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I'd really like an increased radius for "discovering" demons. I've gotten pretty close to the dullahan and the flying fish, but they don't pop in my bestiary. I feel like a clear view of them from a moderate distance (10-15 or so meters) should be enough for a bestiary entry, because it feels like you practically have to get yourself killed by them for them to register as "seen".

Navigation:

I love the emptiness and eeriness of the city, and I think this game can totally work without a map system. However, it can be a real challenge sometimes to actually find areas of interest. To address this...

-I think drugs should be more abundant, found somewhat frequently in garbage or perhaps reliably in set locations such as the skate park, perhaps with a tradeoff that you take damage if they're not bought from the dealer. They're important and very fun way to find locations... but the only reliable way to get them is at the foreclosed house, which is very hard to find and I think isn't even on many of the maps, so you could be searching for 20 minutes for something that isn't there in the first place. And since there's no consistent/reliable way to get money, you could show up there and not be able to afford anything. 

-Though you can find a tab of acid infrequently in the garbage, I think it's a missed opportunity that you always know that it's going to take you to the Konbini. I don't know if the dealer sells any like what I'm about to describe, but I think it would be a positive addition to the game if you could get drugs that lead you to a random, existing landmark. That way there's a good chance it leads you somewhere you've never been in that run, while maintaining the mystery and danger and delight of getting lost.

Hello! I adore this game, I've been following it on twitter for months and I'm so glad I have the chance to play it. I have some thoughts on it:

White Vans:
I love the eeriness and fear that the sound design and environment evokes, but once you learn more about how enemies work it melts pretty quickly. The biggest one is the white van - I  L O V E D  the paranoia that the "vans everywhere" variant of the city evokes, but once you see a van moving and spinning around in a parking lot you learn that you have nothing to fear from any of them unless one of them is acting goofy. At the risk of being acting too much like a backseat dev, here's an idea about pathing to make them a little more menacing:

-What if some white vans were completely parked in set locations until they spot you, and then wait until you're looking away from them to start pursuing? This could be connected to an audio cue of screeching tires or a revving engine so that the player knows to run, even if they didn't see their pursuer start moving. This would add a feeling of cunning to the creature and make a portion of them operate a little bit more like Skoums, increasing the player's fear and paranoia by preventing them from clearly identifying threats with 100% accuracy.

-I think vans should be fast once they're pursuing you. Like, REALLY fast, as fast or faster then you can run. I loved the bit in the tutorial that implied open roads are dangerous because enemies can be faster and go farther when hunting you, and the vans seem like a great way to deliver on that promise. Much like a real van, you could break their pursuit by moving somewhere they can't follow, such as jumping over a concrete barrier, running in to an alley, or moving too far off of the road in to a park or something. All of these are easy for the player and intuitive, while allowing the van to pose a genuine looming threat.

Hello, here are a few softlocks I've encountered:

-When I approach the keypad to the sewer, I can't ever leave. Regardless of whether I enter the right or wrong code, my camera is locked to the keypad and the only way out is to exit the game, ending the run. I've tried pressing everything on my keyboard, but nothing does anything. I can still hear Angel jump and the clack as she flips her phone, so I think the controls are still controlling her or something, possibly making it so that the contextual keypad exit button isn't active. This bug is consistent, I've had it happen all three times I've interfaced with the keyboard.

-The white van gives you a fate worse then death, instead of death. After learning that some deaths have unique text, I wanted to know what would happen if I ran in to a few enemies in particular. However, it turns out if you're moving towards the white van while it's also moving towards you, you just clip in to it. The enemy hitbox can't reach you while you're inside it, and you can't move, so you're forced to just watch the inside of the van model while it spins on an axis around you. I was able to recreate this immediately, it seems consistent as long as you're moving towards the van.

-Door shoving: When you open a fence door, it will push you a little as it swings open. But if the fence is too close to a wall, it will shove you through the wall and you won't be able to return.

-Bus purgatory: I was on the bus and attempted to talk to that little devil guy from brawler's world (?), but somehow got shoved and clipped outside of the bus. I couldn't get back in, had to reset.

-Dog leash: I picked up the dog leash in the foreclosed house and equipped it, and was shoved through the floor, leaving me to fall infinitely. Don't know why, maybe the ghost dog bit me and caused me to nudge downwards? Idk.

-Dialogue purgatory: I tried to talk to Wet Socks on the bus, but the phone menu glitched to show both his dialogue and my phone's menu at the same time. In that state, I wasn't able to select any of the dialogue options so I could never continue. Since you can't just end a conversation by walking away or anything like that, I was forced to just stare at him forever and had to reset my game.

Minor bugs:

-I was able to tell the dog mascot about the impersonator in the sewers, even though I've never seen it or been to the sewers.

-I can't put up the burger posters, because they're already up! Once the dog gave me the stack of posters, the locations I could place them already had posters on them, so I can't complete the subquest.

-Whenever I get the Amethyst ring in a run, it appears on the "get item" screen every time I get any item after that in a run.

I'll post more major glitches if I find them!

I didn't actually know that about their patreons! interesting. Anyway, I also don't believe that hotpink would have a legal claim to shut down LL, because there's actually not very much you have to do to distinguish an IP before you're no longer legally liable. my point was more, as you stated, they wouldn't even need to. a legal threat is all that's needed, because even the prospect of defending oneself in court can become prohibitively expensive. One studio would have the built-up cash reserves to initiate or defend in a court case, the other would not.

To be clear, I don't believe this drama happened for no reason. I do believe this was a matter of ego, and that frequent fan comparisons between the project in their comment section just served to needle them. But there's a big difference between ego damage and annoyance and actually feeling threatened. That being said, the information about the studio patreons does actually shine a different light about their comparative monthly incomes, so you're actually right about that claim claim of threat holding water.

Also, though this doesn't effect your argument being right overall, I find your claim that "hotpink having a million downloads should make them feel more threatened of competition" is very silly. Though I still don't personally believe this was a move made out of economic greed, a better argument in your favor might be "by their own admission, TL's explosion in downloads is largely due to ticktock and twitter, audiences who are comparatively less loyal and much less likely to spend money then audiences on itch.io. people on tiktok have no idea what Lovecraft Locker is, but they're not the ones who vote with their wallets."

edit: oh, you weren't actually the commenter who pointed out their patreons. w/e, the point still stands that it's valid

The original Tentacle Locker received over a million downloads, and Lovecraft Locker is a first-time project by a fledgling studio without name recognition. Even without insight in to the inner workings of Hotpink, it's very obvious their motivation had nothing to do with feeling threatened by competition.

Also, given that Hotpink basically held all of the cards, it would have been exceptionally easy for them to shut down the smaller project or even the Strange Girl studio entirely, since even the threat of a lawsuit would have shut down a smaller studio that lacks the money to hire a legal team (seriously, legal threats kill small projects all the time without anything even needing to enter the courtroom). Blowback would have been negligible, since the vast majority of TL fans found it through other websites and really don't have any clue what LL is at the moment.

So we can tell that their intent wasn't to kill competition... because they didn't. I can't stress enough how effortless it would have been to do that if they actually wanted to.

Since Hotpink has recently deleted a couple of comments and there's some confusion going around, I wanted to make a loose history of events that people can reference if they're curious. These are not necessarily all in order, and anyone should feel free to comment with additional information. Mostly I'm making this because I don't want people getting angry at either studio, and feel that they wouldn't want that either.

1. With Hot Pink's Tentacle Locker seemingly in the distant past, Strange Girl starts developing Lovecraft Locker as a love letter to the original. Hot Pink Comments in support, and development and public builds start coming out for over a month.
2. Tentacle Locker 2 is announced and a demo is released. Fans start publicly comparing the two, with Hot Pink coming in and assuring them that the properties and studios are separate.
3. Hot Pink begins talking with Strange Girl behind the scenes. Much of this conversation is not public knowledge. The studios appear to have initially been very warm with one another at the start of talks.
4. Hot Pink at one point proposes a merger, which is rejected as Strange Girl feels it may cause friction against their own studio's individuality and agency. Hot Pink then proposes a stripped down "partnership" where they say they could offer guidance and help prevent Strange Girl devs from getting burnt out, seemingly because Strange Girl are very open about working ruthlessly long hours on the project without rest. This partnership is rejected for similar reasons.
5. Strange Girl is largely funded by an unnamed investor, and so many of Hot Pink's other offers in these talks are rejected as they could cause issue with the primary investor. Negotiations appear to grind to a halt, and Hot Pink would later indicate that it became more difficult to get responses from Strange Girl as the week went on.
6. Hot Pink games files a warning through itch.io's systems, claiming that Strange Girl infringed on their ideas and assets. The use of copyright claims and automated warning systems has a history of violence and abuse on creator-focused websites such as youtube, and Strange Girl are immediately threatened by this behavior.
7. Strange Girl issues a public statement saying that as a result of this warning, they will be pausing production on Lovecraft Locker in order to focus on future games, but intend to come back to the project at a later date.
8. Hot Pink games states that posting their discussions publicly was distasteful and done in attempt to paint their studio in a bad light. The studios begin posting public comments talking with each other and with fans, defending themselves and their actions but not attacking one another.
9. Hot Pink states that they did not perceive their automated itch.io warning as an aggressive or threatening action. On a surface level, it appears that there is tension between the studios but not necessarily animosity.
10. Strange Girl comes to an agreement with Hot Pink to pay them monthly royalties and provide acknowledgement to Hot Pink within the game, in addition to changing their art style to be more distinct from Tentacle Locker, in exchange for taking down the warning and allowing them to continue development of Lovecraft Locker.
11. Though there are no longer impediments to continuing Lovecraft Locker, it is not yet clear whether Strange Girl will immediately return to it or pause it as they've initially stated in order to develop their new IP, Tentacle Fantasy Soda.

My own two notes on this are:

1. I hope Hot Pink is genuine when they say they did not understand the implication of threat when they issued a site warning against Strange Girl, but I also hope they go on to understand that this is not behavior that should taken lightly and has a history of misuse against smaller creators.
2. Hot Pink claims that their desire for a merger is partially to help prevent Strange Girl devs from getting burnt out. If they are true about their intentions, they are CORRECT. Strange Girl's development practices are CLEARLY unhealthy and CLEARLY unsustainable. I want both game studios to flourish, but Strange Girl very much needs to ease up, because it's clear to anyone with eyes that they will crash and burn if they keep crunching themselves like this, no matter how passionate they are.

The ten point "dimensional" locker upgrade can rarely spawn one of those "waifu" girls it advertises on the main screen. At first I thought it just wouldn't work on the demo and paid versions you can get on itch (I have the latter) but on day 16 I started seeing them show up in the hallway.

I've got kind of a lot to throw at the wall here, so sorry in advance!

-Shiolp's constant dialogue kind of dampens the sexy mystery and scariness for me, I'd like a button in the menu that lets me flip off his text box.

-Once your hallway is maxed out with perma-lockers and gas-lockers, the default tentacle lockers kind of feel like a bummer. They're much more risky then the perma-lockers and the reward feels too modest in the endgame. So, what if you could spend levelup points to upgrade the base tentacle lockers to turn them in to more rewarding "tier 2" lockers that are really worth the risk?

Locker Ideas:

-Aphrodisiac Locker: After this locker gets lust out of a girl and lets her go, it releases a cloud of aphrodisiac to anyone around. Instead of turning to report you, nearby girls instead turn in to those "heart" variants that won't report you and give additional points if grabbed by other lockers.

-Mind Control Locker: Once this locker is done with a girl, it puts a tentacle in her brain! The girl who comes out can spread lies for you to reduce the "report level", or perhaps lure other girls in front of a tentacle locker so that you can wait for the perfect solitary moment to grab them.

-Cowprint Locker: These don't just get lust from a person, they also get milk! I have no idea what you'd actually spend the milk on, though... maybe it's a currency that unlocks new outfits for girls that show up, or unlocks new girls for the hallway altogether? Maybe between days you can use the milk to bribe the administration/student council for benefits? Anything's possible.

Anyway, was so excited to see and buy this game. Looking forward to wherever it goes!

i LOVE this game. went and Double S'd every girl. Ruth definitely made me work for it, but she's one of the best tracks anyway!

One major criticism though: The "Double" modifier should NOT be in cut time. It's more then enough of a challenge to have to split your focus between two bars - but also doubling the amount of notes you have to hit on top of that turns it in to the only modifier that's an auto-skip for me no matter what. Which is a real shame, because Fission, Hold, and Mine are amazing and really fun to put together in the same endurance run.

Other then that, looking forward to buying the full release! This game grows on you fast, it's really something special.