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That makes sense, yes, but I feel it might be better to clarify in the text that this is intentional and not an oversight.

Oh, another thing I noticed was in the Advanced Prisms rules, there's no rules for how they act when they're damaged. I assume that for the Prisms that are just basic elemental prisms with an additional effect, they'll lose the +1 but keep the ability to use that element, but will they keep their additional effects? (I assume that the ones that need to be damaged to use their effects can't be damaged again, at least.) And what about the  double-elemental ones? (I assume that the non-elemental ones just can't be damaged at all.)

Thanks for your reply!

Hi, I was just looking through the recent update, and I was wondering about the "Work Together" mechanic. It looks like the first two outcomes will be useless for characters who have zero or negative Trust, effectively meaning that only the third can be picked. Is this intentional, or should such characters always at least get a +1 for the first two? (After all, characters with negative Trust are already suffering a penalty for Working Together.)

Thanks!

Still a work in progress, I'm afraid.

I don't want to spoil too much, but I will say that there is definitely a poly route in the game.

Thanks for your interest, but I'm afraid I don't really have a set update schedule.

Hi! This is a very cool-looking game, and I'm looking forward to trying it.

I do have a question, though. If a player decides to become a Mentor to the whole team, how does the Trust work? Does the Mentor character have +1 Trust with the whole party (in either direction) or is it just for one specific other character? Also (more generally) is this Trust in addition to the +1/-1 Trust from normal character creation?

Thanks!

Thanks! Good luck with the game.

Thanks!

Hi! Thanks for the great game! I did notice a couple of bugs while playing it, though. 

Firstly, while trying to access the Codex at one point (I believe in the gods' village), I got this error message:

IOError: Couldn't find file 'gui/codex/entries/places/encsv.jpg'.

Secondly, after the final fight, Leos and Cyne returned (I was playing Fawn's route). The dialogue repeated to an extent, with Leos saying goodbye twice, and Cyne initially agreeing to come with Raen, before then saying he couldn't. It feels as though some of this dialogue might have been from Cyne's route instead of Fawn's.

Thirdly, there wasn't any music during the end credits, and it said "Extended Demo" at the top, although I am pretty certain I was playing the full game.

Sorry if these have been pointed out before. Thanks for the game!

This is a very nice start; I would say that I did experience the same bug as RealityBender, though, where Thomas at the boat rail would be visible over the loaded save game.

Thanks for the review! I hope you enjoyed it.

Okay; that's definitely one way I've managed it, but most of the time, jumping there just gets me into another wall run, which takes me under the overhang. I've never found it easier or more intuitive than, say, running up to the top of the left wall and jumping over:

To be clear, it's not a big issue (as I said, I've solved it several different ways), but it does feel like there should probably be one solution that (once you know it, at least) feels like the obvious solution. At least for the main storyline puzzles; secret puzzles can be as obscure and non-intuitive as possible.

And yeah, that makes sense about the attacks; would it make sense to have a tutorial popup about them?

Oh, I guess this doesn't really have anything to do with the demo, but I was wondering if you were planning on adding swimming as a mechanic at some point later on?

Thanks for your reply.

Okay, this is the specific moment at issue:

I think maybe I'm supposed to be running up the right wall to the orange platform, but it's too high to be easily reachable, and generally Tikal will run under or into it, and will fall. I wouldn't mind the difficulty if intent was clear, but there are several other ways to solve it, for example, if I jump at the exact right angle almost immediately after the turn, I can climb up the near side of the wall:

And while I definitely don't think there's anything wrong with having multiple solutions to a problem, here it feels like the game should be more clear about what solution it has in mind. (For comparison, the next wall-running section is very smooth, once you get the timing down, and it's very obvious what you should be doing at every point.) Does that help?

Oh, and on the topic of screenshots, I like the camera mode for being able to set up nice images (and also for scouting for secrets), but I have no idea where those images are saved to; is this a feature that's still in development, or am I just missing something obvious? Part of me would also like it if Tikal could be posed in the camera mode, but I realise that that would probably be a lot more work.

And, looking at the text in game, I see that it does mention more than just "the third strike", but I don't recall it ever really going into how the damage multiplier bar works, unless I missed the tutorial note about that. EDIT: I managed to get the stun, and it is obvious when it happens, but it looks like unarmed attacks are far better at filling the bar than spear attacks are. Is this intentional or a bug?

Thanks for your reply. 

Hey again! Finally managed to beat the robot (and thus the game), and I have a few more suggestions.

Firstly, while I agree with a lot of what gruevy said, I would disagree about the camera speed... kinda. The problem is that while the camera is indeed a bit too slow to turn after wall run turn, it's also too responsive for very fine adjustments (such as when you're trying to line up a jump along a narrow walkway). (Not sure if this would be as much of a problem using a controller, but it definitely is for a keyboard.) One thing I considered was having the camera auto-rotate after a successful wall run turn, but that might just end up being too disorienting for players who've otherwise had far more camera control.

Also, the first wall run turn puzzle feels a little broken to me. With ever other parkour puzzle (including the second wall run turn puzzle), I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. With the first wall run turn puzzle, all I can do coming out of the turn is launch Tikal at the platform to the right and hope he makes it. Sometimes he climbs up to the platform; sometimes he wall runs up to the platform. One time he even went through the middle and ended up on the next ledge along (I have no idea how, and also that meant that I'd missed the checkpoint, so had to do the whole thing again at the next death). It just feels like there should either be a ledge at wall-running height to just drop onto, or a climbable wall at the end that can just be run into.

Regarding fighting, one of the tips said that you can stun your enemies after three consecutive hits, and it would be nice to have some kind of visual signifier of this (e.g. cartoon stars over their heads), because I have definitely managed three consecutive hits against the pigwolves and they just look like they're still fighting.

On another note, I really liked the final cutscene, although I was a little disappointed that Tikal changed back to the default outfit for it. Also, in my game, Tikal had almost died facing the robot, and his "I'm hurt" noises were still audible after the cutscene had finished.

Thanks for reading! Good luck with the rest of the game!

That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Thanks for the reply, and good luck with the game.

EDIT: I found both of the costumes, and while they both look good, one of them has a bit of a clipping issue. If you're still thinking about adding other costumes, would Vacuulus pyjamas work?

I'll have to keep a look out for those then (I'm currently on 4/6 symbols and... well, I know a lot of places that the secret area isn't). EDIT: Is is a little thing that looks like a doll? Because if it is, I know where it is, but I have no idea how to get there...

It feels like Tikal should be able to drop down to hang on a ledge that he's already standing on. Are there any plans to implement something like this? EDIT: Likewise, being able to jump in different directions from the walls could be useful.

Also, another thing it would be nice to see on the pause screen would be the total number of collectibles (teeth, symbols, etc) that have been collected.

Thanks! Both P and esc work for the menu now. The pig-wolves are a lot easier to beat with the new dodge, although I wish I could say the same for the robot... (I would suggest having more easier enemies to practise against to get the timings right, but I realise those are not going to be easy to code.)

One further suggestion I have is that it would be quite nice to be able to see the collected tutorial notes from the menu, as I got one just before falling to my death, and thus missed whatever tip was written on it.

Also, I see that there's an option for changing outfits? Are these implemented in game, and if so, would it be all right to know how to unlock them? Thanks!

This is great, and Qiu is very sweet. I'm wondering, would it be possible to wordlessly point down at the pages he's dropped? Thanks!

Hmm, that could have been the problem. I tried the direction keys on their own, and I think I tried Ctrl too, but didn't think to try multiple keys at once. I would definitely suggest making it only the direction keys, as that feels far more intuitive.

But, yeah, I did definitely try Escape to pause, and that didn't work. Unfortunately, I don't have any controllers. I know a lot of games use P to pause; do you think that would make a difference? (I don't think it should, but you never know.)

Thanks for your reply!

Edit: I just played again, and the dodge does work, but it is very finnicky to have to press both buttons together. Sadly, Escape definitely doesn't work to pause.

This is certainly a very good looking demo; the graphics are good and movement feels very natural.

I have to echo a couple of points made so far: the pickup prompt appears after your first death (and doesn't appear if you find an item before that); it tries to launch Discord on startup; and there seems to be no way to access the pause menu (I'm using keyboard).

The tutorial text is fine, but they're not necessarily located in the best places; I had fallen to my death several times before I learned I could roll, and I lost a further life to the monster before I discovered I could lock on.

One negative thing I would note about the graphics is that the lack of borders to platforms can make it difficult to see where the edges are, when the edge and the ground are both the same colour.

Unfortunately, the one thing that really didn't click with me was the combat. The strike-timing combo itself is fine, although I never could tell why some times a "hit" would still break the combo instead of continuing it (what I assumed to be an energy gauge next to the health bar never changed). More annoyingly, starting a combo will lock Tikal in place until the combo ends, while the enemy is free to attack; I've seen other people mentioning the ability to dodge, but I couldn't find any key that would let me do this, as both movement and jumping were disabled. This meant that it was usually better to attack twice to immediately break the combo than to play it the way it was actually intended to be played.

I think that one improvement that would mitigate a lot of these issues would be to have the key bindings visible (and maybe even changeable) from the start menu. Also, it would be nice to have opponents who are somewhere in difficulty between the immobile targets and the monster and robot.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with the game!

Well, that was certainly unintentional. Would you be able to tell me what things led you to this assumption? Thanks.

Unfortunately, I won't be including direct appearances of any actual Lovecraft characters; Cthulhu will probably be referenced, but nothing more than that. There may be other eldritch horrors to romance, though...

And they look like teenagers because they are teenagers. Sorry if I gave the impression that they're supposed to be older.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I got the following bug while using the character creator:

IOError: Couldn't find file 'images/character_creation/Character Pieces/Hairbeaded/bangs 63 10.png'.

(I was using an old save, in case that's relevant.)

I'm very sad to see this fail; it's possibly the best VN I've seen on Kickstarter in the last year. Hopefully with more awareness you'll be able to succeed next time. Good luck!

Part of me does want to do an extended version (possibly with NSFW scenes, yes), but unfortunately that certainly won't be happening any time soon. Thanks for the interest, though. 

I'm thinking that it might make sense to have the Tommy/Ellis and Casey/Marissa poly routes as quite early in the campaign compared to the others, as these feel like they would be additions to the routes you're already writing, rather than full standalone routes like the others would need to be, and would thus probably be the easiest for you to actually write. 🤔

Although now I'm wondering what an Ellis/Artemis interaction would look like...

I do worry though that if you include too many poly routes in the campaign, you might not be able to fund other fun stuff, like the DLC characters and alternate outfits.

Tommy/Ellis, obviously. 😜 Tommy/Mason as prank-rivals turned boyfriends sounds fun, too, but that means no-one for Ellis again... 😅

Thinking more about the "default partners" thing:

On the one hand, I certainly feel that romanceable characters should be allowed their own lives and agency outside of their interactions with the MC, and this can include having their own romantic interactions with other characters if they're not being romanced by the MC.

On the other hand, this is what it feels like the Tommy/Ellis relationship already is, and it would feel very weird if they both just ended up dating other people at the end despite having a far more compelling relationship with each other.

On the... third(?) hand, people paying you large sums of money to help you fund the game is definitely a good thing, so I don't want to say you shouldn't do it... 😅

So, I guess I can see arguments both ways. 🤷‍♂️

But... but surely the default partners for Tommy and Ellis are each other? 😵 

Jokes aside, I know that one thing a lot of VN makers do is to let backers pay extra to beta test the game, and I was wondering if it would make sense to have the £20 tier be a beta test tier, but with the added bonus that every tier at £20 or over can get the DLC free of charge if/when it's released. Does that sound like it makes sense?

As I already said, the poly routes would be the most important for me. Beyond that, I think the extra outfits would be my next choice; it would be nice to see the boys in swimsuits, formal outfits, and Halloween costumes (can we know what they'd be wearing yet, or is it too early to say?) Also, I do like the cute chibis a lot.

Well, I hope you make your goal; the game thus far is certainly deserving of it. :)

This is a very good demo, and I enjoyed it a lot. Tommy and Ellis are both especially adorable, but it does make me wonder: would it be possible to get into a poly relationship with them both in the full game? Because their relationship already feels like it's the start of a romance, and I don't want to have to betray one to get the other...

On a different note, the demo file was very large for a game its size, and I note that you've got a very large number of sprites that are either duplicates or variants that I don't think are ever used in the game. It would probably make sense to only include the necessary sprites in the distribution package to reduce its size.

Anyway, I hope this goes well. Good luck with the game!

I found another when Hong Yang kabedons Geum...

And I found even more instances in Ao's route, too, although I'm afraid I can't remember the exact points that they happened.

I think I found a missing CG... :/ Because I got a scene where Hong Yang was feeding Geum a spring roll (or not ;P ) but the screen just went black, and it felt like there was supposed to be something there. (I have the Kickstarter reward version released last week, if that makes any difference.)

Thanks! Otherwise it's a great game.

That's good; I always seem to end up with "Cold" Cove... 😅

Good luck with the rest of the game! 

Hi. I loved the update, but I was wondering: would it make sense to let the player set Cove's personality in the Cove Creator, as well as his looks?

This is great! 

I have noticed one or two issues, though: I'm assuming the main character from the book we read is supposed to be the same gender as the VN's protagonist, but they're referred to as a "heroine" even when playing as a guy.

Similarly, the gallery only shows CGs for the female protagonist, not the male one.

On a different note, I went to the party on Friday, and yet it was Monday when I had the hangover... 

It's not exactly a problem with the game, but it would be nice if the walkthrough told us what days Cadfael was around for, and also what dates the events start on.

Thanks! Good luck with this game and your others!

Thanks! 😄

The game does seem to suggest that if you're dressing differently to your gender, you're essentially pretending to be someone else, which I'm not really keen on. 

(Also, Isaac is cute... 🥰)

I just started the game, and while I am enjoying it, I think I may have come across a bug in the character creation. It looks like if I'm playing in a matriarchy I have to select "heroine" to play as male, and selecting "hero" will set my gender to female. 

I'd also like it if there was the option to dress as male without needing to show interest in women. Do I need to dress as female in order to romance other guys?

Thanks!