Summary:
You wanted to be a museum curator… you’re not, but at least your love life is thriving! … until it isn’t. It seems that things are just not going your way, you’re a newly minted 30 year old and it seems like you just can’t get a win.
You’re almost resigned to your fate as a perpetual underdog when you find yourself in a very unusual situation; caught up in the middle of a heist.
One thing leads to another and the next thing you know your life is in the hands of strangers who claim to be willing to help you and you’re not too sure if that’s an exciting prospect or a terrifying one.
Play as a man, woman or non binary person. Plan a heist or try and escape this situation all together, get close to your new acquaintances, find out their secrets and motives, or fight your hardest to get back to your uneventful life. Are you willing to find out The Price of Emeralds?
Info I can offer so far: Note: This is a game where the character does have a bit of a set personality in the beginning. Why? Ever been in a rut and you just can’t seem to be free of it? Ever feel stuck? This story is very much about someone stuck in a rut, feeling stuck who falls into a unrealistically strange situation. They grow into themselves as they go (by choices made along the way).
It might be a little different from other games in that way. Anyway. Thanks and enjoy!
Friends, Fiends and Acquaintances
Atlus/Athena: Wanted for Petty theft, Grand theft, breaking and entering, fraud… Let’s be honest, the list is long.
Lennox/Leonna: Wanted for: Leaking confidential information online
Robin/Robyn: Your lover, light of your life and admittedly slightly selfish person who may or may not be a little unsure of the future that you thought you’d both build together. Is there anything left to save between you?
Update 11/ 10/ 21 More save load slots added might effect former saves, sorry. A few small changes made to earlier chapters as well. Oh and chapter two was added!
You can’t leave me on a cliffhanger with a story in which I’m cheated on
But other then that I can’t say that I understand how the personality system works since I seem to have 100 on the right side of the personality stats but so far so good I would say
The poor MC I very quickly found myself wanting to cuddle them to death and remind them they’re too good for R anyway We’ll get our revenge with a sexy stranger! Mark my words! Also wanted to add for those of us who can feel that familiar sting of what it feels like to be cheated on, YOU are drop dead gorgeous and don’t let anyone tell you different And if they do, send them my way and I’ll happily kick them in the teeth
Still doesn’t know what R deal is, but so far my judgment is not in good light. (cheater are the worsttt) Feel bad for mc tho, I also want to hug them.
I’m okay with other ro tho. Maybe they are much better despite of them being a wanted criminal *question mark, question mark, question mark
Very interesting start here! I’m curious where will it go from now on. I just hope we’ll get enough opportunities to really oppose the heist, but it seems to be the case from what the original post said.
That aside, the characters are interesting. Fernando aside, all of the people in MC’s workplace are awful. And A is too. Seriously, they gave me such creep vibes - at least the MC could avoid the kiss though. Like - “get lost, weirdo!” - I don’t hate them in a meta way though, they seem to be an interesting character. Just hate them as a person. Maybe that will change with time, but I doubt it because of the very plot of the game - I tend to really dislike characters who force the MC into a criminal endeavor.
I’m very curious about R though - wondering how THAT would pan out from now on. I kind of hope for that kind of scenario revolving around “you don’t know just how much you had until you lost it”. I kind of find it more interesting than them still liking the MC but liking the coworker too or something. From how they acted, it seems they’ve fallen out of love with the MC, and I’d love to see them realize how wrong they were about their own feelings. It will take a lot of time to patch THAT up though.
Some issues I had:
Game name:
The name of the game is not the same on the forum and on DashingDon - one is “The Price of Emeralds” and the other one is “The Price of Rubies and Gold” - which one is it?
Some features:
Would it be possible to add save slots and a dark mode? Save slots are useful for testing WIPs, and a dark mode is useful in general to avoid eye strain.
Name confirmation:
When we get to confirm the MC’s name, does the affirmative have to be “I loved my name”? A lot of people, myself included, hate their name, but it’s still what it is, so it makes me a bit unconfortable to be forced to confirm my MC’s name by saying that, even if I don’t self-insert.
Opposed personality stats:
They all start at 100% for the “red” stat, which doesn’t make much sense since this is not necessarily the kind of character one wants to play.
That aside, there were a lot of typos and other errors of similar kind - too much for a non-native English speaker like me to report, so I’ll leave that for someone else. It didn’t distract me from the story though - it was perfectly understandable.
Yes, sorry about that. Gonna try and get that patched up by the end of the day, had to edit my files to get a demo put together. It’s the first project I’ve put together like this so it’s a little bit of a shot in the dark for me haha.
I like the demo. It was fun to play and the conversations felt natural.
I didn’t get the “creepy vibes” from Atlus. Actually I thought it was nice for the poor MC to flirt and to talk about his passions to a beautiful man. I didn’t go for the kiss, I chose to wait, a kiss was a little too soon for the MC after the event of the night before.
Am I the only one thinking our dear Robin was actually getting informations from Beth ?
I don’t know what will happen next but I hope if we can choose a scapegoat we’ll put everything on Beth.
With our mc’s rotten luck they will put everything on them and the mc will get to learn how to be a proper criminal at the usual venue for that.
I got idiot, or at least sucker for a pretty face vibes from the mc there. Though the mc has been through a breakup and rough night just before so they may have been more vulnerable than usual…still this little self control bodes ill for when we meet the guy my mc may actually be interested in, aka the one the author advertised as being an actual model, Koa. Of course at this stage pretty much anybody is way out of the mc’s league and their usual workdays really must be like how Walter White felt scrubbing his entitled student’s fancy cars at his side job at the car wash. Worse maybe even as the mc does not have a more (theoretically) worthwhile if underpaid first job like highschool teaching to allow them to preserve even a modicum of self-worth.
Hopefully this mc’s saga ends better than mr. White’s. But just like mr. White I could see this mc of mine having tons of cropped up anger and pride issues too.
Yeah, except that Atlus, while pretty may not be exactly my mc’s “type”. Like I said I am holding out for Koa.
Sure, in intellect the mc seems far from being an idiot as they were apparently doing well enough at their demanding studies in spite of having to work two jobs. Socially though I have my doubts with how easily he falls for a cute face.
Flattery will get you the personal tour, sure. But it does cross over into idiot territory when the mc lets them into the restricted section and shows them how to escape.
An alternate response there could be nice, however for me personally I hope this one will also be kept as it fed well into his flaw/strength of pride for my mc. Though at that point his name is quite literally the only thing he seems to have left.
Ah, we may once again be on different sides, though given how shit his workplace is my mc’s initial attitude to the heist will be completely indifferent. He is not risking his life and health to help people who do not appreciate him and authorities in a political system he loathes.
If the thieves want more active participation or his help they must be prepared to give him a fully equal cut, as he would not take the risk for anything less.
With what we know now that would mean at least a six way split as my mc will not be bought off for peanuts, if he wants that he could just carry on doing his current or another shit job that is at least legal after all.
I really liked it so far, but there is one thing that got me so so angry (or aggravated? Frustrated?) that I didn’t really want to continue reading, which was sad because your writing is great.
mini rantI really really disliked how the MC is forced to be a dumbass. Sorry, but who in their right mind (and sorry, no heart break can dumb down someone THAT much) lets someone in a restrictive area, at a workplace where the boss already dislikes you, just because they told you a sob story????
Sorry but that was just so utterly unnecessary and idiotic that I immediately started to hate my MC and hoped she gets caught and fired because that's what she deserved at that moment for being so stupid like wtf LOL
I guess it was necessary to get A in there so they can steal the thing (if they didn’t already swiped it in the moment MC wasn’t looking), but that’s something that I’m just against at.
I’d rather have MC can stick with a no and A just forces their way in and MC has to comply because they’re already inside and if she gets caught she might get into trouble (because who would believe MC)
I’m curious about the other ROs because R is a 1000% NOPE for me (cheaters are an absolute deal breaker) and A is not that high up for me because they dumbed down my MC…
That aside I’m looking forward to more, even if my MC annoyed the hell out of me with that stunt.
All in all I do like your writing and really wanna know more
I hope you can implement a save system though!
Not entirely, this time, from what you said. I mean, we’re not entirely on opposite sides. Like, I thought I’d be angry for the story forcing my MC to let A in the restricted area because that’s just dumb, but with how the story panned out up to that point, I see it as a general “F all of this” from the MC’s part, because the workplace is utter shit and people there even worse. Basically, I can’t imagine my MC wanting to help them or their boss or whatever. But it’s all about the canon dream job MC has - I can’t imagine my MC allowing someone to steal from a museum. Like, no way in hell. It’s about protecting the items there, not anything else.
And I don’t think he’d get swayed by arguments like “it’s to give it back to it’s rightful owners”, if something like that is ever mentionned. Plus, I can’t see my MC as a brave person, and well, getting caught would bring a lot of problems so yeah, nope.
That is where we disagree then. I see the museum curator thing as just a shattered dream for the poor mc by now, much like I never became an heroic air force fighter pilot.
So what remains is their love of and passion for arts and antiquities, but that passion could, theoretically, be satisfied just as well as an art thief or a forger.
I guess it will all depend on how much customisation of the mc is going to be allowed. But for my mc I think it is high time for an overdue realisation that he will never attain his curator dream job anymore than I am going to become an ace fighter pilot. He doesn’t have the requisite degrees and aside from forging them at some point (and my mc’s pride would prevent him from building a career on a forged degree) no realistic way to obtain them even if he had the money, as art history or archaeology is not something taught at community college and having to go back and study with a bunch of late teens to early twenty-somethings is just not something I could see my mc doing at this stage.
Whereas I think my mc would actually be quite willing to steal or forge for a passionate rich “private collector” once he: a) realises his dreams are truly dead and b) he gets over his early hesitation/fear of breaking the law, assuming he is convinced said collector has a real passion for the items. He won’t steal for someone who will just use it for barter with the authorities or other criminals.
Whoaaa, I didn’t expect as much feedback from the little bit I posted, I’m super grateful. This is my first project like this, it’s a bit of an adjustment for me writing with choices in mind versus the way I’ve been writing as of late so a lot of this is not set in stone. I’m glad people are into the concept and once I shape up a bit more of the first chapter I’ll share it, so hopefully soon. Thanks again~
*Also next update should have save slots
We’ll get our revenge with a sexy stranger! Mark my words! 
Also wanted to add for those of us who can feel that familiar sting of what it feels like to be cheated on, YOU are drop dead gorgeous and don’t let anyone tell you different 
And if they do, send them my way and I’ll happily kick them in the teeth 
