itch.io

Just in my opinion, you should really just do what you want to do with the story. Take it where you want to take it. I don't think stories do well that are influenced by what those who aren't writing it want, I mean unless its being made for specific people in mind. 

Anyway the best stories I ever read were those where the writer just wrote what they wanted and wasn't concerned about other's opinions. After all someone will always find a reason to complain.

I personally think it's a good decision to not make adult scenes since honestly in my opinion adult scenes don't do much when there is a blank protagonist. However besides that just keep doing what you been doing, I think the story that I saw played by a youtuber named Neena, was very attractive so far.

I got to be honest, it's unfortunate, but my sympathy has run dry. If that has been the case since 2021 why were all those post in the past about something totally different, aka the break in. Health issues that cause them to be unable to work are MUCH more reasonable to share and people will understand. 

So at this point, these are just excuses this person is finding so people won't get angry. It works because people are usually not smart with their money and think everyone is trustworthy. I think the issue here is the developer just doesn't have a good work ethic

All in all, do get better, but you should have been more honest from the start, people are ok with whatever happens as long as you communicate and are honest. However, what I hate is those that don't bother communicating until the last minute, it just shows me that the person doesn't give a crap about the other people they should have been communicating with...

One studio literally was honest and said they have to drop their game because people just got busy lives with college and finding jobs and personal lives. However, they suddenly popped up several months ago saying they are ready to work on the game again. That's what being honest and communicating looks like.

Hope you read this and understand that in business you need to be honest and able to communicate no matter what. I still wish success on this project because people are looking forward to it.

Thank you for taking the feedback well~ like I said that was the ONLY aspect I didn't like. Literally you did an amazing job on all the character's personalities. So to anyone else reading this, I HIGHLY suggest to buy the game, you will very much enjoy it regardless if the romance is strong or not. I just care a lot about the romance aspects, but like I said I will finish the game later. I only didn't finish right now because I was looking for something more romantic to read these days. This protagonist/main character was probably the only character of all the many games I played that I liked so much. You didn't make him too hard headed, not too weak, and not annoying etc... You made him a perfectly well balanced character that you want to cheer for. The other characters also perfectly meshed with him too. Also the story was really good fantasy style. I can see your strong point is definitely world building and creating likeable personalities. Trust me, I am a very harsh critique because played and bought many yaoi games or comics. So believe my words when I say you did amazing on those things, which at the end of the day is the most important anyway. I have some more I want to say, but I will put the rest I want to say in a cut off half of this reply, so won't distract from my main point on this game.

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(this part are just recommendations, but I put this here also so other's that may be looking for some nice bl comics can see these too *most if not all can be read for free*)

As for improving romance writing I highly suggest you read these comics that I read multiple times because the romance was written so well. Some of them are serious, but some are more like romance comedies: 

"Yatteraneeze!" (this is a classical japanese bl manga that really focuses on realism on homosexual relations between young men in the 80's or 90's), "Castle Swimmer" (an extreme fantasy undersea comic on webtoons that is extremely well written in showing what modern day romance's and feelings may look like), "My Scheming Prince" (a Chinese bl manhua that you can read free on youtube, its based on a wushu jianghu fantasy the does a good job in portraying a strong friendship blooming into passionate romance), "Heesu in Class 2" (a high school korean bl on Lezhin that does a good job of portraying how in high school it's easy to overthink and miss the person who cares for you right in front of you). Lastly I will mention a more passionate/sexual romance comic called "Wolves Behind Bars" (it's korean omegaverse comic, so the genre may not be to a lot of people's taste, however it does a fantasic job at showing how a strong connection can easily develop into a uncontrollable passionate love between two lonely individuals)

These are all comics that I read multiple times from start to finish because the romance was just so attractive and well written. I suggest for you to read any of these depending on your preferred style of romance, because I strongly believe these can truly help you with your romance writings. I think "My Scheming Prince" may be something you may prefer more.

A really cute game overall. The romance of hagan's route did feel quite dull by the end, that's just my honest opinion. I mean it's expected for a romance story to be kind of dull if there isn't any passionate scenes. But in this specific route of the game, I feel the romance by the end became extremely one sided up until credits. I feel the love confession part should have been done during the time they are trapped in barrier. That could have made for a much better development. But since the romance only really became a thing by the end, everything else after felt rushed, annoying and forced. I didn't try the other routes yet, because I kind of lost interest for the moment after this first route but even though I felt like this about the romance.. the story overall is really good. The art is great too. I like this fantasy style. So don't take my opinion as me saying the game is bad, I'm just being honest about the one aspect I didn't like. I of course play other routes at later time, good job and thank you for making this! Don't stop making because this style is very good and hard to find other's like it. I just give this critique so you can have understanding the things that may need improvement for future stuff.

So I can not not give this a very high score because there was barely any romance besides people have a crush on someone else. So simply because of that I have to take off points. Also the ages of the characters just makes it even harder to even really enjoy any romance that does exist(games that focus on young minors tend to have very little romance), but doesn't really matter. However, the story was well written. This probably would do better as being listed as a mystery story than a yaoi or bl game(it's listed as such in the VNDB), since the focus on the game is very much the story and mystery. Like I thought I wouldn't be able to figure everything else, but I couldn't figure anything else until the game explained. That alone is amazing.

The music was great, it seems they did a lot of their own music in some cases, that's what I think since a couple of the songs I don't recognize anywhere else. The music really made scenes so much more impactful and emotional. The game overall combined with art, music and graphics were well choreographed to help provide to emotional aspects of the story.

You have to changed your computer to Japanese local, and I don't mean just the simple time and location, you actually need to change "system locale" look up on google how to do that if not sure how. It is usually an administrator option, so if you aren't being asked for permission to change locale then you probably aren't changing the right thing. YOU CAN NOT PLAY THE GAME IF YOU DON'T CHANGE THE SYSTEM LOCALE. I repeat this because I notice lots of people complained about not being able to play the game, but their issue is they didn't know how to properly change the system locale.

There are some extremely heavy trigger warnings here, rape, suicide, overall mental trauma/illnesses. Do not play this game if you feel any of these topics will trigger you. They do not hold back in this game even though  looks so cute. I almost never cry in all the tons of stories I read, but there are a few where I  have, I didn't cry here, but I almost wanted to at some parts. So this game "almost" making me cry means that they get heavy, since I'm not easy to cry at all.

I'm not going to say much else because this game is free, so you need to experience the story yourself. However, just know it's a very complicated to play game. It's one of those type of visual novels that actually care about the "game" aspect. If you are more into just reading the story, there is a straightforward walk through in the forums for the game on itch.io, but if you want to try figuring it out yourself then have fun, because it's not easy.

Hello, so actually in the game around the end of Sakura's route, you find out that Aoi killed his farther after his father came to deliver poison to Aoi and also make Aoi tell him where Shino(the mother) went. She was already dead of course, but the father didn't know.  Sakura hid the body of the father under his dorm bed. That was probably the only part of the story that didn't have a clear resolution, however we can probably just make up what we think happened to the body.

As for Narumi and Kamiya... using context clues and the fact that the professor looked old, like 50's or 60, similar age to the grandpa/father(kanata), and also the fact he said "two prodigies: one died and one disappeared". ... We know the one that died refers to Kanata, the reason why is because he was still known to the public and also the professor didn't know about Aoi. However the one that disappeared, my best guess is that it might have been Kyoya. Since that is the only other character that we get any bit of backstory of and it wouldn't be unlikely that he too was a prodigy but succumbed to the mental trauma his father instilled in him. So my guess is that Narumi was Kanata's first wife that bore his 3 sons (the youngest seems to be Kyoya). The professor could probably have been a friend or classmate of Kanata, since they would have been around the same age. 

Even though I did discontinue my support, its still a bit of a shame that this may not be finished. I thought the concept was quite interesting and unique. I would have love to see what came out from this. Just know that if this game is ever finished I would probably be still willingly to buy if it was made with love and care.

thank you for being real and transparent , but also still keeping confidence! those are the traits that make people want to support~

ah yes, their divine speaker game had some of the best voice acting, your 1001 night game also had just as good voice acting. unfortunately their ocean at night characters are no where near my preference for character design, however i can give try~

haha, i'm glad you tried it. Honestly what I will say is your idea of stat raising is definitely better than most other games i played, you should keep trying different things~

ook!

Hey guys, i just want to express something here. the games made by this developer are all very much worth the money. if you are looking for a romantic story, a sexy scene, good looking characters and a good main character. definitely this developer will have the stories for you.

I say that because this game particularly is the first one where i encountered so many bugs, however being that this is stat game which even a team at a "certain" company for a "certain" game couldn't get right and later dropped.... i can only imagine how difficult it is to get these type of things working right without a team. I believe in future a lot of bugs will be hopefully fixed, but even if not, I still always enjoyed the story and romances, which is my main reason for buying in first place ~~!

To Ertal Games: 

I look forward to your future games!! Keep up the great work~

p.s-also one of my hopes is that someone can make an actual good mermaid bl fantasy story, since barely any good ones or any at all to be honest.. (most just copy the little mermaid, bleh...). The only good mermaid bl story i have read so far in my full 27 years of life has been one on Webtoons called Castle Swimmers. only mentioning this just in case *wink wink* haha

but yea i read some other's comment definitely Ferdinand's route is extremely broken. i think i will just move on to my 2nd pick gilles. I agree with one of the people saying that bugs could have started due to not doing exact things at certain times. so maybe eventually i will come back to his route and follow the guide exactly. for gilles route i'm just going to follow the guide because i don't want to risk another break with me doing what i want. i will let you know if things work after following the guides.

*i reposted my comment here aftering seeing your message*

So i just recently downloaded the game and started playing, I think it's been a few days since a started playing and also a few days since i bought.  so i should have the most recent version. I didn't want to post this at first because I thought maybe it was part of game, but now I'm sure there is a problem. I'm on the Ferdinand route and my goodness, I feel I should have gotten an ending by now, but I am already in may, all my stats are art stats are maxed. did the game just start bugging out after I failed to meet the some requirement for some event? feel free to ask me if need more information on things I was doing that could have possibly caused this bug, but all I can is that it's a biiig bug. it just keep repeating after ferdinand and sister goes missing, even though i was still able to visit him and go to the club.

I'm going to reset my game and just follow the guide exactly because so far playing with my own feeling seems to be breaking the game.

p.s-another bug i just remembered, is i literally did not get a single heart, or did my game already start with all hearts maxed. I don't know. all i know is as i was dating Ferdinand up until sex scene, i didn't see a single change with the hearts.

yea the game freezing like that on the map happened to me a lot. I think it started happening when i was either skipping or going back too much, or if i missed some important event.

for anyone that read my cons and pros before, I just updated my feelings on voice acting. (they are all good, in fact the mc's and leos are my favorite. better than most other bl games i played in english. The people you got to voice this bl game obviously understand great voice acting.)

* update*

I forgot to actually update, I judged the mc voice actor to harshly in my first play through, it's actually very very good. Please disregard anything i said about the Mc's voice.

great game.

Pros:

Art was probably the best thing about the game. I would even say better art than some of Nitrol+Chiral games and they are very successful developer.

Story was really good. I loved the story, fantasy is always my cup of tea. The pacing was excellent too, nothing felt rushed or dragged down.

Romance was excellent. Some games make mistake by not actually building up a believable romance, but this game does a great job at actually taking you through how a romance would naturally be built up and of course in different ways based on the character you go for. The romance also always present throughout the story, so you never feel that all of sudden the characters forget they like each other.

Side characters have story. It's actually amazing to see a game not just use the side characters as plot movers but actually give them a story and focus a little on their romance.

Voice acting is actually decent. Unfortunately i didn't feel MC voice fit his character, so i had to mute that one... however everyone else's completely fit. Also there was actually emotion... like thank goodness, too many BL games kept using this one infamous voice actor that i swear never understood the "act" part of actor and read everything very monotone.

Cons *not many*: 

Writing could be better. This is naturally going to be a thing since writing is hard to get right and can take a long while to actually perfect. The writing in this story started off very strong but started to fall flat in 2nd half of game. The reason I say this because in the 2nd half some of the bigger plot points started to get explained through a single dialogue scene. I do make me wonder if this was truly just a fault of the writing or because lack of budget. Since I imagine if the developer actually explained some of these bigger plots throughout the story it would make the game longer.

Music is ok. The soundtrack wasn't anything amazing, in fact kind of forgettable, but at least you can tell effort was really put in there. I do feel bad saying that since there was an actual singer used, it just at least to me didn't really seem that great.

This last part isn't really a con just my on personal preference. I wish there could have been one more top besides Leos. I always like it when romance options are a bit more even in that way. However, if doing that would just end up causing the story and writing to suffer than it's better to not do that at all.

100% agree

I am very curious as to what your game had to break steam's rules. It can't be the sex alone because steam legit has games like House Party which is a sex simulator...https://store.steampowered.com/app/611790/House_Party/

here is link for those that don't believe me.

Is it because you live in a country where sex games are banned on steam or did you game have like rape... or something involving minors? Also shouldn't you still be able to put a patch on itch.io?

For example, the game Requiescence by Argent Games don't have the NSFW patch on steam but put it on itch.io. That games sex scenes happen to also have a few basically rape parts... but yea even if steam may restrict indication of rape, apparently itchi.io doesn't.

It would be nice if you could explain what's stopping you from actually putting the NSFW content back up.
*update*Oh wait... i just realized you seem to be working with Y! Press Games... oh geez, I wonder if has anything to do with that... they aren't even that good of developer... two games i played from them both had awful writing and plot. just pure smut w/ good art.

Honestly, like people have already said, we hope that everything is ok and you are all healthy. 

Not a lot more I can say. It's been almost  a year. I came back to check and not really surprised there is no updates. 

Just be well, and if well then maybe it's best not to take people's money in future and build up trust first through simple projects...that's at least the advise i can give business-wise. I don't think you guys have to close down, but definitely need to understand how business works and know what it means to keep trust with consumers.

oh you are blind? I'm sorry for not reading your previous comment first. unfortunately there isn't an official guide. I'm sorry I don't think the developer made this fully considering possible issues with sight impaired people, since they purposely, added those visual effects to make it obvious you are choosing the right answers. So simply put Rafael tends to respond well towards smart personality and only can romance in shika or cubi races. Paris tends to respond well towards flirty personality and only can romance in cubi or reaver races. Lastly Braums (aka the rich guy) tends to respond well towards nice personality and only can be romance in shika and reaver races.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to give you the specific personality trait that works for each situation, but in my summary when I say "tends", that suggests that those specific personality traits work most the time, you may have to just experiment a bit to get the right choice for certain situations. My advice in those situations is think what would truly work best when listening to the dialogue while also considering the personality of the character. I hope this helps and maybe someone will right you a guide on here.

In this game, it's not always the direct flirty or romance options that will get you on their route. Each character has a specific type of personality trait that they respond well to, and you will know based on the sparkles that show when picking the right one

Love your way of communicating and respecting your supporters. Also I love that you give the 3rd option. That is actually a really cool idea, I love the freedom of choice in your games.

same I would hope nothing bad happened to them. I did see their new game title failed in the kickstarter and i don't know if they delivered on their promise of giving their backers the game with limited assets. 

should probably make a post on here about that lol

there been delays since 2019. It is almost 2022, I don't know how many times the game was given over to a different publisher, but it seems like whoever is working on the game is extremely lacking the ability to actually finish it in a decent amount of time.

I just going to say this once, if it was for free then of course taking as much time as needed is OK, but once you start involving money then you are entering territory where there has to be some accountability. I hope you can get through all the trials and tribulations, but if after all this time the full released expansion does not introduce a bunch of new things and just ends up having repeated dialogues that you seen before in other routes.... basically if someone can finish the two new routes in just 30 minutes-1 hour then whoever is working on this should be ashamed for making their supporters wait sooo long for just a just bonus content.

In conclusion, be honest with consumers instead of giving misleading information or unrealistic release dates knowing the work ethic isn't there. If you want to see what it means to be honest with consumers then look at the post from the developers that made "The Divine Speaker" on itchio; they give a break down of everything going on and why the game is not released and honestly say they can't give a clear release date. It shows true respect to their consumers, and no one will be upset because the content they have released was completely free.

Sorry for being harsh, but it has to be said. I don't think other people should completely turn away from the game just because of this. However there needs to be some accountability.

I usually don't defend these type of messy projects however... They clearly wrote in one of their recent community updates that they don't know when the expansion will ever be released. 

it seems like they will just be updating the demo a lot. It doesn't look like the full release is a for sure thing yet.

yep 100% agreed and i loved dramatical murdered and most of the other games made by  the company (lamento: beyond the void being also on the top) played the afterstory game too ~~~

lol now it is my turn to say i agree hahah, i am sorry voice actor for kenta because i know you did many games including one of the ones i "kind of " like called camp buddy (a bit pricey but definitely worth it's price for everything they give in game),  but i am sorry the voice is just so lack luster. I am not a voice acting critic at all, but every time i hear i just feel so turned off lol and just something feels so lacking in the voice....  like the best way i can explain it is like how with music there will be usually changes in tones, speed and sound dynamics, it's like listening to song that doesn't change any of those and just completely the same throughout.

yikes the mc voice, I can totally see why it was chosen, and it was done very well. this is just my honest opinion but it don't like it XD I was hoping something a bit more boyish and somewhat cute. however I am leaving this comment because you guys really were super considerate in allowing us to directly choose the sound lvl of certain voices or to just turn off some completely! that was really nice and considerate to people that may not agree with certain voice actors/actresses.

btw i just want to add, please note this is all just my honest opinion. I am not trying to dissuade people who actually may find honest interest in this game for what it is. I just basically trying to warn those who may be of my similar taste and expected a bit more than what was given.

uuh, hm, was this suppose to be a comedy? I mean if so then cool! it was definitely funny. The versatile for all characters was definitely interesting, very rare for a bl games to have all completely versatile characters. Honestly the writing wasn't bad either (especially if it was meant to be a comedy). however the pacing really felt rushed, like i get it is fully voiced acted and the art is of course took time, but like the pacing was soo... not worth $20... I hate to say that, but for $20 visual novel, I expect at least a good solid story with good pacing. It was very weird for each of the character's individual story just be fully told after you have sex with your first love interest choice... then after it's like rushing to a conclusion.... Then the supposedly dramatic/sad relationship deepening moment is done almost all the same for each character in almost exactly same poses..

Ok anyway, overall if  anyone is looking to buy this game, there is a pretty interesting story for each character but don't expect it to unfold in the game, it is just told to you in one scene. If you are buying this just for the sex and quick romances then this game is probably not the best, the sex is very quick even though for a visual novel all you have to do is do narrative of what's going etc, so not sure why that was rushed. Definitely other games that have more intense and longer sex scenes. However this one still at least does that.
So basically only buy this game if just really really like the look of each characters and love seeing bunch of quick sex scenes. oh I will say the voices of each incubi is pretty good. main character, i didn't expect much since i played camp buddy and well not sure why the voice acting was much more bland here, in camp buddy the same voice actor had a lot more personality. maybe because older game??  so yea, you have been warned, so make sure this is what you are looking for so you don't get disappointed xD

yea I saw that they made an update announcement 59 days ago. However I don't believe it that they will really be working that hard on it, since quite a few people asked about the expansion and they received no reply xD If you guys are reading this, the yes, I do think need to be more vocal about your plan with this game and not about a new game lol

here if it helps to give some advice~ try to remember the main character is not you and you are watching a story go down. so if you think about it like that it may not matter what the lovers are like xD for example the lovers in Chasing the Stars weren't my type but I still played because I wanted to see the story. However if I played an otome type game where the main character is meant to be mostly blank without their own story then I am very picky on the type of lovers  I have to pick on.

haha, of course this is just how I feel about things but I wanted to share since could help you make a decision~