4.40 star(s) 5 Votes

Deskitteh

Member
Apr 6, 2018
160
419
Okay, I have played and therefore feel like I have realistic points of legitimate criticism. Not "abrasive" or "abusive" criticisms, but rather just observations about game-play. I'm writing "War and Peace", and no part of it should be considered an attack or direct unfair criticism. Simply what the game is and how it operates.

1: Obtaining money is different than what I'm used to. Exploring is only available for a larger fraction of the game and yields results ranging from time waste to maybe a couple quarters and a candy. Sending team-mates to obtain money is a crap shoot based on their mood and the time of day, and can result in anything from "I got nothing" to "here's a dollar". The time of day actually does matter. The best time of day I could find is early/late afternoon. Morning, evening or night and your team-mates will revolt or outright refuse, with the girls being especially angry. Men are better at being cleaning-slaves and less volatile than women. I couldn't access the gambling mechanic after purchase with my KND number input, and there were no quest steps forward to fix the machine by talking to hoagie, scanning the environment, or talking to anyone else. I'm unsure if this is for number storage and generation reasons mentioned further below. I'm unsure if it would have been helpful, but I tried my best during my 10 hour playthrough.

2: The girls take some TLC to speak to and interact with. They won't like you if you're an ass and bother them/ get overly personal when they're angry. Some items are a dice roll if they even enjoy them. If Kuki is upset and you give her money, she'll say her parents fight over money and you'll get nothing. If Kuki is doing somewhat alright, she'll take money but only if it's enough to buy something of value. The success of certain actions is dependent upon their mood and doing something they don't like drastically affects their task performance and behavior around the game world. IE Kuki will call you "Stinky" LOL. Abby loves candy and will say as such, but if she's really, really angry then it's best to wait 3 days and then offer her candy just before she "calms down". This isn't princess trainer and their woes are not solved with chocolate and a whisper of a sweet nothing. A part of me really likes this as it's a "maturity check" rather than a stat roll. It can be confusing to get a handle on at first but, once you understand the hows and whys, it works. In terms of the game itself and the characters, I'm selfish, and I don't want #4 within 30 yards of Kuki. I like how in character they are, though. It really brought back some positive childhood memories, and I ended up watching some KND videos on YouTube afterward.

3: The way stored numbers are stored is coded differently than what I've come to expect and will result in item duplication/persistence on save/load in addition to input failures. IE you need to hire Hoagie. If you give him 2.5 dollars he'll whine about it being not quite enough. Reload and give him the money again and he'll say that you gave him 5 dollars. Reload again and the integer unit is stable and requires just one quarter. These measurements persisting in this way is abnormal in a coding sense and can be exploited pretty easily, but I couldn't figure out how to use it to duplicate money. I'll get into this more in the next point.

4: Clothing. Clothing operates on a gacha pool with rare equipment (choker, skimpy swimsuit, panties, etc.) dicerolls lower than common (shirt, pants) equipment being spit out by the machine. In other games (Paprika Trainer) the clothes are just available in store and are unlocked as you become closer to the main cast of that game. In this game, it's done on a rolling die of a set of equipment which I believe changes based on when you access it. That's just a hunch based on 200+ rolls. IE it will not give you the skimpiest swimsuit, but it will spit out pants. The zip-up clothes are bugged and will not appear in game as overworld equipment or on the character in-game. In addition, any new clothes provided will not display in the over-world, so if it's not the default, then Abby and Kuki will be naked. The rolling die operates like Hoagie's coin system, so if you purchase an article of random clothing, exit the shop interface and reload, it will give you (2) of that clothing. I'm unsure if this can be exploited, but you can try if you like. If you exit directly after the gacha roll inside the shop window, it will randomize again if you reload. Clothing is very, very expensive at 5 dollars, which can take a full week of searching and repeated failures to find quarters. I don't know if gambling would have helped, but again I tried my best. I think that this cost is very high and it requires a lot of save scumming and work to obtain any item which is desired. I totalled 50 save-reloads just exploring the catalogue before I got the pink thong, exited the shop interface, and saved, loaded, and then continued rolling. A nice tidbit is that the Abby will comment on what she's wearing in specific (with the dev item label before hand) while Kuki is bugged. If Kuki is ass-naked, she'll have item code failures above her head while in the overworld and her sprites will bug in some encounters. Her dress-up dialogue bugs when she is stripped. Spoiler mechanic:
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5: Encounters. These are excellent and in character. I appreciate the work that went into these. They do operate on a rolling die, so if you make a mistake later, you won't be able to retrace your steps and the dialogue may change. Some of the later ones have bugged sprites. IE the background is missing and Kuki does not appear. It can be difficult to obtain skillpoint in a "precise" manner. Most of these points are obtained through encounters and their results are between nothing and the one you want. I appreciate the dev adding the "+" next to skill points in the inventory later after the demo ends to see interactions more easily.

6: Minigames and story: I like that Tropic does an Akabur and breaks the 4th wall sometimes. The minigames are incomplete. So far as consistency stands, I like it. It feels like every movement forward is natural. The exploration mechanic is really dangerous. There hasn't been a scenario where I was able to explore more than 3 rooms without progress loss /(personal injury), but something about it is endearing. It can be frustrating to lose everything so randomly when the game has so many dice-rolls. Say I get earrings / candy / money. I can't just save at that location and cross my fingers. If the option to go further doesn't appear, I am forced to continue but unable to enjoy what was given to me during the event.

TL;DR I think it's great. It needs some hammering out along the edges but in general it's a lot of fun, and I want more. If you read the people above, I don't know if there's consumer confidence in the development team's cohesion, its fallings out, or the future consistency of artistic stylization due to those details, but I understand from other games that it's not really clear what's happening behind the corporate veil. I can only wish for the best.

Tropic, speaking directly to you, these are not criticisms of your work or your person, but there are things which can be done to greatly enhance your game. The gacha roll system on specifically clothes and the explore event could be a little easier to navigate, and I expect from in-game mentions that the minigames are under way. I expect awesome things in the future, and I hope that you do well. If you have the consistent time and effort investment and people like what you're producing, this could be one of the best games out right now. Good luck.
 
Last edited:

tropic

Newbie
Aug 14, 2016
21
18
Okay, I have played and therefore feel like I have realistic points of legitimate criticism. Not "abrasive" or "abusive" criticisms, but rather just observations about game-play. I'm writing "War and Peace", and no part of it should be considered an attack or direct unfair criticism. Simply what the game is and how it operates.

1: Obtaining money is different than what I'm used to. Exploring is only available for a larger fraction of the game and yields results ranging from time waste to maybe a couple quarters and a candy. Sending team-mates to obtain money is a crap shoot based on their mood and the time of day, and can result in anything from "I got nothing" to "here's a dollar". The time of day actually does matter. The best time of day I could find is early/late afternoon. Morning, evening or night and your team-mates will revolt or outright refuse, with the girls being especially angry. Men are better at being cleaning-slaves and less volatile than women. I couldn't access the gambling mechanic after purchase with my KND number input, and there were no quest steps forward to fix the machine by talking to hoagie, scanning the environment, or talking to anyone else. I'm unsure if this is for number storage and generation reasons mentioned further below. I'm unsure if it would have been helpful, but I tried my best during my 10 hour playthrough.

2: The girls take some TLC to speak to and interact with. They won't like you if you're an ass and bother them/ get overly personal when they're angry. Some items are a dice roll if they even enjoy them. If Kuki is upset and you give her money, she'll say her parents fight over money and you'll get nothing. If Kuki is doing somewhat alright, she'll take money but only if it's enough to buy something of value. The success of certain actions is dependent upon their mood and doing something they don't like drastically affects their task performance and behavior around the game world. Abby loves candy and will say as such, but if she's really, really angry then it's best to wait 3 days and then offer her candy just before she "calms down". This isn't princess trainer and their woes are not solved with chocolate and a whisper of a sweet nothing. In terms of the game itself and the characters, I'm selfish, and I don't want #4 within 30 yards of Kuki. I like how in character they are, though. It really brought back some positive childhood memories, and I ended up watching some KND videos on YouTube afterward.

3: The way stored numbers are stored is coded differently than what I've come to expect and will result in item duplication/persistence on save/load in addition to input failures. IE you need to hire Hoagie. If you give him 2.5 dollars he'll whine about it being not quite enough. Reload and give him the money again and he'll say that you gave him 5 dollars. Reload again and the integer unit is stable and requires just one quarter. These measurements persisting in this way is abnormal in a coding sense and can be exploited pretty easily, but I couldn't figure out how to use it to duplicate money. I'll get into this more in the next point.

4: Clothing. Clothing operates on a gacha pool with rare equipment (choker, skimpy swimsuit, panties, etc.) dicerolls lower than common (shirt, pants) equipment being spit out by the machine. In other games (Paprika Trainer) the clothes are just available in store and are unlocked as you become closer to the main cast of that game. In this game, it's done on a rolling die of a set of equipment which I believe changes based on when you access it. That's just a hunch based on 200+ rolls. IE it will not give you the skimpiest swimsuit, but it will spit out pants. The zip-up clothes are bugged and will not appear in game as overworld equipment or on the character in-game. In addition, any new clothes provided will not display in the over-world, so if it's not the default, then Abby and Kuki will be naked. The rolling die operates like Hoagie's coin system, so if you purchase an article of random clothing, exit the shop interface and reload, it will give you (2) of that clothing. I'm unsure if this can be exploited, but you can try if you like. If you exit directly after the gacha roll inside the shop window, it will randomize again if you reload. Clothing is very, very expensive at 5 dollars, which can take a full week of searching and repeated failures to find quarters. I don't know if gambling would have helped, but again I tried my best. I think that this cost is very high and it requires a lot of save scumming and work to obtain any item which is desired. I totalled 50 save-reloads just exploring the catalogue before I got the pink thong, exited the shop interface, and saved, loaded, and then continued rolling. A nice tidbit is that the Abby will comment on what she's wearing in specific (with the dev item label before hand while Kuki is bugged. If Kuki is ass-naked, she'll have item code failures above her head while in the overworld and her sprites will bug in some encounters. Her dress-up dialogue bugs when she is stripped.

5: Encounters. These are excellent and in character. I appreciate the work that went into these. They do operate on a rolling die, so if you make a mistake later, you won't be able to retrace your steps and the dialogue may change. Some of the later ones have bugged sprites. IE the background is missing and Kuki does not appear. It can be difficult to obtain skillpoint in a "precise" manner. Most of these points are obtained through encounters and their results are between nothing and the one you want. I appreciate the dev adding the "+" next to skill points in the inventory later after the demo ends to see interactions more easily.

6: Minigames and story: I like that Tropic does an Akabur and breaks the 4th wall sometimes. The minigames are incomplete. So far as consistency stands, I like it. It feels like every movement forward is natural. The exploration mechanic is really dangerous. There hasn't been a scenario where I was able to explore more than 3 rooms without progress loss /(personal injury), but something about it is endearing. It can be frustrating to lose everything so randomly when the game has so many dice-rolls. Say I get earrings / candy / money. I can't just save at that location and cross my fingers. If the option to go further doesn't appear, I am forced to continue but unable to enjoy what was given to me during the event.

TL;DR I think it's great. It needs some hammering out along the edges but in general it's a lot of fun, and I want more. If you read the people above, I don't know if there's consumer confidence in the development team's cohesion, its fallings out, or the future consistency of artistic stylization due to those details, but I understand from other games that it's not really clear what's happening behind the corporate veil. I can only wish for the best.

Tropic, speaking directly to you, these are not criticisms of your work or your person, but there are things which can be done to greatly enhance your game. The gacha roll system on specifically clothes and the explore event could be a little easier to navigate, and I expect from in-game mentions that the minigames are under way. I expect awesome things in the future, and I hope that you do well. If you have the consistent time and effort investment and people like what you're producing, this could be one of the best games out right now. Good luck.
Actually really do appreciate this. Has a lot of insight, you could have just said "ur gay" and I would have been fine with that, but telling me on what I need to improve is actually really helpful since I don't have a lot of testers and tend to just do things based on how I believe them to work, which oftentimes ends up confusing for the person on the other end of the screen.
A lot of the mechanics like "the gacha roll" are just something I threw in there because I didn't know where else to fit all the clothing items. They're not really intended as a "games" systems or anything.

My general idea with this build is just to see if I'm going in the right direction or not, and what I should improve on, and a lot of these posts like yours are extremely helpful on what I should focus on and what I should change as I keep going forward. So really thanks for that. I appreciate feedback way more than anything else.
 
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Deskitteh

Member
Apr 6, 2018
160
419
Actually really do appreciate this. Has a lot of insight, you could have just said "ur gay" and I would have been fine with that, but telling me on what I need to improve is actually really helpful since I don't have a lot of testers and tend to just do things based on how I believe them to work, which oftentimes ends up confusing for the person on the other end of the screen.
A lot of the mechanics like "the gacha roll" are just something I threw in there because I didn't know where else to fit all the clothing items. They're not really intended as a "games" systems or anything.

My general idea with this build is just to see if I'm going in the right direction or not, and what I should improve on, and a lot of these posts like yours are extremely helpful on what I should focus on and what I should change as I keep going forward. So really thanks for that. I appreciate feedback way more than anything else.
Thank you very much! I really think you have something here. Some ago I watched you working on h-game threads with some curiosity and, when I saw your name here, I did a double-take. I really don't know if there is such a thing as positive feedback from a traditional image board. People quote Four-Leaf studios, and their work Katawa Shoujo, but that was a closed team working in-tandem in the traditional sense as opposed to publicly working on a build. I think the last thing I saw you discussing there was the initial development of the outfit system.

You can see what I wrote above a few days ago, where all the thread NPCs could muster was ">tropic", "cuck game." I never really understood image board culture, but between you and towerdev/towerfag, you have probably had your hands full.

I'm unsure if mentioning a development discord as an idea is against F95 TOS, but I will anyway. A discord server with a "bug report" section and a "ideas and feedback section" is a good starting point for your game's wider community. Since this is essentially an alpha public forum build, it would be wise to seek information about specific instances of bugs and their causes there. In addition, the kind of people who lurk a discord could provide positive feedback and act as a sounding board for your development intentions. Consistency with public information and tidbits about what's happening will do a lot for public goodwill. You'll notice that the most transparent devs tend to be very well regarded here.

On a genuinely positive note, I'm looking forward to what you have cooking.
 
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ARGADONM

Newbie
Dec 6, 2017
46
12
Hey, so i keep getting the quest of "25 and 5's big adventure", but it doesnt unlock on the tracker. Hence I cant progress
 

tropic

Newbie
Aug 14, 2016
21
18
Hey, so i keep getting the quest of "25 and 5's big adventure", but it doesnt unlock on the tracker. Hence I cant progress
It's near the end of the game at the end of Talk.
It's supposed to be individual 1 on 1 missions you can do with each of the character, but I didn't get around to making other bg's for "Out of Treehouse" actions.
Sorry. Just ignore it for now.
 

ARGADONM

Newbie
Dec 6, 2017
46
12
It's near the end of the game at the end of Talk.
It's supposed to be individual 1 on 1 missions you can do with each of the character, but I didn't get around to making other bg's for "Out of Treehouse" actions.
Sorry. Just ignore it for now.
Copy that boss
 

tropic

Newbie
Aug 14, 2016
21
18
The "Polluted Computer" and "Slimed Couch" are also unfinished right?
Uh huh. They're supposed to be more interactive but I just didn't have the CG required to make them as good as I want them, so I had to put disable them from being started for now.
porn flodding.png The polluted computer is supposed to be Bonzi Buddy trying to get Kuki to do lewd stuff for the Camera and Couch Slime was supposed to be an investigation type of quest.
I'll make it more apparent which quests are able to be solved and which aren't in my next build, I'm doing quick fixes to make stuff more obvious.
 
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4.40 star(s) 5 Votes