I replayed the game just yesterday in preparation for this, and I was literally thinking at the end "Huh, it has been a while since we've seen Chop-Chop, hasn't it"! XD
ad240pCharlie
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Objectives definitely sound like a good plan. Since there is so much to do in the game, so many main and side characters to focus on and so many outside activities, it can often be difficult to balance them all. I often find myself realizing, "Hey, I haven't actually done anything with X in over 2 weeks" but then I'm already planning to do Y. Having something like this would make it easier to keep track of what would currently be the best choice.
See, one of the struggles of being a regular college student with no money whatsoever is the wish to support my favorite creators combined with the knowledge that whenever I DO get a stable income I'll have to make many difficult choices regarding WHO I'm going to start spending money on first, especially considering the list just keeps on growing. However, one thing I can 100 % be sure of is that you are certainly going to be the first on my mind!
After playing OIALT, I was already excited for this game. Yet, with only v0.1 and even more so with v0.2, you managed to take those expectations and not only deliver on them but make them look like a parking lot from the perspective of an airplane!
I may not be completely finished with the current content in the game yet, but I want to say a couple of thing before I get too sleep deprived to form coherent sentences. First of all, I've never actually managed to get a VN game after just its first version had been released, but obviously playing your first game made it an obvious thing to do. Therefore, I didn't really know what to expect from just v.01 and I do have to say that I didn't expect the current amount of content to be as large as it actually was. You must've been working your freaking ass off on this!
Secondly, just like your first game, the thing that sticks out the most is the humor. I may not be neither American nor British, but after analyzing different kinds of comedy, I would go ahead and say that the comedy style in both games are very typically British, and I honestly think that's been an advantage. It gives the humor an unusual "color", so to speak, without ever feeling like the originality is forced. And yes, I will still spell it like color, fight me!
And last but not least... Annie is freaking adorable!
Actually, that was a lie... That wasn't the "last" thing...
I absolutely love the gentle horror aspect you gave to both this game and Once in a Lifetime. As someone who loves horror games, I can say with brutal honesty that the night-sequence (that's the spoiler-free way of describing it) gave me more chills than most horror games do. Good job!
Here's my headcanon:
The romcom that the MC watches with Maria, Ashley and Hana was actually "supposed" to be a commentary about the cultural treatment of elves but the writers/directors were forced to take the political commentary out of the script by the executives in order to avoid public outrage.
After all, it's a pretty known idea that (in general) artists and entertainers as a whole tend to often be much more progressive than their time. Like gay people in media during the 80s and 90s. Sure, the portrayal of gay people back then may be offensive and stereotypical from our modern perspective but just the fact that most writers and authors included them at all and didn't portray their sexuality as inherently bad was still a very positive thing at the time.
I think the same applies to this world... The authors, writers, comedians and artists are the ones who will be the MOST likely to support Elvish liberation!
I absolutely agree. If it wasn't for the fact that the story is heavy at times, I don't think many of us would spend the double-digits amount of hours that this game takes. It's what keeps it engaging. So it wasn't a criticism by any means, just pointing out that after the emotional roller coaster this game has been recently, it was nice to have something a bit more toned down.
And as for how you did with the romantic aspect of the scene, it was great. It's so easy for writers to take "romance" too far and there's always a risk that it becomes cheesy in that case. You managed to avoid that. The romance was clearly there but still subtle.
The last few updates have all been very heavy emotionally, so Lin's new content in v0.13 really pleased me for that reason. I love when games are able to get me so emotionally invested as this one does, but it was nice to get a bit of a bit of a break from the more hard-hitting content and just casually spend some time with my girl.
I also struggled a lot, I was never able to figure out how to pick the right answer when catfishing as the psychologist. At one point I was even sure I tried every single possible way to do it but still ended up failing, and it wasn't until I checked the walkthrough that I was able to. It's a very tricky path to follow it seems.
At least personally, I have no problems with having to start the game over from scratch. I usually do that with new updates anyway (although, I often decide to make exceptions to that rule when a game has this much content already) and considering the intricacies of the story I think it will be good for me to start from the beginning anyway as it will make it easier to avoid some of the confusion that the first time can easily come with. Remembering all those names and details in the lore can be tricky after all.
I'm guessing this is something that is going to be fixed in future updates, but after the first scene with Cornwall was rewritten in v0.12 the following scenes don't really make a lot of sense. Maybe I didn't pick the right options so it could of course be that I just missed that part of the scene but the most obvious example is that even though there was no "competition" between the MC and Cornwall, Lin still says that she's sorry they couldn't win. Then there's also the fact that Lin explicitly says who Cornwall is during that scene but yet both her and the MC seem to not have known who he is when they are given the letter.
I get that this is what happens when scenes are remade after the fact and like I said I'm sure this will be updated later, I just thought it'd be good to point it out.
While this game definitely wouldn't be my favorite when it comes to the actual romance or the romancable characters, it makes it into my top 5 NSFW VNS because of the story, lore and especially the humor.
This is not to say that the actual dynamic between the MC and the romancable characters, or the characters themselves, are "bad", they're still better and more well-written than the majority of VNs. I just want to give credit where its due, and that's the comedy and the intriguing plotline.
I myself have pointed out that the MC is a bit TOO MUCH of a bland character at times in the execution of the game, but I also understand why it's made that way, something that I'd say Runey has been very open about. I would however agree that there should be an OPTION for some sort of personality in his character, maybe by a bit more dialogue options or ways to alter his reactions to certain things so I will give you that. However, the part about him being stupid for not figuring out certain things or not doing what we might consider the "smart" option might be annoying but understandable from the perspective of trying to write the story. Since he, according to the dev, is supposed to be whoever the player imagines him to be, then he can't canonically figure things out until it's guaranteed that the player has, and since some players will take longer than others to piece it together, the safest bet is to just have him be out of the loop until the reveal happens in-game.
Every sort of criticism is obviously going to be subjective to some degree, but it seems like a lot of people sometimes forget what "constructive criticism" actually means. It isn't just expressing your opinion in a polite manner, it's explaining WHY you think the way you do.
In a political debate, you can't just calmly claim that your opponent is wrong without providing EVIDENCE for it. Then you have to agree on what the goal of the political issue is and how "success" should be measured, otherwise you'd just be going back and forth. In a book, movie, game and any sort of narrative story, the "goal" of it is to reach what the creator intended, and the "success" is measured through how well that is being delivered to the consumer. If the criticism is "I don't like this kind of content, the game should be different", then that's certainly a fair opinion but it's not constructive. However, saying "If this is what you want out of the story, then maybe this narrative structure, this pacing, this scene or this way of doing it wasn't the best, and here's why it doesn't work!"
You need a perimeter from which to measure the the success of the story, and that perimeter should always be what the creator wanted out of it. You may not like what that vision was, and that's fine.
Let's take a different criticism. "I feel like this new update was a bit too heavily focused on the serious aspects of the story, and it felt like it could've done better with a little bit more lighthearted content to balance out the emotional scenes. It would give the player some time to take in what they just read and get them mentally ready for the next heavy parts." I may not actually agree with that particular criticism myself, but it's articulated in such a way that it takes what the point of the entire work is and what the writer wants and gives a suggestion on how that goal could've been reached more effectively.
To sum it up, every criticism is going to be somewhat subjective but the point of CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is to make is as LEAST subjective as possible, by everyone agreeing on certain guidelines and measurements from which to approach it.
I can understand the point that waltercool and LunarD3ATH are making, but I still agree with you. The direction the story ended up taking was certainly not something I would've expected at the start, and I can see how some people might be disapponted by that particular storyline getting so much focus in a game like this.
Making a game about a harem hotel, if the interactions with cute girls and sex scenes were all the game had to offer, would get a bit boring after a while so some more emotional and engaging content will be necessary if the game is gonna be as long as it currently is. Lots of great VNs end up including that kind of "surprise plotlines", Lucky Paradox and Once in a lifetime are two that come to mind for example.
And the idea of the revolution being started by someone who's just an immigrant hotel manager is probably the most fascinating part to me, and there are examples in history of social change being accomplished despite the movement being started by "nobodies" so it's not that far-fetched as one might think.
Something I'd like to ask is, how much of the content in the later parts of the story was planned early on? For example, when starting writing Lins story, was the idea already back then to have it develop to being primarily about the liberation? Did you know about Maria's genetic heritage when she was first introduced? Things like that.