Weird question but, dream crusher route?
That’s definitely a relief, I want you to know that even though I might have sounded harsh, I have a ton of respect for what all of you have done and if I sound rude its just that I’m super excited to see this thing completed, that’s why I’m just anxious over whether or not it’ll be done after spending all this time waiting.
that’s good and i do hope that new project goes well…
I have been also thinking about how Graces route will continue onward after the demo due to the shower scene
(I mean i swear when i keep reading Graces lines i can mentally picture her speaking English with a french accent)
Grace is going to rub on alex in her normal way that her weight really takes off easily becoming the heaviest girl in the group as Rea and Hannah try to lose their weight which in turn slowly becomes a feeder and feedee relationship.
Or more likely early On their going to Gain Mutually as per Graces agreement with Alex and both their weights climb much quicker that their relation is of a mutual gain while Hannah tries to lose weight but perhaps ditching her diet due to a big argument with Alex and Grace
super well done, it really feels like an ensemble group! I saw the favorite character poll above but found that I wanted to just choose all of them.
I also really like Ryan here, my feeling playing through the conversations was exactly how you described, he is supportive but ultimately part of Alex’s old life and they are drifting apart a bit, and that’s ok.
I especially liked how all of the characters are clearly friends but also don’t get along perfectly all the time. The little disagreements and recoveries made all the conversations feel very real to me; nobody every said anything that made me think “Ah, the writer needed to add drama, so this character did something dumb”. Characters feel like themselves and just we the reader (and Alex) don’t know these characters super well yet, so sometimes they surprise us.
Main things I would fix are both minor. First, some indication when and how much time passes between scenes. Many scenes flow nicely into each other, but scenes where it is several days or weeks later left me a little confused for the first couple lines until I checked the phone to see the date.
Second thing is really minor, but I’m not a fan that going on a phone call gives you a phone notification. I like checking the phone for new notes and progress updates, but if I was just on a call with someone I don’t need a notification telling me that I was on a call with them.
10/10 though, only criticisms were minor, am hyped for the future of this game.
1 Like
Not 100% through the demo, but is the character gallery bugged? I can only change Alex’s weight, but obviously, the other characters gain some.
1 Like
Now that I’m a couple of days out from playing this, figured I’d throw in my two cents on the currently released demo. It’s possible that some of what I’m about to say has been addressed by Tron already, or has been said by someone else, but I haven’t had the time to read through everyone’s posts, so yeah. I’m also a bit tired btw, so if I get some stuff wrong, my bad.
To talk about the story aspect of the game first, I think everything is overall pretty solid. Characters seem to act fairly consistent with what is established with them, and the events make sense from a broad perspective.
That being said, I saw that Tron was trying to streamline the beginning, and I feel like that idea may have gone a bit too far. It starts off well enough, but I feel like the game starts leaping forward in time before I’m really given much of a chance to get to know any of them all that well. I found both Hanna and Rea hard to gage from their initial introductions, so much so that I ended up following Grace’s path at first, since her introduction made it very clear who she is and what her story would be about. Hanna and Rea do have the weight loss thing set up, but that didn’t give me much to go on overall. Instead, all of the more interesting and telling aspects of their characters are in their route sections. I’m not saying that all the information in their routes should be mandatory, but I felt like I’d finally been properly introduced to them once I went back and played their routes. I think more time spend learning about these characters before being thrust into having to choose between them would have been better.
The same goes for Alex’s gaining. I’m not necessarily talking about needing specific stuffing scenes. I just think it all feels too sudden. The character’s supposedly been struggling with this for years, yet now is suddenly the time she makes it happen. I get that this is the inciting incident of the story, so there’s some leeway there, but I just don’t think the game gives a good enough reasoning for why it’s happening right now. Why did she get more confident? Is it her new friends? If so, what is it specifically? I didn’t feel like I was watching her break out, I felt like she just woke up one day and just started succeeding.
One final thing in the same vein, I think a lot of the transitions can come really suddenly. Instead of some of the scenes transitioning naturally into each other, I found myself often having to suddenly get my barings again because I had no idea why the previous scene ended or what the next scene was going to be. The first time skip is the first major time felt this. All of a sudden the game jumped 2 weeks ahead despite the fact that I’d barely met 2 of the major characters, and now Alex has known them for much longer than I have. After which, I started feeling like I should already know them pretty well despite not really knowing much about them at all.
In conclusion with the story, I think the scenes in the game as it is are, for the most part, just fine. I think you need more to connect them together and make them feel like they flow naturally from point A to point B. I know this can be pretty difficult, especially with the choices, but making sure aspects of the story are firmly established at the beginning of the story are essential to it’s success. As much as it might be annoying to look at this part of the game even more, I think it would really benefit you to go back and do some more passes on how the game is structured and paced.
As for gameplay, I have far less to say; though, it’s important none the less.
First, the game probably needs more save slots, but I think people have already mentioned that, so I won’t belabor that point.
What I will talk about, however, is what can be improved with how players interact with the story. At the moment, the basic choices and phone to view stats and check certain things is good and perfectly serviceable. I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with it. That being said, I wanted to give a couple of suggestions to create more interesting systems. These would be harder to implement, but I think people would see a much more engaging and interesting experience as a result.
To start, I think the phone is under-utilized. Other VNs in the past have shown that a phone can be a great asset for allowing the player to interact with the game and story. Giving players the ability to do things like, ignore calls, save and delete pictures, and write their own notes can add a lot. I can give more detail on this another time, but again, this is a really useful tool that I think is being underutilized.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that I feel like food and eating should play a much larger role in how players interact with the story, given what the story is about. For example, if players were able to choose when they ate certain foods, even if they don’t have as much choice in what they could get, could add a lot to the story. For example, the scene where she’s mocked during practice would be much more interesting if the player had decided to eat during it. It could lead to a trade off of having more time to eat if you eat in public, but there’s more chance for someone to comment on it, which could be good or bad depending on the situation. I can talk about this later as well, but that’s the basics of what I was thinking.
Overall, I think this is a nice showcase of the projects potential. Given that this game is 100% in my wheelhouse, I’d like to see it become the best game it can possibly be. I’m always happy to give more feedback on anything, and have some more detailed discussion on what I’ve described here (especially since I wrote this pretty late at night).
Take care, and good luck with the game.
10 Likes
This is an exceptional review with good criticisms, thank you so much!
I really did try to cut the introduction down, though in doing so it seems I’ve forgotten what the frame of reference would be for new players. Same for Alex’s reasoning and success with gaining, I’d tried a few things previously:
- A prologue at Alex’s high school graduation, where she’s excited to try gaining in peace once she goes off to college. I’d need to do this without physically including Ryan, as we don’t plan to give him a portrait.
- A chat with Alex’s mom in the car at the start of the game about her recent minor weight gain, before Alex walks back into her dorm.
- A flashback to Alex’s fall semester at Red Glen, covering why she didn’t make friends or gain much.
I didn’t like where the attempts went at the time, so I scrapped them. As loathe as I am to go back over the introduction again, you’re right that more can be done to make it better. I think it’s the worst section in the game, and it’s clearly the first one I wrote. I’m going to do something about it in a later release, something that doesn’t alter later scenes.
Again, thank you, and I’ll probably have more to say once I’m rested too 
Otherwise, I’ve been working on the patch (014a), and have fixed the following:
- Disabled the scrolling background for now, we’ll see if it makes a QOL difference.
- Fixed Alex’s portrait showing up while she’s changing in her house bathroom. It was indeed a strange bug that doesn’t occur anywhere else.
- Replaced sketch achievement icons with proper colored ones.
- Might have fixed the missing font issue when viewing the progress graph, I need to check with the programmer.
- Added 11 additional save slots to each save page, and made the page navigation tools easier to find. Sorry about that!
- Added a scene transition effect to when time passes between Alex chatting with Ryan and her mom. That was always supposed to be there
- Weight diary graph should show metric units in the legend now, if using metric units.
- Phone notes should show metric units now.
- Fixed every incident of non-metric units in dialogue, as reported by @Kitsune. Thanks again!
- Fixed reported instances of repeating dialogue text.
- Fixed Alex’s random outfit change on Hannah’s route.
I haven’t pushed this version out yet, I want to confirm some changes first. I have NOT fixed metric units showing up in the phone’s history (“A Buck Fifty: Alex’s weight exceeded 150 pounds”). This will require a deeper change to our unit conversion code that I shouldn’t try by myself 
I will update the first post and this thread once it’s out. Might be tomorrow or Thursday, whenever I can have a chat with the team.
9 Likes
Don’t suppose you can try to squeeze in some “previews” for Rea’s, Hannah’s, Grace’s, maybe Morgan’s 2nd and 3rd weight progressions in the character viewer, pretty please? Maybe under a “view spoiler” tag or something that can be edited out in the final builds.
Haha, not yet! Toroboro tediously slaved over the progressions, and they’ll be shown when the time comes 
.
However, more will be included with the next content addition; I’ll say what they are in a spoiler once it’s out.
11 Likes
I think the balance you got in the story is perfect. Your actually a pretty awesome writer, I think you shouldn’t second guess yourself too much and change up what you already have down because your doing a fantastic job.
2 Likes
Agreed
(Post must be at least 20 characters)
1 Like
BTW, if you do a path other than Rea’s like say Grace’s, Rea will gain weight and her character will use heavier portraits in game, BUT it won’t unlock the heavier portraits in the extras character viewer.
Not sure if that’s intended or a bug.
It’s not a big deal ATM because Rea is the only one with heavier portraits, but when there are other progressions for other characters having the extras menu unlocks perfect might be nice.
1 Like
That’s not actually an error? You’re out of memory. Maybe you have 200 chrome tabs open? or maybe you’re on a netbook?
I think the intros you listed are all best left out, and you made the better decision by not including them.
To be a bit more clear, I think the overall progression of the game’s opening is perfectly fine. I just think it needs a bit more flesh on it. Some more focus on how Alex goes from being nervous to being all-in as well as more focus an firmly establishing who each of the characters are before needing to make a decision between them are the key things that need improving.
For a little more detail on that now that I’m awake, I think Grace and Morgan are pretty good as they are. The Morgan stuff in particular is one of the few things in the script as it is that also really helps with showing Alex’s growth through the demo, so it’s definitely something that can be kept almost as-is.
It’s really just Hanna and Rea that I think are the problem. Despite being introduced to them first, the only things I really understood about each of them from their introductions were:
- Hanna’s really serious about Quiz Bowl
- Hanna wants to lose weight, Rea is helping her.
- Rae is often pretty care free
Of course, this is all a gross simplification of them and their relationship, but everything else about them in this demo only becomes clear if you go out of your way to look for it. I would have never seen the more interesting aspects of them if I hadn’t gone out of my way to be thorough.
Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what I meant earlier. Feel free to DM me or whatever if you want any more advice and such. If I have the time to spare, I can look over certain things in a bit more detail. Though, I’d probably have to play it again and actually take notes so that I can solidify all this in my head. All of what I’m saying here is more of a first impression after seeing each of the characters’ routes.
Also, a couple of things I forgot about earlier:
Some of the choices can be a bit ambiguous. One of the ones with Grace in the cafe in particular makes it hard to understand what you’re actually choosing in that instance. Of course, you can always rewind it if it wasn’t what you expected, but I don’t think that should be relied on.
The save and load buttons at the bottom are confusing as to which is which. Those symbols are typically used for “upload” and “download” and it’s hard to tell which is which in this instance. Am I “uploading” a save and then “downloading” it to the game, or am I “downloading” the save and then “uploading” it to the game? There’s nothing wrong with using cleaner symbols for the buttons, I’d just find ones that express what they do a bit more clearly. The other two buttons are fine.
7 Likes
Well, that’s the strange thing. There isn’t any other apps open. Windows task managers shows there is memory free. And it’s always happening in that same place.
The fact you’re calling programs apps makes me think you’re on a netbook or similar device like the surface? that lacks a normal amount of ram? If you have 8+ gb of ram though I’d be surprised.
@Tron a question about current content when it comes to new demos with additional content, you said you were doing a sort of range on the weight gain depending on who you date however i would like to ask if it’s possible to get Alex or other characters to their larger sizes sooner in previously released content for exp she’s just barely able to fit into her clothing as they get have their spring break?
(I think i might of worded that poorly, will the old content be updated with newly released demo content so that we can make choices that could make alex of other characters larger?)
Just finsihed trying the demo and all I can is AMAZING! The amount of work put into this is just off the roof.
I wanted to ask a question; in the final game (Or future updates), will we have to choose a path and expand upon it? or is there a way to go through all the routes in one “save”.
In the Demo I’ve unlocked Grace’s path but I dunno how to unlock Rea’s or Hannah’s, any tips on that?
@maldy Unfortunately, I don’t plan to do that right now. The introduction (everything in version 014) is meant to build a foundation for the upcoming branching narrative. I learned from the previous demo’s feedback that most players want to get as big as possible, ASAP. Every character has a fairly long weight journey, so if I wrote iterative dialogue for most (or every) combination, most of it would likely be skipped in favor of the largest sizes available.
It’s a reason I ended up tying weight to narrative choices, rather than player-driven eating. Originally, Alex was going to have choices on what to eat and when, but I discovered that if players had a choice to eat, they’re going to eat. Whatever gets them as fat as possible, and it became a chore to write and plan for. I worked on a balancing system so that Alex could overdo it on certain foods and hamper her progress (or make her miss class/meetings), but it just wasn’t very interesting and other games cover eating as gameplay better.
It ended up being a blessing once we started discussing CGs, as drawing for multiple size combinations would exponentially increase turnaround time and file size.
Alex always gets to her third weight stage in this introduction, but that will change going forward. Every character’s route has choices for going bigger or smaller, and exploring what that means with her partner as well as everyone else.
However, Alex can’t reach her maximum weight on all routes, only a specific branch on a specific route. You’ll understand when you see just how big that is 
8 Likes