itch.io

Hey, not bad for your first game (I think)! 

(Apologies for the length of the post, take from it what you will)

Stuff I thought was cool:

- I think the art style really works here. I personally prefer the more cartoony style over the overly polished AI or AI-adjacent art that seems to be flooding furry media now and I think you definitely put in a lot of effort for providing consistent art assets here. Good stuff.

- Sex scene was the strongest part of the game for me. Art worked, tone was consistent (i.e., not too horny, not too saccharine), and the "blocking" of the characters' actions was well-done and believable. 

- I think quick games like this are a really good way to get started as opposed to jumping in and trying to make a VN with 16 routes or like a full-fledged RPG or whatever. I think this is a good jumping off point and I'd like to see more.

- Always nice to see another opossum appreciator :)

With that said, unsolicited writing advice:

The writing in this game is a bit... basic? Like, mechanically it's fine. No noticeable typos or grammar issues that I can recall. There are just a bunch of spots where this game could really use some "show, don't tell" to flesh out the characters more.

For example, in the intro, instead of just saying "Hello, I am Guy. I have a hobby and a crush on Girl." just open with a scene of James and Olivia interacting. It doesn't have to be like 5,000 words of dialogue, but this is a better way of establishing 1) what their relationship/interactions are normally like (is she chatty and friendly? Is she normally more distant and he just admires from afar?); 2) how she might be acting differently today because of what she's going to ask later (e.g., have James notice that she's anxiously talking more than usual, or conversely seems more aloof and preoccupied); 3) some details about their job, if you deem that necessary. If the conversation is about work, that can clarify what work they're doing rather than directly stating "I work at Company doing Job". 

There are a few other spots in the game that come to mind too. Like when Olivia is sending dress options, maybe have her send a couple comments for each one to walk through her thought process. As is, it looks like she's visibly uncomfortable in two of them, so maybe expanding on why she's considering them at all might give some insight into her character (does she have self-confidence issues? Does she feel pressured to dress a certain way because of her parents? Did she impulse buy a dress off an Instagram ad that doesn't look great in person?)

Another great spot to expand is the car ride to Olivia's parents' house - maybe have her talk about why she's single, use that to expand on her interests and provide a common ground for her and James (e.g., O: "I just don't have time to find a boyfriend because I'm so busy with Activity." J: "Wait, you like Activity? *I* like Activity!" O: "No way! I can't believe you've been into Activity all this time and I never knew!"). This can also give James more ammunition to talk about with her parents besides just like, being polite and not suspicious for an hour.

A couple other suggestions: Maybe a little more lead-in to the sex scene would be good too - like I said above, the sex itself is good to go, but the setup is a bit... nonchalant? Like maybe build on some of those previous conversations and have Olivia express that things went way better than she was expecting and that she doesn't want the night to end or something. Also, the proposal ending feels a bit trite. I think you could just end the story after the sex scene with the pair agreeing to try going out for real and it would still get the job done.

Hopefully that doesn't sound too nitpicky, but a lot of these are things you could add that wouldn't take up a lot of "time" in the script and would go a long way for providing context for the characters, which would make the story more engaging and narratively satisfying.

Neutral comment:

- Not sure why this is in Unity? This seems like it would have been way easier to do in Renpy. If it's like a test run with making a game in Unity before you go on to bigger and better things, more power to you though. 

Good stuff overall - hope you stick with it.

Thanks for the detailed response! Definitely understand that this is just the demo and will withhold further comments on plot/character stuff until the full release. Like I said above, totally support manageably sized productions (they tend to work better than overly ambitious ones that die 10% into development) so looking forward to seeing how that plot unravels.

Regarding dialogue, like I said it's a bit nitpicky, so feel free to take this all with a grain of salt since it's a tougher one to adjust as well. I think "too wordy" might be more of what I was getting at than "too cheesy" though. There are some lines where I think you're maybe trying to put a bit too much into one sentence. 

Example 1: 

"We were coming back from a weekend party at the Vinnie Bar that's like at the other side of town but we frequent that place quite a lot."

could be revised to:

"We were coming home from a party at Vinnie's Bar. It's on the other side of town, but we go there all the time."

Example 2:

"May be one shouldn't be stupid enough to think that chasing some badger across the road in a dead night to take photos of it is ever a good idea."

could be revised to:

"Maybe he shouldn't have been stupid enough to chase that badger across the road in the middle of the night."

+/- 

"Those photos couldn't have been that important." (Depending on if the photos are relevant to the plot). 

Breaking those sentences up and removing an extraneous word or two makes the lines flow a bit more naturally and less rushed. Really not a huge deal, just something I noticed.

This is a really great start!

Things that I thought were really cool:

- I love a good mystery and this game succeeded in getting me really interested in where exactly this one is going.

- The opening scene especially does a great job of setting the atmosphere, and the girls' behavior was also uncomfortable/creepy in a way I think worked. Got kind of a Death Game/Knock Knock vibe from them.

- Art is solid and animation, both in scenes as well as animated dialogue sprites, is a level of effort you don't see in most furry VNs. Kudos.

- I love the little fade-ins for instructional text. It's a minor thing but it adds a feeling of "production value" to the game.

Things that I thought could be cooler:

- Actual choices for the protagonist. I know this is just a demo so maybe more is planned, but I personally find it a bit frustrating to play as a dumb protagonist. Obvious trap felt very obvious here and it was a bit annoying to have to watch the protag just go along with it. If that's not going to be optional maybe you can do more in the intro to set up that the protag is prone to impulsiveness or is bored enough with his job to take dumb risks that way his decisions are more in character?

- Use of the protagonist's name. We can set our own name for the protag, but I don't think that's ever actually used since the Renpy character name is still just "You". It would be an easy fix to change this to the character's name.

- Text colors for characters. It's pretty common to see characters in Renpy VNs get unique colors for their nametags, and I think this is helpful shorthand for differentiating between actors in dialogue.

- There's an audio issue where the music that plays during the sex scene doesn't appear to be affected by volume controls other than "mute all". I'm not sure if this somehow got assigned to "voice" instead of "music" or "effects" since that preference doesn't appear to be present.

- The "You" character tag disappears from several lines during the sex scene. Not a huge deal, wasn't hard to figure out what they were supposed to be, but consistency is good.

- A bit nitpicky, but some of the dialogue felt a bit awkwardly delivered, like it was roughly translated. Again, nothing where I couldn't figure out where you were going with it but there were a few "nobody talks like that" moments.

- Interesting that the description says this is the "first half" of the game. The demo wasn't very long, and there's certainly nothing wrong with quick, manageable projects, but it did feel like the mystery that was set up might take more than an hour or two to unravel and resolve. Kind of more of a neutral point I guess.

Overall, this was very fun and I'm really interested in seeing where this goes!

Well that all sounds awesome and it's good to know you were already thinking about some of this too.

To comment on just a couple of those points:

- I'm totally good with a manual; I had suggested tutorial since that's just more common now, but as long as how to play the game is conveyed somehow, that's the most important thing. If you made it like a manual from the late 90s - early 00s where you expanded on the lore like how the Love Rocket competition works in-universe and bios for the characters that would be sick. Seems like that's what you're going for and as someone who got way too excited to rip open the box and read the manual as a kid I'm totally onboard.

- That's actually what I was thinking for the BGMs as well. Introduce with lyrics, then loop the instrumental, then maybe bring back the lyrics at critical moments.

- Don't know how expansive the roster is going to be down the line, but another potential option for Cheshire is giving her another set of levels too. If she's one of your favorites, that would be a way to expand on her background and her and Algie's relationship, and it would also make sense canonically since she's supposed to be really good at this game, so a rematch in another tournament/event final would be plausible.

- I think there are a few NSFW chatbot sites out there, but spicychat is the only one I know of that allows free accounts, which is a plus. I've used it a bit and it does the job for me. Maybe someone in your discord has more knowledge though. 

Looking forward to the updates, keep it up man.

Not sure if this is the best place for this, but I had a bunch of feedback and I didn't know where else to put it so I apologize in advance for the length of this post:

Pros:

- Really enjoyed the game overall.

- Difficulty felt pretty manageable for me, though some of the later levels (especially bonus rounds) do get kinda long just waiting for enemy missiles to wander where you need them to go.

- If I recall correctly, the upgrades were simplified a lot from the demo and I think this was the right move. Progression seemed fair, though getting the 100 coin scratch ticket near the beginning of the game was definitely a gamechanger for me.

- Girls are for the most part diverse and unique, with discernable and interesting personalities. I ended up liking some of them much more than I thought I would. I also appreciate the choice of BGM for each girl that ties into her personality.

- Game is lighthearted and doesn't take itself too seriously, but characters still feel developed, which is refreshing.

- The pace at which this game went from initial demo to respectable initial release is insane and should be applauded.

- Johannes best character 11/10 no notes.

Things that could be improved:

- I think this game still really needs a tutorial of some kind. I played the demo, so I was able to jump in pretty easily, but having no background with the game this is based off, I really struggled with basic elements of the game during the demo, like needing to hit missiles in the points areas to do damage, knowing what cannon is firing, knowing how to see my ammo or that I even HAD ammo, etc. It's all stuff you can figure out but it would save a bit of strife to just have like a diagram or something.

- I still have absolutely no idea how you get scratch tickets. Sometimes I play a round and I have 7, sometimes I have 0 and I really cannot figure out how that works.

- Cheshire. Oh boy do I have some thoughts on Cheshire. I think I see where you were trying to go with some of this but I'm not sure if it stuck the landing.

- Cheshire being intoxicated and hungover for the first couple rounds has some humor/light intimidation value, like "oh she's so good she's the final boss and is beating you while barely being functional", but this kind of stunts her character development. All the other characters kind of steadily ramp up as you progress, learning more about their background as you consistently build sexual tension. With Cheshire, the conversations are "I'm drunk", "I'm hungover", "I have minor daddy issues", and "I guess we're gonna bang now lol". Her "chapter" just doesn't really flow like the others do. Like I'd be really curious to see how you wrote her chatbot personality because she's the one girl where I'm not sure what her personality even is.

- I think Cheshire is also the only character with BGM that has lyrics. At first, that felt hype, like emphasizing how she's the final boss so she gets something special, but the issue is her rounds are just super long (maybe I just suck lol) so that "I'm Cheshire" hook gets really old really fast. Ended up having to mute the game for a bit towards the end since it was really starting to get grating.

- Might be alone in this opinion, but I don't know how I feel about the bits about competitors being required to have sex at the end of the match if they lose. I think it would be a bit more fun if getting their clothes blown off was part of the game, but they just agreed to hook up with Algie because they developed chemistry rather than it being some rule. It feels like this is the case for most of the girls anyway, but sometimes it felt a bit forced.

- Some of the borders of the hitboxes can be really hard to make out. Ella's groin hitbox on the last stage of her bonus round particularly stands out.

- There's an error with the tooltips/mouseover text in the upgrade menu. At least for me they all display the description for missile production, regardless of which upgrade you hover over.

Other stuff that would be cool:

- Rewards for beating bonus rounds, like an additional picture or something. I'm not going to like, demand the extra CGs for that though. Just would be nice.

- Being able to replay earlier rounds, in case you want to replay a girl's story without deleting your save or something. If there's currently a way to do this, I haven't found it.

- Maybe having some conversation options to make the pre-match scenes a bit more interactive?

- Skipping dialogue for pre-match scenes that you've already seen. Again, if this is already in the game, I don't know how to do it.

- Regarding the chatbots, I'm by no means an expert on AI chat stuff, but I wonder if an actual NSFW service like spicychat.ai would be better than character.ai? I don't know if there are better options out there but it just feels kinda... underwhelming to have a strictly censored chat with a character that explicitly states they're going to give you a prostate massage with their tongue in this game.

Overall, really liked this game. Hope you stick with it.