It looks like a really interesting game, I would be glad to beta it when you get far enough in the development for it to get tested
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Ooh, cool! Thanks, I would like that!
I think I should finish chapter 3 before I think about beta…
Right now, I’m close to half-way done with that chapter…
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I plan on making the game last 7 days, split up into 15 chapters, 2 chapters for every day except the last, plus 1 mini-chapter for every morning scene. That makes 22 chapters, not counting endings and sub-scenes. That’s a lot of writing! 
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So happy! I finally finished chapter 3!! Here’s to chapter 4 being faster… 
By the way, chapter 3 is now part of the playtest…
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I’m surprised that Gabriel wan’t more popular…I guess more people liked Sei and Kylie…
I’m a little curious about what influenced the votes, though… For instance, did Jamie come across too weird, or was Gabriel too pushy?
I guess I’m looking for some input about why you chose what you chose and what I can do to make the romances more balanced and just better in general… Thanks for taking the poll!
Poor Jamie! He’s the loneliest character… Oh well, I kind of expected that for various reasons…
Would you guys like the poll to stay open or do you want me to close it? I’ll go ahead and close it in a few days if no one has an opinion…
Just did a word count on every scene file currently included in the playtest (not counting stats pages)
With code, it was 11,219!
I didn’t think I had that much yet, so I’m pretty happy right now! Considering I plan on making 6 more day sub-scenes and 12 more chapters, I’m looking at a pretty big game… 
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I’ve played through end of day 0 and it’s good so far. I agree with a peaceful stillness’ comment about possibly making the story in 2nd person, as a text based adventure it read a little odd to me with it being in 1st. However, that’s more of a stylistic choice so feel free to keep it!
I may update this post later when I play through more of it, but here are a couple of things I’ve noticed so far playing through. Some of these are fairly minor and I wouldn’t worry about it til later, but I hope it helps!
At the very beginning when I arrive at the ranch, I chose not to speak with the other people there and instead knock on the door and go inside first. At this point in time you already started throwing around Sei’s name and Jamie was an option in the choice where you could push him through the door. I had no idea who these characters were or what they looked like since I didn’t choose that option. So that threw me for a loop a little. I’m pretty sure I missed some descriptions and dialogue because of the choices I made. I would suggest modifying the choices and descriptions a little until the MC is formally introduced to them? Otherwise it may cause confusion (as it did for me).
Little error here:
This shows up just after the house entering it and being introduced to Mr. Nells. Right after it is this dialogue:
I’m assuming the first bit at the top up to “all” is leftover from some other choice, or perhaps repeated? Since it doesn’t make a full sentence and goes on to talk about his next action.
After I ask questions to Mr. Nells:
I would put what Mr. Nells says on the first line and then in a new line/paragraph start with “Kylie…” Same with when Kylie and Mr. Nells talks later on in this part. I would separate their dialogue by who’s speaking in different lines.
Again, this is more of a stylistic thing, but usually when two different people are speaking even with actions in between the dialogue, they usually are split up into separate lines. (Also again, I never spoke with Kylie, so I had no idea that was her name and probably wouldn’t know until Mr. Nells says it in this segment.)
One thing with splitting up the text. I agree also that big blocks of texts isn’t fun to read through, however, having too many frequent “next” or “moving on” buttons without any choices in between can also get annoying quickly as well.
Some of the pages you have so far are extremely short, being maybe one or two sentences which could have been tacked onto a previous or future longer page without breaking the immersion. I’m not saying you can’t have a page with only one or two lines in it. In fact:
This page after Day 0 ends is the perfect example of why you would do that. This sequence is very different from the previous and the next ones so it makes sense. However, if it’s the same scene, I’d try to go with more paragraphs and less page breaks.
I think they were mainly saying make a new paragraph which is just two enters, instead of doing a page break in these cases.
Other than that, I like the game with what I’ve read so far, the descriptions are fairly good but I don’t know the characters well enough yet to comment on them.
Also just slightly curious due to the nature of the game. Do you currently own or in past owned horses? Or work/ed in a ranch?
I didn’t realise how long this was, so I hope it helps and I apologise for the length!
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First of all, thank-you so much for playing the game!
About the errors, oops! I’ll fix them and put the edited version online soon as possible.
About the first vs. second person, I really find it immersion-breaking to be told ‘you do this’ and ‘you say that’ all the time. Maybe that’s just me…
About the page_breaks, I kinda wondered if I was using that too much…
I’ll definitely re-route the ‘knock on the door’ option so it’s only available after talking to the guests…
As far as the ranch/ horses thing goes, I haven’t actually owned horses, but I am a total horse nerd and have lived near them (literally next door) and read a ton of books about them- I actually used to read veterinary manuals as a kid for fun… So, yeah that’s where the horse stuff comes from…
(I really like long posts, never apologize for them!)
No worries! Again the 1st vs 2nd really is a stylistic thing and it makes every story unique!
I do think there were quite a few page_breaks especially towards the end bit of the demo xD…it was fairly frequent and the pages were much shorter than I personally would have liked. Again, some people might like it how you’ve done, but I feel it is a tad bit in excess.
Oh okay that’s cool! Do you want to ever own horses of your own if you get the chance?
Again I"ll update the more I play but I am running into an error and I’m not sure if it’s on my end or if it is actually the game itself, or if it’s the fact that I’ve already reached as far as you’ve done for this part of the demo.
I’ve gotten to this part of the game after which I get a 404 error, which I assume is because that’s as far as the demo goes:
There was a part of the game that I found a little odd which I think is mostly due to a high number of page breaks so it didn’t really make sense to me.
(I’ll put in spoiler tags so others can play through without knowing what happens.)
It was the part where in the route I chose to go with Sei for working on the fence and she tells us to stop since we got fairly ahead. Then the scene suddenly switches to “someone left rootbeer bottles on this part of the fence.” I think it might help to have a bit more description to set the scene better since to me it was very abrupt and disjointed. You could also keep it with the previous page where Sei talks, but it may still be a good idea to set the scene to make it a smooth transition.
Also one of the options didn’t make sense to me which was the “Yea, I don’t care…” I realise now that option probably if chosen would skip the shooting with Sei scene, but because I didn’t have much to go off, it just seemed like an odd choice at this time.
Other than that, I like the choices so far. I can’t comment too much on it since it’s still fairly early in the game so I want to see where it goes before I say more.
I kind of wish we were allowed to talk with all the characters in the morning before heading off to work, since I didn’t get the chance to interact with Kylie at all so far. I don’t know if this is because you set it to only 3 characters can be talked to or if one of the characters will forward the game to the next part instead of going back to the interacting scene.
That’s all I remember for right now from the playthrough. Good luck!
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Actually, you can talk to everyone before you decide who to go with, but I think I didn’t lock off the ‘choose someone to fix the fence with’ option so you had to talk to everyone first…Oops!
I’m also trying to get nursing school stuff done that I thought I already did…Apparently not though…
So, it might take longer than I thought to get the play-test fixed and updated…
About the ‘To breakfast!’ thing, that is the end of chapter 3 and I’m still writing chapter 4 (that actually handles the breakfast scene itself) So, for now at least, that’s the end of the play_test. I should probably take out the *goto_scene chapter_4 command, since right now there’s not much in it and it’s not uploaded. That’s probably the error you got at the end…
About owning horses: I would absolutely love to own horses someday, once I can afford it…(Hence nursing school!) For now, the best I can do is write about them and dream about the day I can finally own them… sigh
The Sei shooting scene was a bit of a last-minute tack-on, so that’s probably why it seems abrupt…
I should probably add the ‘yeah, don’t care’ option after she mentions wanting to get some practice in…
I’ll definitely edit the playtest to include these changes… Probably have time later today, but you might not see them until sometime…Tomorrow, or really soon after!
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Yay! Got the changes implemented and working and already on the play-test! It went a lot faster than I thought it would…
Also, I want to do a scene at the end of day 1 where everyone sits around and tells ghost stories (among other things) and just realized I have no stories to put there. Any ideas/ starts I can add without copyright infringement?
Also, side-note, did anyone notice the Cage the Elephant reference?
This is so cool! It’s exactly how I picture Foxtrot Hill Ranch handling cattle!!
If you guys want to see more Foxtrot Hill stuff, check out this board on pinterest!
Nice wip you got there. Still waiting for the mysteries to begin though! I do wonder what kind of nature those will have~ Murder? Spooky spectres?! Or did a piece of loaf go missing…?
Also itd be nice if you could put the link in your main post so its easier to find!
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Yeah, the mysteries have already begun, but it takes the MC a while to start noticing…
Just wait till chapter 5 starts…
Good idea about the link in the main post, I’ll change that…
(The nature of the mysteries… remain mysterious until further notice 
)
Has anyone found a sneaky way to find some clues?
Define what you mean by sneaky? Sneaky in where the clue is placed? Sneaky in that you had to do some task before you found the clue?
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Both, actually! I don’t want to give away too much though… It’s a secret to everyone…
All I’m going to say is that the current play-test includes the sneaky way to find a sneaky clue.
Have you noticed the clues stat on the stat page? That has something to do with it…
Hint: check out the first chapter when you start talking to the guests…