itch.io

I am happy to report that I wrote this with the idea that some players won't know or care about Marnie or anything from SwSh, but might still want to play it just because it's a pokemon thing. If I did it right, you shouldn't feel lost or confused. (But by all means please let me know if you feel like some Gen 8 crap went over your head so I can either fix it or explain it better)

...but enough about your face

I'm glad you enjoyed the game!

With limited art availability and my amateurish coding skills, the writing was really all I had going for me. I cut a lot of corners in the art and the visuals, grudgingly saying "this looks bad but it's the best I have without dumping ten thousand dollars into this" a whole lot, but I didn't let myself wimp out on the writing. I have "write" in my name, god damn it. 

With the main mission involving Cynthia, it never really occurred to me that the game should also have sidequests with her too. I intentionally made the evening activities with Jasmine and Betsy and the wilderness stuff with Kate be a little divorced from the main story, to give the player sort of a break from sleuthing with Cynthia. But now that you mention it, the game probably should have had some fun little side-things you go off and do with Cynthia too. I'll keep that in mind for future games. I'm happy to report that the next game has a whole bunch of side missions with the main girl.

You're right that the game might be better if it focused more on Cynthia then on the supporting characters. Kate and Betsy actually weren't planned to be in the game at all when I first started writing it. Betsy sort of arose out of the necessity to have a primary villain, and I wanted the player to be able to run off and join the bad guys so we could see Cynthia as an obstacle under certain circumstances. That means the leader of the bad guys kind of had to become a proper character. Kate I have no excuse for. The existence of the pokemon rangers started as a throwaway joke at the start of the game, and it was only later when I decided it might be interesting to go and visit them. Then Kate's presence in the game kind of grew like a metastasizing tumor. I don't regret her being in the game, but you're absolutely right that there are a lot of non-Cynthia distractions in a game that bills itself as "hang out with Cynthia!"

As far as the game's visuals... yeah, they're all bad. The lewd scenes look okay, obviously, since I had real artists drawing them. For the rest of the game though, this is sadly the best I was able to do with no budget for the game. I can tell you my next game is going to look a lot better because I have a better idea of what I'm doing and I have more money at my disposal to throw at the project. In the future I would like to remake Olivine Lights entirely with better art and graphics for... everything, and maybe add some more content to it. A sidequest or two with Cynthia. More sex. Better  pokemon battles. Proper character sprites. Art for characters sitting down. Backgrounds that aren't photos. Et cetera. That won't be for a long time, though, and it will cost money. The fear of legal trouble from Big N prevents me from charging for this game, so unless I find a schmuck of an artist who's willing to draw stuff for me for free, art is probably going to continue to be the weakest thing I have going for me.

One last thing... I'll be honest, I have no idea what you mean by the suspension bridge effect.

I found the problem and have a fix. I will be releasing a new version with the bug fixed. Thank you for telling me about it!

Doooo iiiittttt

Overrated;

Did not play.

I'll look into it. I have an idea what caused it. There's a section of code that should be accessible through two different methods, and then it gives you a choice of where to go at night, but it might be possible to get there with only one option enabled and then the game doesn't give you the second one and it gets stuck.

I fucking came

That you for the kind words! I'm glad to hear that my take on the characters left an impression, even the original ones. When I was writing day 5 I had considered having the adventure continue; maybe some other crisis arises and you go on another quest with Cynthia to solve it, but I thought it was better to end it where it should end instead of dragging things out and having a story that's never finished.

I am definitely making more games like this, but a sequel/follow-up to Olivine Lights isn't planned at this time. I'm sure I'll write about Cynthia some more, but continuing this specific adventure with this specific protagonist would be tricky since there are so many little details with the different endings. I would have to pick one to be the "canon" ending and go from there, and that would be doing the rest of the story a disservice. So I'm sorry to say this but don't expect to ever see Unnamed-Guy-With-A-Metang again. His story in almost certainly finished.

I do have another Pokémon VN in the works, this one featuring Marnie. Most of it is written and I have a bunch of art commissioned for it, and I hope to have it completed and available to play before the year is over. I can't promise how long it'll take though. These things can't really be rushed.

Thanks, that's what I had hoped for!

It's nice to see someone else besides me appreciates the ability to be a bastard and still be the hero  :)

I'm glad you like it! I'm in the process of making another one. It doesn't have Cynthia in it, but we may see her again.

The end of day 2, where you go up to the tower, is not the end of the alpha. In fact it's barely the halfway point. :)

I'm glad I exceeded your expectations!

Whenever I'm writing this type of thing, my biggest fear is always that the people who are experiencing it will not get invested and will just not care about the details of the world and the characters that I'm trying to present to them. Having someone tell me that they got super invested is the greatest compliment (and the biggest relief) that I can imagine.

If you enjoyed the game, the biggest and most helpful thing you can do for me is to tell other people about it! Share it with a friend, or with strangers. It's not like I have a marketing department after all.

I ain't fraid of no ghosts

I'm glad you liked it! Kate is a lot of fun to write. I don't plan for her to be in the next game, but maybe we'll see her again in a future project.

You'll have to buy me dinner first

Sorry, it's not in this version. The 1.6 update will have a Jasmine love scene. It should be out in January.

I still say Shauntal looks like a cross between Velma Dinkley and Zone-Tan.

I appreciate the vote of confidence in my writing! I hope I can live up to your expectations.

This ended up being so much more than I expected it to be. This is the sort of Zone-Tan fan-smut that I wish we'd had ten years ago. But I'm glad to have it now.

I've been watching this for a while and it makes me happy to see it progress, even if it's still a long way off from "done." 

I think "pulling a Kazerad" is the term for when you nearly cut your hand off while making carrot cake.

Yep, doing the lighthouse after the night scene with Jasmine causes the battle to start with Magnemite at 0 HP. The hp_magnemite value isn't being reset in between scenes like it should. It's a bug that'll be fixed next update.

Breaking into Jasmine's house leads to some bad karma options. If you talk to her in the gym you can warn her that having the key in a fake rock is a bad idea, but this doesn't really do anything big for the rest of the story. If you talk to her about the info on her computer, you can convince her that it's mortally repugnant, but this also doesn't really do anything major. Maybe I'll add some more stuff stemming from this. I could have some non-villainy side effects of breaking into her house but I'm not sure what they would be. Breaking in is already sort of villainous, I think...

The scene with the fanboy only has the options to either say nothing or to be a jerk. Upon reflection, there should probably be a third option there. I'll come up with something. Maybe something like "Politely make an excuse for you to leave so the fan doesn't annoy her"

And thank you for the kind words!

The love threshold is a little weird, especially late in the game. It'll be tweaked in a few places in the next update. Also the last scene with Cynthia has her basically begging you to come with her to Sinnoh regardless of your love stat. That's because I only wrote one version of that conversation. This can result in a nonsensical situation where the player goes out of their way to get as little love as possible, but still ends up with Cynthia. Future versions of the game will have several different versions of this final conversation, depending on love and/or other factors. Possible options will include staying in Olivine City to work with Jasmine in the gym, going off to that boring desk job in Kanto, or something illegal.

I consider the "ending" of the game to be the climax on day 4, with day 5 being a lengthy epilogue. Under that definition, there are three different endings, although two of those have two possible variations. The endings are (with minimal spoilers):

• You capture the villain all by yourself, which is the "best" ending
• The villain beats you in battle, but one of your allies stops them from escaping, which is the "good" ending
• The villain either escapes or dies, which is the "bad" ending

Both the "best" and "bad" ending are kind of hard to get, with most routes getting the "good" ending. You don't need to evolve your pokemon to get the "good" ending and you don't need to meet with the rangers to get the "good" ending either.

Getting the "best" ending does require you to evolve your pokemon, and get to four clues. One of those clues is available in two different locations, and two of the clues are found in the same location, so really it's more like three clues. One of the places where you can level up your pokemon also gives you one of the clues you need, so leveling up and getting clues aren't mutually exclusive.

There are three places where you can level up in the game, and you need to level up twice to evolve. Meeting the rangers is one of them. The lighthouse is another option, although if you do things in a very specific order, there won't be anyone there to fight and level up. The gym is the other one and it's available any time on day 2 or 3. The next update will add a fourth place, but it's tied to a sidequest. In theory I could have put a whole lot more pokemon battles in the game and make leveling up easier, or make it pretty much inevitable. But I was trying to walk a fine line with the battles and not have them be just filler, like most of the random encounters in a main series pokemon game. I'm not trying to make a proper pokemon RPG, because there's already hundreds of romhacks for that. That's why, for example, the pokemons' levels are not shown to the player, nor do the pokemon have defined atk/def/etc stats. That's also why the game doesn't actually let you pick your pokemon's moves. It might be cool to make this into a proper RPG with all the options that comes with that, but I don't see how that would improve the story, and that's my main focus. I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could program the entire pokemon RPG battle system in Renpy if I wanted to. But it would take forever and it wouldn't be worth it.

As for the lact of interactivity - yeah. I know most of the game puts you on autopilot. It's kind of stupid that I call the main character "You" but then don't give "You" a whole lot of control over yourself. It's a stylistic choice and it's not a good one. Future versions will give the player some more options, but most of the game still comes down to, "Pick and place to go and watch how it plays out." I know it's kind of bad. All I can say in my defense is I've never written a game before. Also I was making this whole thing up as I went, which didn't help.

Thank you! I could have just posted a bunch of faces compiled together but I thought it would be kind of amusing and/or cute to make a proper scene with a bunch of the Jasmines.

It's kind of hard to lay out what the routes are in the game without spoiling everything. The main plot has three different endings, but those don't necessarily have anything to do with who you get into a relationship with. For romance options, Jasmine doesn't have any available as of the latest version (1.3.1) but Cynthia has two different ones. You can make friends with other characters but Jasmine and Cynthia are the focus here.

As of the current version of the game, Red is basically the backup. If the player gets to the end of the showdown with Betsy without meeting Shawn on a prior day, Red shows up.

You can beat Betsy by yourself. One of the prerequisites is to evolve your pokemon but the TM choice doesn't really affect anything. I'm probably going to rewrite this a little because the only move that matters is Rock Slide and you get that move no matter what. It's kind of a fake choice, which I don't like. 

Thank you for the feedback! It's interesting to me that people tell me that my Cynthia is characterized like her anime version, considering I've never seen the anime. I know I wrote Lance like a bit of a jerk. I don't really remember what his personality was like in the games and I don't care what he's like in the anime. I just needed an authority figure who I could plausibly have Cynthia say "Fuck you" to. 

There's no option to go get Red to help you, you didn't miss anything. Depending on prior days' events, he may show up when you're fighting Betsy and stop her from escaping. It's not RNG but the requirements for that scenario ended up being a little specific. I'm probably going to adjust that to either make it more likely that he gets involved, or somehow show the player that Red is busy doing his own thing somewhere. In an earlier draft, the player had an option to go round up some allies prior to going down into the hotel basement, possibly bringing along Jasmine, Red, Kate, Nelson, Shawn, and of course Cynthia. But I realized that would lead to writing like 20+ variations of the aqua base and... no. 

Investigating Jasmine's house doesn't go anywhere as of the current release. This is one of the things I'm writing currently. It leads to exactly what the morbidly curious person might think it does. It needs art.

And thank you for the bug report, I see what the problem is and I'll fix it.

The scene triggers if love is greater than 10. So you need 11. I'm probably going to change that because right now if you have exactly 10 the cop in the lobby calls Cynthia your "lover" but then you don't get the lewd scene. Kinda misleading in retrospect.

Thanks. I was worried I wouldn't get it out in time.

Okay, I found the problem and it'll be fixed as of the next version. It's sorta-kinda a bug I knew already could potentially happen. The game was getting to the end of the list of if/else statements that told it what chat scenes to play, and then it would try to pull up one more scene after it had run out. With nothing else left in the list of scenes, it would just start reading whatever other code came next, which in this case just happened to be the entire dialog for that first chat scene. There was supposed to be an error message that played if the game ran out of scenes to pull from, but I didn't set it up right and the game just sort of went off on a tangent until something told it to stop, which in this case just happened to be the "return" statement at the end of that chat scene.

Luckily the fix is simple, I just need one or two more chat scenes. I was probably going to do that anyway, and also make an adjustment to the way the game prioritizes which chat scene to play. So this would have been fixed eventually. Probably. Maybe. I never would have found it without your help. So thank you!!

I still haven't been able to reproduce the bug on my end and I'm starting to go a little crazy.  I was beginning to wonder if I had already done something in my end that fixed it without realizing,  so I downloaded the same 1.2 Alpha that everyone else has and started looking at the code there. I still have no idea how this is happening so I just wanted to clarify what I'm looking for.

(Spoilers for anyone reading this before playing the game, you have been warned)

When you say "The MC showed their partner pokemon to Cynthia twice, the second time happened even after it evolved," exactly which scene is it that happens twice? Is it the scene where you're chatting with Cynthia back at the hotel in the evening? Or is it the scene where you go up to Cynthia's suite to get TM's for Metang? Or is it two different scenes but both of them act like you haven't shown your pokemon to Cynthia before?

If it's the same scene twice - when does the scene show up? It should be the first scene you see when you go and get drinks with Cynthia for the first time, and nowhere else. When it shows up for a second time - what day/time is it? Does it happen on Day 2/Tuesday, or on Day 3/Wednesday, or on Day 4/Thursday? Does the scene play at the end of the day at the hotel, or is it popping up at some other point during the story? What happens after the scene?

Well that's weird. But your info should help me reproduce it so I can fix the problem. Thanks.

I want to add a list of achievements (the checklist you described) that tracks if you've seen every major part of the game. I don't want to implement that yet until the game is more finalized - there are still so many side paths I plan to add, it would be weird to have a checklist saying everything is done when "everything" isn't actually everything, yet. Don't spend too much time looking for the blue haired girl though, it's a pure rng 1/100 chance to appear and she has one sentence of dialog. Too small an easter egg to be worth it.

Thank you for the feedback on pokemon cries, for 1.3 I'll do a thorough check and rebalance or replace anything that's fucked up.

As for the next update, I'm going to get at least one more out before the end of the year.

Sorry

*violently spits out drink*

yes

Thank you so much for your feedback and kind words!

If you're showing off your pokemon to Cynthia twice then something is definitely broken. I'll need to investigate. 

Shawn's sprite is terrible, I know. I spent literal weeks searching for art for a "Super Nerd" trainer that I could use and I came up with nothing. The shitty custom sprite I made by editing Cheren was the best I could do for now. (Ditto for the totally random unnamed engineer sprite who is absolutely not Roarke from Oreburgh) 

Thank you!