Well she responds well to teasing. She’s not upset about it. Which is why I get confused. She says the “making fun of the fat girl” line.
I could try reloading to a weight stage earlier on and go from there. I did save frequently and filled up all the save slots, saving over my confirmed loss dead end saves.
These response lines are not based off of a romance score, but rather three other variables: greed, feedee, and fatconfidence. I’d say probably your best bet is to restart the game.
Or I could see if I can get away with going back a fair bit without restarting. I’m screwed over by invisible variables. Wish this game had a debug like Tramp does.
Punishing someone for a stat they CAN’T SEE being too low and forcing them to restart hours of progress with no way to fix it is the most unreasonable bad ending I’ve ever seen in a game. And you mock the player with a movie quote while they despair in their failure. Sadistic game design.
Oh you could say “you treated her badly. You deserve to lose”. The game doesn’t tell you how treating her effects her and I wasn’t aware there’d be a bad ending with no dialogue choice that’s obvious leading to such. You gotta grind. And hope, PRAY you treated her right. Or else get ready to have to start all over again. Didn’t know a fat fetish game could be a rougelike.
You’ve likely teased her 50 times when she didn’t like it. You keep saying you teased her and she didn’t seem to mind, but before this part of the story she essentially almost always minds. It’s just that she doesn’t mind that much. The lines you’re describing getting; that you seem to think means she doesn’t mind; are not the lines you’ll see later in the game when she truly doesn’t mind. (Later in the game she starts to enjoy the teasing fully.)
The number required to pass this check is very easy to hit. I’d try loading a save that’s 5-15 days in the past, if you have one. Then just doing a bunch of stuff like letting her pick the movie, and the other ones players have mentioned, not doing anything to raise her weight for a couple weeks and then trying the check again.
In the test run through I did when I made sure alice was constantly mad at me for lack of romance score, I got the gameover, then essentially replayed one/two weeks leading up to it, and managed to get the non-gameover result.
IMO this check is totally fair, you’ve essentially been a jerk dozens and dozens of times.
Also, there aren’t limited save slots. In my folder where I was testing for bugs I had like 500 save files. You can just infinitely hit right to get more pages for saves.
In testing when I WANTED to get the game over, the best way to get the game over was just to spend the first week or so calling her and teasing her like 50 times, then you’d be nearly doomed to get the game over (although if you were nice to her the rest of the time you could still pass it.)
Checking the code you need a minimum of 20 aliceromance to get past this variable check. Of course it’s hard to know what 20 means without any reference points. (And more like 65 or so to avoid the breakup entirely.)
Some examples though, going to the fancy restaurant? +3 romance score.
Letting her pick the movie at the movie cinema? +1 romance score.
At your house watching the romantic movie, choosing the wrong option -1 romance and choosing the right option +1 romance.
Calling alice on the phone and choosing the tease option? -2 romance or -1.5 romance or -1 romance depending on how much she dislikes being teased. (You might have been getting some of these partial teasing penalties rather than the fully teasing penalty? If you noticed that the message changed a bit, you might have assumed she was fully into liking it, but she was actually just moving towards cutting down the romance penalty, not removing it entirely (like happens later in the game.)
This is very helpful. I’ll try going back. I was laying the teasing on a little thick earlier on. I do try to take her to the restaurant but I was often too poor which likely didn’t help. Does having her pay for things kill your romance? If so I think that’s why I lost instead of teasing her too often.
Like when the game says “she covers the shortfall”. I wonder if you’re punished for her paying for everything too often.
I was unaware about the arrow key save file thing. Thanks for the tip.
I just read the code for when alice pays and making alice pay a few times eventually starts incurring a -1 romance each time, making her pay often eventually incurs a -2 romance each time and making her pay a lot will eventually incur a -3 romance penalty each time.
Also, I will admit, when I played the game in 0.7, I edited the source files so that alice’s romance score was visible. I was trying to test for bugs though, and back when 0.6 came out I didn’t know enough about code to edit it so I didn’t have that luxury in the past.
That’s it! That’s why I failed. I went days making her cover for me. The bill system is pretty harsh with no weekend work. And promotions don’t come easy.
I wasn’t a jerk who teased her too much. I was a cheapskate.
You’re “meant” to work 4-9 hours a day, AND not always take alice on the most expensive of dates. The “protip” for working is to drink coffee in the middle of the day, which will give you enough energy to put in for another hour of work, while still having the 1 energy and 1 hour left before alice’s bedtime in order to have her over to your house that evening.
Also, I personally think the players income is a bit too low and it should be raised, although, I think since the last time I wrote this sentence tiggertoo actually did raise it a tiny amount. In versions 0.6 and earlier? Infinite debt was possible so players weren’t really pay testing $ back then.
edit: Oh, and also, in case you couldn’t tell from my examples. Romance goes down pretty rapidly and goes back up pretty slowly, it’s just that you have to be a bad boyfriend for romance to go down at all, so most players are able to avoid the issue entirely without knowing any of these mechanics. A lot of VN’s don’t actually punish the player for being a jerk, and a lot of VN’s are essentially be the jerk simulators, so that might be what trips some people up.
Park take out for food every morning and making her pay ruined me. Every day she’s at the park and wants food. I ran out of money and she had to pay for it time after time.
I tried to save money with free events like house visit and park stuff but it wasn’t enough.
I was nice but I made her pay too often. I know I treated her fine even early on. That was my mistake.
But a question. I have the swing event unlocked. Does that tell you anything about my current romance level?
Yeah, I almost always refuse to take her to the cafe from the park unless she’s at a new weight and I want to see a new line (there’s a new one for each time of day at each weight, although they’re all incredibly similar to each other, so don’t feel like you’re missing anything). The finances feel pretty rough for anyone coming from 0.6 (where money was meaningless). If you just go to work enough it works out (and using the coffee once per day to get in the extra work adds up in the long run). Although like I said, I’d be in favor of an across the board raise of a dollar or two.
An alternative if you want her to gain weight fast is to take her to a picnic every morning instead of the cafe, IIRC this is free? (I haven’t actually played in a few months now.)
Is the damage I’ve done irreparable with making her pay? This is one thing that helps. I made her pay most often in her current state. Where she wears the grey shirt to the park. And she goes “hey {player}!”
I tried using picnics some.
The penalty you get for making alice pay (As in the size of the penalty each time it happens?) That never goes down. The romance you’ve lost? That can be easily recovered with time.
So, if you simply stop making her pay ever again, the “damage” becomes irrelevant. Also, you reach the maximum penalty in only roughly 5-10 times she is made to pay.
None of what I wrote just now matters though. Just never make her pay again and the problem doesn’t exist.
@Krodmandoon and @namad thanks for fielding all those questions!
@RABNAD_SKUBLA I should point out that the game is work in progress. As such, a lot of things, particularly background variables, are subject to change. Especially new stuff. And both the happiness indicator and Alice paying if you don’t have enough money are very new and do need some tweaking. For the final (as opposed to semi-final as released) version of 0.7, I would probably have reduced the romance penalty a little for Alice paying, but that’s one of the things I didn’t have time to do before the game was leaked.
I’m really not a fan of loads of onscreen variables in a game like this which is why the stats display is deliberately minimal. Alice’s spoken responses when you tease her should given an indication of how she feels about it. But again, that’s work in progress. I’m planning on adding an option when you call her to ask ‘How are we doing’, or something along those lines and she’ll tell you more plainly that she’s fed up of being teased/paying for dates/wishes you’d be more romantic etc.
As for the breakup, I gave a lot of thought to whether I should include such a harsh ending, but it is a viable outcome, so I left it in. And to be honest, you really do have to have a very low romance score for that to kick in. As far as I’m aware most players have never encountered it.
Regarding money, I’ve had very little negative feedback about that. Once the next test version is ready, I’ll see what people say and perhaps tweak that a little if it’s felt like too much of a grind to keep a positive bank balance 
And finally… my Ko-fi page is now up! Only a few images so far, but I’ll be adding more soon If anyone has suggestions for images that they’d like to see, feel free to make them!
Had to put a blindfold on to donate to you’re Ko-fi to keep myself spoiler free 
. I’m glad you got it up and running though.
Ya know, for all the work they have put in, you should definitely have some kind of shoutout to @Krodmandoon when the final game is out.
I never knew how bad it was to make her pay for things. Thanks for the info. I’m gonna try being less spend crazy and more frugal. I’m sure you can get really rich later on. My salary is like 22 bucks a pop if I “work hard.”
I hope this info can help future players avoid the bad ending.
@tiggertoo
I’m glad my feedback was useful to you even if it did get a bit heated. I genuinely like your game and look forward to future developments.
Thanks to everyone who’s checked out my Ko-fi page!
@Krodmandoon there aren’t any spoilers on there… yet. They’re just one off-images (some of the game characters, some not) for now.
@Demimonde4_Archives That’s not at all a bad suggestion!
@RABNAD_SKUBLA Constructive criticism is always welcome. Gives me good ideas on how I can improve stuff!
The feature of Alice paying is also new to 0.7 and prior the game had zero negatives for not having money and you could just keep playing with no issues. This update changed that and I remember getting the new dialogue from Alice paying once and felt her dialogue implied this was part of a negative outcome. The game definitely doesn’t hammer you over the head with tutorials but I never felt it needed that. In my opinion it always felt like the dialogue ( while maybe not immediately apparent as to what positive or negative choices did in the long term) gave you enough of a clue with character interactions, if there was a positive or negative outcome from the choice.
But maybe that’s me being a long time fan playing the new release versions as they came out. And watching the game evolve over each subsequent release, which makes it easier to play and understand the game, I don’t know.
Oh you crafty tigger you won’t get me that easy. I will not fall for your games.
But I’m a patient person 
a year and a half from now maybe I’ll be worn down but if I can avoid spoilers I will. I know you have been super good in the past with files on the side and blurred pictures plus warnings about that kind of stuff. I’m just not sure what options Ko-fi gives you to work with. And I also am probably in a minority as I’m sure most people want all info and images you would be willing to give. I just find I prefer to see that stuff in game and in context 
.
Yep, Alice’s responses are supposed to imply negativity. After all, if you were invited on a date and then told you had to pay some/all of the bill, you probably wouldn’t be too pleased either.
There are varying levels of displeasure though. As a one-off and only a small amount? No problem. Shit happens, etc. But if it’s happening constantly and she’s being asked to pay the whole bill each time? She’d get annoyed pretty quickly 
I’m still working out how to use Ko-fi, but it lets you put images into different folders. There are two in there currently - one for game characters and one for one-off characters. So, I can place any spoiler stuff into a completely new folder entitled ‘Spoilers’ And then maybe have a separate ‘Are you sure?’ folder inside that containing the actual images so no danger of people accidentally viewing them…