itch.io

Hey creator, thanks for answering to me. :-)

To be honest, I didn't experiment your creation yet because I wanted a RPG for Linux and you categorized your creation a RPG, which drew me here.

I read the description that you made for your creation and upon readind it, I recognized the description of a visual novel, which made me think of Alcyone: The Last City as a visual novel.

So I wondered why you didn't call Alcyone a visual novel whereas you totally described it as a visual novel and I thought that you might not be familiar with the concept of visual novel and that would be the reason why you described your creation as a visual novel and didn't call it a visual novel.

So I thought I might tell you about this.

My comment is entirely based on your description.

After your reply, I watched your video in order to see how Alcyone is experimented exactly.

I didn't see much as you don't show a demonstration of Alcyone but I want to acknowledge that you chose to use Vimeo and not YouTube.

I don't know if you made this choice because you are aware of the threat that Google is for Internet or not but I am always pleased to meet people who are not dependent on Google. :-)

Anyway, in order to check what exactly is Alcyone, I downloaded the demo and I experimented it by myself.

I have some questions about Alcyone.

Why are there graphical artifacts in the texts?

When you are asked your gender, you have choice between woman, man, androgyne or none.

When you present androgyne as a third gender, do you mean hermaphrodite? Do you mean people who have both male and female genitals? Or do you mean on a cultural level, people who have the mind and heart of both cultural genders?

Because I always try to make my characters the closest possible of how I really am and here I don't know what gender to choose because I don't know what exactly you mean with androgyne.

If you mean hermaphrodite, a person who has both genitals, then this is not me.

But if you mean a person who stands between the two genders on a cultural level then I am androgyne.

Then I'll go with androgyne for now and if I happen to discover that my character has a vagina, I'm going to start again  because this will not be me. :-3

Oh shit! I just came to realization that it is obvious that you meant hermaphrodite!

Because you didn't propose to choose an androgyne man or an androgyne woman and you cannot know if the player is a man or a woman so you cannot know if you are supposed to make the player experiment Alcyone as an androgyne man or as an androgyne woman so it becomes logically obvious that you meant hermaphrodite.

Then may I suggest you to rename "androgyne" as "hermaphrodite" to disrupt the confusion?

And now, I need to start again and choose a man now that I understood that I didn't choose the right gender for me.

But before that, yes, I said "the player" because now that I experiment Alcyone, I can tell that this is a game, not a visual novel.

First, this definitely is not a visual novel because there is not much visual at all in it.

You said that visual was secondary, but it could have been that you put more emphasize on the writing and less on the visuals, which would still make it a visual novel.

But to say "the visual is secondary" is an understatement because actually, there is almost no visual at all in Alcyone, there is no background picture, no characters assets, there are barely scarce pictures here and there, Alcyone is really all about text.

So it is more of a text adventure game like Zork than a visual novel.

But there is more to it.

It is also a RPG, but not in the usual way it is meant in video games, more like a table RPG where players physically reunite around a table with a game master and the game master presents them a setting, some situations and events and the players imagine how to react to them then the game master imagines how to react to the players ' actions and so they progressively develop their own story together.

Alcyone feels like that. It reminds me of the experience of a table RPG, I can feel the presence of the game master who describes me the setting of the game and the events occuring to me and asking me how I react to them then telling me the consequences of my choices. :-3

So this is definitely a RPG, in the most traditional way a RPG can be. :-)

There are even character's attributes evolving according to the player's choices, each choice improves one or another attribute and there is an inventory system.

You were right, Alcyone: The Last City is indeed a RPG mixed with a text adventure game.

However the description doesn't feel like a RPG at all, it really feels like a visual novel, as I stated, I had to experiment the demo in order to get the right idea of what exactly is Alcyone: The Last City.

Then may I suggest you a new suggestion to give an idea more accurate to people about what Alcyone is?

How about something like:

"Alcyone: The Last City (pronounced Al-Sigh-O-Knee!) is a traditional RPG/text adventure game set in the last City in the universe. What's a"traditional RPG?" Did you ever play a RPG where you physically reunited with other players and a game master around a table and you lived your own adventures together with the sole limit being the limit of your imagination? No external graphics, no external visuals, every character, every surrounding, every situation generated inside your own imagination. Let me introduce myself, I am Joshua Meadows and I am Alcyone: The Last City's game master. I will make you live a story, in which I will make you choose how to act, and your choices will heavily impact the story, the effetcs on the characters who are involved in it, and the conclusion you will reach."

How do you like this description? I think it would give a more accurate idea to people of what Alcyone is, don't you agree? ;-)

Oh, no, not this endless pointless debate about "visual novels are not games/visual novels are games" again, I have had enough of those already! T_T

Why do you want to consider visual novels as games? Why wouldn't you accept that they are...visual novels and be happy with it?

This is not even about the level of gameplay, visual novels have no gameplay at all, not even in the slightest bit.

If you consider reading texts, watching pictures and making choices a gameplay, even a low-level gameplay, then you would have to consider books which ask you to make choices and to go to a specific page in order to continue the story according to your choice games as well, which would be utterly nonsense, I never met anyone who lacked common sense to the point to consider a book a game.

And this is what visual novels are, immaterial books with texts, pictures and choices and nothing else.

Well, there might be something else, musics, sound effects, voices acting, but still, none of this makes for a gameplay in the slightest bit, this is all for the atmosphere, not for the interactions.

I am not pretending that everyone should see things from my point of view, I am saying "Just call a cat, a cat, and a dog, a dog, call a game, a game, and a visual novel, a visual novel.", there is no point in debatting if visual novels are games or not if there is not a single speck of gameplay in a visual novel.

Something which is counterproductive is to confuse people by miscalling things.

We need to be accurate in the way we call things in order to allow everyone to have an accurate understanding of what we talk about, this is why we have invented so many words to begin with, to allow accuracy.

I don't consider myself "a real gamer", I don't consider myself as "more real" than any other gamer, but I am a gamer, I am into video games almost since I was born, and I almost live for video games, so I don't like it when people call anything "a game" without respect for what a game actually is.

And I love visual novels, too, but I consider them as what they actually are, visual novels.

I merely call a cat, a cat, and a dog, a dog, and I would like that everyone was accurate as well.

I also don't like the elitist behaviors that you talk about.

For example, I don't like when hardcore gamers treat casual gamers like "not real gamers", I always say "casual gamers might become hardcore gamers if you share your passion with them instead of rejecting them, what impression do you think that you give to them about gamers with your useless elitist behavior?".

Yes, I am enjoying the demo. :-)

Even if I now need to start over because you were not accurate with the hermaphrodite gender, you confused me by calling it androgyne, see, the necessity to be accurate? ;-3