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Alright I'm back from playing it a bit, and I have some thoughts...

And while I am giving it the consideration this is a early build only trying to test the very very basics, where we its trying to establish a baseline so other elements will work better when added, but I hate to say it but I don't think I'm going to care where the game's direction is going.

I will start with saying the environment is genuinely beautiful, I love it. Compared to the first game especially, it made me really want to explore the land and see what was out there; honestly I kinda wanted to just go into first person and just walk it a bit, and I did. Even with its small size it created a massive sense of wonder about its world I really don't get in a lot of game, and that's usually a good way to keep me in the game. Things did looks a little weird when they were really far out, but it was still very beautiful that I didn't really think much of it.

Unfortunately that's where my positive thoughts end, while I think my positive thoughts shouldn't be down played as small, I unfortunately still have more negative than positive.

First, the character creation, not the most intuitive, I've seen worse, but it did slow me down a bit and that random button is too easy to hit being at the bottom there. While I liked having a variety of options for my character, everything felt chunky by default, and even the smallest options to things kinda felt... I can only describe it as that feeling as when its obvious someone used a warp tool on photo shop to make themselves look more attractive looking, didn't feel great. But again, I've seen worse on the looks end, (eugh... I still have nightmares about how some looked), but it did not help my character was making massive constant movements while I was trying to customize them. I understand wanting to make characters look more lively in a customization screen, but this was too much, they might as well be running away using their hands to covered their face it was that hard to see their details, actually no, running away thing would be easier. It's not the worse character customization experience, but it was frustrating. Though in honesty that camera system was awful and unintuitive, but I am giving a pass there because if I remember my own unity experience right, that's way easier to do when you're making a prototype and better camera controls will usually be done by the end, so its fine currently.

Second, I really didn't care for the looks of my starter characters, one straight up activated my "Ah, an enemy! Kill it!!!" instinct for especially survival games by how he looked, I just banished him to the stone pile. But I didn't like how I might go the route of picking only specific characters to breed to try and keep certain genes out, that's not the best strategy for when you need as many hands as possible. Not the worse, but I'll admit, I did come from an angle where I was expecting the starters to look something like me so I knew they were allies, but I only realize in retrospect you don't get a variety of furry looks doing that and I get that's part of the appeal with the extra options and 3d characters, but I wanted to mention that just to get a better idea where I'm coming from. Also I'm not exactly a big fan of the constant nudity and erections, I'd personally prefer clothes or at least not to be having characters with a active dingle constantly, but that's a personal preference based critique and one that even if it was taken to account would come much later.

third, Unfortunately I understood right away why I started with 2 instead of 1 I could just reproduce with, because I had multiple tools to work with, and each character also had 1 tool. That... that was annoying actually, having to constantly switch tools for each resource, and I still don't know what the giant spoon is for. Now I realize... well actually only after writing this I could switch between what tools they had by possessing them and manually switching, that mechanic now makes sense to me. But... it felt impractical. Now with no enemies to worry about currently, fine, it works, but I've seen colony and even a DOS rts game where you switch roles for your people, this wasn't the greatest feeling option. While I haven't seen worse, I can safely bet this system of possessing a character through 3 button presses and then switching the tool, then going back to your original character through another 3 presses, is probably a way better alternative than what some games have, jeez I'm willing to bet there's a game out there where you switch your character's job by doing a whole friggen mini fetch quest with a dance minigame too every time you want to switch. Speaking of which.

4th, the sex minigame... Yeah I played the prototype 3 times before, but I'm realizing it actually its not as fun in game... Now thank you for changing the icons there, that made it feel way better. However, a score system like how it's implemented didn't feel great, especially since I don't have the greatest idea what a good score is, or even what the minimum is. It works great for how the game is now, that being a lot more peaceful and no active threats, but after that... I'm not sure it would work well, in the first game, the simpler system was still very tense just by trying to pump out units with the best stats as fast as you can. Which I guess is a fair time to mention, I'm not here for the sex at all, I'm more here for a fun game; however, I don't want to ignore the people who ARE here for the sex, which in that case, this new system is absolutely horrible, and I do mean it. In the original game, there was no pressure, you could just watch the animation as long as you liked and complete part of it when you wanted to see the next part, however here, you don't get that luxury, there's enough pressure you can't really not stop watching the dot and are forced tunnel vision to play the game otherwise your animation ends, to make things worse, that dot will go everywhere but where you can see the animation. It really is the worse possible change for those wanting to watch hot furry action, which sucks for them even more because in this very early build that's really all that there is to do.

And I'll admit, I kinda stopped playing after I realize units don't spawn instantly, but instead characters get pregnant. Because I realized something... even for the early prototype, this isn't designed for being an RTS, this game is a lot more orientated towards being a furry sex themed simple town builder. The building and resource collection is quite fine, no complaints, its pretty good, the cancel button placement is nice. But this isn't the game I thought I was getting, or I guess testing.

Yeah, if you think I was judging this game harshly: Well... yeah I was, but that's because Daggan was a genuinely really good game, not mind blowing (Well except for me when it came to the art direction), but still really good. I don't mean it as a "good Furry sex game" but rather as a game in general, for one it was a really good game that you could recommend to non-furries just as something to play, it looked good, it felt nice, it played good, the mechanics where well designed and implemented and as a game left me hungry for way more of it. I wanted to see different species join my faction which could have different stats, I wanted to see building aspect get more in depth, I wanted to see more bits to the research tree, I really wanted a nightmare mode that was near impossible. It genuinely was a very unique game that I really liked, and because this game has it's name attached to it, I thought this was going to be that more in-depth squeal I was looking for. However, I don't think that's what we can really get from this.

I'm not saying this is a bad game already because of my experience, jeez it's only just begun being a public demo, that'd be rude no matter what; however what I am saying is, I don't think this game would be a good, nor should it try to be a Daggan squeal. Honestly, there's a decent foundation here, that could be fun as a more chill game, doing more for exploration, maybe some farming mechanics, more interesting romance/breeding system, decorations, fully customizable builds at any time, people choosing to move into houses, some decorations, ect. It'd work amazingly building off that concept and just having a furry sexy gimmick to it. But as a Daggan squeal to force make it work, you'd already have to ditch half the stuff added, and I don't think ditching half your game is the best option. Again there is really good potential here, but it needs to ditch the Daggan title, both literally and metaphorically and focus on being its own interesting thing. Because otherwise, it won't work as successor to daggan or the game it could have been.

I feel bad saying "Stop working this as a sequel to daggan" both on the sense of me wanting more of that game, and more importantly because I understand for most people that'd really hurt to hear, especially when you have road map already made; however, I want you to succeed as a developer (whatever your standard of successful might be: fame, money, being remembered, just friggen fun games, ect) a lot more, and If I want to give input in a ultimately small attempt to hopefully see that, I'm gonna be brutal levels of honest. 

But hay, maybe moving this away from daggan might actually be less pressure and end up way more fun both as a game and to yourself making it. I want to reiterate, I want to see your game do well, and if by any chance you do take my advice, I hope you can understand that. Especially since, I'll admit, the direction I suggested is not my type of game, but I'd rather have someone enjoy make a really good game I don't care for than being miserable making a bad game that would be more what I'd enjoy.

Also I'm sorry I made you sit through this whole comment here, but I can only hope it iterates my point of wanting to see your games succeed.

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I don't mind people not liking the game X) I'm making it for me first and I'm thankful for any feedback I can get! I worked 3 years on Daggan and the 30 first builds were... Hum let's say different and ... crappy.

I'm 100% confident it's gonna be great and this early build told me what I needed to know. It's not a demo, it's the current ongoing project. And like all my previous projects I'm working very hard to make it a very fun experience. But that experience is not happening until the 1.0, until all the pieces are there!

For example the whole customisation part is gonna be reworked from 0. Cause frankly don't you expect a winged character to have some good jumping skills? What about shark features?

It's just slow and I'm only asking people to be frank, so thank you, but also to trust me UwU

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Also you're very sharp and precise in your feedback, if you ever want to test the ongoing patron build feel free to hit me on Twitter or discord!

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I can't do it often, because I'm currently in school right now, but sure I'll do some play testing when I can and write down as many detailed notes I can for you when I get the chance. 

Hay, the good news is, one of my classes for school I get to relearn unity again as part of it, so I might be a little more informed about things that might be wrong. Besides, how often does a dev let you test their patreon only build despite not being being a member, its kinda cool to have happen in general, and even for a game that doesn't seem like it'll be my taste, I'm down to take that offer for for the rarity alone. I'll hit you up right away on discord (update: I'm a little lost where to look). I mean I had one really stupid game idea I wanted to make happen at some point in my life just for it being that out there, and maybe I can learn some concepts about how to handle it, there's a two concepts already there, I get to learn in exchange .

And I appreciating you appreciating my uh... brutally Aggressive honesty, to this current build.

Also, I remember playing the earlier builds of Daggan, and kinda fell in love it right then and there and don't remember many issues, but those where the public builds, so I guess I'd had to see the dev builds to really make my judgment on that.

Lastly, small suggestion seeing you mention the character creation possibility being redone, for wings, it'd be interesting if you could theoretically do it so instead of being good at jumping you could just keep hitting jump to flap your wings and fly that way, maybe hold it to sore slowly, again if you're going the making it an RTS route this might be unbalanced, but hay even so it'd but fun to try.