Black Garden [Fantasy Adult RPG]

[FeyRing]

Black Garden is a free Adult fantasy RPG game about a young adventurer who gets defeated by the "Demon Lord" and is forced to become her minion. Starting at the lowest rank in the Demon Realm's army you are sent to a remote Goblin village to help with morale. You soon discover that the Demon Realm is populated mainly by lusty female Monster Girls and that your role as a minion of the lowest rank primarily involves being the village bicycle to raise morale and minion numbers for the Demon Realm's army. Will you rise through the ranks using your hard work and dedication, or will you sleep your way to the top and reclaim your stolen soul from the "Demon Lord"?

The game is not heavily plot focused and is designed to give players significant freedoms in how they approach their day to day lives as they build up their reputation with the locals and explore the ever expanding world.

Black Garden features a myriad of fetishes with the primary focus being on femdom. However, it is possible to avoid all sexual encounters by focusing on the exploration, farming and crafting aspects of the game.

Public Version of the game can be found here:

https://feyring.itch.io/black-garden

Patreon Version (you get an extra +1 point during character creation) can be found on my Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/BlackGarden

Spoiler: Splash Art

CONTROLS:

• [WASD] / Arrow Keys - Movement
• [SPACEBAR] / [ENTER] / [Z] - Confirm/Interact/Talk
• [ESCAPE] / [Numpad0] / [X] - Menu/Exit/Cancel
• [T] - Toggle Clock
• [SHIFT] - Sprint/Skip Text
• [F5] - Toggle Full Screen
• [F6] - Toggle Screen Size

Game Features!

-Name your character with your name, or perhaps the name of your neighbor that you secretly despise!

-A point buy character creation system with various skills, attributes, traits and flaws to pick from!

-A dynamic day and night cycle with various random weather effects that influence behaviour of NPCs, Enemies and some skills! Some examples include:

• Certain enemies only appear in certain weather and time conditions
• Certain NPCs are active only at day time
• Certain skills work better under the cover of the night

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Find randomly generated Treasure and Resources on the maps each day!

-Gather materials from the wild using a selection of skills or just forage for various loose items on the forest floor!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Collect seeds in the wild or buy them when available from a merchant to grow your own plants on a farm!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Craft gear and consumables to upgrade and strengthen yourself using six crafting professions!

• Cooking (various restorative food items)
• Artifice (jewelry and wands)
• Alchemy (potions and bombs)
• Smithing (armour and weapons)
• Tailoring (clothing and plushies)
• Construction (buildings and furniture)

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Head out at night to tackle dangerous enemies!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Realise that you are under-geared and get your ass kicked! Enjoy the consequences!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Build up your reputation with the locals by doing menial tasks for them!

-Or Whore yourself out at the local Brothel!

-Or rob them blind and then pay the price when you are caught!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Check your stats with the locals!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Once you get close enough with the NPCs, you can make them wear slutty armour, cute dresses or nothing at all! NPC status can change based on interactions you have with them.

-Collect various fetishes from your naughty experiences and do your best to keep them low for the fear of losing yourself and getting permanently enslaved!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-A selection of skills with specialisations that you can level up at any time with experience you get along your journey! Allowing you to interact with the world in more exciting ways!

-Different Experience pools that allow you to level up your skills dependent on whether they are Craft, Battle or Bedroom focused!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Buy or craft various furniture to decorate your house with!

-Find "husbands" for the local maidens to fill the village with offspring! Or volunteer yourself for that job instead!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

Woo the local heroines, complete their quests and build up your relationship!

• Heroines (currently only one) can be romanced and married
• Visit the Heroines at night to have some fun
• Don't neglect them or your relationship will dip!
• If neglected for too long they will seek out lovers elsewhere

Spoiler: Screen Shots

-Don't like a heroine? Not a problem, you can still complete her quest route without sleeping with her! Simply find a husband for her instead!

-A Diary that keeps track of your traits and flaws as well as your first bedroom experiences!

Spoiler: Screen Shots

Current Scenes:

• M/F
• M/M/F
• Reverse Gangbang (multiple females on one male)
• Goblins
• Werewolves
• Werebats
• Slimes
• Succubi
• Tengu
• Enslavement
• Impregnation
• Prostitution (male for females)
• Virgins
• Milfs
• Femdom
• Footjobs

Planned content for next releases:

• New map
• New Heroine
  
• Bug fixes

Future planned content:

• More skills or specialisations (fishing etc...)
• More villages and maps
• More Heroines
• More sidekicks/party members
• More enemies
  
• Transformations (Werewolf/Incubus/Vampire/Plant... and more)
• More custom made art to replace some of the default placeholders)
• More clothes and costumes to gift to NPCs
• Less bugs!

Version Alpha 0.1.6b Changelog:

Spoiler: Alpha 0.1.6b

Change Log 0.1.6b:

• Aria will now accept clothing and you can dress her up or strip her down!
• Goblin Merchant will now accept commissions on her stock, allowing you to manipulate her selection for your next visit.
• The Goblin that gives you the basic introduction to Farming will now provide you with five Potato Seeds if you listen to her explanation.
• Volume Controls have been added to the Menu.
• You can now replay Saffron's Brothel Scene from her Night Time Menu but you must first encounter that scene after the game update.
• Forest Chest has been relocated to Emerald Road's hidden glade area, a new Forest Key has been placed in the chest's former location.
• Fixed Bugs related to the new Tool functions.

Change Log 0.1.6a:

• Ability to Impregnate Aria if you are Married to her. She will have the pregnant variant of her bust art and a pregnant variant of the CG in the scene where you bend her over the Cauldron, there are a few lines of text added to that scene as well. A few days after impregnation, she will lay an Egg, which you can find on her bed.
• You can interact with the Egg to help it hatch sooner, otherwise it's Incubation will increase passively each day.
• Once the Egg hatches, your Tengu daughter will run around the second floor during the Day and sleep in the bed at Night. If both ends of the bed are taken up by Aria and your Daughter, you wont be able to sleep in it.
• You can help raise your Daughter by giving her Toys as Gifts, Playing with her and Tutoring her. Once all of her 3 bars are filled, you will be able to impregnate Aria again to start the whole process from stage one. Aria will refuse to get pregnant until her daughter is fully raised!
• Once you have 2+ daughters with Aria, they will sometimes visit the store and play around outside.
• A Search function has been added to the Item Menu, courtesy of greenarrow25. You can use keyboard input to type out the item name. Once you Searched for the Item, you can assign a Hotkey to it as well instead of using it.
• Cucumbers have been added as farm-able plants along with one recipe for them. Seeds for Cucumbers can be bought of the Goblin Merchant as with all the other Vegetable Seeds.
• Most of the farm-able plants have been changed to allow you to walk through them, this includes plants that spawn in the wild. Bushes and Trees will still block pathing. Keep in mind, if you already had plants on your farm or in the wild, those will function as before and you wont be able to move through them until you gather them and they are replanted/respawned.
• Stardust has been added to the game, it spawns at Night like various other Misc Spawns (eg: Eggs, Feathers). Aria has a new Recipe stashed away in her Bookcases that teaches a new way to make Catalyst Potions using Stardust.
• Mortar & Pestle, Chopping Board/Table and Tanning Knife have been reworked to use the crafting interface to replace the buggy interface they had before.
• Thesis weapons have been buffed to give +2 INT.

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IMPORTANT NOTE!!
If you have edited the save files or are using any mods that add items that can move you from one map to the other, make sure these Items turn [OFF] Switch 239 BEFORE you move the character from the map to a new location, failure to do so will trigger an old lighting related bug that will cause you to delete saves whenever you try to save the game.

Furthermore, if you teleport from Emerald Falls or from inside your home and you have lighting furniture, you must also turn Switch 240 [ON] as failure to do so can trigger the bug as well if the lights were on.

If you have never edited the save files or used any mods, disregard the above as the base game should do that by default, however, if you DO encounter that your saves are being deleted, please report the bug as soon as you can!

=============================================================

 

[bullcrush]

looks solid, lets see how it evolves from here

 

[Jash]

This looks and sounds absolutely amazing. It already looked right up my alley, but as soon as I saw the pregnant goblin girl CG, I was absolutely sold.

My main concern is that you've made it a bit too ambitious. That is a LOT of gameplay mechanics and story content you've described, and unless you have a large team backing you up (which is risky when you're starting from 0 on Patreon) you run the risk of promising far more than you can deliver in less than a decade of development. But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

EDIT: Here's your first bit of feedback, though- the controls suck. At first I was put out to discover there was no controller support (something I assumed came standard on all RPGmaker games) but then I struggled to actually start the game. It took a lot of experimentation to discover that you'd bound 'Confirm' to Z rather than the more usual Enter- and I couldn't even find this out until after I'd run my fingers all the way down my keyboard, because the controls list only appeared after I'd managed to select New Game. Please enable controller support. I hate moving with my right hand- it's backwards.

Performance is a bit dodgy too, in the little I played. When you have to warn players about the game's tendency to lag and the need to restart to fix it in the intro, you have a problem- in which case, only allowing you to save in limited locations probably isn't a good idea.

 

[Stemwinder]

Now -that's- how you do an opening post.

 

[FeyRing]

Thank you for your replies!

Here's your first bit of feedback, though- the controls suck.

Fair enough! The control scheme got automatically set by the hot-bar script and I have been struggling to reset it back to normal. I'll try to fiddle with it more and see if I can't revert it back to normal. I will edit my opening post with controls section until I get this fixed.

EDIT: I have rebound the movement Keys to WASD and "Talk/Interact" key to SPACEBAR, and the "Menu/Cencel" key to ENTER... though I can rebind it to ESC instead, which would be preferable?
(I haven't updated the download yet just fishing for opinions on keyboard layout for now)

Please enable controller support. I hate moving with my right hand- it's backwards.

I personally never used one myself so I didn't really think about it, but I will try to get this done too!

Performance is a bit dodgy too, in the little I played. When you have to warn players about the game's tendency to lag and the need to restart to fix it in the intro, you have a problem- in which case, only allowing you to save in limited locations probably isn't a good idea.

From my personal experience in the game, that lag only happens at the very start of the game until you get teleported into the forest, so it shouldn't really happen after that. It seems to be linked to holding down "SHIFT" and fast skipping text at the start when a lot of scripts are being initialised in the background. In the current version, the game can be saved everywhere, though I don't advise saving anywhere near enemy NPCs, because reloading the game next to them can lead to a crash sometimes. It is also pointless because enemies are regenerated when you enter the map, and loading the game counts as re-entering the map.

 

[Incuboss]

Okay, I'll start off by noting that I usually hate RPG-styled eroge. I gave this one a shot because the plot concept seemed fun and the visuals looked great. The main reason for that is present in this game; I abhor having to use the keyboard to interact with the game. Having to rely on the keyboard really impedes a "one hand free" kind of gameplay, which is pretty important to a game like this. It's compounded by the fact that the action key is Z rather than Enter or Space. You have to use two hands to play this; one on the arrows and one on Z/Shift. Not good. If possible, I'd love to see a future installment allow for use of the mouse to near exclusivity if not exclusivity. Then you're just bombarded with tutorials and a really irritating way to do stat allocation.

I'm sorry, I gave up about 5 minutes into the game. I'm sure there's a lot of great content later on in the game, but first impressions matter a lot (at least for me when it comes to fap material). I'll probably come back to this when it's streamlined a bit more because it does seem interesting, but my ADD can't power through the controls and menus at the beginning.

 

[FeyRing]

Thank you for giving it a shot Incuboss, sorry it didn't suit you for now. I plan to rebind some of the keys to make it more comfortable to use and hopefully get a controller support. Unfortunately mouse support is unlikely (though not completely ruled out) as I haven't seen any VXACE scripts that wont break the rest of the game with it (yet).

Not sure what I can say about the tutorials and stat allocations, I had a few initial alpha testers complain that there were none so I added some in, maybe I overdid it a bit. I might try to write a script to handle the stat allocation in the future once I get a better grip on Ruby.

 

[Incuboss]

I definitely don't advocate no tutorials. Though some of it can definitely be kind of "on the job training", if that makes any sense. So, in other words, save some of the explanations for when that thing is actually happening in game for the first time. What I might also suggest though that can ease the beginning would be to have one screen where you do all of your stats rather than having to go through the items and look around for what things do. Here's an example from another game (Monster Girl Dreams for those who are curious):

Obviously the stats are different, but you can see it's all kind of on one screen and if you mouse over the stat (or click it, whichever works), it tells you what it does.

Regarding the controls, a potential option if mouse controls are too laborious to implement is to rebind everything and remove the sprint feature (making that speed the default rather than an extra button to hold down). At that point, I would advise two different bindings depending on different playstyles (or just the option for the player to rebind the keys wherever they want it); one with WASD and Z/X/Space, and the other with the arrows, Shift, Enter, and right 0.

Anyway, I hope it didn't seem like I was coming down too hard on the game. I'm still gonna keep an eye on this one because you do have some good stuff to work with here, and it seems like you're making consistent strides to make your game more palatable to your players. Always a good sign.

 

[FeyRing]

That stat allocation screen looks quite juicy. I certainly hope I can get something like this made, but it may take some time. I can get the graphical aspect drawn pretty quickly but figuring out Ruby script is a different story. It will be worth making something like it for sure though.

As for controls, I have been musing over the idea of making the sprint a sort of toggle "on or off" feature in the options. I'm not sure if it is possible to have more than one binding set up but I'll mess around with it and see what I can do!

Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions! (And for introducing me to a rather interesting looking monster girl game!)

 

[CleansingFire]

Monster Girl Dreams is done in RenPy that's based on Python and scripting, including creating a custom interface, is at least an order of magnitude easier than in RPGMaker VX Ace.

Anyway, my impressions of the game:

It's grindy as fuck. It's more grindy than Peasant's Quest. Different choices during character creation can change some of the gridny-ness, but it's still very grindy.

If I understood correctly what happened during my first attempt at play, it's possible to miss the very existence of skills and exit character creation without choosing any.

The only skilltrees that can be unlocked in the first (and only so far) village are Mining and Smithing. If the player hasn't unlocked any others during character creation, they have no chance of acquiring them. And there's content gated behind certain skills. Including climbing vines, a basic action in most RPGMaker games, which is a sub-skill of Athleticism here. Recovery items are a problem unless you pick up Cooking or Alchemy, and it seems that you can't practice Alchemy until you grind up your way to buying an alchemy table (if the random merchant offers it - see below).

Speaking of skills, when I finally ground my way to Blacksmithing, my hopes of acquiring better equipment were dashed - you need to use the skill to level it up, and apparently at the starting level the player character can produce only Scrap. This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the fact that a single piece of scrap uses up at least one Iron Bar (that has to be dug up as ore and smelted), produces only one point of Smithing experience, and reaching the next level of the skill requires 300 points. And to top it all, using the skill involves a delay in real time, instead of in the in-game clock.

The only generalist merchant changes randomly changes her wares every day. Which is an... interesting design choice, but it becomes really annoying when it turns out that there's a quest that requires an item that most players can get only from a specific state of the store. There are at least 10 and all seem to have equal probability.

It's hard to discover the gift-for-named-character mechanic - I realized it exists by chance, about 4 hours into the game. As the only interface elements that appeared involved with Gifts were the menu option of random goblins, I had assumed that gift-giving happens only through menus.

The handing of the rat killing quest is weird - it's possible to have let's say 10 rats killed, report and receive a reward for the first 5 and then the other 5 rat tails are ignored, as if you are starting the quest from 0. I think it's the same way with the webs, though I haven't bothered testing.

General suggestion: add a Quest Log.

Another general suggestion: make clearer indications which parts of the game are not yet finished/usable, including locations (e.g. the caves) and items (e.g. torches).

I am curious if the author(s) have playtested the game without cheats at all.

 

[futatiger]

how do I get skills?!! I cant even mine STONE!!! also any tips on loosing your character's virginity? I would love to work at the brothel but cant

 

[FeyRing]

Thank you for the extensive feedback, I will try to address these points! (Not necessarily in order)

If I understood correctly what happened during my first attempt at play, it's possible to miss the very existence of skills and exit character creation without choosing any.

That is correct! I have had a play-through with no skills at all once and it was extremely grindy!

The only skilltrees that can be unlocked in the first (and only so far) village are Mining and Smithing. If the player hasn't unlocked any others during character creation, they have no chance of acquiring them.

That is not entirely true. All skills can be acquired in the game. The Athletics skill is the reward for completing the Quest in the Tower for finding 20 Honeys. The Alchemy skill is rewarded for completing Saffron's quest line. White Magic can be learned from the Priest traveler by donating 10g (10000 Copper). Guile, Athletics, Black Magic, Agriculture, Charisma, Perception can be learned from Thief, Fighter, Mage, Student, Swordsman and Soldier respectively if you capture them and donate them as slaves to the Goblin Households. Cooking, Artifice, Tailoring and Construction, as well as some of the above already mentioned, can be acquired as rare drops from chests.

In the future there will be more ways to acquire the skills as the game expands, but at the moment those are the ways.

Speaking of skills, when I finally ground my way to Blacksmithing, my hopes of acquiring better equipment were dashed - you need to use the skill to level it up, and apparently at the starting level the player character can produce only Scrap. This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the fact that a single piece of scrap uses up at least one Iron Bar (that has to be dug up as ore and smelted), produces only one point of Smithing experience, and reaching the next level of the skill requires 300 points. And to top it all, using the skill involves a delay in real time, instead of in the in-game clock.

You misunderstood the crafting process a bit. You don't need to wait for the progress bar to fill up you have to quickly hit "Accept" when the bar turns green, if you miss the moment when it is green, your crafting fails and you get scrap instead of what you were crafting! (Incidentally you can click on Scrap in your menu to salvage it, it sometimes gives some materials back).

...Though I guess I could have explained it better in game.

The only generalist merchant changes randomly changes her wares every day. Which is an... interesting design choice, but it becomes really annoying when it turns out that there's a quest that requires an item that most players can get only from a specific state of the store. There are at least 10 and all seem to have equal probability.

She was mostly meant as a way to get the items in case the person couldn't craft them themselves. I might need to look for more alternative ways to acquire the items in the future.

It's hard to discover the gift-for-named-character mechanic - I realized it exists by chance, about 4 hours into the game. As the only interface elements that appeared involved with Gifts were the menu option of random goblins, I had assumed that gift-giving happens only through menus.

I'll try to add another Tutorial manual for this, I actually forgot to add one to be honest.

The handing of the rat killing quest is weird - it's possible to have let's say 10 rats killed, report and receive a reward for the first 5 and then the other 5 rat tails are ignored, as if you are starting the quest from 0. I think it's the same way with the webs, though I haven't bothered testing.

I'll take a look at this and will probably change it in next build.

General suggestion: add a Quest Log.

This is on my "To-Do" list!

Another general suggestion: make clearer indications which parts of the game are not yet finished/usable, including locations (e.g. the caves) and items (e.g. torches).

Will do!

I am curious if the author(s) have playtested the game without cheats at all.

Yes I had three playthroughs each lasting between 20 and 30 hours each. But I guess i knew the game inside out so I knew what to expect/do.

It's grindy as fuck. It's more grindy than Peasant's Quest. Different choices during character creation can change some of the gridny-ness, but it's still very grindy.

I am hoping that as the playable area expands and more content is added that I will be able to dilute down some of the grindy aspect. Some of the current "numbers" in game are more of a placeholder as balancing is a difficult task... at least for me.

========================================================================================

how do I get skills?!! I cant even mine STONE!!! also any tips on loosing your character's virginity? I would love to work at the brothel but cant

You could have taken Skills during character creation! However, if you didn't, you can learn Mining from a Goblin NPC that stands right near the entrance to the Mines. As for the rest of the Skills just read my above answer to CleansingFire to the second quote!

Also, you can lose your Virginity by either going out at Night into the Emerald Forest and losing to a Werewolf (but this will permanently decrease your will power by 1 point), OR you can Flirt with any of the Goblin NPCs in the village and hope they take an interest in you and ask you to fuck them.

You could also get "Drunk" and that may be enough to lower your inhibition, unless you took the "Arrogant" Flaw at the start of the game or the "Noble" background, but Flirting is probably the easier and more cost efficient way.

 

[Incuboss]

I'll admit, I know absolute dick about coding (I'm currently in the process of learning), so I don't know how unrealistic my feedback is. I'm coming at it purely from a derpy gamer perspective.

 

[futatiger]

how do you find travelers? I keep going to the road but I cant find a single person

 

[Enigma]

how do you find travelers? I keep going to the road but I cant find a single person

Try the forest too, I got killed by a bandit when I found them though so be very cautious.

Also my feedback, the concept is great, but it needs some refinement, like I for the life of me can't figure out if I need a location to use the construction skill or if its just in the recipe menu. I think a little more description on how to use the skills would be helpful, as well as tips on how to acquire new ones in the helpful book as I have wandered around a bunch and had no idea the other skills could even be acquired.

Also I have to agree that current values for things feel very grindy, especially since its kind of hard to earn money early game.

tldr: Good start but needs some quality of life to help prevent confusion early on.

 

[futatiger]

his is one of the better games found here both in terms of writing for the scenes and what little dialogue I've found. but also concept {because dominate goblin women are amazing}. that said this really needs both a tutorial and a questlog. given this is the first version their absence is understandable. plus on a minor note can you make the mine brighter? all in all 9.5 out of 10. I look forward to more.

 

[FeyRing]

I'll admit, I know absolute dick about coding (I'm currently in the process of learning), so I don't know how unrealistic my feedback is. I'm coming at it purely from a derpy gamer perspective.

Me too! I started making this over a year ago without knowing how to even use RPG Maker, let alone any coding, but I'm sure I'll grasp Ruby soon enough!

Try the forest too, I got killed by a bandit when I found them though so be very cautious.

That is correct, the Travelers can appear both in the forest and on the road map! They have only a "Once/Day" check on them per map and have a low chance of spawning, so if one didn't spawn on a given day on the map then the next check wont happen till tomorrow. They also have an even lower chance to spawn if it's raining and zero chance to spawn at night.

Not all of them need to be fought though, the Student traveler for example will run away if attacked, you can either Intimidate him to give up or use an Invisibility potion and hit him over the head while Invisible!

Also my feedback, the concept is great, but it needs some refinement, like I for the life of me can't figure out if I need a location to use the construction skill or if its just in the recipe menu. I think a little more description on how to use the skills would be helpful, as well as tips on how to acquire new ones in the helpful book as I have wandered around a bunch and had no idea the other skills could even be acquired.

You need a Construction Work Bench to use Construction to make furniture, it is sometimes sold by the Goblin Merchant, can be acquired from chests as a rare drop, or you can guilt trip the Goblin that looted your house at the start of the game into giving you one, but you need the Persuasion skill in order for that option to even appear when she runs out of your house.

I'll definitely add some more Helpful Manuals to describe the crafting System some more as well as the Gifting system!

Also I have to agree that current values for things feel very grindy, especially since its kind of hard to earn money early game.

Certain skills like Agriculture, which lets you grow your own plants, and Guile that lets you lock-pick, or just whoring out at the Brothel have significantly higher monetary gain, but I'll need to think how to balance some of the numbers better or maybe create more opportunities for other ways of earning money faster.

tldr: Good start but needs some quality of life to help prevent confusion early on.

that said this really needs both a tutorial and a questlog. given this is the first version their absence is understandable.

It's good to know, I suppose I'll try to focus on polishing some of the early on game play to remove the confusion for now! I have an idea of how I might approach a Quest Log for now, it might not be perfect but I'll put one in and see what people think.

plus on a minor note can you make the mine brighter?

To be honest I am rather hesitant to do that, I wanted the Mines to be quite Dark and only illuminated in certain areas as normal Caves (Once they are implemented) will be even darker and will require torches or a lantern to move through. You will be able to use the Torches and Lantern in the Mines too so that might make things easier to see.

Also, I'm really happy you liked the dommy Goblins!

 

[futatiger]

where do you get underwear? the brothel customers keep asking for them but my character has none to give.

 

[FeyRing]

where do you get underwear? the brothel customers keep asking for them but my character has none to give.

That's not implemented yet. There are no negative consequences for not giving any.

 

[Al Gore]

Very solid game, most rpgs are too linear and boring for me but the fetish, impregnation, and diverse skill systems of this game are great. The biggest areas of improvement I can see would be to make the loading screens in the forest shorter since they're kind of a drag at the moment and to make skill point gain less grindy since it takes ages of grinding to level even one skill to a decent usable level. Also the rare drops and spawns like honey on hornets and the rate of traveler spawns might be a little too rare adding to the grindyness. Beyond that, great job with this rpg so far.

 

[FeyRing]

Very solid game, most rpgs are too linear and boring for me but the fetish, impregnation, and diverse skill systems of this game are great.

Thank you! I'm glad you like them! I prefer sandbox rpgs myself as well!

he biggest areas of improvement I can see would be to make the loading screens in the forest shorter since they're kind of a drag at the moment

They mostly exist to cover up the fact that some items pop into existence when the map starts, I plan to add an option to disable them altogether for those that don't mind seeing NPCs and clutter items pop out of thin air in the first 2 seconds.

make skill point gain less grindy since it takes ages of grinding to level even one skill to a decent usable level.

Most skills actually don't offer anything beyond level 2 at the moment despite being capped at 5. At 5 they give a title and one attribute point (Like artifice at level 5 gives +1 Intelligence). I was hoping to cap the whole game at 5 for most skills. I think some people are compelled to level them to 5 so they feel like it becomes really grindy at higher levels, but it's mostly because the leveling content for those levels doesn't actually exist yet.

Also the rare drops and spawns like honey on hornets and the rate of traveler spawns might be a little too rare adding to the grindyness.

I plan to increase the drop rate of Honey at the very least. Though even now, once the player repairs the bridge in the forest they can find a whole field of giant Beehives that yield quite large quantities of Honey.

The Traveler spawn rate actually goes up quite significantly when they are needed for a quest step, like when Saffron asks you to get the Scroll from the Priest or the Student to offer to the Witch. I also plan to remove the spawn check at night, this should increase the likelihood of them spawning if the player accidentally walked into those maps before 8am.

 

[Obscure]

How, and why, did you disable controller support?

 

[FeyRing]

How, and why, did you disable controller support?

I didn't do it deliberately, I suspect it got disable by the script that added the Hotbar. I don't currently own a controller so I can't mess around with it. I'll hopefully buy one some time this month and see if it is possible to have both the Hotbar and Controller enabled. If it's impossible to have both then I will keep the Hotbar over the Controller because otherwise you will have to select Items from menu manually. which is a pain when planting seeds or opening Coin bags etc.

 

[Obscure]

Well I can see a lot of work has gone into this game.

Fairly impressive.

But there is a freeze if you tell the adventurer to run for it.

 

[FeyRing]

But there is a freeze if you tell the adventurer to run for it.

I will take a look at him, thank you for the heads up! He probably gets stuck trying to walk through you, if you approach him from the side it probably wont happen.

 

[Jash]

OK, finally found some time to give it a proper play for a bit- not extensively, just for an hour or so. I see you're taking this game and the feedback you get for it very seriously, so I'm going to give you some quite extensive critique of my initial gameplay experience. Please note that this will mostly be CRITICISM, because picking out the things I don't like and think need to be improved will be much more productive for you than tongue-bathing the game with praise. So firstly for the record, I think this game is very impressive, the graphics and art are gorgeous particularly for an older RPGmaker game, it has possibly the most potential of any porn game I've seen in quite some time and if you can manage to get it to live up to that potential it may be an all-time classic. Now then...

Firstly, probably my biggest issue with the game is one I've seen other people in this thread bumping up against, but haven't quite put into clear terms, so I'm just going to say it: it's too hard. Now this is a very subjective thing and one that a lot of people would disagree with, but you've made the game tooth-achingly complicated simply because you could. The bewildering array of skills that need to synergise with each other is enough to make your head spin, especially as not only will they define your gameplay experience, but you have to make the decisions about them almost blind. Yes, if you read the helpful books they will make it clear to you that you need metal mining to get materials for artifice and smithing, crystal mining for alchemy and stone mining for construction, but how would you know starting out which of these are actually going to be in any way useful? I started out with metal mining and artifice, intending to craft jewelry to give as gifts for the pretty girls I wanted to woo, but found out on reaching town that the only gift I can offer the goblin girls are new clothing, so I SHOULD have started out with tailoring or whatever the clothes-crafting skill is called and whatever skill you need to harvest materials to make cloth instead. Oops! Also, I didn't take any combat skills at all, intending to play a non-violent Casanova-type character who fucks his way through the game (it's a porn game and I'm here for the porn, so sue me), only to discover that I can barely even stand up to so much as the tiniest rat as a result- my only weapon is my pickaxe and the rats are incredibly tough to hit and I do PATHETICALLY low damage, making it almost impossible to take them down before they chew me to death, even when they only attack every second turn (I think these have to be the toughest starter rats in any RPG in history). Also Saffron wants honey for a quest that I apparently have to get as a drop from giant hornets or something- but I'm fully aware that I have absolutely no way to fight them. If I didn't have Snuffles' help I literally wouldn't even be able to beat one rat, and Snuffles isn't very helpful, which should tell you how tough this is. How am I supposed to make money, just picking up whatever junk I can find and flogging it to the merchant? I can't work the brothel because my morality is too high and the idea of winning fights is laughable. I can't do the spiderweb cleaning quest for the mine foreman because I need a sickle for it and I got a pickaxe off the thief instead, but I can't get a sickle, and beating the rats is impossible. That's another big thing, the game is also grindy as hell- why VP, the stat you use to do ANY physical action (including sex) and would in any other game be called stamina or energy or fatigue, also double as my HP? I have to spend over half of every day sleeping because I run through my VP and WP so fast, but because I went for the Noble background (with no idea what that would mean) I have reduced recovery because of my poor bed (with NO way of getting a better one) and am constantly racking up more unwanted Morality. And finally, I started with the Beautiful Voice trait, which cost a whopping THREE Memory Points, only to find that it only affects my singing voice, not my seduction abilities and charm, and I have no idea how singing works at all yet (or even if it's implemented at all)- BIG mistake. Summing up my point, this is the reason I roll my eyes whenever the Dota 2 players insist that Dota 2 is a better game than League of Legends because it's more complicated and therefore deeper. No, Dota 2 is HARDER than LoL, much more inaccessible with a massively higher skill floor, but complexity =/= depth. NEVER make a game more frustrating and difficult to enjoy than it absolutely has to be in the name of illusory "depth". Ultimately, the biggest problem with the game is that I'm stumped as to what I should actually be doing to make any real tangible progress, rather than just spinning my wheels, and I feel like I'm making blind mistakes all the time.

The issue is more than just the game not really signposting to you what you need to do and being very frustrating if you make the wrong decisions. The entire skill system is, while interestingly in-depth, honestly rather irritating. You can only get a VERY limited pool of skills to start the game with, and apparently acquiring more is a quest unto itself. What the skill system ends up doing is giving you a game with a vast amount of varied content, and then going out of its way to segregate most of that content away from you on each playthrough. Oh, you can see a character up that cliff which you could reach by climbing those vines? Too bad, you didn't start with the climbing skill, better luck next playthrough! Maybe it's possible to learn climbing in-game, I have no idea, but as soon as I finished character creation (and laying the demon queen) I was already being given the impression that I'd made a mistake and should start over again (for the 3rd or 4th time- I screwed up several times trying to create my character and it took me about 15 minutes just to get out of the starting screen). You've created a game with a lot to do in it but given us control of a character who can't do most of it. This is where I worry that you're being overambitious, because you seem to want to make the next Skyrim (including Sexlab) as a game with massive amounts of replayability and variety, but I imagine most people are just looking for a fun RPG with hot monstergirl sex in it.

The keyboard control is, as already mentioned, a giant load of ass. I managed to tolerate it, but I really hate having to use the fingers of my right hand to control directions- I'm right handed, but as a gamer movement is traditionally controlled with the LEFT hand, whether it's WASD with the fingers or the D-pad/analogue stick with the thumb. You've said you're looking into that, which is good, but that feeds into my final major issue: the game is just very clunky in many different ways. For example, having the game track your stats is very good. Having it do so by a variety of different items in your inventory is not. I'm hoping all those crappy diary items are just a stop-gap measure until you can work out the menu system properly, but there really should be a proper stats screen where you can just look at all this stuff. Likewise, exacerbating the problems with the skill system, having to create your character by repeatedly using a bunch of different items was just a new level in awkwardness. Speaking of stats, why the heck are morality and corruption, which are very key stats, hidden in the items menu? I literally only just found them now while I was writing this. I can't work out how to lower morality, which is annoying because it's preventing me from working my sweet little tushy off in the brothel, and it keeps rising every time I sleep for some reason I don't know. Why do there have to be 3 different types of EXP, 2 of which you have to combine into a 4th? Apparently Combo EXP needs to be used to level up some skills, but which ones? Considering the game runs on a 24-hour day/night cycle and time management is of pivotal importance, why is the clock on the menu rather than the main screen, and why don't I know how long some actions take before I do them (such as talking with goblin girls)? OK, I imagine crafting an hourglass might resolve that- but I can't CRAFT an hourglass because there's no way I can get the ingredients. Also, there are NUMEROUS things that are in the game despite not having been implemented yet, like skills and items that do nothing. Don't do that. If something isn't properly implemented, leave it out. There's absolutely no reason for things like Cache Detection Speciality to be in the game when they simply don't work- no, nobody is going to take them so they can take advantage of them in a later build once they are implemented without needing to restart, especially since you seem to have designed the game to be replayed multiple times over anyway.

Now that's all done, just a few more minor things. I do like the art as I mentioned before, and the fact that I was actually able to seduce the demon queen on my first encounter. I wish the seduction system was properly implemented- as I'm able to deduce so far, all I can do is flirt with girls and hope they randomly feel like a fuck. Since there are a limited number of actual goblin girls in the game, I think it might help if they all at least had personalised names, to give them some more personality, even if they aren't all tracked individually in-depth. It's annoying how when you're trying to smelt ore you repeatedly have to choose to smelt one at a time, over and over, rather than just choosing to smelt a bunch (what else are you going to do with your ore?) and kind of odd that smelting ore doesn't actually consume VP (although I'm not complaining about THAT one as too many things are competing for my limited stock of VP already).

But all those things having been said, I hope you take them onboard and work to improve this game. It looks gorgeous and the concept is really appealing, you just need to make it more polished and less... well, difficult to play and enjoy.

 

[Obscure]

So... It takes 10 seconds to fail to craft a metal ring.
It takes 300 XP to get to smithing 2.
But in the meantime that's 3000 seconds or 50 minutes.
Never mind getting the 600 iron ores.

But at lvl 1 smithing you get a 10% chance to succeed at making a thing.
So the chain jacket needs... 8 chains? 6 rings to a chain,
10 ingots to make a ring
600 ingots to make 60 rings to make a chain
48000 ingots to make 4800 rings to make 80 chains to make a chain jacket?
Those dice rolls are expensive.

Now rats payout 1-5 XP. We can suppose it's a 2.5 XP average. That's 40 rats to a combat lvl up. Doesn't sound that bad. Except that rats aren't balanced that way.

 

[CleansingFire]

So... It takes 10 seconds to fail to craft a metal ring.
It takes 300 XP to get to smithing 2.
But in the meantime that's 3000 seconds or 50 minutes.
Never mind getting the 600 iron ores.

As clarified above, you have to press the OK key (default: Z) when the moving bar at the bottom becomes green. It typically takes about a second. Once you figure out the un-intuitive interface, crafting is less of a problem. The problem with crafting is the number of mutual dependencies - e.g. if you want to make a sword, shield or all kinds of armor, you have to also have leather. Good luck acquiring that. (A tip about smithing: the Iron Mace is the only weapon that can be forged from iron ingots only. A mace can be sold for 100 copper, but the materials cost 80 copper, or less if you haggle successfully. It's a good way to farm money and smithing experience for little VP.)

Anyway, I think I figured out the random-chests-and-people system and it's one of the things that finally made me give up on the game for now. Do I understand correctly that there's a limited pool of slots for things and to get them to respawn (and travellers to appear) I have to clear out the present spawned resources? This creates a few problems. First, unopened chests seem to disappear after time, but if the player triggers a trapped chest, the chest remains presumably until it's unlocked. This means that a player who doesn't have lockpicking can get some of their chest slots permanently filled. The other major problem is that a lot of stuff can spawn in areas that are not accessible to the player, e.g. the beehive meadows, or on the top of cliffs, with the same effect - lowering the chances of chests and meeting travelers. Another possible problem is with agriculturally inclined characters - once they get seeds, they are likely to start farming them and won't bother with foraging in the forest.

In short, as of the current version the game seems to be somewhat playable for only one starting build - a warrior build who can climb wines, forage and perhaps also farm. Everything else results in varying degrees of frustration. This renders the extensive character customization process in the beginning mostly pointless.

 

[Incuboss]

As a side note: If it seems like people are coming down on your game pretty hard, don't take it too hard. It means people see a lot of potential in it and want to see it optimized. If it were irredeemable, no one would even comment on this thread. It's actually a good thing that people are tearing it up as much as they are.

 

[PlacentaSalad]

I like the concept of the game. I'm always looking for decent femdom games and your plot and ideas so far seem like they could make for an interesting one. Although it is kind of a grind and the hornets seem to very rarely drop the honey required for the quest (I gave up on this quest because of it), I can see myself keeping track of your updates and progress.

I started my character as a noble, though, and only managed to drop my morality down to 80 by seducing the Demon Queen prior to the goblin village. I notice every day after sleeping, I automatically gain 1 morality but how do I go about decreasing it enough to work the brothel? I figured I'd lose morality by pickpocketing (I failed anyway) and perhaps by escorting the prisoner to the brothel when I had agreed to help him escape instead but neither of these actions lowered the value. It's kind of difficult getting gold without having to grind the rats and hornets for their drops and learning how to mine or smith is expensive.