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rereading this dev log and this bit sticks out more than when i'd read it the first time: "the idea that the mere existence of magic is not only at odds with nature, but also inherently destructive to the surrounding environment". i'm forever wondering about the nature of the spire and it sounds like something-something lost rituals, not enough peace offerings from the new order => spreading corruption maybe?

also thinking about shapeshifters as "descended from a different species altogether". sure it's stigma and stuff but another thing i'm always wondering about is what kind of creatures inhabit this world, y'know? like, we know of goblins and humans thanks to your lore updates buttt 👀 i'm looking!! (also that thing about how goblins?? didn't always have magic?? idey donara ur very sus and we love u for it. [insert theory about how donara just slept with veles which is some magical species, then gave birth to a lot of new magical goblins])

love love love the guild emblems! mentalists and shapeshifters and fleshcarvers won the lottery with theirs i thunk, like?? that sexy eye? the shapeshifters thingy that makes u think of crossroads and potential and change?? that fleshcarvers' looks like a literal stylized carved goblin IMO and that's so sexy of them i can'tt

on the topic of sexiness. i stumbled in some other dev log on a note that you've made six too sexy and i have to agree?? like, you'd think a confirmed dom would read as the sexiest part of the group or maybe a literal shapeshifter but alas! murderous swag win

as always i hope you're doing good and taking care of yourself. things are going to be hard with trump winning and the wars going on still (it's almost 1000 days for russo-ukrainian one which is insane to think about) and everything BUT!! here's to persevering and healing and thriving in spite of all the shit i guess <3

OMG OMG OMG OMG THATS THE BEST THING TO COME HOME FROM WORK TO!!! GONNA PLAY RN

CHAPTER TWO OH MY GOD

THIS WILL MAKE MY DAY I JUST KNOW IT

CONGRATSSS!!!

Goblins would love Son Lux so much, I just know it

Seven is so sus i cantttt wdym the projection plate broke just in time for their intro?? 

At one point I stopped actually playing and stared into the monitor for like half an hour and i gotta say, it really felt like sitting among the goblins in the dark. It was pretty cool. (A little bit creepy. I liked that a lot)

If humans exist in the universe can goblin mentalists read them the same way they read other goblins? I have a feeling it's spoilery somehow

Good luck with the Alleged and just, yknow, in general. Hope the world is gentle to you and stuff. Take care ;)

love this game so much!! i absolutely adore all the variations, especially in the club. snow queen retellings with criminal undertones really do hit different!
the writing, art and atmosphere are all top notch as well
i look forward to the next chapters very very much <3

it is so. fucking. good. 

i'm sad to admit i overlooked the game the first few times i've seen it 'cuz like. superheros? come on. the genre is full of potential but it is so very rare to really see any of this potential realized. when i finally played it, i couldn't do anything but play it again. a few times. the bsh game is very well written, with beautiful art and excellent characters. even now, more than two months after playing it, i'm in love with it - in love with ray, with all the characters, really - and i think of it very fondly. 

thank you for letting us experience this. it's incredible

it's so great to see this update! i'm sorry things have been hard for you and i'm so glad you manage to go on at your own pace and seek help and provide help for somebody else - holy shit, you're amazing! congratulations on getting the grant and the diagnosis (it sounds so weird when i write it in the same sentence XD)

the screenshots from Alleged are looking soo good! wish you luck with working on it! and thank you thank you thank you so much for some for some nice TIS lore [insert the finally some good fucking food meme]

Replaying again, and I'm in love with how you show that moment of derealization in the begining of part 1. I love how the colour of text changes and how sounds disappear and that negative? Filter? Jeez you people are geniuses. 

(Also I love Three's lantern earrings in Prologue. How they light up... So pretty. I wonder how many goblins date - court? - luminists for the benefit of glowing accessories.)

In light of the hogwarts game being released, i wanted to once again say how much i appreciate this game and this kind of goblins fighting for freedom. It's very comforting when everything else is not)

Replayed again, and the codex entries about the mentalist's lessons are so good. Love One's relationship with their mentor! Not particularly healthy but extremely fun to think about. Lesson 2 is absolutely my favourite so far :)  I'm looking forward to more lessons in the future updates~

It also makes me thinks about Six and how exactly One must feel about their mentor, and if the experience Six's got with mentalists has as much if not more to do with their time in corrective camps as it's with their practice. Though that's probably... farfetched lol, it's still fun to imagine them getting their own mentalist visitors. 

TIS's totally become something of a comfort game, and the only thing I regret is that I need to wait at least six months until it feels newish lmao

Anyway, I wish you luck with chapter 2 and hope you're doing alright. Hope the comments are not too annoying lol, and pls feel free to ignore if they are xD

i wonder if goblin esenin looks kinda like sergey esenin

hi! i played both this and paper thin this week, and let me just say i'm in awe <3

the world and the characters are both so engaging, and the mc is honestly relatable with her anxiety issues and her dark past and opinions on warlocks and stuff make her especially sexy imo. in pe we got to hear her voice and lemme tell you for a second there i thought i heard angels singing. sam did a great job!

her interactions with artur are hands off my favourite thing in both games. how artur's obviously written as a bastard yet he's never demeaning or rude when emma gets stuck in her head, he's actually super helpful! their dynamic was perfect, and i also loved artur's voice since i first heard it! very nice! 

i adored wyatt and rose very much too! i wonder if rose has something like a true form? would be interesting... i guess i was less fixated on them cuz their routs didn't come with a bonus pact with an eldritch lmao, but they're both cool af!

and about the pact - that was pretty much the perfect way to end the game, so i guess that's why i tend to think about artur's route as the true one. gimme my own eldritch sugar daddy (gender neutral)!! imagining emma training under artur is very fun too, especially with rose and wyatt acting as wingpeople? what's the gn term of wingman? nevermind. i also want to see them all hanging out together just doing some stuff - baking, playing tabletop games, mixing cocktails, doing some weird magic stuff that they will totally regret later. on a more angsty note, warlock emma meeting her hunter ex friends? that would be noice. 

i think you mentioned somewhere that you're working on something else now (wysapoomp maybe?), but it would be great to see the continuation of the story should you ever make one. i greatly enjoyed both of these games and i'm very grateful for that! so, thank you and have a good one <3 

the more i think about that last survivor from the previous expedition the more sinister it looks 👀

my favourite theories so far: 1) they ate the rest of their party to escape starvation, and their next meal is basically us. 2) they were transformed into one of these organical engines of the old order mentioned in a fives journal entry - they would probably still technically classify as alive in that case, right? 

i can't help but think that two's theory about the survivor being a lie is... actually optimistic? whatever happened to the goblin staying in the spire all this time most probably wasn't pretty. (btw i wonder what new order told the citizens? like, were they pronounced dead or? because if not, i dunno how no-one from our party knew about the thing. i also wonder what kind of person they were - like, voted most likely to day last lol? or first and everyone got surprised?) 

but then i remember that there's probably something much more terrible in the spire then a cannibal or a vegetable state goblin, so even the most unsightly option to get out early can easily prove itself preferable to the alternative... but then we probably wouldn't get the truth about the spire, and now that would be disappointing. also rolling with headhunting exercise and not trying to unravel the spire would go directly against my chosen party motto which is less than ideal. still, meeting the survivor would be interesting. i wonder how their mindscape looks after all this time - it must have left a mark... provided they still have a mindscape at all. would those organical engines still have some semblance of mind? 

on another note, i found a variation of the six introduction, where six reveals that one's read four's mind, and four's like "well since you said it, i'm gonna up my trustbar even more, mx. evil necromancer. at least they still haven't spilled my private beans to you guys, gotta respect that shit". and i was like yesss baby your secrets are for my amusement only, wouldn't want to amuse anyone else with your sexy drama :) you can trust me four :)

also in that scene from five intro with five snapping when we get a chance to calm them down, when six is like "why not just assume control" i wanted to tell them the exact reason so bad! i mean, i totally agree, i too would rather just go directly into their mind, but in that playthrough they didn't like me enough for that to be effective! don't rub the salt in the wound six!! (but the option with verbal guidance was extremely satisfying too though. probably even more satisfying than mind reading in this case... also five with their hair down is very neat and very personal for me)

so, still hyperfixating on this vn. i wonder if the genderless world does it for me? i mean, the game sure is a mix of most of my favourite tropes with gorgeous art and atmospheric music and choices that actually matter and are not a stupid set of kind, evil and quirky options. but yknow, gender is especially crisis this days and stuff. hope you don't mind me spamming here a bit more. have a good one :3

yes!!!

i will wait for it patiently then *_____*

for the facts and ch2 my beloved 😍

thank you for telling me, and take care of yourself 💙

hi again nicholai! sorry for kind spamming here, but i was wondering if you were planning to do the characters facts thing on twitter for five, six and seven? no pressure or anything, i just wanna know if i should let myself look forward to it 💙

i don't use twitter like, at all, so I'm not totally comfortable with posting/commenting there, but omg the facts about one were exquisite 👁️👄👁️

one of the rare times when i can honestly tell you i'm in love with the protagonist

oh my god i just got that scene - the melor sten one - and i just wanted to tell you that it's like the best thing that happened to me in a month at least. they are all so damn dramatic, i love them 💙💙💙

the whole consent thing was SO sexy lmao, and six' whole package of issues is even cooler and funnier than i imagined :д

thank you so much for telling me about this, or im afraid i wouldn't start looking for it, and it would be a truly terrible loss~

hi Nicholai!

wow, i saw your reply as soon as i woke up, and let me tell you it makes an amazing morning! thank you so much for the hints, i now know that i gotta hunt the delicious unseen scenes down as soon as i have time 😍

this hint about seven is very intriguing! i could guess that four'd be able too see... some sides of seven other characters can't just because of their experience so far, but it's a bit unexpected for me to see you referring to them anyway 👀👀👀 

i wish you all the good luck with the development, I'm also happy that you're making time for self-care, especially cuz you making this game has given me some extra opportunities to relax and be excited and feel better, and, yknow, I'm super grateful 💙

wait a sec

i was just admiring the portraits on this page and sevens clothes and headwear strikes as a bit odd... isn't it all floral motifs? i wonder if they're just supposed to be in mourning here orrrr if they're more closely related to horculeans (if i remember correctly, floral patterns are associated with the resident graveyard guild?) 

also their lips on the portrait 👄

hmmmmmm 👀👀👀

ahhh i think today it was about the tenth time i played the demo?? it's so wonderful that every once in a while i just have to come back and play it cuz nothing else truly scratches the exact same itch yknow?

the protags issues are super relatable to me, the art is gorgeous and I can't stop myself from making heart eyes at... pretty much every character lmao

love going through their minds just because I'm curious how their mindscapes look and what they are thinking. ethics are cool and all but im nosy™ and i know no shame. i wonder if at some point we will be given an option to openly discuss the mindscapes with their owners or something

sten is The icon btw. i read the journal a few times and when they're like "buddy i see your new here lemme help you with your mirror" and the transcription ends it's like yfitcurxeyzyexixhkhc. i love them your honour. pretty, petty and murderous. i wanna mess up their hair and splash blood on their face. too bad my desire to play nice is stronger than my desire to please them for now lol. i loved that we can mess with their mind though 

also i love that there is some light in the underworld after all. like literally. i was worried at the start that their radiance three will be the only source of light but thank veles we can maybe hopefully survive even when the fantasy marijuana wears off lol

btw i can't wait for the moment when the wakeroot wears off, and we'll have to face a whole new level of difficulties with three. i wonder if the protag will be able to help somehow by messing with their head? *____*

five is cute. too bad i cannot play it as a good citizen so they never like the mc in my playthrouths, but it's like they're some kind of nervous cat 😺 eldritch horror cat

i also really wanna see that missing variable incident through stens eyes. like, in their mind. because in fives memories it's at least secondhand retelling, and in the journal they said they were gonna exaggerate, and there's also another thing with the shrodingers patient and stens so called vassals... i really hope will get to see it more or less firsthand via six mind, even at the cost of their whole trustbar lmao

anyway just wanted to thank you very much for making this amazing game and sharing this wonderful world and characters with us! i love them all very much and i have many feelings about everything in the game lol so... I'm very grateful and i wish you the best of luck!!

oh my dear god it was incredible!! i had such fun with mechanics, it's all both so innovative and nostalgic i'm in love! and characters are just agaeginaergnwp'G

love them all, chris especially somehow! i'm looking forward to seeing more of this wonderful game! thank you so much!

Oh my god the demo is so good! The characters? The art? The music? The writing? The plot? It is all so magnificent I legit cried. Even the menu is a work of art. Spire is so relatable yet unique, so smart, so pretty, so adorable! I also wanted to touch the clouds do bad... the fog is verrry noice... I feel like the day I see the whole game is gonna be like The Best and I can't wait for it <3