Posted April 13, 2025
Hi,
after having played Ep.1+2, here some feedback. First the stuff that, to me personally, needs improvement.
1) The writing: it's bloated. A lot of the time, especially with the main character's inner monologue, ideas are repeated over and over and over. It just makes reading it tedious. E.g. the MC saying over and over that he hates his publisher doesn't make it more intense, it just makes him seem whiny, which is at odds with his - self-stated - despising of weakness. You could easily cut 30% of the word count without losing anything. To be honest, the last 20 minutes of my 2h30mins playthrough I started skipping the text. It's not because the subject matter or the situation isn't interesting, I just feel there's so much blabla inbetween the good bits. Trust the your audience to read between the lines. (e.g. the "the ones lying under your bed also count" line made me doubletake. That is solid writing. It's just hidden in so much blabla)
2) The main character: he is raging asshole. And partly inconsistent with his own character. To the "asshole" part: he is a walking trope of an emo: the world is so horrible, everyone is an egotist and being paranoid is good. Life is just shit. And repeats that ALL THE TIME. It gets old really quickly, and is, to me as the audience, far too obviously and often stated. It's like talking to someone and no matter the subject, that statement is "well, the world is rotten". It is cartoonishly one-note. I'm not opposed to a jaded and disillusioned MC but in its current form, his rambling makes him feel as if he is a try-hard teenage edgelord all the time. From what I understand he is not a teenager suffering from teenage angst, so this is not only annoying but also inconsistent with his character.
Also: when Samara is introduced, he behaves like a total creep. Don't get me wrong, I think his characterization while he is eyefucking that police officer works well. I get that part of the MC. But when Samara enters his house, the second thing he does is that he blackmails her to have intercourse. You what, mate? This comes totally out of left field. The MC tries to handwave this away as a kind of "test", but like nobody in the history of mankind would have gone for "I'll blackmail her into intercourse, and if she accepts too quickly she's up to something". I understand that there needs to be some "action" but this is not the way to do it. He could have a normal conversation - like e.g. asking the very obvious question where she came from other than "the road", if she wants to contact someone, why she is lost in the middle of the woods 50km away from the nearest part of civilisation - and during that talk getting turned on by her demure reactions. Her introduction currently is completely immersion-breaking as it makes zero sense in-universe. Her reactions, even if she has ulterior motives, seem to come from the planet Zeist too. Pure moon logic. This introduction is so important to the story as it establishes the baseline of their initial relationship, and it's a mess.
Several times he does things that are not consistent with what we have seen from him before. For example, after the first night he goes for a walk to clear his mind. We learn that after we have been told that she is what he considers perfect. So there is this perfect woman in this creep's house who just told him that she wants to please him and he...goes for a walk...are you sure about that? Because no, I don't think he would, especially since he himself pointed out that he can barely control himself the night before. Or that the first thing he did when he met her was to blackmail her. It seems to me that he does that because that is what the story needs to happen, not what would organically happen.
So what I, as the audience, got from the MC: he loves coffee; he hates everyone, especially women (an Andrew Tate stand-in); the world is all bad all the time; he is angry all the time; he likes to control people and is, from my reading, a sociopath devoid of empathy. As reader, I don't really empathize. And I feel that this is a problem. You want the audience to follow the MC -not necessarily root for him but at least follow him - not think to yourself: this guy is a raging sociopathic asshole who really needs shut up about being angry, awesome with the ladies and hating his employer.
What I found good:
1) The music and sound effects are effective, well done, and well positioned.
2) The CGs are very engaging. They are a little too sparse. You could/should add more CGs for each scene, but the ones which are there are, in their majority, quite charming.
3) The "looking around" moving camera is good.
4) The potential of the MC, as a jaded writer who has made a career of Andrew-Tate-ing women, living in an isolated house, is good. Just needs to be implemented better. Subtlety goes a long way.
5) Samara as a juxtaposition is a good idea, but again implementation needs more nuance. I get that she is a succubus-like character, but her behaviour is sometimes, as mentioned, straight out of GAGA land.
I'll check back once the game is complete. Keep up the good work.
after having played Ep.1+2, here some feedback. First the stuff that, to me personally, needs improvement.
1) The writing: it's bloated. A lot of the time, especially with the main character's inner monologue, ideas are repeated over and over and over. It just makes reading it tedious. E.g. the MC saying over and over that he hates his publisher doesn't make it more intense, it just makes him seem whiny, which is at odds with his - self-stated - despising of weakness. You could easily cut 30% of the word count without losing anything. To be honest, the last 20 minutes of my 2h30mins playthrough I started skipping the text. It's not because the subject matter or the situation isn't interesting, I just feel there's so much blabla inbetween the good bits. Trust the your audience to read between the lines. (e.g. the "the ones lying under your bed also count" line made me doubletake. That is solid writing. It's just hidden in so much blabla)
2) The main character: he is raging asshole. And partly inconsistent with his own character. To the "asshole" part: he is a walking trope of an emo: the world is so horrible, everyone is an egotist and being paranoid is good. Life is just shit. And repeats that ALL THE TIME. It gets old really quickly, and is, to me as the audience, far too obviously and often stated. It's like talking to someone and no matter the subject, that statement is "well, the world is rotten". It is cartoonishly one-note. I'm not opposed to a jaded and disillusioned MC but in its current form, his rambling makes him feel as if he is a try-hard teenage edgelord all the time. From what I understand he is not a teenager suffering from teenage angst, so this is not only annoying but also inconsistent with his character.
Also: when Samara is introduced, he behaves like a total creep. Don't get me wrong, I think his characterization while he is eyefucking that police officer works well. I get that part of the MC. But when Samara enters his house, the second thing he does is that he blackmails her to have intercourse. You what, mate? This comes totally out of left field. The MC tries to handwave this away as a kind of "test", but like nobody in the history of mankind would have gone for "I'll blackmail her into intercourse, and if she accepts too quickly she's up to something". I understand that there needs to be some "action" but this is not the way to do it. He could have a normal conversation - like e.g. asking the very obvious question where she came from other than "the road", if she wants to contact someone, why she is lost in the middle of the woods 50km away from the nearest part of civilisation - and during that talk getting turned on by her demure reactions. Her introduction currently is completely immersion-breaking as it makes zero sense in-universe. Her reactions, even if she has ulterior motives, seem to come from the planet Zeist too. Pure moon logic. This introduction is so important to the story as it establishes the baseline of their initial relationship, and it's a mess.
Several times he does things that are not consistent with what we have seen from him before. For example, after the first night he goes for a walk to clear his mind. We learn that after we have been told that she is what he considers perfect. So there is this perfect woman in this creep's house who just told him that she wants to please him and he...goes for a walk...are you sure about that? Because no, I don't think he would, especially since he himself pointed out that he can barely control himself the night before. Or that the first thing he did when he met her was to blackmail her. It seems to me that he does that because that is what the story needs to happen, not what would organically happen.
So what I, as the audience, got from the MC: he loves coffee; he hates everyone, especially women (an Andrew Tate stand-in); the world is all bad all the time; he is angry all the time; he likes to control people and is, from my reading, a sociopath devoid of empathy. As reader, I don't really empathize. And I feel that this is a problem. You want the audience to follow the MC -not necessarily root for him but at least follow him - not think to yourself: this guy is a raging sociopathic asshole who really needs shut up about being angry, awesome with the ladies and hating his employer.
What I found good:
1) The music and sound effects are effective, well done, and well positioned.
2) The CGs are very engaging. They are a little too sparse. You could/should add more CGs for each scene, but the ones which are there are, in their majority, quite charming.
3) The "looking around" moving camera is good.
4) The potential of the MC, as a jaded writer who has made a career of Andrew-Tate-ing women, living in an isolated house, is good. Just needs to be implemented better. Subtlety goes a long way.
5) Samara as a juxtaposition is a good idea, but again implementation needs more nuance. I get that she is a succubus-like character, but her behaviour is sometimes, as mentioned, straight out of GAGA land.
I'll check back once the game is complete. Keep up the good work.