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And she just did it again, despite the fact that I've since had the chance to explain that I'm doing work (something that I would expect her to understand doesn't always have set hours), not studying, and her opinion of me was supposed to have increased since then. And the fact that I last had the game open around this exact time on this day last week, consistency which I would expect to be noticed in a conversation like this.

There are a lot of things I like about this game, but the inflexibility of Aya's expectations is a major flaw. Worse, it distracts me from my work, and puts me in a bad mood to start with, which I can't imagine is going to lead to more productivity. I would really appreciate if you could take a second look at how this part of the game is handled.

This is long. Sorry in advance!

I do a weekly radio show that I prepare material for ahead of time, and I've recently taken to having this game open as a way of providing some entertainment/positive reinforcement for the work that I do which can get a little repetitive or intellectually draining at times. I broadly like what I've experienced so far, but I have a couple of gripes, both around Aya's interpretation of time.

Because of my show's schedule, I only open the game once a week. I then have it open probably for about nine or ten hours straight. I just got chastised for apparently "slacking off", presumably because of how far apart my sessions are. Maybe I'm taking this game too seriously, but this incident has pissed me off, and I've closed the game and very possibly may not play it this week in the hopes that that will teach her something about not holding others to her own standards without them agreeing to such standards first.

I can think of two possibilities for why this scene is in the game. First, this may be something everyone gets in order to give Aya more depth as a character and make her feel more realistic. If that's the case, genuinely good job, because I'm actually kind of mad at her.
Second, this may indeed be an indication that I'm not playing the game as often as intended. If that's the case, I think that's a pretty limited scope of intention. My work schedule isn't the same as a student's study schedule, and I'm not particularly inclined to have the game open while I'm not working because I think I would lose my association of the game with work, and it would stop helping me keep my concentration when working. I would prefer to have an option to set my weekly "study"/work schedule with Aya (by clicking on the calendar behind her, maybe?), so she knows what to expect, and possibly an option to disable Aya's expectations of how often you have the game open entirely.

My other annoyance is that closing the game and then reopening it gets an annoyed comment as well, something to do with "not taking it seriously" because the game wasn't open long enough last time. I think this is a poor metric for that assessment. Consider that Aya regularly leaves her desk to go clear her head, or get a snack. Why shouldn't I be able to indicate that I'm doing the same by closing the game and reopening it when I come back? I think that a better metric for "how seriously is the player working" would be a count of how long the game has been running across all sessions within the last 24-48 hours. That way, if I need to step away and don't want Aya to time out when she asks how work is going (which feels kind of rude on my part, frankly), I can just close the game and reopen it when I get back. If you'd rather still have "closing the game" mean "work is done for the day", then another post-it near the Exit one to indicate "BRB" or something could serve a similar, satisfactory purpose.

I also have more of a comment than a gripe. I would enjoy if Aya could give me the occasional hint on how to unlock new items in the store. I'm still on the first three items only, and I've had the game running for at least eight hours once a week for the last five weeks. I've clicked on everything I can think of. I'm stumped! I'm not asking for the answers on a silver platter, of course (though I wouldn't turn that down), because the idea of discovering the new items does sound fun. But a nudge or two in the right direction every now and then would be welcome.

And the only wish I can really think of would be more music on the radio! I found out about this project from being a fan of brutalmoose, so I know this wish is mostly up to him, but the songs in the game are good, they just repeat a little too quickly for my taste. That would be helped by having more of them! That, or integration with local media files on my computer or services like YouTube Music, SoundCloud, internet radio, etc. That would be cool as well. It'd be pretty amusing if I could find and plug in a playlist of Radio New Vegas songs and have actual DJ announcements from Mr. New Vegas, haha.

I'm very happy with the game, and it has definitely made my weekly news grind less foreboding. I would enjoy it even more if some of my feedback could be taken on board. Thanks for making it and for reading my thoughts!

seventy twenty fifteen point eight fifty two hundred

Let there be spoilers! Scroll past the second bolded username to skip my comment.

Original Rating Text (Part 1 only)

I really like this game! The characters are written very charmingly, the art is top-notch, and the conflicts are presented in a way that feels very realistic. Also, the way Joyce encourages the player to keep at their art contest submission was actually effective enough that once I'd finished this part of the game, I ended up doing the work for the online course I'm taking that I'd been procrastinating on for about 12 days at that point. So good job on that!

However, there were some things I noticed while playing that could potentially be improved or reworked for a better experience. 

• PLEASE let me remap the mouse buttons (if possible within the engine). I keep accidentally right-clicking and opening the game menu and it gets pretty annoying after a while.
• The references to anime and manga kind of alienated me, as I have no interest in either of those. It would have been nice if, in the initial character creation, you got a choice of three sets of interests, possibly with sub-choices that indicate genre or the equivalent detail for each choice. Not extremely important, but it would have been appreciated. 
• I kept wanting to go back and interact with the player character's friends in the MMO, but felt it would be wasting time I needed to spend on something else. Disregard this if that's intentional, but personally I didn't really like it. Surely the player character could find time to interact with two friends in a single section of the day?
• On the subject of choosing who to interact with, I actually might prefer ending up romantically with Joyce (presuming that is indeed one of the two romance options), but felt pushed by the game to interact more with Phoenix, sometimes even resulting in options that seemed unnecessarily conflicting to me. For example, when you get the option to call Phoenix and congratulate them for advancing to the next round or not. I played with route markers active and didn't really understand why "Don't call Phoenix" is an option increasing affection towards Joyce. Joyce suggested it, for Pete's sake. I would think they'd be happy I was paying due diligence to being a good friend, and more importantly, agreeing that their suggestion was best. However, this may be intentional as well, and if so, just take my feedback here as a sign that I'm suitably frustrated by the nuances of social interaction, haha.
• I agree with a comment here on the itch page for the game that the cliffhanger doesn't work as well if the player hasn't been emphasizing Joyce in social interactions. However, again, I think the game kind of actively discourages that, based on the player character being a bit of a grouch about this whole situation, and kind of indicating that they don't want to trust Joyce, which honestly is fair to an extent. Since the game encourages the player to fill their days away from Joyce as much as possible, I think a different path for the cliffhanger to take would be appropriate. Maybe have two versions of this argument, the current "I'm becoming part of your problem" version and a new "You don't need me anymore, you're coming out of your shell just fine" version, the game determining which one to show based on the player's actions, and in both versions, keep the player character's response of "You're the only thing keeping me leaving the house more than necessary".
• I've also considered that if this testing-a-domestic-AI situation were happening to me, my main concerns would be the ethical implications (of having what is effectively a person programmed to want to achieve a specific task and to prioritize that task over anything else they might want to do) and privacy (what kind of data does Bell Tech collect about me? What do they do with that data? I don't want my life to turn into another profit-generator for a multimillion-dollar company, so what would be my legal recourse to prevent that? Etc.). 

I think that if you ever consider another game in this same world, you may want to make a prequel following the development of Joyce, and have the player character be a person on the project (perhaps the project lead?) who has to grapple with these questions and find/implement answers that let them sleep at night while also not getting the project shut down because it won't be profitable enough. Bonus points from me if you insert an anticapitalist message!

Anyway, that's my full report. Don't worry, I'm not expecting $100 for it. Thanks for making something so engrossing! I'll tip you for it when my finances recover a bit. Good luck with the second part!

dominateeye

Rating Text Addition for Part 2

So! It's November 16, 2018, and Part 2 is out. I just finished playing, and I feel like it's time to update my report accordingly.

It had been a while since I played, so I started my save file over. I kept all my options the same and, where last time I had both a female Joyce and Phoenix, this time Joyce was female and Phoenix was male. I like the character designs for both of them, by the way!

I tell you what, I wasn't expecting to break into Bell Tech after that cliffhanger at the end of the first part. I mean, sure, we'd have to go after Joyce somehow, but B&E? It was exciting though! I loved the presentation bit, and I really appreciated the chance to approach Joyce's "rescue" as more of a "please come back because I care about you but you can stay if you want" conversation. This is really the direction I wanted to go in regards to "is Joyce a person and should she be respected as one".

The anxiety about possibly getting caught kinda got to me. I half-expected something to happen, someone to end up arrested or questioned or something. I'm kind of glad you didn't do that (or at least, I didn't experience that), because that really would have put a dampener on things. Mostly alleviated if you allowed such a situation to be resolved by an impassioned argument for AI rights, but still.

Talking about that whole scheme, I really liked Zen. He's fun! A bit pushy, but he makes up for it in being observant of stuff that the main character doesn't think of. Also, I loved that he's your other guild buddy. It kind of resolved my earlier point about wanting to spend more time with the guild-- in my head, this means that Zen can keep the main character and the guild in touch with each other when the MC can't be online.

The competition was tense too! The timer was a really good way to keep me from looking up the answers. I got some questions wrong, but not enough to stop me from landing that job (hooray)! I did feel bad that Phoenix didn't get it though-- kind of in the same vein as my ideal resolution to legal trouble with Bell Tech, I was hoping that, miraculously, the judges wouldn't be able to decide between us, and would give us both jobs and maybe split the money among us. That may be possible (I won't know unless I look it up as I tend to go one route on things like this and look other routes up if I really want to know), but it's not the version I got.

Now, talking about romance. I warmed up a lot more to Phoenix this time around. Really, I think it started in the second part, with him opening up to the MC about his insecurities. What can I say, when somebody opens up to me, they get brownie points. I ended up romancing Phoenix in this run, though not due to conscious choice. When the confession scene happened, I said to myself, "There's no realistic way I can say no here. He's cute, he's charming, he's funny. But I'd really like if saying yes to him didn't necessarily mean saying no to Joyce, if I've even given her enough affection to get there with her." (I guess I'm a real have-your-cake-and-eat-it kind of player, huh?) Again, this may be possible, but I certainly didn't see it. Related to one of my first report points though-- I still feel like the game pushes you towards Phoenix. I found myself wishing I could spend more time with Joyce (as well as the Titan guild), but still enjoying my time with Phoenix. I don't really ever want to turn down an offer of his, but spending time with him means I can't spend it with Joyce. (Note on that: the first time he calls you, if you agree to meet with him, you automatically go for a walk. I didn't like that. I said yes to going out tomorrow so I could stay inside and play video games today, Joyce! Anyway.) I'd love to see a polyamorous route with both of them (hell, if Zen wants to get in on that action, I'm down for that too) but the game seems like it has an overarching theme of "you can't do everything all at once", which that may not gel well with. Maybe think about it, though. Again, assuming it's not there already and I just missed it. 

The epilogue with Phoenix is cute though! Very glad it's not just a "everything is perfect, happily ever after" ending too, that the MC talks about the ways they don't quite (and just plain don't) match up, because in my own very limited experience with relationships, that happens. And yes, Joyce becoming a citizen and having her own life (while still being very much your roommate and friend) is really great too. AI rights!

I think that's all I have to add. This is a wonderful game, and it's clear you worked hard on it! It definitely paid off. Thank you! I'll definitely keep following y'all to see if you make anything else like this in future, and best of luck with your current projects too!

dominateeye

Hi,

I've seen a lot of other people talk about the endings, and expecially the one where it gives the error and then crashes. I'm aware that, at the moment, that's a legitimate ending to the game, which is fine if rather confusing (I knew they were a former agent but from the official responses to other people there's apparently supposed to be some clues as to their identity that I apparently didn't pick up on), but via other posts and poking around in the game files a bit, I'm inclined to believe that there is an additional ending. I'd like to try and experience that additional ending, but a) I'm not too sure how and b) I can't seem to log into my save. I've typed the exact same name in, and it talks about starting a new game. Is this intentional? Is my game wiped because of the "breach"? Is it just standard for a save to be wiped after reaching either ending?

Thanks!