itch.io

Love the update! The choice to call Thomas "Mr Baker" had me delighted, I love the ability to enforce that sort of distance. And I'm so curious who Thomas/Tamsin thought the protag was engaged to? It's really great, thank you so much for updating! 

I don't know if we're meant to get the choice between Thomas and Tamsin at the moment, or if that's determined by our pick for Egerton's gender?

That said, I'm running into a few bugs in the new content, exclusively related to Thomas/Tamsin. On the first page of Chapter 2, $t_mcname appears in the text instead of Tamsin/Thomas. Then, on the third page once you've selected your address for them, "Thomas?" repeats three times, with these error codes:

Error: <<set>>: bad evaluation: expected expression, got keyword 'if'

<<set _acceptedKnewEValues to [ "knew", "francis" ] <<if $t_mcname is "$ro.mx Baker">>

Error: child tag <<elseif>> was found outside of a call to its parent macro <<if>>

<<elseif $t_mcname is "$t">>
Error: child tag <<else>> was found outside of a call to its parent macro <<if>>  <<else>></else></if></else>

Error: child tag <</if>> was found outside of a call to its parent macro <<if>>

<</if>>

Hopefully that's not too much of a pain to fix, and it was really interesting to read all of the responses (as unintended as it was!).

Edit: just realised I missed a few more. When you're questioning Thomas/Tamsin about how pleased they are, the text says $ro.tone.

Finally got round to trying the game with the new update, and I love it! The whole identity system is pretty fun, and I love how vivid the different characters and dialogue options are.

It's always great when a game lets my character be a reckless flirt, even if Doc's going to have an aneurysm at them eyeing up Yvette and Levi, lol.

I was good, about equally tactful/defiant, so I agree that the different choices seem very interesting here. In fairness, I didn't think the trial would go that bad until it did, but I was seriously considering throwing that possessive person under the bus, especially since our main partner in chapter 3 didn't seem to think it was a bad idea. The scene after the victim's body is found just felt like they were going off the rails, especially since my character was quite friendly to both of the other characters in that scene. Hell, even the Master suggests as much at the end of the chapter.

I completely agree on the confessor though, especially since they seem close to a certain pair of characters who are both quite stubborn. I could see them deciding to protect the confessor, especially since otherwise suspicion falls on the protag and someone who people really don't want to risk a fight against (as shown by how poorly that goes). But, in terms of accomplices, it also seems very strange that someone, who has otherwise been very stubborn about the demonhearts, is suddenly ignoring the confessor as a demonheart and doesn't even imprison them? I really don't feel like I can rule that third person out because it feels like a sudden lack of vigour from someone not known for it, especially when the confessor doesn't really have an alibi since their companion was sleeping the entire night.

Ah, I suspected the absence was to prevent spoilers, so that's fair enough! I'll definitely see how much I can make Kaisar hate me in my next run, I'm very curious to see how that might change chapter 3.

I actually agree on the conspiracy theory front. That knife is such a Chekov's gun, and I already thought that person might be linked to the stuff that mysteriously appeared in the morning. My back-up theory, which is probably more likely, is that a certain possessive someone targeted them to become a demonheart so they could protect someone else. Though now I've just typed that, I realise it describes two different groups, so I'll say it's not the group suspected in the chapter. I find that person surprisingly untrustworthy, although maybe that's because I kept pursuing Kaiser.

And thoughts on a certain someone at the end? The last conversation between the Master and Raze implies they're not a demonheart, which I seriously thought they were even after someone self-confessed. Specifically, that the self-confessor was the actual killer getting away with it while they were one of the starting demonhearts. Hell, maybe that still is the case and they're just being creepy for the hell of it, certainly their other partner this chapter had their moments too. I had a fair bit of approval from that person right at the end, I think, though it'd be nice if we could visualise it somewhere (I thought that was an option but couldn't find it?). I'll be curious to see how differently they behave on a full disapproval run, that's for sure.

I am both horrified and delighted to see a Goncharov game.

Slight note on bugs though - if you play as Sofia, another character appears announcing herself as Sofia at the cast read. I also got this bug later on:

Error: <<act>>: errors within widget code (Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <<role>>; Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <<role>>)

<<act>><<role "so">><<S>> grabs <<K>> and together they run out of the church and into <<S>>’s waiting car. They rip down the street.<<role "so">> <<K>> is splattered with blood. <</act>>

It released yesterday on Steam - as a backer, haven't heard anything about an itch.io release yet so probably best to buy it on there!

I got recommended this game a few weeks ago in a forum discussion and having binged s1 and what there is of s2 so far, I absolutely adore it!!! 

NB Roe and Chris have such a complicated romance and I really love how natural all the angst between the two of them feels, because it'd all be so complicated even without the supernatural aspects. Can't wait to see more of them and the rest of the group when you update!

I'm really impressed by the work you've done migrating the game to a new extension program, let alone the new chapter (which I'm just getting to and will edit this comment once I'm done). It works a lot more smoothly and just on a technical level it's very impressive, especially since you've done it in less than eighty days!

Heads up though, I've noticed two glitches - the log screen shows up behind the text box, which obscures a fair bit of the "close" button, and when you go to overwrite a save in the new save screen, the prompt shows up underneath the save screen, so you can't see it until you've exited the save screen and you need to press the escape key just to let yourself click things again after the initial glitch.

Edit: so having finished the new chapter, I think the new content is fantastic and generally well-programmed. However, there is an issue with the choice of drink whilst talking to Erik in chapter 3 where it essentially runs you through all the choices and forces you through the water dialogue in the end.

The previous content, as other people have mentioned since my comment, does have issues with the implementation into the new extension editor, but I genuinely think that could mostly be resolved by a thorough patch before chapter 3's release. 

I've also gone back and found an issue, as mentioned by another commentator, that the log will exclude recent dialogue. I think this only occurs after you open the log window a second time, and even then it will sometimes show text after the first time you opened it, but it's still significantly behind the current text. 

This seems like a more complicated issue, if only because I can't seem to find a consistent pattern in how it works, but it's been an issue even after I closed and reopened the new version, although it did work successfully the very first time I opened it.

If you do end up doing a Kickstarter, I'll be glad to back it if I'm in a situation to, regardless of which game you end up doing it for. Personally, I think the Rose sequel might be more successful, if only because you already have the first game to point to as a sign if you can successfully develop and publish a game. And that way you could bundle the first game in with it for the mid-range tiers (£30-50, I guess?) or otherwise have it as a backers' extra they can pick on top of whichever tier they choose.

I've seen quite a lot of people recommend having a Tumblr blog to promote whichever game you choose, and I second this. Just one word of warning though - I know more than a few devs who've burnt themselves out answering asks on Tumblr in addition to working on the game at the same time. I'd recommend trying hard to balance that (because it can be surprisingly difficult), and potentially prioritising asks on updates (probably just linking to the most recent KS one) and other asks that only need a short answer. The Wayhaven tumblr is probably good for this, because the dev's answers to LI reacts asks is usually one sentence per LI, even if it's a Choice game instead of a VN. It's a quick and easy way of appeasing fans, from what I've seen, although I imagine it can be pretty useful from a writer's perspective too.

Also, most KS devs do well with a monthly update - Quantum Suicide is a good example of one that's been considerably delayed (the sole dev got divorced and had to stop work temporarily for legal reasons during the divorce), but most of the backers are happy because we get regular updates, even if it's "not much happened". Same with Zodiac Axis and Lake of Voices, since I backed both of them and found the dev-backer communication pretty satisfying. It also might give you some ideas for how to layout the process of developing to your backers, if that helps? 

I'm one of the backers, and I think release has probably been delayed quite a bit. One of the backer tiers involves early access to the final release (hence the entire countdown thing, I think), and none of them have apparently heard anything. I want to believe the best, but given the last Kickstarter update was in November... I'm not exactly feeling confident. At the very least, it feels very unprofessional to have not even told anyone what's going on when the game is so late without any news whatsoever. I get that sending out an update saying "sorry people, the game's delayed again" might be rather demoralising for the dev(s), but it's demoralising for us backers to go nearly 5 months without a single update - and I know there's been updates on Tumblr, but it's bloody infuriating we've been told borderline nothing through Kickstarter for so long.