Love the game, the characters are all very interesting, the whole manor makeover has me hooked up, and MC is completely head over heels for T! I’m all in to help T take care of the kid 
(where do I sign the papers lmao)
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I’m going to be typing this as I play the demo, so it’s gonna come off a bit… uh, staggered:
- damn you, I could’ve travelled by train and ferry and you stick me in an aeroplane? On a more serious note, a choice picking your in-flight movie might be another chance to define the personality stats.
- on POV choice: while not COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that it’s a POV choice, I think it’s clear enough. What isn’t is if going to Sebastian’s POV replaces any sequence on your character (i.e., if it’s just extra content in the same playthrough or alternative content). One of the games I’ve played recently, Wayhaven Chronicles,
-
“along” here is just one word; “long” on it’s own is an adjective - I can’t tell if you’re punning the authors names here, but if you aren’t…(also, when picking an old favourite at the library, you have FrankenTstein)
- Perhaps it’s just me, but I think putting a “Bertie chuckles” between two sentences of the MC in the same line makes it a bit confusing. I think it’d be clearer if it was something like “[MC line], you say, eliciting a chuckle from Bertie. [MC line].”
- Gonna venture that that ALEX is not supposed to be there?
- Crafting screen (I love the crafting mechanic, btw): it should say how much of the raw materials I have. “1 hour crafting strawberry jam uses 7 pounds of strawberries” is not of much use if I don’t know how many pounds of strawberries I have.
- I don’t think these choices are for this screen?
- I think the descriptive “little” for the nose is ok.
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Thanks for taking the time to play my game and leave such a nice comment 
Thanks so much for all this feedback! I’ll definitely go through the game and address these comments. Let me give you a quick clarification about–
–for the purposes of crafting, the MC basically has unlimited raw materials. In reality of course, there is a limit, but the limit is so high that it doesn’t matter. In practical terms, the MC would run out of hours long before they ran out of produce.
To give you a quick example using the strawberries, if MC used all 75 hours to make strawberry jam during the first crafting intermission, they would use 525 pounds of strawberries, but the farm is producing 700+ pounds of strawberries per week (total yield is randomly generated). The reason the game tells you that strawberry jam takes 7 pounds/hour is so that you can compare that to other recipes to decide if this is a good investment of your resources. Crafting is still in the baby stages, and I anticipate creating some sort of guide to help players figure it out before everything is said and done
Thanks again for taking the time to play my game and leave feedback!
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I’m not sure I understand - if the resources are in practice infinite, then there is no “bad” investment of resources (other than time). Unless you want to go deeper into the economic simulation (which I’m not sure if it’s what you want), in which case we’d need to have the actual sell value for the raw materials and the processed product, so we can do the math on (in the case of the first crafting) whether it gets us more profit to invest the hours into increasing the value of the pickles or the strawberries.
P.S.: The Frankentstein typo (if it is a typo) shows up again, can’t recall where, but I think at that point code-wise it’s just a variable like [book_name] or something that refers to the original list or something.
EDIT: I almost forgot, since I have you here. Is poly a possibility in the romances? I never saw the contractor again, after theee… either meeting Ines or the secret passage exploration, and I was wondering if this was because all the romance options I picked with Gabrielle (also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to track romance levels other than manually, which I assume increase with every 
dialogue option you pick).
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I do actually want to lean into the economic themes, but it’s more complicated than just money. Let me reiterate that the crafting mechanism is still in its infancy, I will try to explain what I envision.
How to find the cookbook in the stats menu (with pictures)
- Press the “Show Stats” button
- Choose “Other.”
- Choose “View cookbook.”
Example recipe:
Strawberry Jam
- A spread made with strawberries
- One 1-hour batch uses 7 pounds of strawberries and yields 24 cups
- Profitability: medium
- Difficulty: easy
In the weeds
In order to proceed in ACOM, you have to earn various “points.” I’ll try not to just info dump, but here’s a short explanation of what kinds of points there are and how to get them. Feel free to ask questions!
- Harvest points - you earn these by selling produce
- Animal points - you earn these by selling eggs, milk, and animals
- Renown points - you earn these by making a name for yourself (unlocks special opportunities)
- Quest points - you earn these by completing “jobs” (year 2+)
- Crafting points - you earn these by selling processed goods
When you are crafting things, you have to consider a few competing interests:
- Time - you have a limited number of hours to devote to crafting
- Profitability - how many crafting points an item earns
- Difficulty - easier items have a higher yield, but often the more difficult items are also (usually) more profitable
- Ingredients - some recipes require you to craft other items first
- Renown (hidden) - a lot of items (especially the more difficult ones) unlock special opportunities
The reason there are “crafting points” instead of just cold hard money is because it allows me a certain amount of relativity. If I wanted to count dollars, I’d have to do more work to build an overarching economic infrastructure within the game, but with points, all I have to do is compare items to each other to figure out relative profitability. I can tell you more about that process if you have questions!
What I want to do with these points is create competing interests. Sometimes you might have to sacrifice something in order to achieve a goal. Here’s an example that will come up relatively soon within the game: Tony will offer to teach the MC how to make apple cider in exchange for an exclusive contract with their bar. There are pros and cons to doing this.
- Pro: learning from Tony gives MC a permanently higher yield when making apple cider
- Pro: MC gets a relationship boost with Tony
- Pro: agreeing unlocks a scene with Tony
- Pro: the apple cider MC makes with Tony doesn’t use any crafting hours
- Con: MC will have to devote a minimum number of hours to making cider
- Con: agreeing to sell exclusively to Tony will make it more difficult to create a well known brand (hint: this is a lost opportunity to earn renown points)
- Con: selling exclusively to Tony is less profitable than selling to other buyers
It shouldn’t be hard to earn these points (and proceed within the game), but I do want these points to make you think about your choices. What I don’t want is to make players sit there with a calculator trying to math their way to success (in part because some of the system is randomized and can never be fully accounted for with a calculator!). And believe me when I say that the math is tedious and convoluted. I have a spreadsheet full of figures and notes explaining my own system to myself. For anyone who’s really curious, all the math will be, of course, in the code.
If you (or anyone else) want to see some of the behind the scenes calculations, let me know! I’m happy to share. The reason that I don’t want to make it super accessible is because I think for most players the numbers are more likely to be a stumbling block than a helpful tool.
I don’t like to say never, but it’s very unlikely I will be including a poly option–thanks for asking!
I can’t tell for certain if you’ve encountered a bug, but all the characters should show up from time to time in platonic contexts
This is something that I will be changing in the next update, and I’m pretty excited with what I’ve come up with!
5 Likes
Ah-ha, ok, if you get points also from selling produce directly, then I understand what the point of having the cost in strawberries is. I presume having more points in a particular category brings its own benefits, and not just overall points. E.g., having high harvest points has folks talking about your pickle (no, not like that) which might increase the income of selling your pickle (goddamn you, I already told you NOT LIKE THAT), whereas having a high total of points would have them talking about your estate in more general terms.
I presume that selling exclusively to Tony also has the pro of, well, not pissing Tony off by competing with them (I vaguely recall the mayor mentioning something like this, but I can’t recall if it was about the bar or the bakery - I presume it applies to both, and all other businesses, anyway).
I’m not surprised about poly - it sounds like hell to code and write. Like, if you have even just 3 characters you can poly with, that’s SEVEN permutations that you have to put in.
Thanks for the answers. Looking forward for moar content.
EDIT: A suggestion occurred to me: right now, your options regarding drinking (determined during the masters party) appear to be “alcohol bad” and “you’re responsible for half the tips of every bartender in town”. I don’t know how much work it would be to implement (because you’d have to create an extra corresponding scene whenever it came up), but I think an “I don’t usually drink, but this is a special occasion” option might be nice.
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At this point I have to assume Alex will eventually be an RO right? She(in my case they’re a woman)seems to blush around the MC a lot as well as having romance(
) options. However after my first playthrough they appear to lead nowhere. And she wasn’t listed as an RO
I’m a sucker for the best friends that are totally in love trope. It was my entire highschool experience lol. It’s atleast in my mind the most realistic trope in romance.
Edit: I am now led to believe after a 2nd playthrough that Alex is locked in with frankie as I made a male Alex and Frankie became female. And the whole talverton day thing.
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I’ll keep this in mind! Keeping track of a binary variable is definitely the easiest option, but you’re not the first person to request this. No promises, but your feedback is noted
In all seriousness though, Alex won’t be an RO, or at least not a traditional one. A lot of people have expressed interest in Alex, and my writing philosophy is never say never. What I foresee is continuing to write an unrequited love story with Alex with the (extremely small and difficult to achieve) possibility of “success” in the epilogue. Alex won’t get the same kind of content as the rest of the ROs, however. Whether I ultimately decide to include the epilogue romance, I definitely plan to continue the unrequited story-line! It’s very fun to write those heart-wrenching interactions 
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This whole unrequited love thing makes me feel 15 again.
Some authors write slowburn romances. Not you though, you’re different. It burns alright, burns when I see Alex making faces at Frankie. sobbing noises
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You are a cruel, cruel creature. A monster, a blight upon this world, a hex upon all that is good.
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Lmao I think this is my favorite comment I’ve ever received on my writing
I see I’ve found another Alex-mancer 
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Hey I’m here for the Bertie romance so no complaints from me.
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I just found this WIP and let me tell you, I haven’t smiled like a idiot this much sense my first run through of stardew valley. There are so many wholesome, fun, and funny moments in this game it makes me want to puke from all the sweetness (in a good way). I usually don’t like the slice of life genre this much, and I am very excited to see more of this!
Now I go to replay this game to death. (PS- I really like your writing style)
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You probably already heard it but this WIP gives me so many Gardenscapes and Stardew Valley vibes, and I’m loving it!
It’s very light-hearted and funny, also like how you present the chapters, feels like pages of a journal which I think fits with the story and the resources page it’s a big thank you, it really helps. Oh and the crafting screen! I’m looking forward to see more of it.
Don't know if somebody reported these but here it is anyways
Here’s a pair of misplaced quotation marks.
Maybe I’m a little dumb but here I didn’t noticed we’re giving a rose to Alex (I thought it was for the vendor lol)
I gave a rose to Ines but the text was cut, or was it a placeholder?
In the carousel I gave a rose to Tony and fine but when clicked next got a scene as if I didn’t.
Also the collages images are not working.
And that’s it, I’ll be waiting to see more of your job <3
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Glad you’re enjoying Bertie!
Thank you so much! It’s so nice to hear when people are enjoying what I’ve written
Thank you! I really appreciate that you took the time to read my game and leave a comment 
And your feedback is super helpful! More details and a follow up question below–
Summary
I think I’ve fixed all the screen shot typos and bugs–thank you again for sending those in! It can be really hard to find them on my own. The “rose” section was in fact cut off, so I’ve tinkered with the *if statements to hopefully get it running the way it’s supposed to. I’ll upload all these fixes next time I update the game.
If you could provide some more details (i.e. what happened or what did Tony say that indicated a discontinuity, specifics are great, but generals are really helpful too) that would be really great!
Thanks for bringing that to my attention–they’re actually not supposed to be working right now since I was just tinkering with things, so I’ve turned off the variable that allows that option to show up
Edit: happy early Thanksgiving my fellow Americans! Can’t wait to do Thanksgiving in game 
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Although I’m British, i hope you (and any other Americans that read this) have a great Thanksgiving.
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This week has been a hard one in Kentucky. Those of you in the United States probably already know about the terrible storms that swept through my home state and several of our neighbors. The death and destruction here is record breaking. That’s why I’m opening special commissions to raise money for the people who have been affected by the storms. You can read more about it here on my tumblr. I hope you all are all safe and well during this holiday season!
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Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m unable to support this game, as the author made me choose butcher block over marble.
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That’s disingenuous! I didn’t give you a choice at all 
In all seriousness though, the next chapter will give you an opportunity to exert a little more control over your surroundings! It won’t be anything too drastic, but there will be some interior design *choices on the table.
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