I'm in America, and while it's true that stalking cases often aren't handled the way they should, we've come leaps and bounds since the 70s and 80s in regards to the police taking stalking seriously. In fact, the Stalking Awareness nonprofit organization SPARC recommends contacting police as one of the first things you should do. And certain states have extremely robust stalking laws, like California.
Ah yea, that bothers me too!
(Edit: For anyone reading this who thinks they wouldn't be able play this because of the sibling incest, I would say give it a try anyway. If you've seen Game of Thrones and were able to watch Cersei and Jamie together without getting overwhelmed with disgust and shutting off the TV, it's a similar kind of thing with this game. The MC is incredibly well defined with a super specific backstory and life, so it's literally impossible to self-insert with her. So, it's essentially just like watching Cersei and Jamie Lannister on GoT, something totally outside yourself with a life of its own, and you are just kind of along for the ride on the sidelines.)
I have been playing the Patreon version and I have a lot of thoughts on this game, so I figured this would be a good place to put them.
I want to preface this by saying that I only have so many points of constructive criticism because I see huge potential in this game, and because I really like it and want it to succeed!
First things first, I like the framing device of the other-wordly beings outside of space and time, and how they occasionally have commentary. I feel like you could do a lot more with this concept, I actually wish they had a bit more to say! For example, the moment where one of them says something like "oh , did you see that shadow in the window?" that would have been a great moment to actually put a subtle shadow there. (I actually rewound the game to see if I missed one but there was nothing haha.)
So, I understand that you need everyone in this universe to be very threatening and scary and basically unstoppable, for story reasons, but after the 30th time of someone saying "we can't call the police/ask anyone for help, it's pointless", it starts to feel a little silly. These start to feel more like supervillains in a comic book than actual human beings after a while, especially when you start to actually think these things out from a logical perspective and brainstorm ways you could actually solve MC's problems (go to the news, record everything on your phone, etc etc,). I have a few ideas for how this could be solved:
1. Make this a period piece. You could set this in the 70s or 80s to a time when the mafia was an actual, legitimate threat, where no one had a cell phone, where there were no security cameras on every street corner, where the police really *were* useless (particularly when it came to taking things like stalking and harassment seriously) or
2. You could keep the modern setting, but since this is an alternate universe, just make it so there is no police force, perhaps it's some sort of anarchical society ruled by crime with a splash of vigilante justice.
Either one of these would be an improvement, because as it stands now I get extremely distracted by how nonsensical the behavior and actions of the MC are (like, lady, the FBI designed the witness protection program *specifically* with the mafia in mind. Go to your nearest FBI field office and call it a day lol).
Another thing is that it would be nice if there were at least a few happy endings? Granted, I haven't gotten them all, so maybe there is like... one among the 20 or so bad ones, but the shock of the bad endings wears off after like the 4th or 5th one and you just become kinda numb to it, as a player. I think the game would benefit from more of a variety of good vs bad endings to keep things fresh (that being said, I understand if, thematically, you want to keep this theme of "no, it's all bad, life sucks" cus life sure does! haha)
This last thing is more of a minor nitpick, but whoever drew the nude scenes of MC doesn't seem to understand how dark skin works as they gave her like bright pastel pink nipples, despite her being dark-skinned lol. As a POC this really stood out and kinda took me out of the story because I was so flabbergasted when seeing it. Pigmentation on melanin doesn't work like that :) You/the artist can study the figures of dark skinned bodies to see how it normally works for us, if you genuinely didn't know!
Again, I want to emphasize that I think you have a really nice game here, and with some tweaks, my opinion of it would be through the roof. I also love the sprites, it's not often you see sprites in an indie otome game that are actually attractive and pleasing to look at! (Quinn's is my favorite!)
Nice work :)
Device & Manufacturing Year: Predator-Helios-300
Operating System: Windows 11 Home
Game Version: 0.3
Bug: This error appears as soon as "start" is selected:
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:
Exception: The say screen (or show_function) must return a Text object.
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback:
File "script.rpyc", line 153, in script
File "D:\Non Steam Games\sleepy-time-jack-win\SleepyTimeJack-0.3-win\renpy\ast.py", line 921, in execute
renpy.exports.say(who, what, *args, **kwargs)
File "D:\Non Steam Games\sleepy-time-jack-win\SleepyTimeJack-0.3-win\renpy\exports.py", line 1373, in say
who(what, *args, **kwargs)
File "D:\Non Steam Games\sleepy-time-jack-win\SleepyTimeJack-0.3-win\renpy\character.py", line 1266, in __call__
self.do_display(who, what, cb_args=self.cb_args, dtt=dtt, **display_args)
File "D:\Non Steam Games\sleepy-time-jack-win\SleepyTimeJack-0.3-win\renpy\character.py", line 927, in do_display
display_say(who,
File "D:\Non Steam Games\sleepy-time-jack-win\SleepyTimeJack-0.3-win\renpy\character.py", line 624, in display_say
raise Exception("The say screen (or show_function) must return a Text object.")
Exception: The say screen (or show_function) must return a Text object.
Windows-10-10.0.22621 AMD64
Ren'Py 8.0.3.22090809
Sleepy Time Jack 0.3
Wed Apr 19 15:35:42 2023
```Which character was your favorite? Why?
Definitely a tossup between Luca and Theo... with Luca coming out on top by just a hair (if Theo was a bit more forward/dominant he might be my #1, but I understand why he isn't, for story reasons.) I usually go for the confident/forward flirt archetype if there isn't a dominant/possessive archetype available, so Luca fits into the former quite nicely!
My least favorite was probably Tristan. He was just... too innocent and boyish for me, especially for a game like this that seems to really be going for a more relatable adult tone. I didn't really get any sense of passion from him. Normally with these types of characters part of the payoff is seeing them finally break out of their shyness due to how overcome they are with emotion/passion for MC, so I was surprised when he stayed pretty much the same throughout the route.
Did you manage to make all the guys on the main screen regain their color?
Yes! But I have a weird thing about otome games where I don't like to see bad endings haha so I haven't gotten any of those (if I feel like I am starting to get a bad end I will panic and go back lol)
What's your favorite moment in the game?
I found the good ending scene with Luca to be my favorite. It's just incredibly sweet and you did a good job of conveying his affections, how strong his feelings were, etc.
There were multiple times I laughed out loud, which rarely ever happens when I'm playing an otome game, so hats off to ya'll. (Theo's line delivery of 'husban...dos...?' sent me into orbit)
I appreciate what you guys did with Mark's character! He's not my favorite, but I definitely respected him by the end, and I really related to his struggles of feeling trapped in something that seems safe and predictable, but also is slowly killing you inside.
Misc thoughts:
I would be interested in paying for like an 18+ patch or 18+ DLC, I'm sure a lot of others would, too (I think we all saw that big survey on the otome games subreddit where like 70% said they wanted to see 18+ content lol). Just something to think about :)
I also would like to see you guys try out writing in second person rather than first person! It's not often used it's my favorite format, and I was thinking I would love to read this game in second person pov.
And it would be nice to be able to change the eye color of your sprite :)
Great work! I had a great time with this one and you guys should be proud!