itch.io

This is better, and you are a great pixel artist.

This is a lot to read through, and I'll read everything carefully multiple times. So thank you for that. It's going to take a bit to reply to this.

I put "generator" in the title since it's planned to be dynamic and it's marketable. Nothing really beyond that.

It is extremely early on, most of the writing aspects aren't even started yet, and I do understand the shitty intro made in 30 minutes had too much text. I asked for the character designs since I wanted to get certain things done with before doing the major parts. Since a character's design should be close to what the personality is, it should show who they are with what they wear on the outside to others. And a bad looking game can kill a game before anything else, since this game will take a lot of time and effort, I wanted to get the graphics looking decent enough compared to my past games. 

Right now the AI can only move around, not interact with anything. The player can murder using the crafting system to gather items to turn into traps and weapons to impact behaviors. So for example, an AI or the player would clog another character's toilet to force them in a public bathroom, where they can trap the door for a swinging blade trap which can kill them if the blade hits them when they go to the public bathroom. They can notice if they eat more often at breakfast or have a weird animation when are locked in the influence game that they are going to go to the bathroom eventually. The reason I had a bunch of filler text was to explain parts of the game's vision, since most people wouldn't know about things like the crafting system unless they went to the second floor into the crafting room to try it without any items gotten with the inventory system.

The main scope of the game is hanging out with everybody, character perspectives change depending on actions during the influence game. This leads to a murder/suicide. It's announced on the screen. The player can see where they have died and checked the body and other aspects of the room for evidence. Right now most of the evidence that can be gathered is in the dorm rooms (the storage box was a little bugged when you streamed, since it showed you choices in the box when there was nothing in it), and checking the bodies for how it looks like they died. There is also some smaller things like being able to smell smells from doors if acid was used or if a bathtub (placeholder model currently) has been used to clean a weapon. If someone who isn't the player is injured, there is a text box showing so. [Everything beyond this point hasn't been added yet due to the trials being one of the last things I will add.] The trials will have options to bring things up to raise suspicion on others. So if someone used the furnace to burn a weapon, they can be called out if they haven't cleaned themselves. Or if someone wrote something in a diary, it can be brought up and used as evidence. If someone uses a Medical Bed to quickly recover from an injury, it can be gathered and used against them. If someone dies from the top floor, the person who does it gets screws. Or someone who messes with medical bottles for painkillers has medical labels they have to do something with. Cross has the ability to turn normal weapon into bloody ones to falsify evidence (the player can do this if he chooses to be Cross). Which will allow for more thinking involved. Let's say Agatha was killed by a whip. Her wounds would showcase her being killed by a whip. But a bloody knife was found. The player can determine that the bloody knife wasn't used, and that someone was trying to frame someone else. But if someone beforehand died due to a knife, it can lead to questioning of "did we get the last murderer correct?". Since the player can choose a wrong answer and be punished for it. The player could also do this to get away with murder. That's the idea of the puzzle elements I want to add to the game instead of it being generic. "I killed someone in a fight, so the weapon I used doesn't matter." The player will be able to see facial reactions during trials to see how they feel, and if they should be pressed forward or not. 

In the combat right now for the player, what weapons the player uses on someone is used to determine what wounds they have. If they were poisoned, the skin would have a different coloring. If punched, lots of bruises. If stabbed, stab wounds. Etc.

I fully know I need to work on my writing, and many parts of the game was quickly written so it was playable on demo day. I plan to spend a lot of time making sure it's good. Your input is very helpful for this with what needs to be done. Many of the dialogue for the influence game was made to be generic so it could be done for demo day. It needs a lot more responses for each character and unique ones, since right now everybody shares the same base of responses to choose from. But the code behind it is very sophisticated with using 60+ functions to gather viewpoints on the other team for the AI, determining views and a choice, and reacting to it. Still a little buggy, but it's mostly working as intended background wise. 

I didn't want to hide the twist it's a TV show. Since I didn't want it to be a twist. More of ideas of "who is watching and who funded this and why are we all selected for this" instead of "what is the most generic thing to hide away from the player?" I personally don't like the idea of hiding it's a TV show, since I would rather have different things that are more interesting take center stage, and having people think "oh this is just another TV show twist instead of anything unique" is not a good thing. So ripping the band-aid off for that idea is better than letting the player think lesser due to that reason.

I'm adding life sim elements to fuel different ways for murders to happen, and to individually know each cast member one on one depending on who the player chose. If the player chose Edgar, it changes how people view you due to how you look. The influence game isn't completely random. It takes the default viewpoints everybody has of each other for trust, and uses that to determine if collaborating or sabotaging. Then depending on the outcome, it changes character perspective. Someone who is sabotages learns to have less trust with others. While collaborating builds trust. The gifting system already in the game develops or removes trust based on what items the player gives to someone else. Every character has a unique inventory and they will react different depending on what they have. 

I fully understand the writing is the main thing holding this idea together, and I do know this will take a long time to get everything right. I knew that when I started and I have been actively trying to improve on my writing since Whiteout Frontier last year. It's my top priority to get it right with the finished game. Since this is an alpha, I quickly did what I could to get it up and running to get feedback, which has been very helpful. But I do fully understand how impactful good and bad writing is to the player. I understand what I need to do from the feedback I've gotten so far to see where it goes. All of the text in the game is probably going to be written and refined multiple times over the next couple of months.

Also, even with everything, this game isn't as complicated coding wise compared to Whiteout Frontier for the AI. The AI in that game was based around teams instead of individuals to influence how enemy teams behave when the player does any interactions. So it takes time, but isn't that hard to code. The writing is the bigger thing to get right and will take more effort. 

Cool. Not many things are made off of those movies, it's a lost art in a sense. 

I don't know what caused the bugs for me, everything was running very well outside of it. The game over menu works with the cursor, but pressing escape doesn't have the cursor appear, and escape doesn't work to get out of it. With weapons, I can go into the stance, but nothing happens outside of aiming when doing any of the mouse buttons.

The main menu intros are really soulful, but I wish there was a way to skip it. Since there is no prompt to press spacebar to get the option to do a new game or not as of yet either, but once I realized that, getting into the game itself was much quicker. The options menu isn't complete, I would have liked a windowed option. I'm reminded a lot of Dark Crystal with the 80-90's fantasy vibes. Really nice touch. The voice acting was good, I think it was AI due to the ends of certain sentences. The pause menu has no way to escape it or a way to use the mouse.

The manual was really good. I couldn't progress much since I couldn't use the weapon, or the fire breathing once I found it. I have to say this game is oozing with soul. It should be really good when it's fully complete. 

In the video options, in full screen it doesn't show all of the video options. Only 4 for resolution types. So I selected a tiny one and it started showing every single option once out of full screen. But clicking to select an option has it auto scroll downwards even when not pressing any key or using the mouse where trying to move. It took me a couple of minutes to select an option since it kept flying past what I wanted to select.

The options menu scrolls with the scroll bar automatically downwards. Hard to see options because of that when changing the default resolution. I don't see why I have to press control to select something that could be a movement key when the number keys already exist, I wish control wasn't used as the default, Q would be better. Since moving my finger down there gets tiresome every time I want to switch, and this game is about switching on the fly. I had to change it and having it as Q with the rest being the number keys is so much better. It really should be the default with how much better it is to use once changing it around. keyboard shortcut support too would be nice for certain combos. Tutorial needs respawn checkpoints. Also a way to skip the tutorial when accidently killing yourself, which falls in line with checkpoints for the tutorial. Maybe showing visually that you are in the mixing menu outside after selecting something would be a nice touch too.

The game, outside of the default controls being bad, is decent and fun. Needs more music. It is a fun game. I don't have anything else to add about bugs I could, since the other post talked about it already. The only major thing is the default controls is just awful. Once I changed it, I had a much better time overall. I think with some polishing, this will be very good.

I got stuck with the pause menu that I couldn't use, and the options menu wasn't in the main menu. The gold of trick of dodging backwards and attacking forwards worked on most enemies. They blocked, but repositioning made them easier targets with running in circles. I like the graphics. I played with keyboard and mouse for a bit. I think there needs to be reminders of combos. Not sure on the hardware requirements, but I have 60+ FPS for most of the game unless I am moving the camera, then it goes down until it stops changing. Will be interesting where this goes, since there is a lot done well here so far. 

First off, when not in full screen, it takes a bit to get the border up and running with going back to the desktop and enabling and disabling borderless. 

Second the mouse sensitive is too low. It takes forever to move where I have to drag my mouse across the table 3 times to move 90 degrees.

I think you should focus on impact. Right now, none of the features have real impact and the enemies feel very tanky. I don't know why it takes 6+ shots to kill a generic enemy. The enemies are all my size too, so I don't feel like I'm a giant robot. More like in an exoskeleton.

I'd highly recommend Armored Core for more fast paced combat with mechas, especially Verdict Day. Slower mecha combat is fine if there is impact, which right now there is none. Overall impact is really important. The slower the game is the more impact matters. Every gunshot/attack pulling it's weight and seeing it in the air with the reaction. Right now it seems most weapons have the same blow up animations or nothing at all. Not sure how possible it is in the engine you are working on, being seeing parts flying would be nice with knockback with bullets.

Basically, if I'm firing a giant robot canon, I want it to feel like I'm using a giant robot canon. If you can nail that, then you will be in a very good place.

This is much better with the tutorial than last time I played. It's fun. I wish there was an auto shoot instead of needing to hold it down so much.

From what I understand, many people who buy those kinds of devices like comfy like games that are calming while waiting for something irl. It's how I mostly use my switch all things considered. So they gravitate to roguelikes when outside and other types of games when inside. 

WASD doesn't work in the web version. Having enter roll is weird as a secondary option for it. I wish I could click to close things instead of needing to use enter. Shops use space when everything uses E. 

It's a cute game, reminds me of the Goof Troop game Game Grumps did a video on.

I'd recommend you get Steam Deck support, which mostly needs controller support. The Aesthetics are good and the tutorial was well made. It needs some something to make it stand out, and the chips to be less sticky when placing them, but it's alright. 

Also, nice details.

Really cool for a GBC game. Shockingly lewd. Weird horror angle at times but the bondage game was fun. I think this is fun. Shocking how you were able to do this as a GBC game with the content in this.

For anybody wondering, use retroarch, it worked perfectly for me there.

That makes a lot of sense with how long the first turn was.

The graphics are nice with the music. I think it's better than last time I played it. But there are two things I think I should say.

1. There should be a button in the main menu for the settings instead of only getting it with ESC key.

2. There is a lot of turns where it's mostly passing until someone gets a combo or making one small play to wait for a combo. With the heat mechanic, it usually means doing a lot the first turn, and then hoping you get lucky with draws. Interactivity would be nice on the enemy's turn in some shape or form with maybe having some abilities that does things on the opponents turn. I only played with the default character, so I'm not sure if I'm missing anything or not. You could already have this and I didn't realize it, since there is a lot in the demo.

It's a very nice game with nice sprites and music. 

I really like Hearthstone, especially older hearthstone when it was closer and more iconic, so seeing this is really cool. First thing I should say is there really should be a more visible turn timer. It felt longer than what Hearthstone has. I wish there was emotes with the removed "Sorry" emote. Sound sound effects too. But outside of that it's extremely faithful with being extremely snappy. Makes me wish Hearthstone still had Classic mode. Really enjoyable and I cannot wait for it to be finished. 

I didn't realize it was an auto battler until playing. I liked the Harrem outside the most. When starting battles there is a delay with a nude model and showing what items come up. It really needs sound effects, and maybe some eye effects with the pupils when under certain items instead of it staring at the screen. It needs more interactions with the items. The vibrators should have a vibrating noise with tape having some muffles. It's interesting as a porn game, and it will be interesting to see where it goes next. You nailed it only needing one hand to play. But it needs some sort of undressing element, unless I missed it, for it to be a full on porn game which this seems like it wants to be. 

Almost forgot, this error with the final fight for the hair. Would be cool to customize the player more too.

Thank you for playing and writing everything out.

>I am not sure if I got things right. Should I be able to move with WASD when in a cutscene, or just in general? If the latter, then can't we just use WASD for the camera movements? QEFG is just confusing when one can use their mouse to look, or the thumb stick of a controller (by the way Controller works fine, I checked)

WASD is in general. The mouse is better to use, but I have to make it less sensitive. QEFG is what I went with since it's less sensitive to move the camera around. I'll have to figure it out, but in the future I'll just say use the mouse instead of QEFG.

The music in the intro is Bianca's theme, which I wanted to be chaotic. For a future version of the intro it won't be used, and I might make a slower version of it that is more sinister and ambient. Overall there is a lot in general I'm trying to figure out a balance with. The intro was quickly made together in 30 minutes for demo day, so it's not going to stay that way in the future and I didn't know exactly what to have and what not to have in the intro.

I'll make it more visible what selection you are making when selections are asked. The cursor being more visible is something that would help a lot with giving more of a buffer between selections.

I liked Edgar's design too.

The graphics are really good. The shading/color looks really nice. 

There is a visual bug with the main menu where it shows the background that wasn't covered by anything else. I like the areas where it's obvious where enemies are going to come from, so there is anticipation of where to watch out for. The animations are good too. It took me a second to realize the ammo types and such, but they were fun once realizing how to use it effectively. 

Like the other person said, this game is really fun, would play more in the future. A pause menu would be nice. 

Thank you for playing. I appreciate you writing so much out for this. 

The intro is something temp for Demo Day to select some options and to say some things, it's going to be completely revamped later on.

The camera is something I have to figure out the best solution for with everything. Since it's behind the character at the start, it can sometimes spawn the camera into the wall. 

I'll fix that soft lock, I didn't realize it was still possible to do so. Sine I got soft locked a bit. The auto save saves as soon as it can when certain actions happen, so it probably saw it as a good time to auto save when you got soft locked due to the pause in movement. 

I'll consider ways to make the breakfast scene faster or more automatic outside the player. I'll probably make the text automatic where it moves on to the next thing shortly afterwards for a forced pace. I'll have to explain some stuff too with the controls in a better manner too. But since it's something that happens daily, I really want the pacing to be good.

I'm taking notes on everything people say, and there is a LOT left to do and I do want it to be a good experience all around. It's going to be a challenge, but hopefully it should come out well. 

Thank you for doing the polls, it helps me with the cast designs.

Thank you for playing. I really appreciate the honest feedback.

It's engine specific for the loading screens and the requirements. There isn't much I can do to optimize it as much as I would like either. Most of the complexity for the walking around stuff is done, it's mostly stuff regulated to specific scenes that needs to be made. I've made a 2.5D game in the same engine and it has the same problem, but not as impactful for requirements. Without 3D models it requires 2GB of VRAM and with it's 4 GBs. But it running at all takes a bit of resources, and part of that is the engine is still in development. It will have the ability to port directly into Unity which should hopefully fix many quirks of the engine and do more directly with C++. But that's a couple of months away, and if the feature doesn't get delayed.

The UI is something I took heavy inspiration from those games. I'm not sure the best way to proceed with it to make it stylish but unique. I made Bianca have a Unique text box for more a more impactful/controlling feeling. It's going to require a bit of experimentation.

I like the full 3D since many things can be handled with code compared to a VN for showcasing facial expressions and animations automatically based on other factors, which allows for more dynamic responses. That's a major reason to why I don't want to remove the full 3D aspects. Maybe I should make everything a little faster for the walking, since that might remove some of the impact it has for the need to walk. For a forced top down perspective that is fixed, maybe it could work. I'm not sure the best way to do it in the engine I'm using, since it would send up involving needing to move to what you want to talk to anyways. I might experiment with it, but I don't want to remove from the feeling of what protag choice the player has made, since the goal is they will be all unique. Along with being able to see the character expressions. There is a way to call a 3D model to the middle of the screen like a VN, but the problem is that it doesn't showcase the dynamic choices without rewriting everything with multiple versions of every piece of dialogue which would be worse for performance due to more needing to be loaded in with each character. 

I do want you to rank the designs so far. Which I put in a different comment, but I'll repost the strawpolls here. Mainly to see what strengths there are in the designs and what flaws there are. I'm holding off on most of the character writing aspects until after Demo Day to see what I need to do and fix before doing it, since it requires a lot of time and effort to get right. But the models I'm mostly going to keep unless I really have to change them up with editing them further.

Guy ranking:

https://strawpoll.com/e2naXRbqAyB

Girl ranking:

https://strawpoll.com/XOgOV6o4an3

Visible Pantsu ranking (to view them you will probably need to choose each girl for being the protag selection outside of Bianca's pantsu)

https://strawpoll.com/PbZqbQxVeyN

I recommend you have a GPU with at least 3-4 GBs of VRAM to run this smoothly. 

Also, I'd like your opinion on the designs for the characters, even if you don't leave a comment for a more detailed feedback.

Guy ranking:

https://strawpoll.com/e2naXRbqAyB

Girl ranking:

https://strawpoll.com/XOgOV6o4an3

Visible Pantsu ranking (to view them you will probably need to choose each girl for being the protag selection outside of Bianca's pantsu)

https://strawpoll.com/PbZqbQxVeyN

Something must be happening with the lighting when I export the game, it's not like this at all in editor, I'll have to figure it out. Thank you.

I hope it goes well for you, since it is extremely polished already.

I'll look forward to whatever you make for new stuff for this.

A normal pistol, so something like the shotgun is an upgrade since it has more range. Most games start with a pistol since it allows everything else to be showcased to be different from it easier and more instantly. 

The graphics are really amazing with that sketched art. I wish that was used in game. The polarization is ok looking, but I like the sketches a lot more due to how detailed and 90s looking they are. They are much better than the sprites. Also the aiming feels like it's aiming in the opposite direction with how the mouse movements impacts the aim. I hope you do more with this in the future.

>essentially click where you're trying to aim

Personally I would like that more than the dragging from behind.

I never had this happen during testing. Maybe it's an export error. I'll have to playtest to make sure, and to check some stuff. Thanks for bringing this to my attention 

The graphics are really amazing with that sketched art. I wish that was used in game. The polarization is ok looking, but I like the sketches a lot more due to how detailed and 90s looking they are. They are much better than the sprites. Also the aiming feels like it's aiming in the opposite direction with how the mouse movements impacts the aim. I hope you do more with this in the future.

Extremely impressive. Only thing to say is to make sure some quality of life stuff is added for what you feel is required for playing and what other people say should be good, since that makes or breaks a lot of these kinds of games. And to slowly edit the graphics over time to be more detailed. But I had fun and will look forward to more info about it.

The biggest flaw, which seems unchanged, is the art style clashing a lot. It really doesn't look good and takes me out of playing. You should be sticking to an art style for the units instead of being very random with it. 

The cover art is trash, but the in game it looks amazing and plays amazing too. I was trying to think of something to say, you really should get something better for cover art, it doesn't represent the game at all. Outside of that it's really fucking good right now.

Reminds me of that Sseth video that came out recently a month ago. I like the portraits. Focus on readability for everything and it will be interesting how this goes. I'd recommend watching that video since it showcases why focusing on choices with branching paths is very important. 

I'm not sure what advice I could give, so far you seem extremely on track with what you posted on /agdg/. Maybe look into a publisher or two if you haven't already. Very fun game.

Fun game. Only thing I can say is that enemies shouldn't be able to spawn randomly, have select locations where they spawn or make them spawn out of the player's view. Kinda wish I didn't start off with the shotgun and the arena was bigger. Canon blast guys were a lot better, since there were more interactable than the samurai. I'd recommend something more like that based off bullet hell games that forces the player to think and move quickly than generic enemy running to you for your enemy designs mechanically. Good so far.

Music is good. The light mechanic is good. Some of the graphical effects makes it hard to read what is going on, and he triangle needs to stand out a little more, maybe by being grey, since it blends in with everything else very quickly. Also wish there was a tutorial. A good base to work off from.

Too many cutscenes, barely any time in-between them really takes me out, would rather play an actual movie game instead of a platformer pulling the same stuff. It is pretty obvious when something you made is being heard/shown and something you downloaded online, so it is jarring at times. It's ok. The deer is so fast that not using it felt dumb. You made something that looks good, but doesn't really have much more than that for me. 

Has a lot of depth even with how short it is and is very engaging and fun. I recommend making a mobile version and making the graphics have a little more detail in the animation framaes, and people would like it there. Also needs music.