many imaginative ideas here. As work progresses on my project, the world has become bigger, richer, and started expanding to a point where it is almost building itself. The same can be said for its characters.

I have been hard at work to make character interactions more believable.

While I appreciate your input and passionate suggestions, I can't help but feel we are essentially talking about two different stories here. A lot of what is going to happen in my story, has already manifested itself as elements in the plot that either haven't been written yet, or completely fleshed out. I can't really comment on where the story goes - or where it doesn't go, as I don't want to spoil anything.

I'll say that in my VN, we are not in a world that so easily provides access to the luxuries you suggest. A lot of things are going to happen before we can approach anything like a "realm stabilization".

That's all I'll say about it for now :)

To me it honestly sounds like you might want to try your hand at writing your own Visual Novel. Have you thought of that? It's a big project, but very rewarding. I might recommend putting all your ideas in a document with a timeline for when various elements of the plot should take place. It doesn't have to be deep descriptions, those can come later.

As I've been working on my VN, I find myself going back to do revisions, changing little details as I go. These revisions often present a chance to reevaluate whether things feel right, or not. I try not to be lazy in this process.

Regarding the subreddit - I would say yes, BUT - please wait until the next chapter is out. So many things have changed, I would rather not have more eyes on the old version for now.

When the new chapter comes out you are more than welcome to post my story on r/furry.

Thank you for your input :)

I think people need to see what AI can also be. This world we live in is changing faster than any of us can keep up by now. AI is at the centre of that change. Scary stuff.

I agree with some of the walking animations, and as you said, perhaps it would be better with more static sprites. If I use static pictures, I can provide far greater variety much easier, with fewer issues. But... It's just not what I wanted, so I'll still try to make it work with animations.

I am working on a sort of compromise with the backgrounds, because I agree those should not be with "handheld" camera or have perspective/parallax shifts etc. - I never wanted that except for rare cases, it was just something I was willing to live with. We'll see how it goes in the next release.

I can say that the tone of the story will be eerie in general. I can't say more than that atm.
I appreciate it!

I have no idea where AI will go. It's a can of worms for sure. I see several scenarios where it will both lift us up and inspire humanity, as well as be a plague. As with all things, it's up to us to chose what we focus on. It's pretty cool if it can somehow inspire you to draw again. Keep at it?
I can sort of draw, but I'm really not very good at it. There are both musicians and painters in my family, but music was always my call.

Appreciate the rating and your support ♡

TLDR:
Project still alive and being worked on diligently. Next release unknown.

Just a little word from me. I am still working on this.
Listening to feedback, I decided to go back and change the prologue.
It has been a struggle and progress with that has been painfully slow. Whether it's my ADHD or not, going back and changing or rewriting things, is a tough exercise for me. 
I'm much better at moving forward.

I've been working on other things as well.
The interface for one thing and challenges in trying to make the engine do things it was never designed for. In choosing AI for my visuals, I have not made things easier for myself (as I knew going in), and if I am to fulfil my vision, there is hard work ahead.
As previously explained, it's more than just generating a few pictures.

I won't say much more for now, other than I appreciate those of you who've given me useful feedback, and those who understand that making something is difficult. I listen to most suggestions and implement the changes I agree with and can make.

In short, the next iteration of the game will feature:
- a reworked prologue/parts of chapter1
- New Music
- New Chapter
- Bug fixes and design changes

What I am trying to create, is not perfection, I've fallen into that trap far too often, it has a tendency to kill all progress for me.
I am trying to create something that is emotionally impactful and interesting to the best of my abilities.

I could update the "demo" with what I have, but I'm just going to let it stay as it is for now. I can't give any kind of timeframe, cause I'm no good with those and it will jinx things.

I look at this page every now and then, but not too often, as it quickly becomes a distraction. Regardless of the many opinions of what I've made so far, I want to focus on my vision for what the hell this thing is and try to actually realize it.

Well this is a fun comment section. 

I'm not going to get too much into the AI discussion since I feel like my feelings on that are too complicated to address in the scope of an itch.io comment (which knowing me is probably already going to be way too long). What I will say is that you clearly put in a great deal of effort into making the models and animations for this, and while you're absolutely going to continue getting some pushback, I don't think you should stop making this or stop posting it or whatever. There seems to be a clear difference here in the use of AI in this game and just slapping a quick prompt together and generating a generic anime waifu.

While we're on the subject though, some of the visuals can be a bit rough and there are some errors. A couple that I noticed, for example:

- when Sam is sitting on the bed and his ear twitches, it looks like his face is kinda... collapsing?

- So fun. But there are a lot of useful comments as well. I did put a lot of work into it. It will not be perfect, there's no way around that. Sam has sometimes done things that frightened me, and I will ask him to behave for future chapters. His face needs to stay intact, I very much agree.

- when Sam is walking after leaving the house, one of his feet is plantigrade and the other is digitigrade. In other shots, sometimes both are plantigrade and sometimes both are digitigrade.

- Fuel for the AI haters, I'm sure. This is a very common AI problem right now. I'm left with either reducing the animations a lot, sticking only to the very few that work well, or spending a lot of money (spoiler, I don't have a lot of money).

It's not for lack of prompting, both in Stable diffusion, and in the animation process. The process is pretty much this:

- Generate the wanted image through prompting in Stable diffusion. Typically with a ratio of 1/10 or 1/20, meaning 1 out of 10 or 20 is a useful picture. 

- Import to Photoshop to correct errors, cut it out and place it on a green screen background. 

- Animate it with KlingAI, which again often does not succeed. 

- Import it into Premiere Pro for chroma/color keying, and add a transparency layer to it, tweaking the loop. 

- Import to Visual Basic script and give it a name etc, ready for the game.

It takes time. That's completely fine, I think it mostly works.

While Naho had some really bad takes, I actually do agree with him to an extent on the animations. Having animations for Sam for much of the game is fine, but he does not need to be moving at all times. For example, you can have him be static during the meal scenes where he wouldn't be doing a ton of movement. In seated, static scenes like this, the constant movements can get a bit distracting.

I also think you should be more selective in moving the "camera" for the backgrounds/scenes. I found this very unnerving when first entering the house, but the more you use it, that effect quickly wears off. Where I think it works is as a kind of subversion of expectations for what a VN looks like. Players are typically used to static backgrounds, so having the background shift to move like a first person horror game can quickly increase the tension by taking the viewer out of their "comfort zone", so to speak. So maybe use that for particularly intense scenes rather than just like, looking at a forest.

It simply happens, the AI won't listen to me, so I've had to work around it. In my opinion, if the background perspective is shifting, the characters should follow, which they don't - it would be an insane amount of work and I might break the engine.

Again, I could use static backgrounds, that's just not what I wanted. The very first scene in Chapter 2 (not released) has a static background with parts of it lightly animated. I may do this more, I may not.

As several others have noticed, there were lots of spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, but it seems like you're already working on addressing that.

There is also some really stilted sentence structure going on here, and that may be a translation issue.

Ex. 1: .....

......"The fox had been lonely."

(shortened quote to save space)

- Yes I'm working on the writing, fixing the many mistakes, as well as changing things that are not realistic, or not good enough.

I'm going to look closer at your examples. I will work on it, but you should probably still expect some things to be a little weird going forward. It won't be perfect - hopefully, the world as a whole will be appealing.

Is there something that predisposes MC to follow the fox from the bus station? Is he lonely? Is he depressed? Is he looking for adventure or excitement? Is he a horny gay furry? If the idea is for it to be totally mystical, A) maybe consider having it not be since grounding decisions in character is almost always more satisfying than having them happen solely for the plot; and B) convey some of that with Sam's responses. Have him be aloof, evasive, cagey, but friendly with at least a hint of charisma. Things that make MC suspicious but intrigued.

Also definitely convey VERY early on that MC is a human and that anthros are not normally present in his world. I did not realize either of these until the house and that really changes how that intro should play out. You should clarify this both for the benefit of the reader and because MC should react SOMEHOW to seeing a real world anthro for the first time.

- This is definitely one of the weaker parts of the story. As I wrote in another reply, some of it is intentional. I'm trying to keep the framing of the MC and their motivations, to a minimum, so as to suit any reader. In this, I may have missed the mark, and ended up making him one-dimensional.

Of course, you would expect a reaction from the MC when he meets an actual humanoid fox, and I can understand the disappointment when there is none, or when it is not properly explored. I had reasons, but yes.

Look, at the end of the day, I think you should stick with it. I know I can be a little heavy with the red pen sometimes but the point isn't to attack you or discourage you. If I thought this game was a trash heap I wouldn't have spent the better part of an hour writing a whole-ass dissertation on my feelings about it and how to improve it. Regardless of the (hopefully interpreted as constructive as intended) criticisms that I have provided, I do legitimately want to see where this story goes and how this world develops. Best of luck to you, truly :)

- I understand how it might feel unnatural. I have made several mistakes here. For one, as I described in a reply below, having the MC be without much character to them, to avoid assigning personality traits to the reader they do not feel at home in.

We met Sam for the first time on the bus station and had with him about 3 or 4 four sentences from each side.

And then we decided to go on a walk with the strange mysterious fox for 3-4 hours.

IN ALMOST ABSOLUTE SILENCE

We haven't even learned his name to this moment.

- Yeah I know. It's 'cute' but not realistic, and probably grating on the reader. I was thinking the reader might fill in the blanks and was also playing with the scenario that the MC is in shock, or not completely lucid.

Music:

It's good!

Especially the last track, cause it plays in the right mood and time.

The only thing I would advise is to choose tracks more accurate for moments.

Music in the house got me overwhelmed with all this noise in several minutes...

- That's fair, I know Harpsichord isn't for everyone. I'm practising a "less is more" approach with the music for some of the newer tracks I've been making. It's tough, but this is a VN, the music should support the narrative, not steal the focus. I get it. We'll see if I succeed. The track in the house in Chapter 1 is meant for a different place (in Chapter 3).

GUI:

Sorry, but it's just bad.

It's almost base GUI but with ultra-small fonts and strange scale.

- Yeah, I'm working on it. It should have been fixed before the first release, especially the tiny text and tiny menu buttons.

Artwork?:

I'll be short and clear.

I do not appreciate this kind of stuff in any games.

It looks creepy and glitchy and has an uncanny valley effect so I dislike it, this surely will not work out for mass audience.

The only moment that I enjoyed of it's the transition of the house from autumn to winter, it was kinda cool!

That's the most of that I wanted to tell, English isn't my native so sorry for any possible misunderstood.

- That's fair. You should have seen all the stuff I've thrown away. There will be more morphing things, and things will get stranger. There will be some weirdness. I am practically playing on it for some things. At this stage, it's impossible to make it 'perfect'. 

I don't think any of the things I make will ever appeal to a mass audience. I appreciate you taking the time to check it out and give me all this valuable feedback.

Wish you luck with the project!

Thank you!

I think you need to smooth out the edges of this project. Make the demo of this game a little better, fix the mistakes, and then write a couple chapters of the story. After that, publish a new demo.

- This is what I am doing atm. I am learning as I go, and trying to be as humble about the process as possible.

Regarding the story. I would advise you to write a backstory of the characters, at least the backstory of the MC at the beginning. Where he's from, who he is, where he's going, etc. At least briefly. Because right now it looks like two strangers met and went somewhere for unknown reasons, -Why? - Just because...

Let's say the protagonist can share his live story with Fox as they walk down the road. The fox might say something brief about himself in return. 

From my point of view it is important that at least something about the main character is known at the beginning of the game, otherwise it feels like a gap.

- I understand this critique. It's very valid. It may seem strange, but it was actually a conscious choice. Sure, some of the dialogue simply isn't realistic enough, and I will work on that. I was working under the assumption that the MC should fit the reader, and since I don't know the reader, I cannot assume too much about them. In doing so, I swung into another cul-de-sac - having a MC who is bland and one-dimensional.

You can write this VN, you did well for a start, don't give up)

- It may be a while before the next chapter, and rework of what's already here, but I'm working on things, thank you :)

I was not expecting it to be good.

It was a very interesting atmosphere to it. I usually don't like linear stories that have no or minimal choices, but I really liked this (oops, only now just noticed choices won't be implemented until later chapters. I'm excited for those!).

- Interesting. I'm glad it didn't disappoint. Yes, we'll see about that :)

I'm not a fan of AI art, I was really iffy about checking this story out because of it. However, after reading, I feel with the setting of the world, you are using it to tell a story that can only best be told if using AI artwork.

- I'm waking up to this - the fact that people are more averse to AI than I initially thought. I'm pleased you can see what I can see here - that this story is in a symbiotic relationship with AI, rather than hindered by it.

- This is what I hope people will appreciate. The music, and the feelings I'm trying to create. The emotional world-building. Music is the art form I'm most at home in. If I can make someone else feel something similar to what I feel, that is my highest aspiration. Thank you :)

There are a lot of typos though. Grammar and spelling.  At least there was in the first part, where the protagonist meets Sam in his world and walks with him. Once they reached the cabin, I stopped noticing it because I was too interested in the atmosphere and setting.

It IS weird though, that you have no idea what an isekai is though LOL.

Isekai is a fantasy subgenre where a character is transported (or reincarnated) into a fantasy world. The protagonist of Interloper walks down a road and enters a different reality. This, by its briefest definition, makes it an isekai.

- I have always just sort of done my own thing.

This is an oversight of mine, as I have not educated myself about this concept. I've always been uninterested in trends, or in being defined by subcultures. I never really felt I fit in any of the boxes. In this case it sounds like I'm literally writing something a bit like an Isekai, while being ignorant about the concept. The thing is, I don't think it will harm the story. I am unbound by the tropes or typical story motifs, since I don't know about them. Will I be making some banal mistakes that could have been avoided if I had taken a more informed approach? Yeah probably. But I think - I hope - I'll also bring something else to the table.

Honestly, I think the story was formatted well, the "suspension of disbelief" you mentioned, I could easily understand what was going on and felt it was done very well.

- I used to write when I was a child. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I haven't written in over a decade, so it's fun to do it again. I'm glad you felt it was worth your time :)

I can't say exactly when the next chapter will be, and I will probably take a bit more time with things. Thank you for your kind words, they are much appreciated.

I'm not into those excessive muscles either :D I think it's fair if that's what the author wants to see, but I admit it also puts me off those stories. The scale - are we talking in the prologue (before they start walking together), I can certainly see that. It has been a challenge doing this with AI. Probably a lot more difficult than people think it is.

I'm currently making corrections to the writing. There are a lot of mistakes... typos spelling mistakes, grammar. I'm also considering rewriting the prologue, but this is a maybe. If I do, I will be correcting those scale issues that are present there.

Maybe a less realistic visual style of AI model would look better, but maybe not.

- It's a difficult problem. Some of these issues will be quirks that would require an amount of technical work detrimental to the process, as most of my time would be spent trying to sew together body parts in Photoshop. And honestly, if I chose that route, I'm not sure I even can.

The music is nice, just in the theme of the atmosphere of the game.

I'm glad you liked it :)

I don't understand the hatred towards AI. It's the same imaging tool as a painter's brush, and just like a brush, AI needs to be mastered to create good art or animation.

I wish you good luck in creating this VN, and will wait for new updates. Btw, what kinds of anthropomorphic animal characters will be in the game? Some cute lynxes won't appear in it by any chance?)))

- I can't say, but lynxes are very cute, I agree :) I appreciate your kind words a lot. Since releasing this, I have had a bit of a culture shock. Even to the extent that I have been undecided about whether to even continue the project here. In that case, I would just make it privately.

So I appreciate it.

I would just say that it would be my hope that people can see the potential for weird worlds previously impossible, instead of focusing on what problems AI create. I can only try to share my vision.. people usually don't understand what I have in my head before things are more complete.

I would say I'm making a visual novel because I'm fascinated with AI and where it can go, rather than that I want to write a visual novel, and just happened to settle on AI for the visuals. ..So commissioning art is not very relevant in this case. Even if there are some amazingly talented people out there, it would be impossible to create the animations. If I were to commission art and then animate with AI, I would still need 100's of pictures.

I have some scary stuff planned, and some very strange things already made. If people like this story, I will gladly publish another chapter. I'm a little put down right now, tbh. I'm doing this project to escape some struggles in life that are not minor.. so I guess I can't deal with too much negativity.

The inteface and Ui also do not help. Everything seems smaller then in other vns for no good reason, and character sprite is haunting me somewhere from the right side at all times. It all really distracting and get in a way of experience.

And it doesn't sound like the moving character thing is for you. That is fine.

First of all, animations in this game are overused. ANimating character sprite both in and out of CGs as well as locations as if you are recording  on camera in real time feel completely unnecessery and distracting.

Animations in the beginning of the story are lacking atm. I made them as I went along, writing the story. I then went back and changed some things, but I see there are some.. 'bugs' I would almost say. Where the same annoying animation is looping badly, again and again. Things like these will be better in future releases.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'both'. It's either CG, or sprites (which is also CG, but yeah). The CG is occasional, the sprites are primary.

The CG in the first scene is primitive compared to what you'll see later. I'm using KlingAI, and it.. evolved while I was making the first chapter.

It takes a lot of work and money to animate this, because there are so many 'flukes' - not being able to completely control what you get. I've spent $150 on compute so far, I think. Not that that is important, I chose this and I am excited about the possibilities.

The landscape scenes are supposed to be with a static camera angle, but that very rarely succeeds, to as an example. I work with what I get.

When fox thing lead protagonist to a house, protagonist goes on the balcony by himself and states he was living here for a long time?...

No that's a misunderstanding, but I can see how that may need to be rephrased. What he's saying, is that he's lived in the general area where the beginning of the story takes place, and he believes to still be in that area - which is not the case.

"The point of furry isekai's (or at least the descibtion of the game makes me believe that this is na isekai) Is to transpor a protagonist from the world familiar to us to a world that doesn't." I'm not sure what you're talking about, I don't know what isekai means. Maybe I should, but - If it's a story format, I'd just say you've got it wrong. I'm not following any style or format, other than my own, I'm not trying to emulate anything.

Yet here in original world seems like anthro people are commonplace, so that's automatically makes this world unfamiliar to us. And then we get transported to another which... is also unfamiliar to us...

Yeah, the whole thing is just a mess.

Please understand, that this is not a finished story - this is just the first chapter - and even that, is not finished. Honestly I find your critique unreasonably harsh, and I suspect it might be a language issue for you as well. I want to listen to fair criticism, but I don't understand your hostility.

Appreciate it!