Sentinel (Complete Demo)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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As of April, the demo for Sentinel is officially complete! This is an urban fantasy with horror elements, based in the fictional city of Goldcrest - play as a fully customisable character, choose your own morality and define your experience as you investigate a brutal murder.

Synopsis

Everyone has demons. Everyone has regrets.

You didn’t expect to be staring yours down in quite such a visceral way, but what can you do?

While investigating a gruesome murder, you find yourself embroiled in a conflict spanning lifetimes, haunted by the past in a very literal way. In order to survive, you’re forced to face your demons and deal with the fallout of decisions made long before you were even born. Ask yourself what you’re willing to sacrifice, what you hold most important, and who will help you.

When faced with the choice, how will you survive?

Contains horror, strong language & graphic violence.

tumblr is at https://nyehilismwriting.tumblr.com/

Demo: https://dashingdon.com/play/nyehilism/sentinel/mygame/

Please feel free to drop feedback, comments, or anything you wanna say in here!

RO Descriptions

Adrian Shaw: 5’11, olive skin, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes. sometimes clean-shaven, sometimes lets his stubble grow out, he puts a lot of effort into his appearance, usually wearing expensive/fashionable clothes. a childhood friend of the MC, he’s 100% ride-or-die, but he can be a bit of an asshole.

Levi Attraeus: 6’5, muscular, long black hair he usually keeps braided, dark red eyes. clean-shaven. tattoos cover his whole body in intricate swirling patterns, including his hands, the back of his neck & the sides of his face. he’s pretty cagey with the MC at first & obviously knows more about the situation than he’s letting on.

Evangeline Reese: 6’0, bright red hair, usually tied back, hazel eyes. dresses practically & comfortably. very professional, police detective struggling to keep her integrity amidst a sea of corruption & injustice; can be self-righteous and inflexible. a lot less confident about her place in the world than she lets on.

Amari: 5’1, black & purple hair in dreadlocks, dark eyes. has a prosthetic arm made of living wood that she made herself; the extent of her magical capabilities are unclear (so far). fun, friendly, very nosy, but difficult to read.

Update 03/08/19

Fleshed out choices in earlier scenes
Introduce options for character skills
Introduced two more ROs, Levi and Evangeline
Continuation of story

Update 24/08/19

Story progression
Introduction of character-specific powers
Further interactions with ROs
Fun with subroutines

Update 06/09/19

Introduced Amari, romance option number 4!
Reshuffled some scenes from the previous update
Story progression, more worldbuilding/setting stuff
Updated the stats page

Update 05/10/19

Added romance/friendship scenes.
One of these routes contains a major spoiler - please be aware of this if you want to discuss it! I deliberately made this scene harder to get to, but it is possible.

Update 17/04/20

rewrote chapter 1
merged several of the early chapters into larger, single files
added options to refuse shaw’s touchiness (should be consistent throughout the game)
you’re now able to use the mugger’s knife in the fight with the strigoi - if you took it
entirely reworked the character creation system
added achievements!
fixed various instances of unwieldy or useless code
shifted some stats around, introduced some new functionalities in the Injuries section - will only be obvious if you take a very specific route, but it’s there now
a logo is coming - I was going to do it and have it release at the same time as this update
john mulaney voice and then I didn’t
reset the save plugin so it should no longer get corrupted by other games’ saves
i have been looking at this for ten years and my brain is broken if you get any bugs, or things don’t make sense, please tell me

625 Likes
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Cool binging can’t wate for more

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So good so far！Waiting to read more.

My critique so far is that it seems rather weird to offer many different races to choose for and offer “Jones” & “Smith” as last names. The first names offered aren’t that diverse either.

Sure, you can type out your own choices, but it feels rather odd to go from more varied choices to that.

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Yeah, that’s fair - I just wanted to get character creation out of the way, so I’ll probs go back at some point and add more names.
Thanks!

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It’s good, but I think the (I guess you would call it a) flashback needs to be separated from the earlier text better. Reading present tense then past tense for two questions and back to present tense didn’t quite do it for me. Maybe add a

Last Night

Before the flashback text and after our last past tense choice.

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Count me interested. Time dilation is a cool power to have.

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Yup, that’s a good point, I’ll do something to make that transition clearer.
Thank you!

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Seems pretty interesting. I can feel this kind of like a mysterious vibe coming from it and I love that. It’s still a little short for me to give better feedback yet though. But I will keep an eye on this for sure. Best of luck to you! :wink:

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Its a nice demo I like to see how the story will unfold

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That was pretty good so far, I cannot wait to see what you do with it.

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It’s sounds good but I do think you need to expand the summary a bit more

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Oooh, this seems pretty interesting. I love the concept that you have so far. Past lives? Spooopy. I’m already liking the way the MC rolls, Coughkillingpeoplecough

4 Likes
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A bit too short and end too fast to get a real grasp of what is what . But…I still want MOAR! :grin:

Here are my gripes though…

1- I would recommand to change ‘‘race’’ with ‘‘ethnie’’ . Since ‘‘race’’ apply with out of space races and nothing else .

2- More personality choices . So far with Shaw we can either ‘‘Blush’’ or be an ass . Way too…extreme and restrictive .

3- just for lolz…but tone this down : As always, he looks somewhat disheveled, in the way a model might look if he had been told the shoot theme was “rugged”. Artfully tousled dark hair, ripped jeans, leather boots with just the right amount of wear; you can’t deny Shaw knows how to put together a look. it make me feel fugly…Boo! :crazy_face:

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Interesting enough. I’ll totally check for future updates. You really should work on your summary though. It’s the first thing everyone sees when they click the post and the way it’s written is so…dull. Might turn some people off.
You should also really consider adding a save option in the demo.

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I really enjoyed the demo so far and I can’t wait to get more interactions with the RO btw.

And the option to kill is really awesome, it’s something that has been lacking in other HG and CoG games tbh.

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This 100% I wanna be nice to the guy but I don’t wanna have to be in love with him as a result

7 Likes
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lol just let us be the anti-Christs

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Oooooh~ Update please! Very interesting :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Idk if it’s meant to be this way or just an early rendition but maybe make the character creation a bit more… I guess “immersive” is the word? Just picking appearances feels a bit basic. An example I thought of is maybe in the nightmare the PC focuses on their appearance to sort of calm/re-center themselves? It’s even a good way to let us make our name ahead of time!
Ex: “Your name is (F/n)(L/n), you are of (Ethnicity) dissent. You comb your hands through your (H/texture) (H/color)(H/style) and try to clear your (Eye/c)”

But as always this is your work and this my opinion is given but doesn’t need to be taken if you believe it clashes too much with your style! I enjoy it so far, keep up the good work!

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Thank you! Integrating the character creation is definitely on my to-do list, I’m just trying to get the story and coding right at the moment, hence the quick-start option.
Thanks for reading!