Human to anthro in some capacity. Specifics are big spoiler territory, but we’ll be going a little more into it in chapter 3, and the title screen hints at it as well.
Like the LOOM itself (which is custom-made), that functionality isn’t baked into ren’py and requires custom python code and actual programming knowledge, so it is in fact quite challenging. Our situation also isn’t identical to Nekojishi’s use of a glossary, so it’s not something we can emulate directly.
(But it is something we’re looking into, along with a couple of other options.)
Because we do multiple article updates per LOOM notification, (rather than every notification being for a specific article), do you think it would be less annoying to just have the LOOM send a notification at the end of every major scene (or chapter) with the expectation there will be multiple new/updated articles?
We don’t want to do a notification for every new update because then updates would be very frequent.
Maybe we can figure out some way for it to list all the updates in a separate window. 🤔 And just have a handful of notification alerts per build.
Definitely noted. We’re working on some ways to make new articles easier to find and the notification itself to be less demanding. Thanks for the feedback!
I’m glad you’re enjoying the game and thank you for the feedback!
We’ll probably continue experimenting with the best way to communicate the LOOM information. We’re trying to find some compromise between timely information reveals but not annoying the reader with an abundance of notifications.
I’ve thought a lot about this and actually wrote a long twitter thread about it, which you can read here. I’ll expand on it somewhat.
In short, I’m fine with implementing some kind of visual censorship, such as blurs or black bars for nudity in CGs, because society has very different opinions about visual vs. literary sex and nudity (and also I don’t want streamers to get in trouble).
It’s important to note that “NSFW” means different things to different people. To some people it means “any kind of sex,” to others it means “explicit, pornographic sex written intentionally to arouse.” These are not the same things because the first could suggest someone thinks a work is NSFW because of a general discomfort with sex or it could be contextual discomfort (such as reading sex in public/at work). Those are both fair and specific concerns that fall under my answer of “this game is 18+ and may have contextually inappropriate content; avoid it if that makes you uncomfortable.”
The second interpretation of NSFW, however, is typically the one that gets all the discourse. I encourage everyone to think hard on why they think about NSFW the way they do. For me, I see the situation like this: An anti-NSFW (or NSFW ambivalent) argument that reads NSFW solely as “explicit, pornographic sex written intentionally to arouse” is problematic because it presumes the author’s intention, and generally presumes it is always the same (“only getting the reader off”) with little nuance. It then proceeds to base an argument of “NSFW is unnecessary fan service” or “NSFW is just porn” from there. Therefore, NSFW is “just something you can hide or remove” because it’s not important. It’s fluff. It’s designed to arouse and nothing more.
I think that is a problematic argument because it presumes sex is always something meaningless, and must always be intentionally pornographic, when sex can be some of the most powerful, vulnerable, revealing moments of a novel. You don’t see literary fiction shying away from sex scenes for example, and those aren’t considered pornographic. Indeed, they often end up on popular and very public best-seller lists.
This is why I personally think censoring words, such as writing two completely separate scenes for NSFW vs SFW is fundamentally inappropriate (unless the scene was literally only written to be porn and has no other purpose—a rarity, in most media). Authors are very particular with their words, and I’m trying to communicate some very specific things when I write. If those specific things require some level of explicit detail, then compromising that detail for the sake of being SFW means I’m not communicating what I intended the way I intended, and am essentially self-censoring.
That’s what I mean when I said earlier “if I feel it’s meaningful.” If the sex is developing characters in a meaningful way, it’s important to include it; if it’s not, then I won’t. If that inclusion makes someone uncomfortable, fair enough! Then this story may not be for them. This is also why I don’t want to promise NSFW: I’m not shy about including sex in my writing, but this isn’t a game about sex, so I don’t want readers to be caught up on a promise of something titillating when that’s not a primary focus of the novel. Again: If sex scenes are appropriate to communicate something, I’ll include them. If not, I won’t.
The short answer is: I’m using 18+ as a general umbrella for anything adult, which may include NSFW. So if anyone wants to avoid NSFW, this game may not be for them.
The longer answer is: I’ve been ambiguous about it intentionally because while I am not presently planning on any specific explicit scenes, I want the freedom to include them if I decide it’s meaningful to do so.
However, if I call the game NSFW, then there’s an expectation for sex scenes, which may upset readers if I ultimately decide not to include them. If I don’t call the game NSFW but then include sex scenes, I’ll potentially upset those who are reading the game to avoid NSFW.
It is a complicated space to exist, so I’m trying to be thoughtful about it.
It reminds me of the concept of the Liminal, which isn’t horror in itself, because horror is–as you stated–more about a self-conscious awareness of unknowing, an invitation for monkey hindbrain scrabbling (especially for cosmic horror).
Liminality is almost the opposite, because it isn’t about the unknown directly, it’s about the subversion of some known (often mundane) environmental expectation. As Natalie Wynn discusses in her video essay on Liminality, it’s a complicated aesthetic to talk about because it encapsulates a lot of different feelings: lingering in a place that is intended to be transitional (the threshold); a present haunted by lost futures (the hauntological); the unfamiliar in the familiar (the uncanny); a collection of worlds that don’t belong together (the eerie); and potentially many other things (the nostalgic, the surreal, the weird, etc.)
My read on what you’re describing is very much Liminal, because you don’t seem focused on the aesthetics of decay, but on the transitional moment between unsinking and sinking; being and unbeing. It isn’t about an end state (dying, drowning, reaching the bottom), it’s about a perpetual state of in-between–existing in the threshold–a place only intended to be traversed, and never lingered in. The idea of being trapped there, or constantly reliving such a thing can be… unsettling. Hence the “The Backrooms” of internet fame.
Specifically, however, I think we’re talking about “the eerie.” Thalassophobia and the eerie are often companions because the ocean itself is a collision of worlds: what we can see and what we know vs. what we can’t see and what we can only imply, with a huge threshold of unsettling transition between them: The Liminal.
In Soulcreek, The Blackzones encapsulate this very well. Their borders already establish a threshold–a clear marker that “beyond this is parts unknown,” yes–but there is no visible indicator anything is wrong: The grass is still green; the trees are still healthy. We look at the familiar but understand there is something unfamiliar; we can intuit there is both something missing (people) and something present (demons), but precise agency eludes us; it is both uncanny and eerie. Unsettling. Liminal.
Consider this quote by Mark Fisher from “The Weird and the Eerie”:
“The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where they should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something.”
For example, an eerie presence would be a feeling of agency where there should be none, like the feeling of being watched. An eerie loneliness is wandering in a space where you expect people to be, but they aren’t. A ship in the process of sinking is eerie especially if we don’t know why it’s sinking, because ships aren’t supposed to do that. (Nor should we be there to see it.)
Wynn summarizes the concept as, “The eerie implies speculative questions about incomprehensible agency,” and thus, an unknown. Why is the ship sinking? Where is it going? Why are we there? And is at its most powerful when we are surrounded by the familiar.
Cosmic horror lives in the space where that implication becomes terrifying: essentially, the moment we become self-aware of the implications of that unknowing–when the safety of the familiar becomes uncertain. The more evidence we’re given–the more we step away from speculation into a more concrete sense of knowing there’s a lurker at the threshold–is when eerie begins to approach horror.
And as I think you astutely pointed out, that lurker needn’t be a monster. It just needs to be elementally unfathomable.
Thank you so much for engaging with the work! And never fear: it’s just the introduction that’s getting a rework. My style of prose will otherwise remain.
As the very first thing new readers see, we ultimately decided the poetry of the introduction went a little too hard into literary fiction for mostly indulgent reasons. I think we can keep some of that sublime sense while grounding it in more concrete details that are a bit easier to follow.
In any event, this is all a work in progress, so I’ll definitely be playing with ideas and revisions as we go along, hehe.
(Also a note that if you leave the LOOM notification up, it won’t indicate any new entries. It just stays there. LOOMing. Begging you to read it. But otherwise leaves you alone. So you can exercise restraint, right? 😁)
I am and honored and gratified you were able to engage so much with the work. Thank you for reading, and I hope you find future chapters as thought-provoking.
Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback! There are some good ideas here we’ll consider for the future.
As for CGs, those are entirely limited by budget at the moment (though you are very correct about the CG placements, and I hope to revisit early chapters for more illustration development should our funding increase).
Because of the linear nature of the narrative, there are presently no plans to allow for player customization of the main character.
(The planned story is very deep, so the added complexity of storing and accounting for player choices is beyond the current scope to keep development moving at a reasonable pace.)
You are correct that many of these questions will be touched on over the course of the novel. Unfortunately, there’s a give and take when it comes to exposition and lore-seeding: Some people love it crunchy and dense, others find it obstructive to sift through.
We’ve already received feedback that there’s both too much lore and not enough, so figuring out how to the thread the needle to offer just the right amount of information will continue to be a challenge!
This is why we included the LOOM and also why we are doing the supplemental podcasts: So those folks who really want to dive into the world have that option, but without slowing the pace of the narrative. The important questions we’ll answer over time, the rest we’ll slip in where we can (with revisions as necessary).
Yup, there’s definitely an art to efficiently communicating world details in stories like this: Too much and it gets bogged down and is potentially confusing. Too little and the world lacks depth and is even more confusing.
Trying to find that middle line is always the challenge, and I don’t pretend to always get it right. I’m certain we’ll veer back and forth and try to make refinements throughout development.
Edit: Ah! I did see your review, and thank you for the feedback. I can say that yes, the Ravy character does have flaws - he is, after all, struggling for independence and self-empowerment after being sheltered for some time. The question is if he’s handling this struggle in the most productive or thoughtful of ways.😉
No doubt his impulsivity and inexperience will lead to conflict. The interesting thing, for me at least, is how he deals with the consequences.
We considered nonlinear routes, but determined the planned story was too long and too complex. It could as much as triple development time. We know this will disappoint some players, but hope the strength of the story will speak for itself!
