Herculean (WIP, update 8/3/19)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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https://dashingdon.com/play/thebuttlord/herculean/mygame/

herc%20cast%20header
herc%20cast%20header3000Ă—1055 1.19 MB

Magic is a vital part of the Kingdom of Vosia, and magicians are everywhere. But their Imperial Majesty Emperor Tychon Agrona has decreed magic to be impure and is on a quest to eradicate the magic-using masses, including yourself. Embark on an anarchic journey with your friends or work secretly against their mission to depose Tychon. Build relationships, fall in love, or burn it all to the ground on your Herculean adventure for the Vosian throne.

Prologue: MAGUS
Ten years before everything changes, you’re a fifteen-year-old at Ikrarius Academy of Magic about to face the most important decisions and events of your life. Hang out with friends, decide your future, and maybe even get a crush…

link to tumblr

Features:

  • male, female, nonbinary MC
  • 2 male, 2 female, 1 nonbinary romance options
  • no gender-locked romances
  • no romance required! (you won’t get a shorter game if you don’t want to romance anyone!)
  • (7/28/19) ~71,000 words total

Character Snippets:

Pinterest board

UPDATE NOTES 8/3/19

  • Aruna and Ananta have been renamed Runa and Nanta
  • some character descriptions have been added throughout
  • addition to Archor’s end scene to add friendship chats instead of only flirt options (have not yet gotten to everyone else, but they’re in the works. his just comes first in the code.)
  • spelling errors fixed
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Oh! I read this yesterday on dashingdon and immediately went to look for it here but couldn’t find it. Now that it’s on the forum I can finally bookmark and give it a :heart:.

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Is Aruna the only female RO?

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Seems like it’s Anura and her sister Ananta.

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This seems super interesting. The writing is well done, the world is intriguing, and the connection between these characters/friends is believable even this early on.

I’m trash for romance and so as soon as Rahul went in for that early hug, my brain was like “this one.” So when MC teased about a wedding between Rahul and Aruna my jelly side took over and was like STOP WHY WOULD YOU SPEAK THAT INTO THE UNIVERSE :rofl: But then I, of course, decided to follow him, which I saw was the flirt option, and yet I was still somehow surprised when he pulled the immortal classic: “The view’s nice.” / “Yeah, it is:eyes:.” I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to choose for my MC to admit her feelings first for such a cute scene to happen! I liked that the player pretty much made the first move there by choosing to follow someone, knowing it’s a flirt option, but that the MC didn’t actually have to confess first… so after choosing just to admire the view and then seeing Rahul say “I like you,” I was just–
tenor

This is still early on tho and while I usually very easily pick one LI and stick with them (even through multiple playthroughs 'cause that’s how I am), I had to previously choose the option to stick around with Iovis because… I mean, they stayed to check on MC?? And then they were all blushy and nervous and sweet? And this part right here: “They smile gently, as if seeing you for the first time. “Yeah. Okay.” You can feel their eyes on you as you make your way back to your room.”
:heart_eyes:

I tried the Archor scene, too, and felt it was equally sweet. His concern over if they’ll stay “friends and stuff,” grabbing hands and another mention of looking at MC as if for the first time (got me again), the “he looks at you in adoration” bit… also, how much he blushed just from a kiss on the cheek, lololol. Good content :ok_hand: I feel like Rahul and Archor are going to cause problems for my indecisiveness.

I’ve just been gushing about the cute flirting scenes, but everything else–the premise, writing, characters–is all great, too. Seeing this pop up was such a pleasant surprise. It’s also very interesting that this prologue takes place 10 years prior to the rest of the story? Like wow. I really want to know what’s going to happen next, what the story will end up being, and how these relationships are after 10 years, if they all even stayed friends or what (especially after those cute crush scenes about staying in contact). I’m already attached.

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Yes, Aruna’s sister is the other female romance option. You’ll meet her a little later on.

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Hmm, I definitely think this is interesting so far. I noticed a few "your"s in place of "you’re"s, but that’s easy enough to fix.

How much time is spent in the past? All of it, so far, is based ten years back, but the character descriptions in the glossary are for them in their 20s.

Is the end of the demo also the end of the flashback?

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What’s up right now is just the prologue (part one)! So far the whole story is planned out to be a total of 5 parts (6 counting the good vs bad endings).

This part is 10 years ago, the next prologue part will be 2 years ago, and then part 1 ch 1 will be the present!

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First game I’ve ever played where my name is actually an option.

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Have you thought about adding descriptions of the characters appearances? I’m personally having a lot of trouble remembering who is who without an image in my head.

It’s very good so far, I really like the interactions and the story is quite nice.

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I really enjoyed this! The group dynamics are very sweet and real-feeling, and I’m excited to see what happens post time-jump.

While your characters’ personalities are well-differentiated, I have to admit I got a bit lost — there are a lot of A names, and everyone was introduced at once, which made it a bit overwhelming.

Also, your header image is gorgeous. Are those the NPCs, and, if so, could you tell us who’s who?

ETA: Also, so many nonbinary background characters! Games often feel like the MC (or maybe the MC and token love interest) are the only nb folks around, so this brought me a lot of joy :heart:

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Better character descriptions will be added in the next update! Sometimes you get so used to writing fanfiction where you assume everyone reading already knows the characters, you forget that’s not the case with your own oops

And yes, the banner is the main cast. From left to right: Ananta (who you haven’t met yet, last RO), Aruna, Iovis, Archor, Rahul, Asara, Akari. Below are all the character sheets I made for them :slight_smile:

Here is a link for all my official art for the game. Character sheets, mostly.

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well I like the story and the way you write the dialogue (I really like the dialogues :grin:) .

But I’m hoping we will have more choices and agency in the futur ? As it’s, from the get go we like everyone (even if we barely know anyone) and the mc smile too much…:face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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The story shows promise, the art looks good and I like that you’ve used uncommon names for each individual, but there’s an issue with the pacing and exposition (info-dump).

The game treats as if we’ve known the characters for some time and while that may be true for the MC the same cannot be said for the player. That flirty scene near the end in particular, felt rushed and a bit “in your face”. I’ve barely had any meaningful contact with my “friends” and I’m already being given an option to flirt and kiss. They are practically strangers to me so why would I?

Also, what kind of world are we in? At first I thought it was modern-ish fantasy setting but that option about “Hunting” threw a monkey wrench on that theory, making it look more archaic than I expected. Schools are usually present in more current and modern stories, so having a whole program dedicated to Hunting (Gathering furs and meat to feed the community) is very unusual. That’s typically an occupation you’d find in medieval (and older) settings and post-apocalyptic worlds.

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I played a little bit of this at work (and will play the rest now that I am home) and it was really good. I look forward to more from this story!

Edit- Just finished it, very good so far!

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Yeah, but the shear number of “A” names is making keeping track of everyone difficult. Especially with teachers using last names, and friends using Nick names. It’s all a bit much so early in the story.

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I am contemplating changing a couple names to not have so many A names.

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Great game

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Sounds like a good game

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Okay, forgive me for commenting again but I was replaying and one of the classes I chose this time was History and I just now saw that Archor has a crush on MC?? :hugs: I previously tried the scene where you can follow (and kiss) him, but having Asara mention Archor likes MC before that moment caught me by surprise and makes the later scene even sweeter. I’m a sucker for cute childhood/teenage crushes :rofl:

Just a side note: I didn’t even realize Archor was deaf until it was mentioned in history class that he was signing. I thought it was usual speech when I played earlier since I hadn’t chosen that class yet (I’ll have to play again to see if there were any indicators before then or if I was just too excited to actually notice), but then the line later about sitting up front so he could see clicked and made more sense. I’ve checked put the character sheets since then and they’re great.

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