Are the characters specifically designed to look like something you'd see on Deviantart? Like, early 2000's Deviantart? If so, you've captured the aesthetic remarkably well. It's very nostalgic.
Breecer12
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A member registered Sep 09, 2020
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I'm astonished that the developer has given up on this seemingly without a single word or announcement. Which is a shame, because the new project they are developing is more or less the same exact thing as this game, with the same kind of problems. Arguably, it's even worse, since it gets rid of the Demon Soul's/Berserk aesthetic and replaces it with a subpar outdoor realm dream nonsense reminiscent of something akin to Dawn of Corruption (But with little of what makes that game so engaging as far as growing a character from six foot to sixty and beyond). Did they just not learn at all? None of (Or perhaps a little bit) of the criticism given here was overly mean spirited or hateful, and yet they're just doing the same thing that caused many people to become frustrated with the gameplay.
It's like they're ripping up a piece of paper to shreds and trying to recreate the same exact thing with those same shreds of paper.
Honestly, to me, this is why the Gain Jam is kind of... too demanding? You shouldn't feel as if you have to put something down, even if it is rife with bugs and requires many updates to fix the issues. I'd rather somebody create something on their own time than feel as if they need to put something out because of an event coming up.
If you were getting paid for this, it would be a different story, but still.
This is just an exercise in frustration for me. The ingredients keep flipping around like they're fidget spinners in my hands and burgers sometimes disappear when you go to the customer and the meteors don't help at all, I feel as if there should be a couple days before that happens so that the player isn't immediately barraged by the difference in gameplay. In Papa Cooking games, the ingredients don't flip around willy nilly in your hands, they realistically slop down onto the ground if you don't aim them correctly. Great concept, cool art, gameplay could use some improvement.
The developer legit moved onto another project entirely because so many people kept saying the same thing about how the combat is repetitive, grindy, and very unforgiving, and I guess they've just shelved this one until further notice.
You know what's funny, though? The new project has the same exact problems as the old.
Already, I'm more intrigued by what's happening in this novel than the entirety of the original Soft Fantasies. Sorry, but most of the original felt like I was meandering through the story without any real purpose or direction, and the characters felt a little bland.
Like, I optimized the crud out of the original in regard to character affection by basically just having sex/other such lewd things with characters in order to gain the optimal amount of weight, Like with Ziul, for instance. Ziul won't give you the pill that makes you gain more weight if he doesn't like you, obviously, so getting a random Balogna and jelly surprise was basically free affection points from him, since you were forced to interact with him for that one occasion no matter what you did.
Is there ever going to be any grander storylines in the game, or is this just going to be a sandbox-esque game where you meet/screw/befriend a random assortment of people and monsters from start to end? Like, would we be able to eventually find out who or what cursed us and cure ourselves of our affliction, or take advantage of the curse and make it even more powerful? Or even grant it to other people?
I like the game, but I prefer to know that I'm working towards a tangible goal that I can reach, rather than just faffing about and getting planetary huge (Not that that's bad, mind you) with no end goal in sight.
I'd personally recommend someone else to spell check your writing if it is too difficult for you. Having proper grammar in your public game project (and especially at the very beginning) will entice more people into your content, or at the very least, nobody will be turned away from it by virtue of it appearing poorly written.
That's okay, I just don't like when people assume wrongly about my words on the internet, even though I understand that conveying certain things on the internet is far more difficult than over the phone or in person and my intention was not to insult you or anything like that. But personally, I just think that as long as he is somebody like Jack Horner or Handsome Jack, I'd be fine with him being a bad person doing bad things. And going by the story, that's probably what is going to happen with the introduction of the beach place, where he can find more people that he can grow and get into more wacky shenanigans.
How is it not fun to read about someone who is a bad person doing bad things? Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a whole cast of people who are despicable people, and a lot of people love that show. And if the author says that they intended Eugene to be the way he is, then what? You'll just say, oh, okay, bye then? How do you not eventually make the assumption that Eugene is probably not somebody you should think is a good person? He shows a clear lack of respect for Phil's agency and is clearly just doing this because he wants to watch people grow and get bigger, (LIKE HOW EVERYONE PLAYING THIS NOVEL WANTS TO). He does not need to be a good person, nor does he need to be relatable. Entertaining, yes, compelling, yes to that as well, but not relatable. That should not be a deal breaker for you.
And why are you assuming that I'm downvoting you? I don't need to do something like that to get my point across or anything like that. It's probably somebody else, idk. Why would you even point that out?
And no, I don't believe this story should really be taken that seriously because I believe that it's not meant to be serious and nor should it be.
And yes, I think that you are wrong, but you're putting words in my mouth when you say that I told you that you are stupid. No, I did not, I told you that what you were proposing seemed to be wrong, from my POV.
Why do you feel the need to "like the protag"? Not every protag is meant to be likeable, relatable, perhaps, but personally, I feel like Eugene is supposed to be an observer and not a partaker, that's exactly why he's doing the things he does in the story. He's not there in the new town to hang out and make friends and do wholesome stuff, he's there because he wants to have fun messing around with people's lives and making them grow.
Believe it or not, I do want to see him succeed in his goals, even if he's a bad person. Because his goals align with what I want to see in the story. And how is any of this story bitter and hollow? It seems to just be a humorous self-serving kind of thing for both Eugene and the reader, which is, you know, the whole point of the novel.
Perhaps that's the whole point of Eugene's character, that he IS a bad person who wants to manipulate people's lives, and one should not automatically expect him to grow and develop into a better person. If he does in a natural way, that's fine, but I'm perfectly okay with a bad person who does bad things for bad reasons, as long as they are entertaining (Like, Jack Horner, for example). I just think that your expectations are a bit out of place.
Why do you want an overly deep and complex narrative to what is effectively a fetish game? I don't want the author to focus on a grander narrative, I want them to focus on what drives me to read and engage with it, IE, the very thing it WANTS you to engage with. I don't need the author to create some huge, omega class world building and deep intricate lore for their clearly fetish based visual novel. And isn't that the point of Eugene's character? At least from what I have gathered, he's a slippery conniving self-serving man who is really only doing this because he likes doing it, not because he's genuinely invested in people's lives and improving them, which is perfectly fine with me. I don't need a protagonist to be relatable all of the time, sometimes I just want to read a story where what I see is more or less exactly what I get. The characters, the plot, the stakes. All of it.
Of course this could all be subject to change, but I don't know, it kind of feels like you expected this to be something it just won't be and should not be.
There IS a save button, but yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with you. You'd really only play this game to specifically do just that, because otherwise, why play it? It's repetitive, tedious, enemies are way too powerful, especially mid to late game, and even early game they are pretty bad, if you don't prioritize speed over anything else, you're probably not going to get very far in the game, and even then, being fast enough means nothing if you can't lower the opponent's HP faster than they can to you.
Diminishing returns of XP means that you will have to grind particular enemies for quite a long time if you want to frequently use items in battles (Pretty much mandatory for most, if not all of them), which is just... why? Why have a system akin to Dark Souls with using XP for both buying items and leveling up? Just make a separate currency that enemies drop upon defeat, or that you can find in the overworld.
The writing, though, IS GREAT. Like, I'm not kidding, it's quite good, as well as the art and the overall idea of it, but the fact that it is hidden beneath a frustrating unbalanced veneer of a game boggles my mind. I honestly feel like this would've been better off as a choose your own adventure story from the nineties or something, rather than whatever this game is.
Yeah, that centaur fight, you're basically guaranteed to lose if you don't hit them EVERY single time, and not only that, you might not be damaging them enough to make up for the difference in the health that you lose to them. And even then, the barrage move they do is one, super accurate, two, absolutely op, even if you prioritize vitality (That's also pretty bad because in this game, Higher DPS means a lot more than survivability nine times out of ten), and three, is seemingly random. There's no line that says that they are specifically preparing the attack before they unleash it in a previous round, it's just random. Unless I'm mistaken, and I'm just not remembering it right.
AND ON TOP OF THAT, they also have really high evasion, so if you don't focus on leveling up speed, you are just not going to hit them, nor are you going to dodge their attacks. AND ALSO ON TOP OF THAT, trying to escape them is nigh on impossible, or at the very least, highly unlikely. It seriously reminds me of how necessary it was to have AGL in Dark Souls 2 if you wanted to dodge something properly. If the dev is not currently looking into how to properly balance a game like this, I'd highly, HIGHLY recommend they do so. If you want the game to be fair, but challenging, that'd be fine, but I don't know how well that kind of thing translates to what is essentially a text adventure game.
Also, last thing, but why do enemies give diminishing returns of EXP when you level up? EXP is literally also used for buying things in the game, and yet if you want to routinely use those items in combat, you'll be grinding for what feels like hours, which is incredibly monotonous. In a game like this, which is already bordering on repetitive, that's clearly not a good thing.
Honestly not that wrong, this game is so rng-based that it makes me upset to play it. There is little to no skill or strategy involved, it's just like rolling dice with clicks and it's quite repetitive. You should make a good game first, not fetish art first. If it's not fun, I don't care that it may or may not appeal to my personal kinks. Just play Tribal Hunter instead, tbh. Also, the only two equipment limitation is pretty restrictive given just how much the Ai loves to heal themselves and paralyze you and all that other junk gimmicks they can do. Not to mention how leveling up speed, to me, doesn't really feel like it's improving my accuracy by a noticeable degree.
Also, wtf is with the forced loss rng? I have to save and reload encounters so many times because otherwise my current run will end quite abruptly. Why give the option to save in the first place if you can just end the run permanently when you lose to someone (You certainly can and will on lower levels)?
Good VN so far, I just have two questions. One, What is the main character's species? There's some confusion for me, since there was one time where they looked in the mirror and saw themselves, and they commented on how sticky their fur was, but in other instances, they have hands and hair instead. Are they supposed to be human or are their species supposed to be ambiguous?
Second question, and this may be wrong or whatever, but whenever you and Popcorn get confronted by some roided out macho mom because you took something from her daughter, which technically, she didn't actually own it yet, if you defend your stance on being the rightful owner of the game, she literally punches you in the face, knocking you out, right in the middle of the store.
My question is, how is this woman not only allowed to do that, but also not get apprehended for assaulting you IN PUBLIC, presumably in front of at least a couple people. She would honestly get arrested for that, since she also threw the first punch. Is it just an attempt at humor? Because I didn't find that particular part funny at all, other than her name.
To be honest, my opinion may as well be influenced by the simple fact that I don't like most children, which is one of the reasons why I like Popcorn so much. Either way, I still enjoyed reading this novel. I do love the self-deprecating Gen Z kind of humor it has.