itch.io

This game only has one ending, for whatever that's worth.

Despite having the broken guitar, I can't interact with the guitar strings and don't know why.

Well, this totally missed the mark for me. Maybe I'll understand it after I've had an ugly relationship.  Maybe I'm not romantic enough. Not sure. Not sure why I commented either, but maybe somebody will find this interesting. On to the next thing, I guess.

No.

Are the entries being judged on quality, or will the winners be randomly selected?

He is. This is mentioned very early in the game.

Abandoned?

Well, I'd meant that you should include a link in the page description, but I guess this works.

Would you link to your Patreon here? I don't currently have the game downloaded, and would rather not need to just to navigate to updates.

It's permanent.

Well, there are some chinks that need worked out. The text speed should be faster, or at least adjustable, because I read much faster than the text loads, so I need to click the arrow twice for every slide. Also, a feature to skip text (or at least previously read text) would be helpful, and in the second round, if you vote "no one", the screen just flashes red and doesn't allow you to pick another option, soft-locking you. Despite the polish issues, the writing is excellent. Good work.

Actually, I have to say I agree with him. Kinda.

He's right that she's selfish and inconsiderate, repeatedly pushing far past his comfort zone despite being unambiguously told to stop and why. I actually don't mind this; characters in literature of this type tend to be perfect, it's refreshing to finally play a game where they aren't.

What's been bugging me is the way Erik reacts (or rather, practically doesn't) after the cave incident. He's already feeling guilty about what he's done with her, then she basically pins him down and rapes him while he's too disoriented to resist, and then... almost nothing? He feels a bit guilty and there are gestures at being angry, but in his thoughts, there are none of the emotions you'd expect; no real fury or pain or sense of betrayal or much of anything, really. Supposedly he feels ashamed and guilty, but then a day later he's agreeing to get drunk with her despite surely knowing where that would lead, so apparently not that ashamed. It just feels too easy, like you didn't really capture the angst he would be feeling there.

I don't mean to be too critical. In general, your treatment of these characters and the taboo itself is quite sophisticated. It just made that scene and its (lack of) fallout disappointing, IMO.

You've reached the end of the current content. There's nothing else to do, unless you want to start a new playthrough.

Is Spanish localization not properly implemented? I tried to switch to Spanish, but it just removed all the text everywhere, which of course bricks the game.

A brilliant gem of a game. You have a great eye for detail; I was especially delighted to discover that NPCs will step around you if you stand in their way. I only wish you had the option of playing Missy a little more defiantly (e.g., to try to fight back against Poppy when she rapes you in the bathroom, or to tell Miss Paris that you keep wearing the wrong underwear because you enjoy the feeling of empowerment you get from defying someone who wants to break your will).

Reproduction is a foundational element of life. It is inconceivable that any sexed species, nevermind an intelligent sexed species, could evolve without developing an awareness and concept of a biological phenomenon that is integral to sexual reproduction: that individuals come in two types with differing roles, one of each being necessary. This need not imply anything else: things like grammatical gender and gendered behavioral norms need not necessarily follow from sexual differentiation. But they would surely be aware of such differentiation and have a vocabulary to describe it.

It feels like the author decided they wanted a non-binary species for political reasons without considering what that actually means. They could have created a species where biological sex simply does not matter beyond the rudiments of sexual reproduction. Members of such a species would not self-identify as non-binary: they would self-identify as male or female and barely give the matter further thought. Self-identifying as non-binary is a conscious denial that the binary applies to you, which would be insane if referencing biology; it only makes sense as a rejection of something else, namely, norms associated with a person's sex. An entire species would self-identify as non-binary only if they first developed gendered norms, then chose as an entire species to deny those norms, and were still living in the shadow of that denial. I should like an explanation of how such an event came to pass, although I doubt anyone could create one that I'd find plausible.

Of course, I doubt that was really the author's intent; they probably just wanted a species without gender norms. It is ironic that they chose to do so by making it "non-binary," as that very concept implies said norms and therefore perpetuates the species' subjugation to what the author was trying to eliminate.

"There are some dragons who lay eggs, and some dragons who fertilize them."

So, there are still males and females, the author just isn't calling them that anymore.

I don't get it. 

Trying to download this game for Windows for the first time in a couple of years, and the installation executable keeps failing upon reaching a file named peaceful[...]. The error message provides no explanation as to the nature of the problem.

Currently, it does nothing but set a variable. Eventually, it will do something... probably.

There's no penalty for doing that. All checks so far require sufficient power OR skill, so as long you keep up on skill, you can forego the power gains from corruption.

They increase the amount of resources a character earns when performing certain jobs (the job description says which skills it uses) and are sometimes used in pass/fail skill checks.

The lastest version was released to subscribers on Patreon two days ago. It will be here within a week.

You don't need the horn, and I would recommend against it. If you make all the right choices, you can max skill, which is all you need.

Note that none of the shop items do anything yet.

Yes. I think it is already implemented.

Also, money in this game does not do anything, apart from a few chances to spend it for relationship points in Amber's route.

Yes

Upon playtesting some more, it seems to be a caching issue. If I load from the beginning or a save prior to the transition, everything works normally. But if at any point during a session I load a save or enter a segment using the new room, if I load a previous save, it retains the new room look.

*It seems like loading a save from before chapter 4 doesn't affect it, but chapter 4 and on is affected, as are new games.

Looks like the tower home room replaces the default one even when it shouldn't (i.e., earlier in the story when she hasn't moved into the tower yet).0

Where in Kagabangui do you need to go to record the sword in the Summoning Blade quest? I've completed this before but can't seem to find the trigger now.

You shouldn't even need to do that. Ren'Py stores save files in a centralized location elsewhere, so you can just run the new executable and it will pull all files.

I think they are supposed to be unrelated stories. To be honest, NiiChan's decision to write multiple games simultaneously is very confusing, especially when so many characters look and sometimes even act alike.

In my head canon, he's an eccentric man who has come by a great deal of magical power over his very long lifetime.

Now that I've completed the game, some thoughts:

I'd forgotten how good your storytelling is.  I'm actually more impressed with it now than I was the first time I played, probably because I've read a lot of genuinely awful stories since then. A couple things that bugged me at first were 1) Ashe telling Mila that they weren't close anymore and she wanted no further part of her life (apparently fighting to the death together meant nothing to her) and 2) the bashing that Rinaldo constantly received from Ashe and Faaldha (while he was unquestionably rash and at times foolish, he also burned with righteous anger and was willing to sacrifice himself to it, which I think deserves a great deal of credit). But I now think you handled both of these things correctly, or in the first case, at least reasonably.

Two other things that bother me about the storytelling which I do still wish to make comments on were the post-battle moments of clarity and the memory fragments. While I understand the desire to morally redeem fallen characters, this particular way of handling it felt… "forced" might be the right word. Not in the sense that the moments were trite, but from a lore perspective, their occurrence doesn't make sense to me.  Why would a vampire getting beaten up reduce the hold of vampirism on them? It's not entirely clear to me from what we are told whether the behavioral changes are the innate effects of the vampiric curse or a psionic link to the master, but regardless: if the curse is altering their mental state like a drug (which it is often depicted like), it doesn't seem like dying should have any effect, and if the cause is psionic control, it seems like the effect should actually become stronger as the spawn weakens (and loses any power they might have had to resist it). So their moments of clarity don't make sense to me.

My complaint regarding the memory fragments is much shorter and really more of a suggestion. The memory fragment fights were all pretty generic and unmemorable (barely more difficult or time-consuming than the ordinary goons running about the palace), and I feel like a real opportunity to relive Mila's regrets or fears was missed by the total lack of dialogue. I mean, why have they been called forth in the first place, if not to torment her?

My last comment is that the final battle felt much too easy. I thought I was going into the battle significantly under-leveled, as I had, by my estimate, skipped half the castle content. (I was HR 74, maybe you can say what it was balanced for.) As it is, I beat the boss without any real difficulty on the first try. IMO, Ashe constantly (and automatically! no opportunity cost required!) reviving Mila is the culprit, because Ashe is an absolute tank, so Mila's health suddenly doesn't matter. I'm honestly not convinced it's necessary and would suggest disabling that. Then again, I don't recall being challenged by any of the bosses after Vivienne (the first time, in chapter 2), so maybe a hard mode would be a better solution.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts on a couple of things. Overall, it's a great game. Thanks for making it freely available. I'll be watching to see what you do next.

Just found him. D'oh!

Thanks.

The Mysterious Dealer seems to disappear from his store in act five. Makes completing the delivery quest impossible.

The game engine is Ren'Py, but if you are asking about the art, I understand that it is all hand-drawn.

Dealing with the princess is as far as you can go in the current version of the game.

I have a bug report for you (this is not a new one). If you decline to have sex in chapter five with the half-orc bard whose name I forget, the game thinks that you sexed her anyway (relationships screen shows 1/1 scenes unlocked and her status as lover, and IIRC, later dialogue alludes to it having happened).

Okay, great. I was somewhat confused when it didn't release last Friday night/Saturday morning but didn't want to be impatient. I'll be looking forward to it.

I love your work, btw. You are great at both characterization and world-building (it's rare to see that together; I'm usually happy if someone is great at one and decent at the other). Plus, (speaking as a man) women write the best porn, yours being no exception.