I was the same as you before… I tried it when Season 1 was the only one available but dropped it. I only read it last May and got hooked (and I admit it helped that there’s a new RO that got me interested.)
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Thoughts on this?
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My thoughts are: They burned numerous bridges with the shenanigans they underwent with Errant Kingdom, realized that they needed to address the real issues the game has in order to keep their customers, and are now trying to legitimately make good.
I find the following worrisome:
This is telling me that the writers involved had not documented and/or recorded their writing well enough to pick it up and carry on years later.
I don’t expect them to remember every detail, but I do expect them to rely on their own resources instead of relying on fans/readers feedback to tell them “everything” needed to be addressed.
I know many people that went from “sight unseen support” for this team of developers to “I’ll wait and see” support.
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I am one of those, I wasn’t on EK Kickstarter but I bought the game Early Access, and I probably won’t buy other Lunaris’ games before they finish it.
One thing that bothers me a little is that the dev who wrote this post keeps saying that they prioritize team welbeing and all, and didn’t want to make them crunch. Well, if we see their devlogs we can track the game progress. They started launching the game with the consistency they promised, one chapter every two months, until chapter five. That was the part where they decided to postpone the bimonthly chapters and focus on changing the game from Unity to Ren’py.
But, here’s the thing, they could simply keep making devlogs and, well, informing us of the development of the game. But, THEY said a lot of times that the game was almost ready. Despite the problems with the development of the game, they insisted on post things like:
Mon, October 11, 2021
Hey everyone. We’re back with what we actually hope might very well be our final ever progress update,
We’ll keep it short and sweet for you so we can get to the point, but we’re super close to getting the completed version of Errant Kingdom in your hands!
Sun, January 23, 2022
We still aren’t going to jinx ourselves with a release date but I can tentatively promise you it will be in the first quarter of the year, again… life/world things pending
Sun, July 10, 2022
We have some fun things to show you this time around! While editing and finalizing the final chapters of all three routes, we realized that we wanted to add a few more CGs to the game to give it that extra ‘oomph.’
Thu, August 11, 2022
The Kingdom of Novus has been thrown into disarray and it’s up to you to decide if you’ll help to bring peace or stoke the fires of chaos. Pick a side, and meet your match. The epic conclusion of Errant Kingdom, a high fantasy LGBTQ+ is coming on December 20th, 2022
Mon, December 19, 2022
As of right now, we envision the double chapter releases to be staggered fortnightly. If all goes to plan, the game will be out in its entirety by the end of February.
So, the first thing I would like to point out is that if there was any pressure, this was coming from inside the team, because they were responsible for putting these unrealistic expectations. If they were honest in these devlogs, nobody would expect the game anytime soon. Also during the EK development they launched the Call me Under demo, the revamped version of When the Night Comes and one DLC for When the Night Comes. A super backer pointed this out on their Kickstarter, then got a really rude response from one of the main devs from Lunaris, saying that she doesn’t have any idea how a game studio works. Okay…
One of the things that they said they were working on before the Ren’Py launch was polishing the game. But when the first part was released, the game had even the same typos as the Unity version.
But hey, even with all these things, they had launched a mindblowing game, all of this could be forgotten but, as I already said the reasons here in this topic, the new chapters are bad.
Did you play it? Is so clear how the quality of the writing at the beginning of the game doesn’t match the end. I dare to say it doesn’t seem like the same writer, even. So I think you are right, @Eiwynn . They probably didn’t have all the game written after chapter five. They forgot some plot points (the cultists that were in Novus just disappeared), and they created three routes that in the end had no meaning (if there were meaning they wouldn’t give my ambassador A FUCKING SWORD). The romances - especially the endings - weren’t good either, especially for some characters. If I were a Lucien romancer I would be pissed. They are a demon so they got bored and left us to do demon things. And we wait because they come back sometimes. WOW, nice ending.
So, I am happy that they are trying to change these holes in their plot - the game got a lot of people complaining about these points on Steam reviews. It would be nice if they could correct those wrongs and release a revamped version of EK, with voice acting, like they did with When the Night Comes. But sometimes I got the impression that the devs got bored of this game. I didn’t expect they would make these changes they announced, to be honest.
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That’s how they chose to end a romance route?? Ugh, I’m glad I never played this. I think I may have played a chapter or two of the demo, but I don’t even remember it, and I never played Call Me Under (thought it was on my list to try).
I liked When the Night Comes, but haven’t played any other Lunaris games. I probably won’t after reading all this.
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I played the beginning; the knight route, the ambassador and the assassin/whatever all to the point where there was a jousting tournament.
I decided at that point to wait, and wait until it was “finished.” And then after seeing all the reviews and hearing from others about the fubar nature of the game, I just could not read the rest, for fear of screwing up what until the joust was a good story.
I thought they did some good things with When the Night Comes, but the demo of Call Me Under seemed off to me when I played it… so ya.
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Oh damn Lucien uses they/them pronoums I forgot sorry.
Do you want to know what is the most ridiculous part? They stated in the game that Lucien is an ancient being, that all the human lives for them are just a blink of an eye.
And yet, they leaves their very much HUMAN lover alone because, bored. LOL
Sometimes I wish I could forget the ending and get a headcanon for the last three chapters
I play visual novels most for the romances and I am tired of Lunaris romances (read all the characters banging each other ) so I don’t have a lot of expectations too. But I liked When the Night Comes - basically because of August.
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I like Superstition well enough, though I would much prefer more Throne of Ashes. Ruben’s route is amazing and I’d love to see more in that world.
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I didn’t expect them to post a response. EK has mixed review ever since launch. What irks me that that they don’t apologize of their treatment of their fans. They’re pretty snappy on their Twitter if you look hard enough and they deleted and revised their previous posts to suit their needs. Overall, I felt like there’s a project mismanagement during EK development and the lack of communication or change of release date sour a lot of former fans enthusiasm.
I hope they concentrate on getting Call Me Under first. Unfortunately, I already helped kickstarted that game but I will be wary for their future projects.
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I saw that too, also there are lots of fanboys ready to be on defensive on their behalf. Aparently because they are a small indie studio we can’t criticize anything they do. BUT in Steam they can’t delete reviews, so I think it’s the reason of their response.
I was thinking about that, they totally should finish Call Me Under first, instead of working on Errant Kingdom right now. They are updating the Call me Under Kickstarter regularly?
Talking about Kickstarter here’s another game (actually is a demo, the game is still in development) recomendation. I wish I could’ve backed this game, the demo is so good. There are a lot of ROs in this one: 9!!
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It took a while for that one to get going. He was such a prick in the beginning. It was wearing me down reading it. But by the end, it was awesome.
Zarik is the one I’m dying for.
That actually worries me. With so many, either it will take a really long time to write or the romances will end up being mediocre, at best. I always love the idea of having a ton of ROs, but when it’s implemented, I’m usually meh about it (probably because it ends up being: you meet, you flirt twice, you kiss, you may get to screw, yay happy ending).
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(I laughed so much with the “you may get to screw” LOL)
I think three of the ROs were stretch goals from Kickstarter. I don’t mind the game taking a long time to write if the romances are good. I saw one answer on the itch io page from the author saying that the tentative date for launch was October 2023, but it was almost a year ago so I don’t know that’s still the plan. At least, when you play the demo, we can see there is cohesion between the MC and the other characters. I prefer games with less ROs too, but I still have hope that this game will be good.
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I loved Throne of Ashes. That was actually the reason I tried Superstition in the first place.
This doesn’t sit right with me at all. I haven’t played any of their games, and now I’m glad I haven’t.
That one is on my list to try. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
To be fair I’ve seen some games with romances that go like this that only have like 4 ROs. I think its less about the number and more about how much work the author puts in.
I would agree with this.
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There’s no news on Kickstarter. The last update was on March 2023 and we only get news through their Twitter account. 
When the Night Come was really nice though. I would still recommend their first game. I really love August so much. 
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I loved Ruben’s route BECAUSE he was such a prick in the beginning. It’s one of the best examples of character growth I’ve seen in a RO in a text game.
And yeah, I definitely love the premise of the Zarik route, with the MC basically being brainwashed into a soldier.
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I guess I’ll add it to my list then.
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I also recommend Alkar and Omen (as a poly, they’re awesome). I like Alkar alone, too.
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I dunnpo, WtNC was such a generic bland experience that the only impression it left is the fact that I played it.
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Honestly speaking, Ruben in the beginning of the route was too much. All that happened to the MC was too much and Ruben’s atitude only got everything worse. I don’t know any way of playing Throne of Ashes that isn’t with a depressed MC. But, in the end, even if this game always makes me very sad, the way the author manage the “redemption” of Ruben was very well written, so I still like him. But in a kind of a masochistic way - actually, these are my feelings for this game in general. Throne of Ashes made me very emotional, not in a “I want nothing more to with this game” way (like a Mage Reborn did to me) but in a way that I felt very bad for all those things that happened, but in the end it turned out ok, so it was a good experience.
In my opinion, there are a lot of better games, but a lot of worse games too? LOL I think I like WtNC more because it was one of the games that got me into otome/romance visual novels. So even if wasn’t the most brilliant of the plots, for me it was an experience. Also Jonah Scott and Gideon Emery as August and Finn are some of the main reasons I liked this game.
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Honestly, I get that. I go back and play TOA every now and then when I want to cry, but in the cathartic way, you know? It’s horrible, but the arc (for both Ruben AND the MC) end up being so good that it releases the tension that the earlier horribleness creates. But I get that not everyone wants to slog through some pretty heavy subject matter to get to that catharsis. And, it may not be a very good GAME. I play it basically the same way every time, just looking to experience the story.
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