Doolally (WIP. Chapter 2 18/09/21)

I will be exploring the poly relationship and/or Leander depending on how it feels for me, for now I’m all about the throuple. I’m super interested in how this story is going to go and I like the choices we’ve had so far.

Also, I picked the keychain option but and it was mentioned as a keychain except for this moment:

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Its very promising! Andddd another cliffhanger! Cant wait to meet the other characters thou!!! Goodluck u can do it! :ok_hand::+1:

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Happy New Years everyone! And belated happy holidays to those who celebrate. I’ve updated the demo with the ‘Angels’ route (it was nearly done when I created this topic, just as a heads up, updates probably won’t be this quick going forward). Working on the talking to Gabe route next, market will be last, sorry to those wanting that route!

Thank you again for all your lovely comments, hope everyone is well! :grin:

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Infinite loop bug with the home party in chapter one. If you choose to “Step outside for some fresh air” after helping Emilia with the drinks and “Go back inside,” you can go back and help Emilia again to loop up that relationship stat.

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Ah, the good old infinite loop that I’ve been trying so hard to avoid with lots and lots of messy coding. Thanks for finding this, I think I’ve managed to fix it, though I’ll probably wait a couple of days to put it through, since I’m not sure if reuploading to dashingdon resets saves/progress.

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I really love your game! I took a peek at your code and my goodness the sheer amount of options is impressive. I really like that you have a smaller cast we can get to know and they all seem to have their secrets to uncover.

Some small things I noticed if you stay home:

  • The transition when you choose to step outside seems a little abrupt coming back to the house, you meet Jesse and next thing you know you are at this line “You raise your drink- it’s in one of those fancy looking, yet inexpensive, diamond patterned glasses- and take a sip.” I think it might flow a little better if after meeting Jesse outside it goes to the same transition scene as helping Emelia where you choose where you want to sit.

  • I would LOVE it if your perception was high enough, you met Jesse lurking outside the house, and didn’t tell Gabe in the kitchen if you could ask if the business card was from Jesse as he rips it up. Such a power move having the MC put 2 and 2 together, plus Gabe isn’t very forthcoming so it would be interesting to see how he responds.

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Love the demo so far :+1:t6:and I’m definitely looking forward to a poly route with Leander and Gabe unless we meet Imri in the next update. Keep up the good work

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@loyallyroyal Thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying it, and that you’re happy with the amount of choices. I wanted to give a big range of options but was worried some of the stuff might be too similar. And sorry if the code is difficult to navigate, the first chapter is a bit messy code wise, I might try to neaten it up when I get round to editing and rewriting.

Thank you for your suggestions as well, I’ll definitely have a look at the transition. I might try a condensed version of the seating choice, since talking to Jesse for a prolonged amount of time is meant to lock you out of hanging with your housemates.

It would make sense for a high perception MC at home to put two and two together, thanks for noting that, I’ll either include an extra option or simply add an extra scene to the pre-existing choice to mention Jesse. As for Gabe’s reaction, if you haven’t mentioned Jesse before, it probably wouldn’t be too different to the earlier mention, if you have, quite possibly a lot of suspicion, but Gabe is suuuuper reluctant to talk, even when cornered, as I’m discovering in the current route I’m writing :sweat_smile: I’ll try get the transition and card mention done for the next update.

@virgofinest Thank you very much for your lovely comment! I’m glad you’re enjoying the story so far! :grin: As for Imri, as long as I stick to my flimsy plan you should meet them at the end of chapter 2. Which is probably still a few updates off.

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Hi everyone, quick announcement. I’ve decided to rewrite chapter 1, and probably part of 2. I was originally going to introduce Imri at the end of chapter 2, but since the main plot is tied so closely to them, that feels a little late. The rewrite will introduce Imri a lot earlier whilst also keeping much of what originally happened. I’m also taking this as an opportunity to update the actual writing to match the later stuff more. Depending on how much I’m rewriting, I may post a separate demo until the new stuff has caught up to the old.

Thank you everyone who has read, liked or replied, I’m a little frustrated at myself for changing my mind on what I want to happen, but I’m hoping the rewrite will be an improvement and that you’ll all like it :blush:

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Things usually don’t go according to plan- but it’s alright! We’ll support you no matter what you do :slight_smile:

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When we ask Gabe questions and he comes onto us, could there be additional way of flirting without jumping his bones or stammering :joy: ? Calling him out on how abrupt it is but not turning him down? Unless it doesn’t matter how we respond and we can trigger the romance later
Other than that I enjoy your writing style and I’m looking forward to demo 2.0 :grin:

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@Mistyleaf123 Thank you! :blush: I really do appreciate the support, fingers crossed this plan works!

@Mango_Pirate Thank you for your comment! I’ll be rewriting that scene soon, so I’ll make sure to add some clarity to the choices. Most of the romances don’t have triggers, the lock will be near the end and will be an obvious ‘which character do you want to romance?’ type thing. The requirements will also be fairly low and you don’t have to have picked any of the romantic options, you just need a decent relationship with most of the ROs. The flirty/shy/tsundere options are there if people want to progress things faster and for flavour, and again, the requirements are low (especially for Gabe). So, in short, yes, you can say no at that point and still pursue the relationship :grin:

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New demo uploaded! It’s currently quite short, only going up to the club/pub/home split (wish me luck on those rewrites, it was a nightmare the first time. Here’s hoping I can reuse a lot of the old stuff). The whole thing’s been written to hopefully flow better, I’ve also added a second route with Imri (though you can still meet them on the other route). Hope you all enjoy, and do let me know what you think!

Edit: I’ve just realised that, for some reason, both the new and old link take you to the same demo. Not sure why, as I’m pretty sure I didn’t overwrite the old demo, but since there’s not much I can do about it, I’m just going to remove the ‘old’ link now

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Please don’t hate me but I actually very much preferred the original demo. This one feels much more rushed, too many characters too fast. I really liked the original intro where we had some time to get to know the two siblings and meet Gabe and see how they handled questions and I really liked their response if you noticed they were uncomfortable and stopped. It was much more show and less tell compared to this demo.

You are the author, so at the end of the day write what makes you happy but I think you had something rather special with your original demo that didn’t seem to translate over.

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I’m not going to hate you! All feedback is welcome, it helps me know what is and isn’t working after all. I did wonder if anyone stopped questioning Gabe in the original, I changed it in this one to make a later check easier, but I can always add in the option to ask Gabe and the others extra questions. As for the pacing, will have to think about that. Just wondering, did you stay with Imri at the start or follow Emilia? And if you did both routes, did both feel rushed?

I’m going to leave it as is for now, because I don’t think I could face reworking it again :sweat_smile: but I will come back at some point and see about slowing it down and adding more questions for the characters

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I kinda have to agree. I really enjoyed the other demo because it set a good pace to introduce the characters. I feel alittle rushed in the new one.

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Yeah im going to agree with @loyallyroyal and i also think meeting the characters are pretty rushed (specially Imri), in the original demo the characters felt more fleshed out ( an example by @loyallyroyal is when you can choose to decide to leave the reason due to the the MC felt that gabe was uncomfortable and some other dialogue options like where the MC can be “dense” to gabe saying to them sit on their lap)

As for Imri i felt like there is no buildup for her, you just meet an very important character to the plot but there is no buildup for that and compared to the original demo were there was an part where the MC gets chocked by Imri but we dodn’t know that Imri is doing that yet (unless you checked the relationship bar with Imri which changed a lot depending if you went masochist and enjoyed being chocked and making Imri get angry) and it did a bit of buildup of basicaly remembering you like “oh yeah, don’t forget that there is also an supernatural thing that wants to ruin your life and go mad”

(PS : Memory is a bit foggy on some parts of the original demo soo my apologies if im mistaking the choking scene and if it is from another WIP)

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I have no idea what the previous demo was like, but I can say it does feel rushed. Everything happens a bit too quickly for my liking? I, personally, would have liked there to be a build up for Imri (as others have mentioned). We can still see them at home for the first time, but interaction is sparse at best. If you call to them, they can glance at you just when Emilia arrives. Conversation goes on, but Imri is already gone. Then you see Imri again perhaps while clubbing, watching a movie, or going for drinks. I would go as far as to say I’d like it if Imri was presented in a friendlier light before BAM, they turn antagonistic.

I hope this doesn’t sound rude, and I suspect this is due to the demo feeling rushed, but the chemistry between the ROs (mainly Em, Gabe, and Leander) feels off. I’m guessing Em and Leander knew Gabe already and while his personality and antics can easily drive someone mad, I dunno, I guess I just find it hard to imagine this group being MC’s gaggle of buddies (assuming that’s the intention :joy: Every MC must have The Squad).

Other than that, I enjoyed the demo and I hope I haven’t come across a certain type of way, as that isn’t my intention! The TLDR of this is: I would like this more if it was paced a bit slower. I know, it’s hard to get the pacing right. I’m often looking at my own writing and just asking myself: “Could I take this scene out? What if I add this in? Is it too soon for this to happen?”

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I’ve played both demos… I did like how Gabe gets introduced in the previous one, but I also really like meeting Imri at the start here. Also, I really enjoy your writing, it feels personable but polished. :relieved:

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Thank you everyone for your feedback, I shall give it all and poke to see about slowing it down! I’m also going to add Gabe’s questions back in since that seems to be missed

@Just_browsing The choking bit was in the original, it just happened at the end of chapter 1. My initial plot has also changed a little, there was a reason the MC couldn’t see Imri in the first, whereas there’s a reason you can in this one. I’ll look over Imri’s scenes again, but I’m unlikely to shift meeting them to later. Also, the Gabe lap scene is a later scene for the ‘stay home’ route (I think), I’m not planning on changing those too much so it should still be there when I get round to uploading those parts

@PrismaticSpace Oh, don’t even get me started on pacing! I struggle with that when writing regular stories (it’s always too fast), never mind a choice story! Then you end up overthinking it all, which then makes it worse :sweat_smile: As for the Squad, Leander and Emilia haven’t known Gabe that long (I’ll be adding Gabe questions back in, so you’ll hopefully be able to find that out), so their interactions are meant to be a bit rough at the mo, not sure if that’s what you meant by off? I do plan to develop the characters and their relationships throughout the story, so hopefully they’ll feel more natural with each other by the end. And no worries, you didn’t sound rude :slightly_smiling_face:

@Jordan_Saulnier Thank you! I’m glad that you liked Imri’s intro. I am going to be adding Gabe’s questions back in, so hopefully that’ll be the best of both worlds

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