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Because you seem like the type of artist who'd appreciate it, and because I had a strange feeling like the game wanted to hear my thoughts but had no place to receive it, I've decided to write my thought process thinking over this game's question.

What I thought is, I'm not sure if I know how to give myself a present like that. As an adult, if I want something, I can take steps to acquire it, and I often do. These things seem nice but often mundane, so to call it a present doesn't really seem right. And if it's something I do daily, could it really be that special?

But then, the prompt doesn't say that it has to be 'special', only that it has to be a present. It seems that a present should be something that makes me happy, but is it so easy to figure out what would make me happy? Would a new shirt, or a cup of a nice drink, make me happy? Perhaps marginally, but I so often experience those kinds of things with little thought, so that it's hard for me to think of them as presents, really.

So I started to think that even if a present isn't special, it should at least be something different from what I usually do, at least a little bit. So then, maybe a present is something that makes the day worth remembering. It would of course be an impossible goal to do that every day, none of us manage to do something so memorable that it's worth thinking back on every single day, I'm not even sure our brains are capable of that. But don't we each, after all, wake up at least hoping that we do something to make this day worth remembering in the future, rather than fading almost immediately into a blank space on a calendar?

It was hard to really think of something I could do on the spur of the moment that would satisfy that condition. Perhaps I'd set kind of a high bar for myself there. But it occurred to me suddenly, that perhaps the comment I was composing in my head was itself a kind of present. To self-indulgently dump my stream of consciousness to a total stranger and hope that, as an artist like myself, they would appreciate the feedback. So, of course at that point I had to commit to actually writing it.

I don't know if I'll be back tomorrow, but engaging with this definitely gave me something interesting to chew on, so I'm glad that I took a look.

You can't just drop a sequel tease like that unless you're planning to really do a second one. I'd buy it, to be honest. I wasn't even a King's Quest fan, but there's just something hypnotic about those stairs...

I chose the one that reduces the prices of things, Ace if I remember right.

I don't really understand what the point of Lie is, and it seems like it broke something...I clicked it a second time while I had the wagey job for the first guy, and his base went down to 31, so I changed jobs thinking that I could just undo it by changing it back, and I got a runtime error.

It's required that the Cycle of Points value be over a certain threshold as well. The required value is given in the upgrade text.

Is it supposed to be possible to softlock the game by running out of scrap and nanites?

It has been an exciting and eventful time, since I first posted this. To find this within ourselves has been truly a special experience. I'm glad you found this story meaningful. <3 And I hope that things go well for you all, as well.

Thanks! Unfortunately, my focus is kind of eclectic. I really wanted to finish this, but my brain just decided it didn't want to. X3 I'm glad people are still finding it even now.

Lately, most of my writing has been in a more traditional format, on AO3. If fanfic interests you at all, you can find that here. https://archiveofourown.org/users/Circe_the_Hex_Witch/works

That said, I definitely still have an interest in erotic IF...mostly it's the mechanical structure of these games that I'm inexperienced with, and I've never really liked the typical style of IF puzzle that much, which probably shows a lot in my approach. I'd happily take recommendations if you have any, since I'm still decidedly a newbie to this type of work.

Ah, sorry. This is a hobby project that's been dead for a while now. If you're looking for a good NES emulator, you might try Bizhawk, which is a multi-console emulator that covers the NES as well as a range of others.

Uh...wow. Reading this opened up an awful lot of emotions. It's really sweet and nice and I'm glad it had a nice ending. Thank you so much for writing it.

Interesting concept, I like it a lot. Given the intense nature of the work, it might be a good idea to have a "safeword button" and make note of it within the game before things get started.

Sorry for the slow reply. I'm not sure I can really articulate it well...a lot of movements and attacks feel jerky and abrupt. I think that would be the main thing? Like, the way you latch on to climbable blocks, the way a lot of attacks come out, stuff like that...

The interactions between Rae and Tab'i are super cute. I'd definitely love to see more of them. I will say, the first combat section seems pretty intense as an introduction to combat, and the controls could use some ironing out, but overall it's a decent start.

One feature I might ask that past a certain number of resets, lower-tier imps start to become automated. It gets to a point where you have to click the upgrade button a whole whole lot, and on top of that, the game usually feels like it can make some measure of progress while I'm AFK, except right after a demon reset when I have to sit there and do a bunch of upgrades for like fifteen minutes or else production is just massively underpowered till I get around to it.

I found that making sure to spend energy while doing other stuff worked out pretty well. You never reach a point where the game grinds to a halt due to lack of raw mana. But it's understandable if that feels kind of slow. I would guess that in future versions there will be other ways to get waste, because right now getting a Worm C is basically impossible.

You may have already figured this out by now, but the main way to get a lot of waste is by using energy abilities. With 10K you can get a Worm B and start to make them back. That's still pretty slow, but it's doable.

The game has saved fine for me even before the update. Maybe it's broken for some people or something? In any case, there's some quality of life tweaks and a new energy ability that's very good. I haven't gotten to the dark mana stuff yet, though.

I've been checking this game for updates at a slightly embarrassing level of frequency. Quite interested to see what has changed in the update.

It uses similar mechanics, but I'd say it's an improvement. Swarm Sim becomes such a dull grind eventually.

This is a neat little game. I thought I wouldn't finish it because it was a bit bland, but I started to get kind of hooked by the extra mechanics and abilities, and my curiosity about the narrative. It certainly took a much darker turn than I expected, and I honestly would've been really interested if the game had leaned into that more.

I also really enjoyed reading your thoughts about the game's development! I can see the thought you're putting into how different mechanics influence the player and their experience, and I think that's really cool.

I...wish I could go back. To the feeling that I was moving away from something, and towards something else. Like Sam.

Thanks.

I'm glad to hear it. Making the game accessible while assuming as little knowledge as possible about interactive fiction on the part of the player was a big challenge here, and there are definitely some stumbling blocks I still need to work through, but I'm so pleased that people were mostly able to figure things out.

Haha. I don't really have any art to put into the game, or the means to create it, unfortunately.

The rest system was actually not too bad, as its effect is fairly constrained to the puzzle set pieces. You can see how it's implemented if you dig into the source code I posted as a separate file.

As far as the energy and the puzzles in general, right now I'm in a place where I realized that each puzzle is giving me a big meaty chunk of stuff to write, which I spend more time on than the puzzles themselves, so there probably aren't going to be very many or very complicated. An interesting lesson from this game is that this particular type of puzzle doesn't lend itself well to building up towards large, complex designs in IF, if only because it would be quite difficult to keep up with the level of detail you'd want to see in an interactive fiction game.

Edit: I probably should also note that the resemblance to Hadean Lands isn't coincidental. I was looking for inspiration for more "system-like" puzzles, which are fairly rare in interactive fiction, so I re-played the game to help give me ideas for my design.

Thanks for the feedback. This is my first big I7 project so I'm still getting a handle of what all I can accomplish with it. What sort of interactions did you have in mind? Are there any noteworthy I7 works that would serve as good examples to study?

Haha. Nice catch. Ultimately I decided that it would be unfair if the player was able to explicitly notice the circle had been broken, but be unable to do anything about it. I'm curious if you have a different opinion about that.

Gotcha. The intro section is definitely a bit unusual as Inform 7 goes, and I didn't want people to get stuck there. I wonder if I should make it even more explicit.

Oh yes, one more question. Did you go through the help menu? If so, did it help any?

I'm glad! tbh this is my first time actually posting erotic prose in the jam and I was super nervous about it XD

Yes, I understand. Programming Inform 7 games is something of a usability challenge. To be honest, I stuck with it anyway because I'm absolutely enamored with its world modeling system, so I'm probably going to stick with it for the forseeable future. I know it's not going to be to everyone's tastes.

That said, if there were particular commands that you had trouble figuring out, or commands you think really should've worked but didn't, I'm always up for feedback on that.

That might be helpful. This kind of guiding process is subtle and hard to get right, except with playtesting probably. Mostly the problem I had was that I would see things in the world and not really be sure how I should interact with them or why I wanted to. It's possible I missed something important, I'm not sure.

It looks kind of neat, but I couldn't quite figure out what I was supposed to be doing, or if I had any control over what was going on with Liam. I collected a star thing, but I wasn't sure what it was? I think it could use a bit more direction. Also, I found the mouse control kind of awkward, as well.

Wow, totally cute. I went for Cassidy without a second thought X3 More games need to feature cute lesbians. uwu

My answers were pretty honest and I got a date with Cassidy, so I guess this game is good in my book. :D

Yeah, and I also typically expect the text box to jump to the end of the current line when I click it. And the screen scroll in the warehouse was kind of slow. Not to be too negative about it. X3 These are fairly superficial problems I think.

I love the sprite art, the characters are very cute and sexy. This isn't the kind of game I'm terribly good at, but I managed to make it through to the end. Would love to see a part 2.

Goodness, I'm not sure I would've been able to handle that if it had actually been drawn on-screen. Still, I encourage you to keep creating...as long as there's adequate content warnings. :V

I'm not sure if I missed anything, I managed to wander around the shop a bit and then fight some enemies. I like the sprite art, though.

Also, the background parallax is a bit intense, you might want to dial it down a bit.