Post by SugarMint in Malevolent Planet 2D Demo - September Public Build comments

Malevolent Planet 2D Demo - September Public Build » Comments

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Gutted the demo version? The demo version wasn't meant to be "here, you can play 90% of the content for free!" It was supposed to hint at the content available in the full content builds which it's still doing by showing some post-ISA content as well, but not in a linear way that would remove any kind of reason to even consider supporting the game because most people aren't going to pay for something that offers the same thing they can get for free.

There'll be a full 1.0 release next year on Steam, so people who don't want to deal with monthly subscriptions on Patreon will be able to buy the game once. Anyone who supported me enough to pay for the base price of the game will also be able to request a key, so I'm not sure if what you're complaining about is maybe not being able to play the full game for free?

Cpt Obvious199482 days ago

I didn't say anything about playing the full game for free. All I pointed out is that the demo used to only be limited by being one update behind the paid version. Now, it's also limited by removing a whole lot of content, including a basic feature like saving. A feature that you originally said you were going to make better, until you apparently decided to not do that and just removed it instead. I understand that the "one update behind" model isn't very sustainable when you get close to full release, but there are better ways to limit a demo besides removing a bunch of content.

I fully understand not wanting the demo to be equal to the paid version, and I never said it should be. However, the way the demo is now, it's not going to be able to fulfill its purpose very well. Most people coming to this game will be here for the sex, and if most of that is removed and/or censored, they won't be able to properly form an opinion on said content. Also, with no saving, players are forced to try to play as much as they can in a single sitting, and they might not be able to make much progress, which will also prevent them from forming an accurate opinion.

The better way would be to do what most video game demos do: have a cutoff point where you can't play any further, but have all the content that's available in the playable part. For example, if a game has 10 chapters, the demo might let players play through the first 2 chapters in their entirety. This provides the best way for players to properly judge what the content of the game is like and decide if they want to see the rest or not.

SugarMint82 days ago

Thank you for giving your reasonable thoughts on this. The issue with your approach is that there's a diverse range of content and if the players can only see what was available in the ISA, they wouldn't know that there's alien content as well.

The demo is however meant to be short, taking the player from NSFW scene to NSFW scene. I think there are about 7-8 NSFW scenes available right now in the demo, and each of them is supposed to hint to the player what they can actually expect in terms of NSFW content, which wouldn't be possible if only one chapter or two chapters as you say was/were available.

No NSFW scene should really be censored in the demo as it is, so I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are descriptions in-between memories as to what might have happened so the player gets an idea of what other scenes there could be.

Most people coming to this game will be here for the sex, and if most of that is removed and/or censored, they won't be able to properly form an opinion on said content.

The saving being locked, that's inspired from a demo of a very successful game, but it's not just a "personal choice", it's also a technical need because the save the player could make when they're teleported across the game to see different scenes would likely have bugs when loaded in the full build for example.

I'll think about it, maybe the demo for the Steam build will be different. If you're a solo dev and you try to provide an incentive for people to support you in getting anywhere near completion of the project, you have to try different ways because as it was the public builds weren't really doing anything at all, because people could just wait.

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