Seven Kingdoms, The Princess Problem

I think they call him Stranger Danger on tumblr. Or so says Aly.

I really wanted to befriend Avalie, but it never worked out. She was much too clever for me. Same with Gisette. They did come to my tea-party though and then proceeded to snark.

Clarmont didn’t want to be my friend either.

Lisle’s my favourite. I found his path difficult, since I failed that on my own first playthrough, it was the one I was aiming for. There’s a guide on tumblr for it. And he’s not but that doesn’t mean you can’t marry him. I really, really liked the idea of Penelope for my sister. And I think she was the most excited out of anybody.

@Sneaks Oh wait should that be Emmet didn’t ‘like’ me. He was all very friendly, he came to my parties, he sent me a gift, I think, but nothing beyond that, not a single spark of romantic attachment.

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@Victoriya @alliebee I’ve created a monster! runs from this ship

@Illmaster There are definitely guides on romancing the duke in question. Check the big everything you could ever want to know guide I linked before.

I have a few more links today in case anyone is bored of my tumblr posts. Haha.

Fanart collections - one of all the MC’s and one of all the other art.

The first video let’s play of the demo that I’ve been linked to haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFVBzXsMS90&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1

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The demo refuses to work for me. The file that’s supposed to open up the game claims that it doesn’t exist at all. Not that my computer doesn’t have the proper tools to run it, just that it doesn’t exist.

@J_Simone
Try downloading the game again.
Make sure that you’re saving it properly when you’re downloading. (Sometimes I accidentally click the wrong button and it places everything in temp files.)
Make sure you unzip the files once you’ve downloaded.
Does it still fail to work?

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Guess that I’ll actually have to use my laptop for this

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@Aly I saw this video when someone else on the forums posted it. Since I now ship BlainxJarrod, I thought I should share it

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I was wondering.

BIG SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE DEMO!!!

It’s about that very last scene.

Remember [spoiler]Blah blah[/spoiler] to post spoilers.

Who’s dead? It’s been said that it’s none of the romances. I presume it’s someone we’ve met before. And they use ‘he’. Does that leave us with two options? General Falon and Blain? Is it Blain that’s dead?

I mean it does say, on the cast page. “Blain: The bitter young lord of Corval is both possessive and tactless, leading you to wonder if he was sent to the summit in hopes he would anger someone enough that his enemies at home wouldn’t have to kill him themselves.” I’d just thought maybe it’d be use.

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@Aly The monster ship follows you dutifully. XD

This game has escalated so quickly, which is exactly what I pictured for it! It’s the kind of thing that everyone with any interest in dating sims/raising games wants, so it could get huge. Tumblr is one thing… just wait until some rabid fan puts it up on 4chan. >.< (My spidey-senses are tingling, I can imagine it)

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I would be surprised if that was Blain’s fate! He’s a good comic relief/love-to-hate him character, killing him seems like it would drastically change the tone, though I suppose the murder of any character we know would accomplish that.

However, it’s not a romanceable character, and assuming it’s someone who was named, that means it would have to be either Blain, General Falon, Master Jorges (an unmet character but named on the website, the head butler I think?) or, I JUST HAD A THOUGHT! LISLE?? I’ll explain, it under the next tags, so spoiler for Lisle’s story:

Couldn’t you technically say that Lisle isn’t a romance? I mean, he has a path, but there’s no way to have an actual romance since he is gay. That would be such a shocking twist!! Plus I would definitely cry. And if @Aly wants to reduce her readers to tears without technically getting rid of a “romance” character, well that’s one way to do it!

Even though at the end, it says “he’s” is it possible that the person found dead is a girl? Though I’m probably looking too much into this, but that would widely expand the possible victim pool. I don’t think this theory is likely, but it is possible.

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SPOILERS BELOW (Don’t click if you’ve not finished one playthrough.

Is Blain? I’ll admit I mostly just found him annoying, as opposed to comic relief. And I didn’t think a murder would be against the tone of the game, it felt perfectly in fitting with all of the scheming going on, and the attempts to kill us.

I disagree. Since yes, killing off the only gay male character is certainly a problem that’s rife in most media, I would normally be concerned. But Aly does speak about how there’s a possibility for that path to end happily on her tumblr. And she does make a few other comments to suggest that there is more to it than just finding out that Lisle is dead.

But yes, to your last point. Definitely possible.

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You’re right about the tone, I’m not sure why I feel that way, and what you said makes 100% sense, but for some reason Blain dying seems different to me? Maybe because I view him as relatively harmless, like a mosquito. He’s not smart enough to be a grand schemer (or at least not smart enough to do it well), he’s not impressive enough to be a threat… He’s just… Ridiculous. Which I suppose is a better term to use that “comic” relief" to describe how I feel about him. He’s annoying, and I don’t like him, but I had fun irritating him every chance I got (including sending him a heartfelt letter during gift giving, stuff like that).

I’m so glad you disagree and that you found those posts on Aly’s tumblr.It makes me feel a lot better, I was really worried for him. I love Lisle (and Penelope) so much, I think his friendship with the MC and slowly building trust is beautiful, and I can’t wait to see more! His trust might be gained slower than Lyon’s is! (Still not sure we have Clarmont’s trust since he hasn’t told us what he’s up to yet, and I don’t think we’ll ever really have Gisette’s. Or at least, not till the veeeeeery end.

I don’t even think I can go into if my last point is true. Too many depressing possibilities.

But out of all the options, who do you think is most likely? I think the General, we haven’t seen him too much, but he’s an amazing strategist, it’s easy tp see why someone would want him dead
Basically, I need to find out the answer ASAP! This is causing me too much worry! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Is it definitely a named character? I’m not sure why I assumed. It might not be. I just thought it’d be more dramatic, maybe.

I think if Blain dies then it’d be interesting, because you’re the most obvious culprit, with Ana being a second. There’s no other named character you can say that about. He was always clear about how much he hated you. He’s the only character whose opinion of you doesn’t change regardless of what you do, which makes it easier to have a set path. I’d say he’s the most interesting option. He’s a character we are actually invested in, even if it’s invested in loving to hate him, so if he’s the one that’s dead, it’ll definitely pack a punch. But perhaps it’s just an unnamed character instead.

I’m actually surprised Blain hasn’t tried to throw a party or something, without inviting us, in an attempt to deliberately out do us. Or maybe he did, and no one accepted his invitations… Apart from Jarrude! And together the two of them bonded over their mutual hatred of us! Do you think? :wink:

Lisle’s my favourite. I love playing with classical fairy tale archetypes myself, and the Prince Charming with a twist is something I love writing. So it’s interesting to see another person’s take. I’m also fond of themes of duty and obligation vs personal freedoms. I do like that he is extremely difficult to win over and that there is so obviously a lot going on beneath the surface. I love the relationship between him and Penelope and also how much he loves his country, how he’s absolutely dedicated to it and that he is, oh so very responsible. But that he’s not dour and serious all of the time either. I also liked that he seems to have a very strong sense of personal ethics. That despite how important it is that he gets married at the summit, how essential it is to the future of his country, he doesn’t even consider lying to you, or leading you on. And that he is looking for a good person, as well as a good political match.

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@J_Simone I’m sorry you are having troubles with the demo! I hope you have resolved it. The game doesn’t require any external programs/files to run. It should go something like download a zipped file - extract/unzipp the game to somewhere on your computer - open the folder - find the .exe file (it’s the one that says 7kppdemo and has a little red crown) – double click on it — the game launches.

If that isn’t working, something was probably corrupted during your download? Otherwise I’m not sure what could be happening.

@alliebee That is awesome! Thanks for sharing~ (I totally danced along to it like a dork)

@Shawn_Patrick_Reed Haha I still remember six months ago when I was so nervous about putting it out and convinced 0 people would play/like it. We are still smallish, but we have all the best people~

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@J_Simone

Maybe it’s your antivirus that’s the problem? Mine automatically deleted files when I downloaded the game because it considered them harmful, for some reason.

@Sneaks Some antivirus programs don’t like games made with RenPy (the engine 7 Kingdoms uses). I can point at a few threads on Steam where people who had other games made with RenPy had their antivirus do the same thing.

I had to disable my anit-virus security and disable my computers UAC, but it was worth it😄this is a great game.

AvaliexDuke Woodley, they both speak in circles and it gives me a headache.

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I don’t know what anti-virus you have, but you may be able to make an exception for this game.

First of all, I’d like to say that this game was quite a pleasant surprise! I got to know about it because some random friend posted about it on Facebook, saying that it was probably the best visual novel she has ever played, so I decided to give it a try.
Truth be told, at first I wasn’t thinking much of the game, because it didn’t look very professional (fonts, overall design). But silly me, I was thinking of judging a book by its cover. I’m a writer myself, and I really appreciate when someone comes up with innovative ways of presenting a story and doesn’t fail in execution, and I have to say this is one of those cases.
The overall descriptions are surprisingly well written, which I really didn’t expect from a visual novel. Considering it’s quite easy to overextend descriptions to the point of dullness or redundancy, they came off as charming, even gratifying. That also goes for the dialogue, which is exquisitely entertaining and kept me with a constant smirk on the face. I will have to say that, even though spelling-wise this game is practically flawless, I found a good amount of typos, repeated words and punctuation errors that kind of ruin the pace of such a pleasant read, but I’m pretty sure those will get fixed in the final version.
Characters are, without a doubt, the best part of this game. They are pretty complex for a visual novel game and most come off as delightfully charming. I even found those who we are supposed to hate quite hilarious (such as Jarrod or Blain), especially enjoying the fact that we had the option to (even slightly) influence Jarrod’s bad attitude for the good. I’m hoping we can also do that with Blain at some point.
Characters like Penelope, Lisle and Emmett were extremely likeable and adorable to me. For God’s sake, I’m a guy and I must confess that Emmett’s adorability made me a little gay at times! Also, dat flower story he tells during his first week event is so… powerful. My mind was thinking: “man, I’m not supposed to be feeling these feels”. That goes as well for most of the other characters, who have at least one or two memorable, powerful moments in store for you.
Actually, one of the only things I didn’t like about the story (or, better said, the different possible stories) is, perhaps, how “quickly” your MC or other characters seem to fall for each other without actually interacting that much. I don’t know, it came to me as unsatisfyingly odd when you have to tell the Matchmaker that you truly “loved” a certain character in order to unlock their romance path, even though you only substantially interact with them for about three times throughout the whole three-week run (counting the introduction on the first day, the character’s first week event and the optional date in week 3). Maybe I’m just weird, but I think we should really have more optional events with the romanceable characters with whom we did well during the introduction before the last Matchmaker’s event.
I have to point out, also, that the menu buttons are infuriating to use, as their clickable areas are exactly inside the letters, and when trying ot use them, you usually end up advancing the text instead of going to, say, the save or load menu. I hope that gets fixed, because it would really make everyone’s lives easier at managing the save/load screen. Adding hotkeys for the different menus (especially the My Page menu) would be ideal and would enhance gameplay experience.
Another detail that still bugs me is that, although it’s supposed to be a game with multi-dimensional relationships, I failed to see how certain relationship stats affected gameplay or your bond with the different characters. For example, as far as I could tell, I could get the same exact events and conclusions for a certain character path if I got a huge amount of Friendship and no Respect and viceversa. The only obvious thing is that high Rivalry means that you won’t be getting along very well with that characters and, thus, you’ll be unable to get most of their events and get them to assist to the events you host, but I don’t see how different degrees of Respect/Friendship affect the outcome of a relationship. Maybe we’ll have to wait for the full game to actually see the difference those stats make.
Despite the minor flaws I found in the game, playing it is an overall enjoyable (and addicting!) experience. I have recommended it to several friends and even though most are skeptical at the beginning, saying stuff like “I don’t like the design”, “it looks amateurish”, they end up liking it a lot and saying stuff like: “Omg, can I marry Ana right now?”, “wow, Penelope sooo cute!” or “I’m in love with Prince Zarad already!”. Only one male friend told me that he got bored really fast, but it’s probably because we aren’t native English speakers, and considering this is a text-heavy game, well, yeah…
Overall, this is a good visual novel. A very good one. Maybe even a godsend for the visual novel genre, since, despite it’s not being produced by a large, well-funded Japanese company with years of visual-novel-making experience, at its core, it’s far superior than most of the stuff those companies bring us, really. It has far more content, interactivity and depth than most games that come from “profesional” studios, which have, yes, pretty visuals and original soundtracks, but have predictable, dull and dumb stories that rely on ecchiness to attract attention, about the typical Japanese school days, loser high-school student protagonists that have the personality of a rock but have suddenly put together a whole harem of pretty girls and have no regards for the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief, or overall visual novels that basically play themselves because they only give you 3 or 4 story-changing options throughout the whole game. In comparison to Seven Kingdoms, those games seem garbage. Also, the creator of the game opted for making politics one of the main themes of the story, being a risky topic to base a story on as not many people are interested in such serious things, but it played extremely well at the end, which I applaud. This seemed to me like Long Live The Queen (another politics-based visual novel game available in Steam) on steroids.
Anyways, sorry for the long post, but I really wanted to sort of review this game and hope it becomes, at least, decent feedback for the creators/developers (I think her name is @Aly ?), because Seven Kingdoms has a lot of potential for the visual novel genre of videogames. I, for sure, think this makes a far better read and experience than reading one of those cliche juvenile Hunger Games/Harry Potter/Twilight ripoffs that infest bookstores nowadays.
Keep up the good work!

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I’d agree with you on the game’s GUI probably being its weakest point, it could definitely benefit from some polish. That’s to be expected for a game still in beta, though. The writing is good enough that I’m willing to overlook weird menus.

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