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I, ah, often play for a dozen or so in-game days, so that may be part of why I found the "food is on its way" issue O:J (Also, there are some lines from Arlene that I normally don't see until the fourth or fifth day, and I planned on watching every movie with May.) I'll check tonight whether the timing is related to meeting Arlene, as Dig-Bick found.

I do remember getting another line via "talk" to May, and I think that time the food came before I could ask about her game collection(love the things she has to say about some of them :3), so maybe clicking on the games puts that one "in front", and it never completes so it never leaves the front? I'll try it tonight.

Listing the gender-marked lines was more intended as a reference you could look at when you do implement the choice. Games that retrofit gender choice tend to leave a lot of things still assuming male >_>

Personally, I kinda like doing chinese food twice, once when it's May's idea and once when it's my idea, and the first time going the route where she says "I'd love you even if you were fat" to me, then the second time saying it to her :J However… maybe "let's just get something from the fridge" should be a food option, which just has her go "eh sure" and then fade to black and back? That way the player can skip it unless they want it :J (It also seems weird to get delivery every day.)

I'm not sure the delay serves any purpose; after the initial look around May's room, there isn't much to do other than the things that are blocked while food is coming, and things that are on their own timers.

Also, this is a pre-beta demo so eh, but personally I like to shower before breakfast, if it isn't a perfunctory "grab a bar on the way to the shower". Maybe make the doorway to the kitchen clickable? There's a problem that shows up in Don't Starve and in the Zelda games: It's not fun to do something if you have to do it, even if it would otherwise be fun. The food being "on rails" may be the main reason it's not fun.

Enjoying the new content(10Jan demo), but the bugs are getting bad…

It looks like "blocking content" features are the thing that makes bugs a real problem. After just a few days May always gets into a "food is on its way" state that blocks movies and showers, and I haven't figured out a way to escape. Maybe it's always triggered by the waking-up line "Whacha wanna do today?"? With the first demo, the movies being blocked off was a problem, and sadly that seems to still be a thing. I'm not that familiar with Game Maker, but it looks like flags are able to be set by a bunch of things they shouldn't be? You could try redundantly clearing the "food is on its way" flag when sleeping, frex, but the movies I'm not so sure about. OTOH, getting the shower scene when leaving May's bedroom for the hallway is always a laugh :)

Love May's animations, now that she does them <3

Interestingly, I kept mixing up Arlene and Autumn, until they showed up in the game, then suddenly not a problem. Probably the "first letter rule" in action. You may want to make sure the player sees them early, enough to get a feel for who they are.

It, ah, seems a little weird to have a substantial arc about one of the UI features being disabled, ne? O:) And, aren't phone chargers basically just USB mini(and derivatives) nowdays? Despite those two, I'm liking a lot about the phone charger arc :) But it does seem weirdly like Arlene is the focus of new instances of May calling the player male: "Arlene's away at some weirdo convention and she's got this guy's phone charger.", "He does, but he's been here all weekend.", "You DID have to borrow his after all.", "He does, but for some reason he never charged it after he went home.", etc.

I gather this is intended to be a non-exclusive relationship? It'd be nice to know if that was intended, or just a result of the characters having OOC history… ("At least I thought I was." Heh.)

The first demo had a lot of lines in the "talk" option, even if they were pretty aggressive about provoking bugs, but in this one talking to May seems to always(except for plot) get "We have a lot of the same tastes, you know?". It has a second line that only plays if it's going to get stomped by food, which begins "Not that I'd mind if you liked other things, just an", but I dunno the rest. Maybe that's the first "talk to May" line, and nothing else comes up because the first one doesn't complete?

There's a lot of typos and other misspellings(normal for a pre-alpha demo), but "bad segway" conjures quite the mental image :3

I'm guessing not; it doesn't run through Wine for me or my friends, because it uses .CAB compression, which has limited support outside Microsoft-per-se platforms.

(Oh yeah, Terence: For the actual game, you should include Wine as a targeted "version of Windows". Linux users are savvy enough not to care about the indirection, especially since stuff that runs tends to run better on Wine than on Windows.)

Sweet O:) Welcome and thank you for working on this! :)

I played through the demo again, and here's the mentions of his gender I found:

"Jealous? I may have a couple dozen "hazubandos" but I've only got one "booifurendo"."

"Hey, how about you go on the "you already ate and don't get a say in what I have for dinner" diet, Mr. Healthy. I'm hungry for pizza."

"What? It's a thing, Mr. Health nut. I saw a guy do it on the internet. In fact, there's your diet right there. Degrease that sucker."

"Aaaand, you're still carrying an empty backpack and a map… OK dude."

The one I was thinking of was a reply option early on: "It's just a map. A guy can't have a map?" I guess in my head I turned the others into callbacks to that, sorry. (She also refers to Wilson as "guy" once or twice, I probably put him and the mouse dude in the same mental bin.)

I'm not sure about this one, but together with the others it feels like it contributes: "Plus if we were both fat our bellies would smack together when we do it." I could go into details, but… yeah.

Finally, the general stereotype of "you're supposed to like action movies, I'm supposed to like romance movies" seems gender-based… especially since May ends up liking the action movies far more than the romance movies.

(I really do miss her reactions every time I encounter that "no animations" bug <\3)

Hm. I think the level of detail is fine; the demo intro blurb mentions "haven't personally played a lot of dating sims so any input will be extremely helpful", so the para on RelationshipValues was intended as kind of a crash course on the subject.

On donation, I'm waiting for something more trustworthy than PayPal, I've had problems with them in the past. Also I've already spent my discretionary budget for the month, and I probably won't get approval to go over that for a video game. But the demo's already good enough I plan on setting aside some of next month's for when another way opens up :D (Hint hint, Terence ;)

Wow, this is beautiful <3

I'd say this isn't a dating sim yet, but it's better than a dating sim! I would love a game that spent less time on(or even skipped over) the "get a date" stage, and more time on the "been dating a while" stage :) Maybe a "what level do you want to start on" kinda option?

The demo has very limited content, and the usual supply of demo bugs(May often stops reacting and just keeps playing her base idle animation, one time watching the first Godzilla movie blocked watching the second, and try talking to her with the speech bubble in her room then over the next few days try watching movies), but it's already at the "where did my hour go" level :)

On the subject of dating sim mechanics, the big one is covered by the TVTrope RelationshipValues. (Really, you can learn a lot about any media genre by spending a saturday afternoon looking it up on TVTropes.) One way to think of it is: How much does she think you're a goofball? How much does she like goofballs? How much does she think you're a gentleman? How much does she like gentlemen? Etc.

A trick with idle animations is to make sets of 3(or more) sub-animations that can all tween into each other, then after each sub-animation pick a random one to go next. 3 idle sub-animations like this will look better than one idle animation 3× as long.

Any plans on adding chargen, at least a gender choice? As a lesbian, every time she referred to me as "guy", and every time the mouse dude appeared in the shot and I had to remember that's supposed to be me, it was jarring.