I decree 0.5 the “Shortstack” update. It may not be long, but boy howdy is it thick!
Hope everyone enjoys the update! This time around we shine our focus back on Sebastian as a certain ex-Huntress has a new round of tests set out for her! I fear speedrunners might dash through here quick, but for players who don’t mind a little exploring, they might find quite a few secrets!
(And a few bugs. While the beta testers helped a lot with the searching, I was adding things up to the last minute. I swear there used to be 31 days in April!) Speaking of help, do offer thanks to CJ, the artist behind Apostles. As you can see from both the sprites and title image he does both Sprites and lineart and is open for commission! https://ko-fi.com/cj_x4 – Cj-x4 - Hobbyist | DeviantArt
But without further ado I hope everyone who has been patient with me enjoys! Saves are included, but bringing your own is recommended. In order to bring the old, go into your old game folder, go into “www” and copy the folder marked saved. Then go into the new game folder, go into “www” and paste save.
Otherwise the 3 included saves go-
Heather “Love” route
Heather “Friends” route
Heather “Hates your fucking guts” route.
Enjoy!
It’s show time
Two big thumbs up from me!
New update for Apostles? Hell yeah!
Just started playing it but I think I found a typo:
Was the “is” in this sentence supposed to be an capital “I”?
Excited for this update.
Noticed that the dragon fight was completely impossible to lose.
I looked at the files and saw there was a sort of bad end but even when doing no damage every turn, it takes forever for Heather to die and Sebastian cannot die at all.
Really great update though. Always down for some best girl action and more lore. It was short but super in-depth.
Also the sprite work is amazing, hats off to CJ.
Yep. Sorry, about that! Will fix thank you. Hope you enjoy the update!
Oh yeah. I think I might have made just a redundant bit of dialogue JUST IN CASE someone managed to lose, but I could probably re-balance it so it is at least a little bit of a challenge. And uhhhh…sorry if you look through the game files, I really really don’t organize things well!
Also glad you liked the update! This one was very deep in one character with multiple branches and ways to play. (Most test chambers have several solutions or variants.)
But already I’m excited to start working on 0.6 so we can see what exactly the town has been up to in there own snow version of quarantine!
Never underestimate peoples ability to lose in an unlosable fight.
I have just finished Episode 5, I enjoyed the update, but it definitely made me feel heather’s pain and perspective in a positive and negative way, which I will get into in the review
SPOILERS FOR .5 IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED .5 AND GIVE A SHIT DON’T UNBLUR THE TEXT
This is just my opinion, you are free to disagree as you like
Pros:
Byzantium reformed: My reviews have been near constantly wondering about what happened to Byzantium, seeing as he was unaccounted for in the Mannequin Room at the end of every update and the only one’s who shared that fate were either the dead or the servants to the apostles, even if he had a brief role in this update, he was used well in terms of story and sauce, so props there which leads me into
Half Right Hero: The theory that I had about Byzantium was that he was an Immobile blob being held in the shadow realm and being used as a magical battery alongside other fattened mages to power the Shadow Realm, I also thought that meeting a mage in this world is like meeting a professional athlete irl on the street and Gretel was like an Olympian in terms of rarity, Hence why the Cynic thought that the Apostles were con artists and not just assuming magic was being used, and why most questions of where the food came from were shot down, after all, what are the chances? Both of these seem to have been half-right according to this update (Which makes this more of a personal pro but hey, I was happy to both be slightly right and surprised
Apostles:The Line: Just a pro for the lines from Sebastian’s little “Tough Shit” monologue, it was super satisfying to hear Heather’s self righteousness get knocked down a peg, considering she was engaged (Or at least complicit) in much worse shit then sebastian has been doing to her(I am mainly going down the Love route, only since I like to see this as a weird sort of redemption for Heather) considering(As shown in the scene) she’s half the reason why Sam has her broken rib and nearly got herself killed, complicit with her brother’s exploitation/rape(Depending on definitions) and was just as much of a parasite as the others in terms of leading Auburnwoods to the edge of Dissolution. The entire update she seemed a bit spoiled to me. Considering she LITERALLY described a worst fate for her via “the hole” so hearing Sebastian serve her some humble pie was great(And seemed to have shut her up about her fate, considering she was willing to bang him after that).
Return of Sebas: Sebastian is definitely neck and neck with L in terms of being my favorite, to site a dead meme, he has so many “Thug Life” moments that made me genuinely laugh so many times I have lost track, and this update is no exception, his interactions with Heather in particular(As referenced above) made me laugh in a good way, I’m guessing tact and holding back would make him less slothful.
Tsamdere: I tend not to enjoy the Tsundere archetype in fiction, but here it genuinely works for me because it’s paired with Sebastian who gives as much as he takes, instead of laying down for his dick flattening.(Since he’s laying down for a nap instead). Her genuine concern for him and her sisters is heartwarming, even if she’s working through thinking that caring for them is a weakness, it’s not obnoxious and genuinely shows a character to her.
Lore in general: Getting to know a reason as to why the apostles are doing it(Even if I partially knew the reason already) was a treat, some may complain about the density of lore getting thrown at them, but I enjoy parsing through the lore of different fictional worlds, so it wasn’t too bad for me
This War of Mine: The parts with Galloway in the city are marvelously done, with the game that is this pro’s namesake having a much similar vibe to Galloway’s part, the people not caring about the politics of the war and just wanting it to end, the military who is corrupt as fuck, even the color scale, and I love every bit of it. Galloway seems like a woman who has a long life lived and while the world seems to disappoint her, she has yet to lose faith in it I.E how she literally breaks her finger to escape Acedia’s Paradise and the scene with the orphan girl, she seems a type that I very rarely see in any pop culture, Pragmatically good. (In short, she knows what does good(Pretending to mug the girl and then teaching her to survive in her conditions when the people are “Fully willing to kill a little girl for the money”) rather than what sounds good(Ned Stark, don’t @ me) she is an unexpected treat for this update.
Characters, not Avatars: While this is a game wide pro, it felt concentrated in this update, I enjoyed how I was guiding a character, not that I was the character, I.E Heather’s Bafflement at learning the Apostles were using the sin energy to restore Auburnwoods and help people. To me it seems obvious as to why they would do it, prosperity and safety are two great ways of making people fatter (cough America cough) but while she is smart, she is “Rubik’s Cube” smart, not “Courtroom Politics” smart, Wisdom is not Intelligence etc. etc.
Cons:
Late to dinner: While I did love this Update and what It did for Mostly Heather but a bit of Mauve, it felt like the conversation with Gretel about having Lunch at Pamela’s was a set up for a possible loop around the town to learn how big the villagers of Auburnwoods have gotten after Sebastian wrapped up with Heather, and the update end scene with Galloway(Forgotten if that was her actual name) would end after a Lunch scene with Pamela. Especially since I see that the towns folks have gotten fatter in the mannequin room’s descriptions. Maybe got my hopes too high with the “Shortstack” moniker and the thickness being for the other towns people as well as Heather and Mauve
Mana’s carbon footprint: This is less of a straight up con and more of a question not explained by the game, is mana like electricity, where you can output a certain amount but go over it and everything goes to shit and the capacity is how much a person can output? or is it like fuel, where you have a finite amount of it and capacity is how large the “tank” is? While I doubt it will matter much,due to the Apostles using sins as Nuclear to Mana’s Oil/Solar, this is more a cry for clarification then an outright con, if it spoils stuff just say so, but this was part of my confusion at the update
And that is all I can say for .5 as of 5/1/2021, this update felt imbalanced in terms of sauce versus story compared to .4, heavily leaning into story(Probably for a good reason, but still). While some scenes are still S tier sauce, it felt like a lore shovel to the face, rather then the drip feed of .4(Which while it makes sense in terms of which character each centers around, the dreamscape scene has me seeing stars from how hard the lore book smacked me). It was still a fun sequence, but it only felt like it need redistributing over the update. Over all though, giving it some credit due to it’s size, I will say this update is an 8.75/10 for me, the first part of the story was building up alot, and then the dreamscape sequence while great definitely felt offbalance to me in terms of placement(Again, if this was like the middle of the update and I had the lap around Auburnwoods learning what the other residents got up to i think it would have been better, since it would’ve let my head cool down from the lore dump and then see the Apostles actions in a new light. Waxer has yet to make an update I personally don’t like, for me it’s more a question of how hard does the content hit rather than does it hit, I am hoping .6 will return to .4’s style of lore(Where it is interspersed over multiple scenes rather than mostly crammed into one) but .5 is definitely still a good update nonetheless, keep up the good work
Tl;Dr Didn’t like the balance in story and sauce, albeit each was still made from top shelf material. Wish we got a bit more, but overall still a good update even with it’s length, better than .2 but definitely not as good as the others IMHO. 8.75/10
I seem to be unable to run this version?
Downloaded & extracted, as usual, running the .exe isn’t doing anything, and running it as Admin only produced a log:
I’m admittedly confused if the .exe is supposed to be called “game.exe.exe”
Most bizarre. It should not be exe.exe and I don’t know why it is. I can’t imagine what could have caused that sort of thing. Well first thing to try would be changing the file back to .exe. And then if that doesn’t Perhaps a faulty download? I’d recommend redownloading the entire 0.5 off mega again to see if it offers a corrected version.
Sorry again for that weird one of a bug, let me know if neither solution works and I can try something else!
@Altair123 Whew! As always I am glad for your long and thoughtful reviews! It really helps tremendously to get an outside look for how I’m doing!
Pro- I had a sneaky suspicion you’d like the return of a certain mage! I know we didn’t get to see much of him (besides a comically fat face) While this hopefully worked as a surprising turn to see where ended up, the story of course isn’t over! And we will be seeing more of him, and perhaps even getting some more info on what exactly he’s been up to. (And why he has such chubby checks now.)
Hey half right isn’t bad! Heck it’s close to perfect as hopefully it meant that although you didn’t completely solve all mysteries early, you were still in the ballpark enough that everything doesn’t seem to come from left field. I’ll go into magic a bit more in the cons, but in terms of rarity yes it’s pretty darn rare to meet a mage, and one of Gretel’s talents is unheard of.
Glad Sebastian’s “Tough shit” talk worked. I felt like if every character was just like “Oh you want me to get fat? SURE!” the game would lose a lot of it’s reality. So some characters like Heather pretty darn oppose the forced nature of weight gain. Of course also on the good path I didn’t want it to make it seem like Heather did a 180 in terms of character. The person she was in Auburnwoods hasn’t been forgotten.
And double glad Sebastian was able to bring the laughs, cause to be honest I had a blast making up all those little signs and the like. 
And while him being that sassy might be a bit off character, I’d say it has a lot to do with him being in a more relaxed environment with Heather. (Relaxed because he controls every bit of that world, because as stated he is a bit of a control freak!)
Tsamdere- (Great pun) Sam was an interesting one to write. The letter idea came later in the making of the update, (with her originally just not doing much while Sebas was away) but I’m actually really happy how they turned out!
Glad the lore worked! Which is a big weight off my shoulders as “that” section I wrote and rewrote more then the others, just trying to get the information across the right way. Originally that talk was just Sebastian and Heather talking to each other with no visual pop ups! So hopefully those visual aids helped make the talk a bit more engaging, and at the very least, it gave me an excuse to have CJ make a mega butt Heather sprite for the game!
Yay! G’s story was a success! I was hoping people would be pleasantly surprised to see her again, as I don’t think we’ve seen her since 0.1 and 0.2. She also offers a much more different bit of flavor to the stew of the game with her attitude towards problem solving. None of the 3 missionaries would have slapped the shit out of the kid in order to help them, but at the same time G can’t snap her fingers and bring out feasts like Gretel can. She makes due with what she’s got.
And as you’ve stated, writing for her gave me a good chance to show off how the rest of the country was dealing with the conflicts of war.
And as for the last again “yay!” for having it feel like the player only moves the character along, not controls every aspect of their personality. But also “YAY” for your description of Heather as it is RIGHT on the money for how I try to write her. 'Smart, but not wise."
And now onto the dreaded cons!
For the first one I can’t argue at all, because I agree who heartedly. In fact originally it WAS meant to end with Gretel and Sebas doing a loop around town. However Heather’s section took a lot longer then anticipated, and honestly I think I spent too much time there. As I should have learned already, it’s not just about working hard, it’s about effective time management. And while in some areas, spending an extra week to add the visual cues to the LORE talk at the end I think was worth it. The sheer amount of time I spent on some of Heather’s puzzles, might have been to much and I should have scaled back a bit.
But Hindsights 20/20! Regardless the loop of the town hasn’t been scraped, and it will be the jumping off point to 0.6 and while this doesn’t correct the error of 0.5 being a but stunted, hopefully it will make it feel better overall!
Mana talk- DANG I hoped to have gotten the lore of many out clearly, without wasting to much time on it in the end talk.
To clarify Mana capacity is like the fuel tank that you are born with and can never swap out. (barring the Edgar flashback way.)
Some people have BIG OL fuel tanks and don’t have a problem just slinging spells with more power then skill. Why bother with a precision fire ball when you can just make a FUCKING BIG FIRE BALL. Anyone above the 400 range.
Other people are born with smaller fuel tanks. Meaning they can’t do as many or as big fireballs. BUT if they work at it hard enough they can overcome. Concentrate the fireball into a more precise strike. Anyone in the 399-100 range.
And then there is 90% of the population, who has so little mana in them, it really doesn’t matter. At 12 mana capacity Heather could light a candle. At 5 Sebastian could MAYBE spend a year training and learn how to give just a super nasty sun burn to someone.
But either way once you run empty on magic, you are out for the count. And need to take some time to rest before it comes back.
Hopefully that answers the question. But if not tell me! Also let me know if you think lines for the Heather Sebastian talk should be changed or clarified for better sense. It won’t be the only time magic is brought up, but I do want it do still be a clear initial rundown.
Hey as an overall score I’ll take a 8.75! That’s more then I’d give it! As your con’s are quite fair in the failings of the update, but I’m glad the good doesn’t get brought down by the more lacking elements!
And once more, can’t say it enough, thank you from the bottom of my heart all the thought you put into the review, it really means a lot! Thanks!
I probably should have stated that I’d done both of those steps prior to posting. Will try a 3rd time, as this game is far too good to give up on because of a little error like this.
Edit: Same results having downloaded the 3rd attempt. Renaming it doesn’t fix it, running it renamed, even as admin, prompts the Windows loading circle, then nothing.
By any chance do you still have 0.4 left on your computer? If you take the folder markered “www” from 0.5 and use it to replace the “www” in 0.4 then you should just “update” it.
It wouldn’t really need to be 0.4 honestly, any rpgmaker mv game will work.
Bug report: was doing the “hates sebastian’s guts” route with your save and went into the mercy section, but when Sebastian teleports her away some older cutscenes start playing (the one where Heather smacks her head against the wall onwards) up to the point where the tests start, at which point there’s a black screen.
Ah dang! Sorry about that one. I’ll get a sorted in the 5.1 asap.
Okay so I felt this update was a bit short BUT I still love it.
I love that we got more time with Sebastian and have more lore about the world, him also how magic works in this world then there Heather’s new test, the puzzles were not that bad and it was fun to see what happen if I fail them but what got me was the nightmare part and how dark that when and showed Heather biggest fears because a very common fear that people have but it was made worst because of Heather’s way of thinking and her outlook on life.
the only thing is that I wanted to send more time in the village and hit some of the Characters that have not gotten a ton of screen time but I guess that what the next update is for.
I tried an in-situ upgrade first, by overwriting everything with the new version, but that didn’t work.
Doing this “replace the www folder” did work, so thank you.
YEAAAAAAAAAH
Jean-Luc seems like a badass, the idea of someone who’s wandered the world for centuries and seen everything there is to see but is still a dummy is really dope. I really like how if you pay attention you can “see” characters early in the game like the grave of Clover and Dana’s family next to the church, and then later in the game Dina will talk about Clover committing suicide, Dana’s family is obviously a big part of her story (those names always throw me off lol, thank god for the viewing room), and of course in this update Jean-Luc is mentioned more after being hinted at in the church and by Steph in earlier updates. The interactives in this game are great at worldbuilding and being funny, my spacebar key is probably worn as fuck
Also my safe guess of Sebastian’s plans is that he wanted to raise his own magic potential/use power from Sin in order to bring back his wife - we can see he has the same creepy mask in the flashback so assuming it’s the same project, his audacious plans are probably something he wanted before becoming an Apostle. But then that begs the question as to why Gretel wouldn’t help him with her Jesus-powers, and while sexy clown ghost says you can’t come back from death, there are undead like Pat and the cute zombie bro who can help Violet… maybe I’m thinking too far into this lmao.
I definitely didn’t expect the seven deadly sins to be related to the Niss lol. Perhaps I’m just reading too much into the word “Sin”, but maybe they’re not as entirely benevolent as it seems? Or are the 3 Niss unrelated to the other 4 sins? Surely they have to be real gods and not just the Apostles BSing to generate more Sin, because the Apostles talk about them in private when there’s no reason to lie.
On the fatties side, Lily getting Mauve to lick all the cake off her was great lol. It comes to a point where it’s just entertaining to see what crazy fetish bullshit she does next to poor Mauve, assuming you don’t think about the implications too hard of him basically being… fuck-tortured. In general the mix between “WOAH NICE FATS” and “Even though the adventurers deserve punishment, the Apostles are bat shit too” is really interesting. I hope we see more of Gretel’s issues and past sooner or later, except for bashing Violet it feels like she’s been dived into the least, and judging by what Sebastian and Lily say I really want to know more. Also Byzantium’s chubby cheeks are adorable <3
GLORY TO JEAN-LUC 
Thank you for the extremely kind words!
I’m glad all the little details aren’t going missed! While anything truly crucial I give more fanfare (like the final talk in this update with Heather) I do like to hide little details of the future in the game. It might be a bit before we start learning more about Jean-Luc as well as others, but boy will I have fun leaving the hidden clues!
No comment yes or no on Sebastian’s super secret machinations of possibly evil intent! That said, I can confirm that he is not planning to bring his wife back as a spooky skeleton! Obviously for no other reason then skeletons can not get fat!
Happy to see some theorizing about the Niss! Their secrets will be revealed! Eventually!
Lastly on the subject of Mauve and Byzantium, I am glad there are some male fat fans! I know some people just prefer the girls, but I like to spread it out! Nice fats for everyone!
Thanks again for playing!