thank you so much. i'm glad you appreciated the slow burn and sometimes inconsistent take on this. I wanted complicated characters for this story that started out fairly superficial because i feel like that's what people expect in these types of games. irl we learn more about people through conversation, behaviors, or their opinions on things and that's really what's showcased here. i wanted more of a story that unfolded through dialogue than i did something with a ton of action or complicated choices
thank you so much. i don't even know what the final version clocks in at... i was thinking around 15 hours or so. may have to ask the community that one. glad you enjoyed it, though, and thank you so much for playing and letting me know you liked it
Heya, thank you for the well written note and I'm stoked that it impacted you in such a way as to give you a new perspective and renew some love for your bf. Also, congratulations on 14 years. that's a pretty long time and should be respected and i hope it continues to grow for you both.
in terms of your suggestions: yes, i plan on translations eventually but i think it will be difficult just because i apparently write with sooooo much slang. i never really expected non-english speakers to even get through it originally so it's been incredibly rewarding to hear that people are motivated enough by the project to wade through this thing, lol. I do plan on trying to work with people on the discord to get it as accurate as possible but we'll see. languages are complex and inconsistent obviously so who knows how that translation will turn out.
i see what you're saying with dialogue and maybe that's something i could add. there's a few spots in the later parts of the game where i did that. i just very much see all the random stuff that seems less important as still being character development or giving you background that may come into play later. when i sit down and read books, i usually like massive ones with a ton of details. but i also think that conversation is how relationships naturally evolve so i really focused on a lot of dialogue that spans everything from serious to existential to anger to teasing the crap out of each other. I definitely think it's a lot for a non-native English speaker to struggle with 'cause i get really wordy sometimes :p
things like that may come after the revamp project is completely finished where i may be able to go back and just do some touch-up updates and stuff :)
heya, well thank you for reaching out first off. and yes it's absolutely fine to post here. i'm not sure why you were unable to post on patreon. that should have been a free public post where anyone could reply so sorry you had that experience but here is certainly fine :)
but thank you so much for running through stuff and testing it. it seriously does help me out and save me time while i'm working on all the future stuff. all of those new image updates will be including in the next update too. It's coming soon. i promise. little more work than i expected but i'm on it
appreciate you and appreciate the support and follow <3
heya, thanks for checking in and thank you for the multiple reads. i've said this before but when i started working on this thing i never expected it to go global-- sure, it's on the internet and everything is technically global, i guess-- but i never expected it to hold up in so many different places, cultures, lifestyles, etc. And because of that, i never grow tired of hearing the experiences of others. I truly value posts like this and I thank you for sharing it.
I think there's power in hearing from the experience of others: hearing or reading something that you've experienced yourself, and realizing that you're not crazy and you're not alone. With all the division in the world, it's nice to feel connections with others so i'm glad this small part of the story resonated with you. It's also fun to just hear all the parts that resonate with different people because the world is a diverse place.
You spoke about this vulnerability and I think the next update that I'm working on now, returns to that again briefly, but it can be scary. If you've had past experiences that have taught you to protect yourself, it becomes advantageous to defend yourself and be very leery of outsiders. Giving them too much information could hurt you. But the flip side to that is that is the connection that comes from shared vulnerability. when you find people that you can be yourself around-- drop that filter. it can be terrifying but that's what gives it its power: when you're vulnerable with them and they, in turn, do the same to you; and neither of you uses that vulnerability for harm. obviously, you need to be safe and calculated with that and much of that is based on our past experiences.
i think for me: i've made bad decisions in the past. some of those have allowed people to hurt me just as much as my own stupidity has hurt others. at some point, i have to decide which of those experiences needs to become a lesson i learned the hard way and which of those are the painful shackles that are preventing me from moving forward to learn new lessons. It's like any other investment-- there can be profound gains or painful losses-- but i think the currency of meaningful relationships is vulnerability. But that's just how i found acceptance in my own head.
i truly wish you the best and i hope you find acceptance and peace in your own way. stay safe and may all of your future relationships be rewarding. thank you for reading :)
Heya. This project does not contain any femboys, sissy, or crossdressing content. In fact: it's almost the exact opposite. Character interactions and personalities could be described as cis and are probably more "bro" and sarcastic with an existential twist than anything else. While I openly support any of those identities, lifestyles, and any similar content, I tend to be pretty masculine and I've always heard to "write what you know."
There's plenty of LGBTQ+ talent out there with far more insight into those lifestyles than I have and the world would be better served to hear their voices over mine. They would do them more justice than I ever could.
so far the revamp updates are much quicker than the original updates-- mostly because i dont have to do much writing-- it's just editing of existing writing. that being said, i've sorta taken the extra time to practice more things during this passthrough of the revamp-- hence all the animations and stuff. But so far it's been around ~2 months give or take.
and i really appreciate the support-- that doesn't necessarily mean financial-- just support in general. please dont feel obligated-- there's a reason the game is free. just make sure you take care of yourself first. the world has been crazy for awhile now <3
yep. rest assured you're not the only one that it happened to. it came up in discussion on the discord and it happened to a few fans that had already played the original and were actually expecting animations. so apparently it was easy to miss. the hard pauses are only like 1 or 2 seconds so it shouldn't be annoying for quick clicking. it should also be ignored if you use the fast forward feature :)
heya, greetings from the US and thanks for reading. i'm glad you're enjoying the revamped version and since you're finished the story, you already know the revamp is just now getting to the good parts. In terms of a sequel, it's been a common question but no plans right now. i don't multitask well so i only work on one project at a time. right now, i'm finishing the revamp (to conclude this game). as i near the end of the revamp, the workload should reduce a bit and i may start looking towards the future then. without stating spoilers here, i worked hard on the ending for this to check a lot of boxes for people so i'm going to be very careful if i ever choose to continue things. i dont want to just run a story into the ground like a lot of movies do
haha, aww. well thank you very much. the end of chapter 6 is one of the few times we sorta get a break from the tension. there's some resolution here and a lot of questions are answered as well as we truly get a feel for what the story is all about: it's zack's journey to find some kind of peace or acceptance of who he is. glad you're enjoying the story. i really do put a lot of effort into it so it's always amazing when it hits people the right way.
thank you so much. i'm glad you enjoyed it. thank you so much for reading. if you're still interested in the characters, the revamp is a great way to scratch that itch for wanting more.
heya, first off thanks for playing and I'm glad you're enjoying the project. To answer your question, first you need to know that I'm not a coder or game developer in any professional capacity. I went to school for psychology so i'm completely self taught for this based on reading forums and watching videos. I'm still learning in real time-- that's why the quality of the original game changed so much as it progressed. So if there's a way to avoid this issue, I'm not sure how to do it. I'll give you a pretty lengthy but detailed response though-- just know that I probably won't sound like I know what I'm talking about. lol
So "choices" in the game are based on declarations within the code. When the game starts, all known variables and declarations within the game will be loaded. I load all of mine as "false" when you start a New Game. When you make a choice in the game, the variable assigned to that choice then becomes True. Later in the game, if that choice becomes important, the game will remember that the variable is true and your story will follow that "true" path.
The problem and the requirement for starting a New Game after each update is because as the story progressed, I added new variables. So for example, if you played the first Update of Chapter 1, your New Game would not have loaded all the chapter 10 variables yet because that chapter wasn't written yet. The game has to load all variables within the game at the start or it'll crash when that variable becomes required (usually the error message will say something is "not defined.")
One criticism of this is obviously that I could have just loaded all known variables for the entire game when I first started writing the story back in 2017. The problem with that is I wasn't sure where things were going. I'm a fan of the story myself so I didn't want to plan a lot out, I wanted to be surprised along with the reader so the story wrote itself each time. Another problem with that stems from people that are actual coders. Without exception, there's always a segment of readers that break into my code every update (especially in the original version) and looked for spoilers or clues to where the story was going. Hell, I even had a few fans that have never actually played the game-- they download each update and just break into the code script and read that like a novel-- they never even boot the game: just the code. To avoid hackers finding future story spoilers, I just never included any future information-- including those variables that would prevent the game from crashing.
The Fix: So the reason that boot message is there is that during each update, you need to start a New Game. The newest version of the game will load all variables--including the new ones just added into the story when you click New Game. But then immediately following that, you normally will have some choices to answer. Those answers will modify the code to flag things as True and essentially recreate your old save file and choices based on what's required for that update. Then it'll drop you right at the end of the last update with all your old choices.
Hopefully that makes sense. If not, feel free to ask :)
thank you so much. i hope you continue to enjoy it. i progressively just got more comfortable doing my own thing rather than try and do the typical VN stuff so hopefully that works for you. lemme know if you end up liking it (not sure if you're playing the original or the revamp) by the end :)
haha, thanks for sticking around through the original intention. that means a lot. sorry about the tears but i seriously appreciate the investment. and the character you mentioned was a surprise fan favorite to everyone. i think he ended up being as popular or more popular than the MCs
aww, this is amazing. i know i dont know you but i'm so proud of your progress and your ability to find peace and acceptance in who you are. I'm always humbled when people state that this story was involved in any way in their journey or as an impetus for change. that's still one of the best compliments i could ever receive but I think it's always important to kick the majority of that credit back to the reader because you're the one who was willing to listen to yourself and find your own path. thank you so much for reading and thank you for giving the revamp a try. i hope you enjoy it even better than the original-- i've worked really hard to do nothing but improve it. same story. just everything looks, sounds, and feels better. please take care of yourself. i wish you and those important to you nothing but the best. thank you so much <3
heya, first off thanks for playing. from where you are in the original game, you should be able to go to class and that would unlock a TV discussion with Braden and open pool access.
since you're playing the original, you're stuck in the frustrating part of the game. when i started this thing, you basically had to keep trying different combinations of things to unlock the progress forward. that's how a lot of sandbox games were built then. since then i've learned to hate that method and i promise that goes away after chapter 3. if you want to completely avoid all of that, then just play the Revamp version, it's not the full story but it'll get you through the first 5 1/2 chapters without having to worry about any of that stuff. then if you still like the story you can jump back to the original and pickup the story while you wait on the revamp version to be completed.
There's also a .txt file in the game folder that has a walkthrough of all the choices and how to get through the first 3 chapters quickly. i promise i got way better. i can't stand the beginning (hence why there's a revamp). hope this helps :)
thanks a lot. glad to clear it up. i think it was less obvious in the original because i had very limited scenes in the prologue, which is one of the reasons it was completely redone with new visuals but i like introducing mikhail very early like that. it means he's always been present in the story and it's one of the very few cases in the game where we see anything that happened prior to when the story started. thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the rest of the revamp <3
heya, greetings from the US and I'm humbled to have you onboard. I've tried to make the story pretty deep, especially for the adult genre. it definitely has it's heavy moments but there's a bunch of fun nonsense, too. so in terms of translations, i do have people on the discord who have been interested in translations. i originally got some interest then got busy learning more things for the Revamp and it go put on hold. I do know there is still interest tho and Spanish was one of the most popular requests. a full translation won't be soon but it is something that I'd like to do and would likely include the community to do it. lot of people have wanted to help with this project and that's definitely something i can't do alone. i'm very much against AI so i'd rather have people doing it-- which will likely take longer but it's more rewarding
heya, so nothing changed from that scene in the original story versus the revamp.
[SPOILER]
in that scene with mikhail, mikhail is indeed referencing the beginning prologue of the game. the beginning of the game was intentionally misleading to make the reader think it was zack but it wasn't. throughout the original story (and the revamp) we will get extremely limited backstory of zack. i didn't want zack backstory in the game, i thought that it was more powerful to have his backstory ambiguous and left up to the reader, allowing them to justify some of his decisions or mindset. but in terms of the mikahil scene: that scene was done for a couple of reasons. i wanted zack to view mikhail as this powerful character but i wanted mikhail to actually have some backstory where he wasn't and i wanted him to be able to empathize with zack while coming from that part of himself. i also wanted to depict the idea that being strong isn't necessarily something you're just born with. mikhail's character is pretty consistent in that many of his weaknesses are things that he learned to overcome. i think that's a hopeful message and i think it's something that makes mikhail a much stronger character. it's also a hopeful message to zack in that he is very stuck within his own head and sometimes hopeless and to realize that a powerful friend of his, that he looks up to, has actually struggled with the same idea before and overcame it is incredibly validating and hopeful. i'll also say that the prologue was intentionally shot in black and white so it helps mask the skin tones a bit but if you look closely at the prologue pictures, it was clearly mikhail in the prologue pictures and not zack, mikhail was just a bit younger then so his frame is thinner and he didn't have his tattoo yet but facial structure (what parts you see) as well as his hair and other physical features are all the same. the first time we see zack in the game is in the dorm room.
so the short answer is i'm not sure. The beginning part of the story was going to take a lot longer. there was a lot more work during the early parts of the story and then gradually less work as the story progresses. however, then i've learned more skills in the process so i ended up adding more things like animations and stuff like that. as of right now, i'm probably about halfway through it so maybe another year give or take.
in terms of plans after that, i'm not sure. i didn't plan a lot of this and sorta let it write itself. however, i dont multitask well so i really only want to focus on one thing at a time. but as a near the end of this, i'm expecting the workload to drop more which will leave time to start looking towards the future. i have a folder with some ideas in it
heya, no worries on waiting on the revamp. I think it's honestly worth it. i was always worried about people starting with the revamp then jumping back to the original because of the quality difference but lately people have reported that it worked for them. in contrast to how long it took to do the original, the revamp is going much quicker because i dont have to really outline or write. updates so far have been about 2 months or so on average. it just really depends what i'm trying to do.
i'm also glad the story rings true for you. zack is complicated. there's a lot going on for him to unpack and work through and you're definitely not alone. seriously appreciate you reading and i hope you continue to enjoy the story. dont worry about the money stuff. people have been generous. i release it for free for a reason. too many greedy developers out there nowdays. just know that i appreciate you for giving the story a chance and for taking the time out of your day to come say hey and let me know you're enjoying it. that's good enough for me <3
thank you so much. i'm glad you found the genre and thanks for giving this one a try. there's a lot of stories out there so i'm happy you found mine. Yeaaahhh.... Ash is a fan fav for sure. Def the most fun to write out of all of them but they all have a special place in my heart for the time I've spent with them. I'm also happy that it worked jumping from the Revamp to the original. I've come a long ways and while I didn't like the beginning of the original story's quality, the middle and beyond started to pick up. However, after working on the Revamp, I can't believe the difference and I always worry about people jumping back to the original. It's still very popular on the Discord because fans really enjoyed watching the growth of the project and for most, that was how they first experienced it. It was a first for all of us. But the Revamp is on another level and I'm way more proud of it.
Heya :) so in terms of actual labels in the game, i've never officially confirmed anything. However, the demi-route you're discussing has been widely considered by a lot of readers. I have my own head canon but I never openly confirmed things just because i like to leave it up to the readers. your ability to relate to what you've read so far is a good example of why. if i confirmed something that was opposite to what you gained from it, I'd fear taking that from you and i dont want to take anything away from a readers ability to relate to a character or situation. so i've just decided not to do that. you're definitely allowed to put labels on the characters and there's definitely enough evidence in the story for you to draw that conclusion-- many have. So once again, you're not alone :)
yo, thank you so much for the response. glad you're enjoying the revamp. I really felt like i had to make a case for why i was going back through things but it seems like people are onboard with this once they actually see it. I will say Brian did a good job on the story. He brought some really good points into the reading of it as well as sharing personal things and adding things that I left out or just didn't even think of-- i think that's what makes a good stream on something like that: just taking the source material and adding something of your own to make it better. I know he was able to reach a lot of people that I couldn't and I appreciate that. He did a good job and i'm grateful for that. thank you for reading :)
