For what it's worth, Grove is far from complete and the romances far from 'concluded'. The romances in that game are intended to be story-long relationship building rather than quick sexual flings. Though of course there are moments like that should you lose certain fights...
If that's not your preference for romance, fair enough, but I figured you should know. That is also how we are handling things in Prowler: story-long romances.
Thank You. I - think that actually answers my question. Sounds like I shouldn't go into this expecting to find anything I didn't find in Grove - which, again I just wanted to know upfront. So far I've been enjoying this almost as much as I did Grove.
But, just to elaborate a little in response to what you said. "If that's not your preference for romance, fair enough"
Quite the contrary, I absolutely adore the style of character & world building I found in Grove. Not sure if I just didn't expect to find a solidly fleshed out world & properly 3 dimensional characters in a lewd scalie fetish game - or, if it was just the right media at the the right time; but, either way I got way over invested in Grove a couple weekends back hahaha.
I'll 'try' to explain this without major spoilers - I'll just need to be a little verbose to avoid specific references. Sorry in advance for the text wall this might turn into.
Right near the current 'conclusion' of Grove there's a point where.. the world/story starts to.. fragment?Optimistically, this is some of what you meant when you said Gove is "far from finished". Conquering new territory shifts from being challenging, feeling earned, and motivating return trips for more thorough exploration toward these smaller rapid-fire spaces (with really interesting stories to tell) but nothing to revisit once they're completed. (Which is fine. For the record. I'm just landmarking what part of the game I'm talking about for what I'm going to say next.)
Then we get these significant character moments, kinda. It's more like each of the central characters had a lead-in towards some satisfying final character interaction - (Note: I'm not talking about something specifically NSFW. I'd like that, but it's not about that.). JUST when it feels like some sort of payoff is coming for many of the characters, you hear of strange happenings at night. Then Tuon, Jaler, & Bosc basically just run out of dialog. Kuno & Commander (Having welcomed the player into private spaces) promptly re-lock their doors & exit stage left. And, this wouldn't matter- except, Grove did such a good job getting me invested in these characters to begin with - it's a little unfortunate it doesn't do anything more with them in the end.
All that's left then is to investigate the aforementioned "night time happenings" which leads directly into credits, and the Grove 2 teaser - which I assumed meant Grove was as complete as it was gunna get. Save for the obvious recent updates to language packs and stuff that is.
But, what you're saying makes sense - and is a bit comforting too as you seem to be involved with/close to the development? It did feel like those final moments were leading towards something, and I guess maybe that something was just incomplete? It would explain why everything seemed to just get unceremoniously dropped right around the same time near the 'end'. If nothing else, I'm glad to hear that, at least sounds like, there's more content planed - and maybe some day I'll come back around to find more satisfying conclusions.
But for now - it seems like I just need to tune my expectations accordingly. These games are genuinely impressive, not just "for a fetish game", or whatever - I mean that in general, there's loads of really well executed & thoughtful game design here, (Especially, IMO, in Grove). That's going to take time. Keep up the good work - and I'll look forward to the results.
In terms of building 'romantic' relationships with NPCs at the very least, Prowler is somewhat similar to Grove. But I would at least like to think -- as the writer for both games -- that the rest of the game's story and content (and definitely gameplay) has some differences to keep it interesting and not just a rehash or "nothing I didn't find in Grove".
Thank you for the praise re. Grove's writing, and your explanation of what happens. All I can say is that the reason the game takes the turn it does regarding NPC interactions is that, ultimately, we're an RPG first and not a Visual Novel, and we don't want the character interactions and relationships that should span the entire game being something you can rush and conclude well before the actual main game's narrative.
So those moments you've described in terms of interactions, they're a bit 'significant', yes, but far from the end. Just a milestone on the way of the overall relationship, which is intended to span the entire game. Prowler works in a similar way, where you can't build relationships past a certain point without continuing in the story.
Hopefully that explains everything to you as well as possible. And if you have taken the plunge and purchased Prowler, we're very grateful for you giving it a go, and as the writer I hope you enjoy the game to a similar degree, even if the content and context is different!
I appreciate this! Makes sense. Thank you for the conformation. And yes, I have picked this one up, and am diving in. I was always going to, I want to see more of the work y'all are doing. This conversation is more about me wanting to set my expectations according as far as what I'll find in games currently and what I should get excited about down the road.
