Post by GrizzledOldGamer in Layla: Shattered hopes comments

Viewing post in Layla: Shattered hopes comments

GrizzledOldGamer95 days ago (4 edits) (+2)(-8)

I wish that I could have played your game dude. I don't want to be a dick to you, but you are early in development, and until you fix the godawful production values in this game, you will continue to struggle to gain any traction and attention.

It's something in the transitions where roughly every 3.5 seconds, the screen goes black for several seconds and I can't tell whether I am watching an unskippable animated black screen (WHY WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN), or simply forced to click my way through 10 black background cards while you get set up for the next scene.

I got frustrated within 10 minutes and quit your game. I'm not going to trouble shoot your game for you. This is made in Renpy, and Renpy (transitions on or off) doesn't behave this way in ANY of the other nearly 500 games I have seen. It is ABSOLUTELY on you whatever is messed up in the production.

Beyond that, why does EVERY male character in a corruption game have to be written and presented as a dirty hobo? Do none of you porn developers realize that there are more sociopaths on Wall Street than there are mopping McDonald's bathrooms?

By the time ted Bundy got to hitting girls over the head to rape and kill them, he was weeks from complete meltdown. Most of the (up to) 70 women that he MIGHT have murdered were met by a warm smile, and charming personality.

And, finally, it would be nice if just ONE corruption game got the girl in trouble in such a way that it could actually HAPPEN in real life without her being required to be mentally retarded. (Your story requires absurd levels of retardation from this young woman.)

Let me show you how easy it is.

1.) Woman wants to buy something expensive.

2.) Woman has bad credit.

3.) Woman borrows money from a loan shark.

4.) Woman must now humiliate herself in order to keep paying the interest on the loan.

Corruption, AND the dude can be in an Armani suit, with hygeine that suggests he MIGHT have showered since 1954! (Why would ANY woman accept a job offer from someone like that? Being a solo hooker is a better "career" option.

If you want to get really crazy. Give her a DECENT husband, and use the above scenario to keep her on the hook forever. Give her a REASON to feel guilty about cheating on him. Not some slob that DESERVES to be cheated on. The depravity just writes itself, and its a believable tale. Naive woman gets scammed. Men will pay MONEY for hot slutty action!!!

You know, write a story, where people behave like the people you know in real life behave. Except with sex and depravity. It's a winning idea. Trust me!

What was YOUR idea?

"Run for your life honey, This is a brothel, not a restaurant."

"I choose not to believe rumors. Besides, the stranger on the train, checking out my tits when I awoke said this is a nice place, and his friend will help me out." RETARDED!!!

Like I said, I'm not trying to be a dick. But between the bad writing, and the awful production values, i quit this game before it even got started.

You have two choices now.

1.) You can get defensive, and ignore me.

2.) You can recognize that you now have a grand total of ONE comment on your work. It's from someone with over 200 porn reviews under their belt, and nearly 500 played.

I'm intelligent, and an outstanding writer. You might want to contemplate what I have said here.

OtB Games94 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

Transitions (fade-outs/black screens) were mostly used in the first two episodes and will be significantly reduced starting from the next update.

The story split into two paths in Episode 4:

Path 1: She stays at the café

Path 2: She decides to move to the city

All events are currently skippable.

In the first path (café), the direction is clear — it’s a corruption arc. The second path (city) is more complex and will later branch further, including romantic relationships, cheating, and more nuanced emotional developments.

P.S. All transitions will be remade in the next update.

GrizzledOldGamer94 days ago (1 edit) (-7)

I really want to corrupt your girl. She reminds me of someone I know! Thanks for not just assuming that I was trashing you.

I help good games sell copies on Steam. I do my best to end the careers of bad game developers. I'm a little crazy, so my reviews tend to be more like an essay on the subject, the Dev, my life. But they get attention.

If you want to see what I'm talking about, I have a review for 'Between Two Worlds' for a positive one.

'Love Potion' is a game that I pretty much killed within 48 hours of launch.

And while I didn't kill 'Thirty Days.' I severely hurt its sales numbers in that critical 2 week launch window. These days, when he addresses the community, it usually reads like he's contemplating abandoning it entirely. (He should have made PORN instead of cock block! lmao)

-------

I had a lot to say about what you got wrong in my first comment. I'll be looking forward to telling you how much fun I had with your next update. I really do wish you luck.

The porn genre is a mess. A bunch of lazy developers pushing out trash to people that shouldn't be allowed to handle their own money! It makes it so hard for a decent developer to get noticed. 4 years ago, when I first started reviewing porn games as a hobby, I was the ONLY person bitching about story and sensible content, believable people. I see more and more people picking up that torch.

I'll leave you with a couple more thoughts.

Dr. Pinkcake is a scamming thief, and 'Being a Dik' is total garbage. Regardless of how much money it makes. There is no story. The MC is a fucking bitch. And the girls are hot, but it's pointless bullshit because all he fucking cares about is cashing those Patreon checks.

R.J. Rhodes is a MUCH smaller developer. Her game 'Come Home' is much smaller than Dr. Crackhead's. It's well written, with likeable characters. The plot (alternate universes) is ridiculous, but everything else around it is grounded and simply makes sense. Suspension of disbelief is easy. It's an absolute gem of a game.

Both of them use(d) Patreon to get their game made. One of them panders to every thought of the subscribers, but makes them pay dearly for it. The other never wavered from their vision, never gave creative control over to the people simply because they had an extra $5 that month!

And one final kick to that dead horse:

William Shakespeare did NOT poll his patreons on whether or not Romeo and Juliet should live happily ever after. Had he, it might have made a decent porn story for the 1500's, but there would be one less movie with naked 14 year old tits in it for us to watch today!!!

(A story written by committee will ALWAYS suck!)

P.S. If you ever make an incest game, Step 1 to making a coherent story is allowing the player to redefine the relationships from Patreon's standard landlady, roommate. (As if the CEO of Patreon doesn't watch, buy, and jerk off to daddy/daughter porn!)

OtB Games94 days ago

Thank you for the feedback! You’re the first one who actually gave me a full explanation about the slow transitions. People had mentioned it to me before, but only in a couple of phrases, so I thought it was just about musical cues and that people were playing without the music, lol. But after reading your post, I rewatched everything and finally understood what you meant! Thank you so much for that!

I’m also trying to make the story as believable as possible, but of course, I have to cut some corners to keep it from dragging on too long. The “whore route” will have a slightly faster-paced plot and a darker story with unpleasant characters that Layla will have to deal with. The “city route” will be more slow-burn, with a lot of focus on the story, which will become especially apparent in episode 5. The characters and relationships will be completely different from those in the “whore route,” but naturally, it won’t be without sex ;).

Thanks to your feedback, I was able to fix something that was probably annoying a lot of people. Thank you once again

GrizzledOldGamer94 days ago (1 edit) (-5)

Dude, I just fuck around writing for fun. So I started this story called 'The Beastgirl' and I'm kind of freewheeling in my writing style. So my outline was "Male MC soul bound to halfling, maledom, hardcore smut.

The story is 58 pages long, barely more than a prologue, there hasn't been ONE appropriate place to put a sex scene, and it's borderline femdom. And now I've pretty much abandoned it because if I finish it it would be Harry Potter length stuff (all 7 books), and I'm not really a femdom kind of guy.

Writing a decent story is hard. Trying to match text boxes to pictures while telling an entire tale in a concise manner has to be really hard.

You can always take the Dr. Crackhead shortcut, and just dump trash onto the stupid. That would be stupid levels of easy. You wouldn't really need to even WRITE a script. My four years in the wasteland of depravity have taught me that less than 10% of the people playing these games read ANY of the words.

I really believe that having a story in a porn game is kind of a detriment. The people (even myself) can easily make up whatever story they want while they are watching the cartoon whore get banged. And the overwhelming majority of the time, during those sex scenes, while the dev is so proud of all the dirty talk they have written, those fucking text boxes are just covering the action!

I do think that a game that said, "Here's a bunch of chicks that will get fucked a LOT, use your imagination for the story," could do very well in sales. At least as long as the scenes were produced right. Mutliple angles, positions, and stuff like that.

It depends on what you want. If you are here for easy cash, you really should ignore me, and try to out steal Dr. Crackhead! It's not like the world would end or anything. But if you are doing this more for the artistic expression of it, then it will be a lot harder to make the money, but you might enjoy the journey more.

I can't say. It's nice to enjoy what you do, but life is expensive, and the need for money can't really be ignored.

itch.io

Viewing post in Layla: Shattered hopes comments