A game I very much enjoyed. I'm going to give critiques, because they may be of use to you, but don't take them too personally.
Writing - The writing is solid. Very relaxing dialogue that makes you smile. I appreciate the casual flirtation between the MC and Cynthia, it suits Cynthia's character. I think there were one or two jokes that I laughed aloud at.
I like theme of having the nature of Pokemon human-relationships contrasted by the player and the Kate. Amphy adds to this, with it being unprotected because it's not "owned" by Jasmine. As well as the haunted house Pokemon's backstory (trying to stay vague here to not spoil). The Houndoom fight conclusion was very cool and the haunted factory part was great. Both were tense and made you think afterward.
Notably, the events of the game seem to have rather clever problemsolving, which belies writing talent. I liked the plot, I liked the mystery, I liked the end of the game.
If there's one thing I can give advice on writingwise, it's premise. The game advertises itself with Cynthia. The only problem is, the coolest scenes in the game were the Kate part hunting for Houndoors, and the investigation of the haunted mill with Jasmine. See the problem? No Cynthia! Now I hardly minded it because the scenes themself were excellent, but I think they would have done well to further develop the connection between the player and Cynthia, via the suspension bridge effect. Um, this critique isn't urgent at all and may seem trivial, but I think works that revolve around fansa for a character should dump as much fansa as possible in the work, rather than getting distracted with side characters. This is up to you though, as I'd be remiss to say the side characters didn't have weight.
Art - The art direction is very inconsistent. You mix flat pokemon graphics with photo backgrounds and pixellated labels on the imagemaps. I'd recommend looking into consistency across the board in all these, because having a recognizable and pleasant style will draw more people in. Unfortunately, it's understandably difficult, either requiring a budget or a BG slave. But it will propel your game from looking like a Renpy test demo project to it's own visual novel with its own style. I do think the sprites look very clean and attractive, and the photo backgrounds are also very pretty but the problem for me is they just... don't fit together.
Music - Pretty decent. I hardly noticed it.
UI - Generic Renpy UI is anathema on the eyes for people who have played a lot of Renpy games. If you're looking to make VNs in the future, I recommend updating the menus to literally anything else. Aside from that, the menus in the achievements and the background are fine. I happened to think the pixelated black and white Pokemonesque labels in the imagemap look nice, and wondered what the game would look like if the textbox used that style. But they contrast with the menus and the quickmenu, and the time counter, and the photo background. Needs to be less glaring contrast. Perhaps play with filters? That said, I do see you using filters to make characters darker in darker scenes. I like that you do that, it's the little things that make it more atmospheric.
BGs - Aside from my complaints earlier about consistency, the BG choices are very good. They're consistent with each other and my vision of the town. I... may have used a couple of the same ones lol.
Transitions - It's alright. I like that you have the concierge behind hotel desk, it works well. But when he flips sprites, it happens a bit too quick. For this I recommend a dissolve transition to go along with your xzoom -1. You do this sometimes, but it's not consistent. Additionally, wouldn't the pixellate dissolve for scene transitions work well for the Pokemon theming? Eh, it's up to you though.
Sizing - Weirdly noticeable. Everything is at several paces away. You change it up a little bit, but there's a lot of focus on keeping everything centered for some reason. There are points where you I wouldn't mind some scenes having characters get up close and personal, or start farther away.
For instance, in the scenes where you're sitting in a cafe or bar with Cynthia, it's still a standing sprite overlapping the table. If you were to zoom into the BG and Cynthia at shoulder level, it could have the appearance of her sitting on the couch without having to show the legs. Am I making sense? I feel like I'm not making sense. This comes with its own downsides though, like not being to see the full BG. There's never a perfect solution.
Once again, I'd like to compliment your visual novel, and tell you not to take my critiques so seriously. I was been feeling melancholy this week, and this VN cheered me right up. Here's to your future projects! I can't wait to see them :)
With limited art availability and my amateurish coding skills, the writing was really all I had going for me. I cut a lot of corners in the art and the visuals, grudgingly saying "this looks bad but it's the best I have without dumping ten thousand dollars into this" a whole lot, but I didn't let myself wimp out on the writing. I have "write" in my name, god damn it.
With the main mission involving Cynthia, it never really occurred to me that the game should also have sidequests with her too. I intentionally made the evening activities with Jasmine and Betsy and the wilderness stuff with Kate be a little divorced from the main story, to give the player sort of a break from sleuthing with Cynthia. But now that you mention it, the game probably should have had some fun little side-things you go off and do with Cynthia too. I'll keep that in mind for future games. I'm happy to report that the next game has a whole bunch of side missions with the main girl.
You're right that the game might be better if it focused more on Cynthia then on the supporting characters. Kate and Betsy actually weren't planned to be in the game at all when I first started writing it. Betsy sort of arose out of the necessity to have a primary villain, and I wanted the player to be able to run off and join the bad guys so we could see Cynthia as an obstacle under certain circumstances. That means the leader of the bad guys kind of had to become a proper character. Kate I have no excuse for. The existence of the pokemon rangers started as a throwaway joke at the start of the game, and it was only later when I decided it might be interesting to go and visit them. Then Kate's presence in the game kind of grew like a metastasizing tumor. I don't regret her being in the game, but you're absolutely right that there are a lot of non-Cynthia distractions in a game that bills itself as "hang out with Cynthia!"
As far as the game's visuals... yeah, they're all bad. The lewd scenes look okay, obviously, since I had real artists drawing them. For the rest of the game though, this is sadly the best I was able to do with no budget for the game. I can tell you my next game is going to look a lot better because I have a better idea of what I'm doing and I have more money at my disposal to throw at the project. In the future I would like to remake Olivine Lights entirely with better art and graphics for... everything, and maybe add some more content to it. A sidequest or two with Cynthia. More sex. Better pokemon battles. Proper character sprites. Art for characters sitting down. Backgrounds that aren't photos. Et cetera. That won't be for a long time, though, and it will cost money. The fear of legal trouble from Big N prevents me from charging for this game, so unless I find a schmuck of an artist who's willing to draw stuff for me for free, art is probably going to continue to be the weakest thing I have going for me.
One last thing... I'll be honest, I have no idea what you mean by the suspension bridge effect.
>I cut a lot of corners in the art and the visuals, grudgingly saying "this looks bad but it's the best I have without dumping ten thousand dollars into this" a whole lot
As long as it's something you're keeping it in mind, I'd say you're good fam. Let me say it clearly too, I think everybody who enjoyed your work is happy you released it regardless (this includes me). A VN with some minor flaws is 100% better than no VN, or a VN that spends forever in development hell.
I actually have a lot of respect for people who work with what they've got and actually release it fully, rather than seek perfection on every work, you know?
>I have more money at my disposal to throw at the project
Before that, I might look toward ways you can make the VN more visually appealing without the use of money. The little things, like UI, or if a character fits into the background. Tsukihime, Higurashi, and Katawa Shoujo all used photo filter backgrounds when they were doujin works like yours, and they became breakout successes despite the industry having visually beautiful, heavy CG works for a time before them. It's possible, but tricky, and requires some creativity, I suppose.
>when I decided it might be interesting to go and visit them. Then Kate's presence in the game kind of grew like a metastasizing tumor.
Hey, sometimes that's the way the writing takes you. It made for a good plot which is why I hesitate to criticize it. But just a tad more attention diverted to the heroine might have been good. Ideally, you'd have both the ranger and cool scenes for Cynthia, but that requires more work in all aspects and this VN is already at a good length.
Also, I may have been wrong here. Looking at the store page now, there's no overwhelming impression that this VN is for Cynthia only. It seems to be be a more general than that. So my B.
>I have no idea what you mean by the suspension bridge effect.
Ah, it's a writing tactic/dating advice based on the concept that a couple undergoing a dangerous trial (such as crossing a rickety bridge together) will grow stronger and trust each other more.
One more thing. I'd be surprised if this was your first visual novel work. If so, it's really impressive. Even if it's your second or third, there's a lot you've done that surpass expectations. Pacing and length of the story, the characters are sprightly, choice structure is solid and useful, achievement system with integrated New Game mechanics... It all clearly has a lot of effort and balancing put into it. There's talent there, you know?
Got an annoying bug. Did the "blackmail" option, but it locks up the game when it gets to that point in the night. The only option is "stay here with Cynthia instead" and it just repeats that being the only option over and over.
I'll look into it. I have an idea what caused it. There's a section of code that should be accessible through two different methods, and then it gives you a choice of where to go at night, but it might be possible to get there with only one option enabled and then the game doesn't give you the second one and it gets stuck.
All the characters were so well-written, and even though it was a relatively short VN I felt like all of them left an impression of their personality.
I’m sure it’s been said by others but Cynthia was honestly amazing; she was super fun and likable, and I really enjoyed how things progress with her. Same with Jasmine and Kate, both felt like unique characters with their own experiences and defined personalities. Similarly, Nelson was a great side character and Betsy felt like a solid antagonist. I laughed at Shawn being so committed to his bit with the name of his Muk.
Honestly, I felt really sad when it ended because adventuring with Cynthia was just too fun. I don’t know if there are any plans to ever get back to this with a sequel, but I would be overjoyed to see the adventure continue (and evolve my Metang).
Just overall, this was genuinely great and a special experience!
That you for the kind words! I'm glad to hear that my take on the characters left an impression, even the original ones. When I was writing day 5 I had considered having the adventure continue; maybe some other crisis arises and you go on another quest with Cynthia to solve it, but I thought it was better to end it where it should end instead of dragging things out and having a story that's never finished.
I am definitely making more games like this, but a sequel/follow-up to Olivine Lights isn't planned at this time. I'm sure I'll write about Cynthia some more, but continuing this specific adventure with this specific protagonist would be tricky since there are so many little details with the different endings. I would have to pick one to be the "canon" ending and go from there, and that would be doing the rest of the story a disservice. So I'm sorry to say this but don't expect to ever see Unnamed-Guy-With-A-Metang again. His story in almost certainly finished.
I do have another Pokémon VN in the works, this one featuring Marnie. Most of it is written and I have a bunch of art commissioned for it, and I hope to have it completed and available to play before the year is over. I can't promise how long it'll take though. These things can't really be rushed.
Great surprise. This VN is really great. You trully have different ways to navigate the story while all of them are well written. My favorite route was when I ended up saving the city by being an absolute AO with 15 bad karma and still was an hero to the city.
I believe I have 100% it at this moment? Excellent writing, made me chuckle aloud multiple times. Cynthia is really well written and by far my favorite part of this VN. I would read entire books written by you about Cynthia. Looking forward to checking out any other work you do!
I actually played through this and not unlock any of the lewd scenes. Spent all night on it, but it was pretty engaging and definitely worth playing multiple times. Fantastic job.
10/10 game honestly. didn't have too high expectations, but i got pulled in enough that i even forgot it was a porn game by the point cynthia came to me drunk :)
Just finished my first run and I enjoyed it a lot! The story was well put together I got super invested by the end. The characters were grounded and a bit sarcastic but not to the point I couldn't take things seriously. Never realized how much fun a pokemon setting could be for a VN definitely considering the discord after a few more runs of this for the other endings/achievements.
Whenever I'm writing this type of thing, my biggest fear is always that the people who are experiencing it will not get invested and will just not care about the details of the world and the characters that I'm trying to present to them. Having someone tell me that they got super invested is the greatest compliment (and the biggest relief) that I can imagine.
If you enjoyed the game, the biggest and most helpful thing you can do for me is to tell other people about it! Share it with a friend, or with strangers. It's not like I have a marketing department after all.
This was a really good VN! I can't wait to see how you expand upon the current story! I really enjoyed all the characters and interactions, the only one I felt iffy about was when talking to the fanboy and telling him to "go away" if you didn't built a high relationship with Cynthia, though maybe thats how it is. Otherwise, really amazing interactions and characters. I do wonder if investigating Jasmine's house leads anywhere? As in do we have to go down the villainy route a bit. Finally, on Wednesday, with a Beldum, doing the lighthouse starts with magnemite's hp at 0, which made the game reset the scene which allowed things to progress normally.
Yep, doing the lighthouse after the night scene with Jasmine causes the battle to start with Magnemite at 0 HP. The hp_magnemite value isn't being reset in between scenes like it should. It's a bug that'll be fixed next update.
Breaking into Jasmine's house leads to some bad karma options. If you talk to her in the gym you can warn her that having the key in a fake rock is a bad idea, but this doesn't really do anything big for the rest of the story. If you talk to her about the info on her computer, you can convince her that it's mortally repugnant, but this also doesn't really do anything major. Maybe I'll add some more stuff stemming from this. I could have some non-villainy side effects of breaking into her house but I'm not sure what they would be. Breaking in is already sort of villainous, I think...
The scene with the fanboy only has the options to either say nothing or to be a jerk. Upon reflection, there should probably be a third option there. I'll come up with something. Maybe something like "Politely make an excuse for you to leave so the fan doesn't annoy her"
This was really solid! As a major lover of Cynthia I really liked how you characterized her. It feels like a mixture of her anime, game and even somewhat her manga self while adding in some bits that make sense. I also really love Jasmie and I'm happy about her prominant role.
While I feel like the portrayal of Lance is a bit uncharitable I also get that this is from Cynthia's view.
I really liked Nelson. He was a neat side character. Coll regular dude who just happens to be able to use telekinisis.
Now, there were a few things I wanted to ask about and mention. First, you can meet Red on the pier and you talk to him about how you may need backup and he agrees to help you so long as you come to him. But he never does and you never get a prompt to get him to come help you. Did I miss some other prompt or is that something that will pop up in a later release? (If not, I'm just gonna headcanon that he as dealing with more gyardos out there or something)
Similarly, investigating Jasmine's house. Does THAT plot thread actually go anywhere? (My morbid curiosity forces me to ask.)
Additionally, I recieved an error at the end of the day when I went an investigated Jasmine's house. Specifically, when you and Cynthia talk to one another after the exploration you can get halfway through it all before running into an error. This happens at both the bar and coffee shop. You can only progress by skipping that day's talk option. Here's the code:
[code]
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:
File "game/gym.rpy", line 673, in script call
call cyn_tms from _call_cyn_tms_1
File "game/hotel.rpy", line 521, in script call
call cynthia_chat_blocks from _call_cynthia_chat_blocks_5
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in script
if not cyn_chat_job:
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in <module>
if not cyn_chat_job:
NameError: name 'cyn_chat_job' is not defined
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback:
File "game/gym.rpy", line 673, in script call
call cyn_tms from _call_cyn_tms_1
File "game/hotel.rpy", line 521, in script call
call cynthia_chat_blocks from _call_cynthia_chat_blocks_5
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in script
if not cyn_chat_job:
File "C:\Visiual Novels\OlivineLights-Beta_1.3.1-win\renpy\ast.py", line 2115, in execute
if renpy.python.py_eval(condition):
File "C:\Visiual Novels\OlivineLights-Beta_1.3.1-win\renpy\python.py", line 1092, in py_eval
return py_eval_bytecode(code, globals, locals)
File "C:\Visiual Novels\OlivineLights-Beta_1.3.1-win\renpy\python.py", line 1085, in py_eval_bytecode
return eval(bytecode, globals, locals)
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in <module>
Thank you for the feedback! It's interesting to me that people tell me that my Cynthia is characterized like her anime version, considering I've never seen the anime. I know I wrote Lance like a bit of a jerk. I don't really remember what his personality was like in the games and I don't care what he's like in the anime. I just needed an authority figure who I could plausibly have Cynthia say "Fuck you" to.
There's no option to go get Red to help you, you didn't miss anything. Depending on prior days' events, he may show up when you're fighting Betsy and stop her from escaping. It's not RNG but the requirements for that scenario ended up being a little specific. I'm probably going to adjust that to either make it more likely that he gets involved, or somehow show the player that Red is busy doing his own thing somewhere. In an earlier draft, the player had an option to go round up some allies prior to going down into the hotel basement, possibly bringing along Jasmine, Red, Kate, Nelson, Shawn, and of course Cynthia. But I realized that would lead to writing like 20 variations of the aqua base and... no.
Investigating Jasmine's house doesn't go anywhere as of the current release. This is one of the things I'm writing currently. It leads to exactly what the morbidly curious person might think it does. It needs art.
And thank you for the bug report, I see what the problem is and I'll fix it.
Lance being the choice for 'authority figure Cynthia can talk back to" worked rather well honestly. May not fit his other portrayals perfectl;y but it fits with his position in the world.
I have been DESPERATELY trying to figure out how Red can prevent the escape andkeep messing up somehow. It's always Shawn and Muk (no, I will not dignify it with the name). Similarly, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to beat Betsy yourself. Does the TM choice matter at all?
On the subject of Red doing other stuff, I actually was almost epextcing Lugia to show up, considering what the dex says about it and storms and Red coming in to help with that.
Also, while I still have yet to get her to appear, I appreciate the Dawn references I've seen others mention (and Cynthia's own lines that reference A New Dawn's Ending). I adore that VN so much (not the least reason of which being my love for Dawn) so the easter eggs are very welcome.
As of the current version of the game, Red is basically the backup. If the player gets to the end of the showdown with Betsy without meeting Shawn on a prior day, Red shows up.
You can beat Betsy by yourself. One of the prerequisites is to evolve your pokemon but the TM choice doesn't really affect anything. I'm probably going to rewrite this a little because the only move that matters is Rock Slide and you get that move no matter what. It's kind of a fake choice, which I don't like.
Found this from a random /vp/ thread you advertised, didn't bother reading much after the first paragraph in this page and just assumed it was a slightly fancier porn game, I was very much surprised to find an actual game with an actual story and actual characters.
I think this is really good, is a story that has enough of game lore, anime lore, and headcannon to not feel like either a boring simple story form the games nor a fan-fiction of characters with barely recognizable behavior. I feel Cynthia and Jasmine's traits have been amped up to eleven, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
Overall I think you made something real nice, with enough options to make this feel a bit less linear but still tell a straightforward story.
There's only one issue I felt could be a quick fix, even though I know nothing of game design: The MC showed their partner pokemon to Cynthia twice, the second time happened even after it evolved, tried to be vague to avoid spoiling anything for the people that may think that's a spoiler somehow.
Also I'm not sure about the sprite for Shawn, might have to use another one form the games? Don't wanna shit on your photoshop skills but, you know, at least I appreciate you changing the color of the helmet of the totally random mundane engineer trying to fix the backup generator, that's a nice detail.
Right now I've only seen one ending but I wanted to give my feedback while everything is fresh in my head, but I'll try and get all of the endings and explore all the dialogue options I've missed, If I wanna add anything new I'll post it after.
Up until now at least, I can say it was a lot of fun, thanks for taking your time doing this!
Thank you so much for your feedback and kind words!
If you're showing off your pokemon to Cynthia twice then something is definitely broken. I'll need to investigate.
Shawn's sprite is terrible, I know. I spent literal weeks searching for art for a "Super Nerd" trainer that I could use and I came up with nothing. The shitty custom sprite I made by editing Cheren was the best I could do for now. (Ditto for the totally random unnamed engineer sprite who is absolutely not Roarke from Oreburgh)
Just finished, from what I could tell, the rest of the game, I'm going to assume that by 4 endings you mean four different outcomes from the final battle and not what relates to Cynthia at the end, because those would be 3: accepting, declining, and not happening, (sorry if my vagueposting is not vague enough, if only there was a spoiler option here).
The only thing that I never found is a Scyther, and the apparent blue haired girl in the docks, and is driving me crazy, I have no clue how likely are the odds of the girl appearing, and I'm not waiting it out in case is shiny odds or something impossible like that, and I genuinely don't know where in the world is Scyther. Given this mons apparent appearance and who one of the special thanks is I have an idea of who she could be but I wanted to see her "in person" damn it.
Gotta say after replaying this game over and over I found a lot of stuff that I missed out, it was really enjoyable, also liked seeing the little differences in dialogue depending on previos actions, I feel like it added a lot of replay value, the scenarios are very different and interesting.
So much so that, maybe if it's feasible, some sort of vague event checklist could be added? To make you wanna search for a different path, or maybe is just me getting to a point where I'm not sure if I've seen everything and wanting some indicator to answer me, maybe both. I've read in previous logs you started learning Ren'py just for this project so if it is too much trouble don't worry about it, I'm not even sure if is posible since I don't know anything about the program, is just my autism wanting to see the equivalent of a big 100% after I'm finished with a game. I'd rather see more story than these QOL but hard to implement improvements.
Last bit of bitching: some of the pokemon cries don't check the audio setting, I remember getting my ears blown in the ranger mission.
I really enjoyed playing this, but by the dates of the releases and current scope of the game I feel it's gonna be a while for the next update, but I'll happily wait to see what's next.
I had a lot of fun this past couple days and I'll be sure to stick around. Keep up the great work!
I want to add a list of achievements (the checklist you described) that tracks if you've seen every major part of the game. I don't want to implement that yet until the game is more finalized - there are still so many side paths I plan to add, it would be weird to have a checklist saying everything is done when "everything" isn't actually everything, yet. Don't spend too much time looking for the blue haired girl though, it's a pure rng 1/100 chance to appear and she has one sentence of dialog. Too small an easter egg to be worth it.
Thank you for the feedback on pokemon cries, for 1.3 I'll do a thorough check and rebalance or replace anything that's fucked up.
As for the next update, I'm going to get at least one more out before the end of the year.
I still haven't been able to reproduce the bug on my end and I'm starting to go a little crazy. I was beginning to wonder if I had already done something in my end that fixed it without realizing, so I downloaded the same 1.2 Alpha that everyone else has and started looking at the code there. I still have no idea how this is happening so I just wanted to clarify what I'm looking for.
(Spoilers for anyone reading this before playing the game, you have been warned)
When you say "The MC showed their partner pokemon to Cynthia twice, the second time happened even after it evolved," exactly which scene is it that happens twice? Is it the scene where you're chatting with Cynthia back at the hotel in the evening? Or is it the scene where you go up to Cynthia's suite to get TM's for Metang? Or is it two different scenes but both of them act like you haven't shown your pokemon to Cynthia before?
If it's the same scene twice - when does the scene show up? It should be the first scene you see when you go and get drinks with Cynthia for the first time, and nowhere else. When it shows up for a second time - what day/time is it? Does it happen on Day 2/Tuesday, or on Day 3/Wednesday, or on Day 4/Thursday? Does the scene play at the end of the day at the hotel, or is it popping up at some other point during the story? What happens after the scene?
The scene I'm referring is the chat at the hotel, when he shows her his Beldum, the TM one works fine.
I don't really remember what day it was, only that I never went to the ranger mission, nor the bar with the Mallow look-alike, also didn't go inside Jasmine's house since I chose to call Cynthia, those were the things I specifically remember not doing the first time.
I'm pretty sure this is all the useful info I remember, sorry if is not that useful. Also it never popped up anywhere else, just twice at the hotel bar.
Okay, I found the problem and it'll be fixed as of the next version. It's sorta-kinda a bug I knew already could potentially happen. The game was getting to the end of the list of if/else statements that told it what chat scenes to play, and then it would try to pull up one more scene after it had run out. With nothing else left in the list of scenes, it would just start reading whatever other code came next, which in this case just happened to be the entire dialog for that first chat scene. There was supposed to be an error message that played if the game ran out of scenes to pull from, but I didn't set it up right and the game just sort of went off on a tangent until something told it to stop, which in this case just happened to be the "return" statement at the end of that chat scene.
Luckily the fix is simple, I just need one or two more chat scenes. I was probably going to do that anyway, and also make an adjustment to the way the game prioritizes which chat scene to play. So this would have been fixed eventually. Probably. Maybe. I never would have found it without your help. So thank you!!
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A game I very much enjoyed. I'm going to give critiques, because they may be of use to you, but don't take them too personally.
Writing - The writing is solid. Very relaxing dialogue that makes you smile. I appreciate the casual flirtation between the MC and Cynthia, it suits Cynthia's character. I think there were one or two jokes that I laughed aloud at.
I like theme of having the nature of Pokemon human-relationships contrasted by the player and the Kate. Amphy adds to this, with it being unprotected because it's not "owned" by Jasmine. As well as the haunted house Pokemon's backstory (trying to stay vague here to not spoil).
The Houndoom fight conclusion was very cool and the haunted factory part was great. Both were tense and made you think afterward.
Notably, the events of the game seem to have rather clever problemsolving, which belies writing talent.
I liked the plot, I liked the mystery, I liked the end of the game.
If there's one thing I can give advice on writingwise, it's premise. The game advertises itself with Cynthia. The only problem is, the coolest scenes in the game were the Kate part hunting for Houndoors, and the investigation of the haunted mill with Jasmine. See the problem? No Cynthia!
Now I hardly minded it because the scenes themself were excellent, but I think they would have done well to further develop the connection between the player and Cynthia, via the suspension bridge effect.
Um, this critique isn't urgent at all and may seem trivial, but I think works that revolve around fansa for a character should dump as much fansa as possible in the work, rather than getting distracted with side characters. This is up to you though, as I'd be remiss to say the side characters didn't have weight.
Art - The art direction is very inconsistent. You mix flat pokemon graphics with photo backgrounds and pixellated labels on the imagemaps. I'd recommend looking into consistency across the board in all these, because having a recognizable and pleasant style will draw more people in. Unfortunately, it's understandably difficult, either requiring a budget or a BG slave. But it will propel your game from looking like a Renpy test demo project to it's own visual novel with its own style.
I do think the sprites look very clean and attractive, and the photo backgrounds are also very pretty but the problem for me is they just... don't fit together.
Music - Pretty decent. I hardly noticed it.
UI - Generic Renpy UI is anathema on the eyes for people who have played a lot of Renpy games. If you're looking to make VNs in the future, I recommend updating the menus to literally anything else. Aside from that, the menus in the achievements and the background are fine.
I happened to think the pixelated black and white Pokemonesque labels in the imagemap look nice, and wondered what the game would look like if the textbox used that style.
But they contrast with the menus and the quickmenu, and the time counter, and the photo background. Needs to be less glaring contrast. Perhaps play with filters?
That said, I do see you using filters to make characters darker in darker scenes. I like that you do that, it's the little things that make it more atmospheric.
BGs - Aside from my complaints earlier about consistency, the BG choices are very good. They're consistent with each other and my vision of the town. I... may have used a couple of the same ones lol.
Transitions - It's alright. I like that you have the concierge behind hotel desk, it works well. But when he flips sprites, it happens a bit too quick. For this I recommend a dissolve transition to go along with your xzoom -1. You do this sometimes, but it's not consistent.
Additionally, wouldn't the pixellate dissolve for scene transitions work well for the Pokemon theming? Eh, it's up to you though.
Sizing - Weirdly noticeable. Everything is at several paces away. You change it up a little bit, but there's a lot of focus on keeping everything centered for some reason. There are points where you I wouldn't mind some scenes having characters get up close and personal, or start farther away.
For instance, in the scenes where you're sitting in a cafe or bar with Cynthia, it's still a standing sprite overlapping the table. If you were to zoom into the BG and Cynthia at shoulder level, it could have the appearance of her sitting on the couch without having to show the legs. Am I making sense? I feel like I'm not making sense.
This comes with its own downsides though, like not being to see the full BG. There's never a perfect solution.
Once again, I'd like to compliment your visual novel, and tell you not to take my critiques so seriously. I was been feeling melancholy this week, and this VN cheered me right up. Here's to your future projects! I can't wait to see them :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
With limited art availability and my amateurish coding skills, the writing was really all I had going for me. I cut a lot of corners in the art and the visuals, grudgingly saying "this looks bad but it's the best I have without dumping ten thousand dollars into this" a whole lot, but I didn't let myself wimp out on the writing. I have "write" in my name, god damn it.
With the main mission involving Cynthia, it never really occurred to me that the game should also have sidequests with her too. I intentionally made the evening activities with Jasmine and Betsy and the wilderness stuff with Kate be a little divorced from the main story, to give the player sort of a break from sleuthing with Cynthia. But now that you mention it, the game probably should have had some fun little side-things you go off and do with Cynthia too. I'll keep that in mind for future games. I'm happy to report that the next game has a whole bunch of side missions with the main girl.
You're right that the game might be better if it focused more on Cynthia then on the supporting characters. Kate and Betsy actually weren't planned to be in the game at all when I first started writing it. Betsy sort of arose out of the necessity to have a primary villain, and I wanted the player to be able to run off and join the bad guys so we could see Cynthia as an obstacle under certain circumstances. That means the leader of the bad guys kind of had to become a proper character. Kate I have no excuse for. The existence of the pokemon rangers started as a throwaway joke at the start of the game, and it was only later when I decided it might be interesting to go and visit them. Then Kate's presence in the game kind of grew like a metastasizing tumor. I don't regret her being in the game, but you're absolutely right that there are a lot of non-Cynthia distractions in a game that bills itself as "hang out with Cynthia!"
As far as the game's visuals... yeah, they're all bad. The lewd scenes look okay, obviously, since I had real artists drawing them. For the rest of the game though, this is sadly the best I was able to do with no budget for the game. I can tell you my next game is going to look a lot better because I have a better idea of what I'm doing and I have more money at my disposal to throw at the project. In the future I would like to remake Olivine Lights entirely with better art and graphics for... everything, and maybe add some more content to it. A sidequest or two with Cynthia. More sex. Better pokemon battles. Proper character sprites. Art for characters sitting down. Backgrounds that aren't photos. Et cetera. That won't be for a long time, though, and it will cost money. The fear of legal trouble from Big N prevents me from charging for this game, so unless I find a schmuck of an artist who's willing to draw stuff for me for free, art is probably going to continue to be the weakest thing I have going for me.
One last thing... I'll be honest, I have no idea what you mean by the suspension bridge effect.
>I cut a lot of corners in the art and the visuals, grudgingly saying "this looks bad but it's the best I have without dumping ten thousand dollars into this" a whole lot
As long as it's something you're keeping it in mind, I'd say you're good fam. Let me say it clearly too, I think everybody who enjoyed your work is happy you released it regardless (this includes me). A VN with some minor flaws is 100% better than no VN, or a VN that spends forever in development hell.
I actually have a lot of respect for people who work with what they've got and actually release it fully, rather than seek perfection on every work, you know?
>I have more money at my disposal to throw at the project
Before that, I might look toward ways you can make the VN more visually appealing without the use of money. The little things, like UI, or if a character fits into the background. Tsukihime, Higurashi, and Katawa Shoujo all used photo filter backgrounds when they were doujin works like yours, and they became breakout successes despite the industry having visually beautiful, heavy CG works for a time before them. It's possible, but tricky, and requires some creativity, I suppose.
>when I decided it might be interesting to go and visit them. Then Kate's presence in the game kind of grew like a metastasizing tumor.
Hey, sometimes that's the way the writing takes you. It made for a good plot which is why I hesitate to criticize it. But just a tad more attention diverted to the heroine might have been good. Ideally, you'd have both the ranger and cool scenes for Cynthia, but that requires more work in all aspects and this VN is already at a good length.
Also, I may have been wrong here. Looking at the store page now, there's no overwhelming impression that this VN is for Cynthia only. It seems to be be a more general than that. So my B.
>I have no idea what you mean by the suspension bridge effect.
Ah, it's a writing tactic/dating advice based on the concept that a couple undergoing a dangerous trial (such as crossing a rickety bridge together) will grow stronger and trust each other more.
One more thing. I'd be surprised if this was your first visual novel work. If so, it's really impressive. Even if it's your second or third, there's a lot you've done that surpass expectations. Pacing and length of the story, the characters are sprightly, choice structure is solid and useful, achievement system with integrated New Game mechanics... It all clearly has a lot of effort and balancing put into it. There's talent there, you know?
Got an annoying bug. Did the "blackmail" option, but it locks up the game when it gets to that point in the night. The only option is "stay here with Cynthia instead" and it just repeats that being the only option over and over.
Tried both coffee shop and bar.
I'll look into it. I have an idea what caused it. There's a section of code that should be accessible through two different methods, and then it gives you a choice of where to go at night, but it might be possible to get there with only one option enabled and then the game doesn't give you the second one and it gets stuck.
I found the problem and have a fix. I will be releasing a new version with the bug fixed. Thank you for telling me about it!
This was honestly amazing, I loved it!
All the characters were so well-written, and even though it was a relatively short VN I felt like all of them left an impression of their personality.
I’m sure it’s been said by others but Cynthia was honestly amazing; she was super fun and likable, and I really enjoyed how things progress with her. Same with Jasmine and Kate, both felt like unique characters with their own experiences and defined personalities. Similarly, Nelson was a great side character and Betsy felt like a solid antagonist. I laughed at Shawn being so committed to his bit with the name of his Muk.
Honestly, I felt really sad when it ended because adventuring with Cynthia was just too fun. I don’t know if there are any plans to ever get back to this with a sequel, but I would be overjoyed to see the adventure continue (and evolve my Metang).
Just overall, this was genuinely great and a special experience!
That you for the kind words! I'm glad to hear that my take on the characters left an impression, even the original ones. When I was writing day 5 I had considered having the adventure continue; maybe some other crisis arises and you go on another quest with Cynthia to solve it, but I thought it was better to end it where it should end instead of dragging things out and having a story that's never finished.
I am definitely making more games like this, but a sequel/follow-up to Olivine Lights isn't planned at this time. I'm sure I'll write about Cynthia some more, but continuing this specific adventure with this specific protagonist would be tricky since there are so many little details with the different endings. I would have to pick one to be the "canon" ending and go from there, and that would be doing the rest of the story a disservice. So I'm sorry to say this but don't expect to ever see Unnamed-Guy-With-A-Metang again. His story in almost certainly finished.
I do have another Pokémon VN in the works, this one featuring Marnie. Most of it is written and I have a bunch of art commissioned for it, and I hope to have it completed and available to play before the year is over. I can't promise how long it'll take though. These things can't really be rushed.
Replay value still strong, played it last night
Thanks, that's what I had hoped for!
Great surprise. This VN is really great. You trully have different ways to navigate the story while all of them are well written. My favorite route was when I ended up saving the city by being an absolute AO with 15 bad karma and still was an hero to the city.
It's nice to see someone else besides me appreciates the ability to be a bastard and still be the hero :)
I believe I have 100% it at this moment? Excellent writing, made me chuckle aloud multiple times. Cynthia is really well written and by far my favorite part of this VN. I would read entire books written by you about Cynthia. Looking forward to checking out any other work you do!
I'm glad you like it! I'm in the process of making another one. It doesn't have Cynthia in it, but we may see her again.
I actually played through this and not unlock any of the lewd scenes. Spent all night on it, but it was pretty engaging and definitely worth playing multiple times. Fantastic job.
10/10 game honestly. didn't have too high expectations, but i got pulled in enough that i even forgot it was a porn game by the point cynthia came to me drunk :)
I'm glad I exceeded your expectations!
Where do I do the Goin' Ghostbusting achievement? I've been looking for a while now, and haven't found anything.
Just finished my first run and I enjoyed it a lot! The story was well put together I got super invested by the end. The characters were grounded and a bit sarcastic but not to the point I couldn't take things seriously. Never realized how much fun a pokemon setting could be for a VN definitely considering the discord after a few more runs of this for the other endings/achievements.
Whenever I'm writing this type of thing, my biggest fear is always that the people who are experiencing it will not get invested and will just not care about the details of the world and the characters that I'm trying to present to them. Having someone tell me that they got super invested is the greatest compliment (and the biggest relief) that I can imagine.
If you enjoyed the game, the biggest and most helpful thing you can do for me is to tell other people about it! Share it with a friend, or with strangers. It's not like I have a marketing department after all.
things are-a brewin'
Hi, is there a scene with Jasmine? How to unlock it? I reached 11 "love points" but no scene nor new dialogue...
Sorry, it's not in this version. The 1.6 update will have a Jasmine love scene. It should be out in January.
I see, thanks, and no reason to be sorry. Also, how can I get the "antihero" achievement? thank you xd
Fantastic work! Thank you for this game!
This was a really good VN! I can't wait to see how you expand upon the current story! I really enjoyed all the characters and interactions, the only one I felt iffy about was when talking to the fanboy and telling him to "go away" if you didn't built a high relationship with Cynthia, though maybe thats how it is. Otherwise, really amazing interactions and characters.
I do wonder if investigating Jasmine's house leads anywhere? As in do we have to go down the villainy route a bit.
Finally, on Wednesday, with a Beldum, doing the lighthouse starts with magnemite's hp at 0, which made the game reset the scene which allowed things to progress normally.
Yep, doing the lighthouse after the night scene with Jasmine causes the battle to start with Magnemite at 0 HP. The hp_magnemite value isn't being reset in between scenes like it should. It's a bug that'll be fixed next update.
Breaking into Jasmine's house leads to some bad karma options. If you talk to her in the gym you can warn her that having the key in a fake rock is a bad idea, but this doesn't really do anything big for the rest of the story. If you talk to her about the info on her computer, you can convince her that it's mortally repugnant, but this also doesn't really do anything major. Maybe I'll add some more stuff stemming from this. I could have some non-villainy side effects of breaking into her house but I'm not sure what they would be. Breaking in is already sort of villainous, I think...
The scene with the fanboy only has the options to either say nothing or to be a jerk. Upon reflection, there should probably be a third option there. I'll come up with something. Maybe something like "Politely make an excuse for you to leave so the fan doesn't annoy her"
And thank you for the kind words!
This was really solid! As a major lover of Cynthia I really liked how you characterized her. It feels like a mixture of her anime, game and even somewhat her manga self while adding in some bits that make sense. I also really love Jasmie and I'm happy about her prominant role.
While I feel like the portrayal of Lance is a bit uncharitable I also get that this is from Cynthia's view.
I really liked Nelson. He was a neat side character. Coll regular dude who just happens to be able to use telekinisis.
Now, there were a few things I wanted to ask about and mention. First, you can meet Red on the pier and you talk to him about how you may need backup and he agrees to help you so long as you come to him. But he never does and you never get a prompt to get him to come help you. Did I miss some other prompt or is that something that will pop up in a later release? (If not, I'm just gonna headcanon that he as dealing with more gyardos out there or something)
Similarly, investigating Jasmine's house. Does THAT plot thread actually go anywhere? (My morbid curiosity forces me to ask.)
Additionally, I recieved an error at the end of the day when I went an investigated Jasmine's house. Specifically, when you and Cynthia talk to one another after the exploration you can get halfway through it all before running into an error. This happens at both the bar and coffee shop. You can only progress by skipping that day's talk option. Here's the code:
[code]
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:
File "game/gym.rpy", line 673, in script call
call cyn_tms from _call_cyn_tms_1
File "game/hotel.rpy", line 521, in script call
call cynthia_chat_blocks from _call_cynthia_chat_blocks_5
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in script
if not cyn_chat_job:
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in <module>
if not cyn_chat_job:
NameError: name 'cyn_chat_job' is not defined
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback:
File "game/gym.rpy", line 673, in script call
call cyn_tms from _call_cyn_tms_1
File "game/hotel.rpy", line 521, in script call
call cynthia_chat_blocks from _call_cynthia_chat_blocks_5
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in script
if not cyn_chat_job:
File "C:\Visiual Novels\OlivineLights-Beta_1.3.1-win\renpy\ast.py", line 2115, in execute
if renpy.python.py_eval(condition):
File "C:\Visiual Novels\OlivineLights-Beta_1.3.1-win\renpy\python.py", line 1092, in py_eval
return py_eval_bytecode(code, globals, locals)
File "C:\Visiual Novels\OlivineLights-Beta_1.3.1-win\renpy\python.py", line 1085, in py_eval_bytecode
return eval(bytecode, globals, locals)
File "game/cynthia chat blocks.rpy", line 76, in <module>
if not cyn_chat_job:
NameError: name 'cyn_chat_job' is not defined
Windows-10-10.0.19044 AMD64
Ren'Py 8.0.3.22090809
Olivine Lights Beta_1.3.1
Fri Jan 27 01:39:47 2023
[/code]
Thank you for the feedback! It's interesting to me that people tell me that my Cynthia is characterized like her anime version, considering I've never seen the anime. I know I wrote Lance like a bit of a jerk. I don't really remember what his personality was like in the games and I don't care what he's like in the anime. I just needed an authority figure who I could plausibly have Cynthia say "Fuck you" to.
There's no option to go get Red to help you, you didn't miss anything. Depending on prior days' events, he may show up when you're fighting Betsy and stop her from escaping. It's not RNG but the requirements for that scenario ended up being a little specific. I'm probably going to adjust that to either make it more likely that he gets involved, or somehow show the player that Red is busy doing his own thing somewhere. In an earlier draft, the player had an option to go round up some allies prior to going down into the hotel basement, possibly bringing along Jasmine, Red, Kate, Nelson, Shawn, and of course Cynthia. But I realized that would lead to writing like 20 variations of the aqua base and... no.
Investigating Jasmine's house doesn't go anywhere as of the current release. This is one of the things I'm writing currently. It leads to exactly what the morbidly curious person might think it does. It needs art.
And thank you for the bug report, I see what the problem is and I'll fix it.
Lance being the choice for 'authority figure Cynthia can talk back to" worked rather well honestly. May not fit his other portrayals perfectl;y but it fits with his position in the world.
I have been DESPERATELY trying to figure out how Red can prevent the escape andkeep messing up somehow. It's always Shawn and Muk (no, I will not dignify it with the name). Similarly, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to beat Betsy yourself. Does the TM choice matter at all?
On the subject of Red doing other stuff, I actually was almost epextcing Lugia to show up, considering what the dex says about it and storms and Red coming in to help with that.
Also, while I still have yet to get her to appear, I appreciate the Dawn references I've seen others mention (and Cynthia's own lines that reference A New Dawn's Ending). I adore that VN so much (not the least reason of which being my love for Dawn) so the easter eggs are very welcome.
As of the current version of the game, Red is basically the backup. If the player gets to the end of the showdown with Betsy without meeting Shawn on a prior day, Red shows up.
You can beat Betsy by yourself. One of the prerequisites is to evolve your pokemon but the TM choice doesn't really affect anything. I'm probably going to rewrite this a little because the only move that matters is Rock Slide and you get that move no matter what. It's kind of a fake choice, which I don't like.
Found this from a random /vp/ thread you advertised, didn't bother reading much after the first paragraph in this page and just assumed it was a slightly fancier porn game, I was very much surprised to find an actual game with an actual story and actual characters.
I think this is really good, is a story that has enough of game lore, anime lore, and headcannon to not feel like either a boring simple story form the games nor a fan-fiction of characters with barely recognizable behavior. I feel Cynthia and Jasmine's traits have been amped up to eleven, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
Overall I think you made something real nice, with enough options to make this feel a bit less linear but still tell a straightforward story.
There's only one issue I felt could be a quick fix, even though I know nothing of game design: The MC showed their partner pokemon to Cynthia twice, the second time happened even after it evolved, tried to be vague to avoid spoiling anything for the people that may think that's a spoiler somehow.
Also I'm not sure about the sprite for Shawn, might have to use another one form the games? Don't wanna shit on your photoshop skills but, you know, at least I appreciate you changing the color of the helmet of the totally random mundane engineer trying to fix the backup generator, that's a nice detail.
Right now I've only seen one ending but I wanted to give my feedback while everything is fresh in my head, but I'll try and get all of the endings and explore all the dialogue options I've missed, If I wanna add anything new I'll post it after.
Up until now at least, I can say it was a lot of fun, thanks for taking your time doing this!
Thank you so much for your feedback and kind words!
If you're showing off your pokemon to Cynthia twice then something is definitely broken. I'll need to investigate.
Shawn's sprite is terrible, I know. I spent literal weeks searching for art for a "Super Nerd" trainer that I could use and I came up with nothing. The shitty custom sprite I made by editing Cheren was the best I could do for now. (Ditto for the totally random unnamed engineer sprite who is absolutely not Roarke from Oreburgh)
Just finished, from what I could tell, the rest of the game, I'm going to assume that by 4 endings you mean four different outcomes from the final battle and not what relates to Cynthia at the end, because those would be 3: accepting, declining, and not happening, (sorry if my vagueposting is not vague enough, if only there was a spoiler option here).
The only thing that I never found is a Scyther, and the apparent blue haired girl in the docks, and is driving me crazy, I have no clue how likely are the odds of the girl appearing, and I'm not waiting it out in case is shiny odds or something impossible like that, and I genuinely don't know where in the world is Scyther. Given this mons apparent appearance and who one of the special thanks is I have an idea of who she could be but I wanted to see her "in person" damn it.
Gotta say after replaying this game over and over I found a lot of stuff that I missed out, it was really enjoyable, also liked seeing the little differences in dialogue depending on previos actions, I feel like it added a lot of replay value, the scenarios are very different and interesting.
So much so that, maybe if it's feasible, some sort of vague event checklist could be added? To make you wanna search for a different path, or maybe is just me getting to a point where I'm not sure if I've seen everything and wanting some indicator to answer me, maybe both. I've read in previous logs you started learning Ren'py just for this project so if it is too much trouble don't worry about it, I'm not even sure if is posible since I don't know anything about the program, is just my autism wanting to see the equivalent of a big 100% after I'm finished with a game. I'd rather see more story than these QOL but hard to implement improvements.
Last bit of bitching: some of the pokemon cries don't check the audio setting, I remember getting my ears blown in the ranger mission.
I really enjoyed playing this, but by the dates of the releases and current scope of the game I feel it's gonna be a while for the next update, but I'll happily wait to see what's next.
I had a lot of fun this past couple days and I'll be sure to stick around. Keep up the great work!
I want to add a list of achievements (the checklist you described) that tracks if you've seen every major part of the game. I don't want to implement that yet until the game is more finalized - there are still so many side paths I plan to add, it would be weird to have a checklist saying everything is done when "everything" isn't actually everything, yet. Don't spend too much time looking for the blue haired girl though, it's a pure rng 1/100 chance to appear and she has one sentence of dialog. Too small an easter egg to be worth it.
Thank you for the feedback on pokemon cries, for 1.3 I'll do a thorough check and rebalance or replace anything that's fucked up.
As for the next update, I'm going to get at least one more out before the end of the year.
I still haven't been able to reproduce the bug on my end and I'm starting to go a little crazy. I was beginning to wonder if I had already done something in my end that fixed it without realizing, so I downloaded the same 1.2 Alpha that everyone else has and started looking at the code there. I still have no idea how this is happening so I just wanted to clarify what I'm looking for.
(Spoilers for anyone reading this before playing the game, you have been warned)
When you say "The MC showed their partner pokemon to Cynthia twice, the second time happened even after it evolved," exactly which scene is it that happens twice? Is it the scene where you're chatting with Cynthia back at the hotel in the evening? Or is it the scene where you go up to Cynthia's suite to get TM's for Metang? Or is it two different scenes but both of them act like you haven't shown your pokemon to Cynthia before?
If it's the same scene twice - when does the scene show up? It should be the first scene you see when you go and get drinks with Cynthia for the first time, and nowhere else. When it shows up for a second time - what day/time is it? Does it happen on Day 2/Tuesday, or on Day 3/Wednesday, or on Day 4/Thursday? Does the scene play at the end of the day at the hotel, or is it popping up at some other point during the story? What happens after the scene?
The scene I'm referring is the chat at the hotel, when he shows her his Beldum, the TM one works fine.
I don't really remember what day it was, only that I never went to the ranger mission, nor the bar with the Mallow look-alike, also didn't go inside Jasmine's house since I chose to call Cynthia, those were the things I specifically remember not doing the first time.
I'm pretty sure this is all the useful info I remember, sorry if is not that useful. Also it never popped up anywhere else, just twice at the hotel bar.
Okay, I found the problem and it'll be fixed as of the next version. It's sorta-kinda a bug I knew already could potentially happen. The game was getting to the end of the list of if/else statements that told it what chat scenes to play, and then it would try to pull up one more scene after it had run out. With nothing else left in the list of scenes, it would just start reading whatever other code came next, which in this case just happened to be the entire dialog for that first chat scene. There was supposed to be an error message that played if the game ran out of scenes to pull from, but I didn't set it up right and the game just sort of went off on a tangent until something told it to stop, which in this case just happened to be the "return" statement at the end of that chat scene.
Luckily the fix is simple, I just need one or two more chat scenes. I was probably going to do that anyway, and also make an adjustment to the way the game prioritizes which chat scene to play. So this would have been fixed eventually. Probably. Maybe. I never would have found it without your help. So thank you!!
Glad I was able to help out :D
Thanks for making an amazing game!
I honestly really enjoyed playing this, hope you continue the good work and push out updates.
There's definitely more potential and can't wait to see what else you put out.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you!