The Shadow Society General Discussion Thread CANCELLED. Cancellation update on #246

@Carawen quick question…I don’t know if it would be considered a spoiler or not but can we continue to romance Q in book 2 ?

P.S:Just love the characters

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I just finished the book and I was so, SO excited to see what was going to happen next and then
“To be continued in book 2”

Damn my ability to get way too emotionally invested in stories. Guess it’s time to replay this a million times for every route- (my first was Gwyndal’s btw)

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Hi!

If you’re unsure if you plan to mention something is a spoiler, you could use the spoiler tag just to be safe.

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Gwyndal: exist
Me, getting down on one knee: “asgjsjshfwgj, marry me,”

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I think this might be a better meme to express frustrations at TBC/Cliffhanger endings:

:smiley:

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Definitely. Although my main frustration is that I’m personally broke and I had to pull my mom’s leg for 5 bucks to buy the book, only for it to not be a complete story. Though that’s more my fault than anything tbh.

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This game is EXCELLENT! I played through so many times and I loved every second. It had all my favorite qualities of The Wayhaven Chronicles while maintaining it’s own creativity. I especially love how different the RO’s are and how different ones react to the same choices differently. They felt very human. Congrats on the release and for making such a great game :slight_smile:

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Summary

Well I just finished it and to be honest in some regards it’s even better then expected. Imo the romance was nearly perfect (at least for A) The only thing which bothered me in it is that it feels a bit rushed while not being faced paced. Why? Because you don’t get the speak the her really. Every moment you have with her is gold. But they are always way too short. And I’m not talking from a reading perspective but from an in universe one. At least from what I understood is that they are together (in a group) for like 20 minutes and maybe 5-10 alone. Then A is suddendly busy for the next week and we see her maybe one time in the passing. While I understand you can’t spend 90% of the screentime with romance it always feels like they never really talk outside of the conversations we read.

But like I said the scenes with her were awesome. You could practically feel her cold aura. What I also really liked is that unlike many other games the “ice queen” didn’t suddenly become all sweet and lovely in the romance. While you are ceartainly differen with you SO you don’t do a complete shift. I want to romance a cold and argoant RO when I start her route. That doesn’t mean she hast to be always in that archetyp I really loved that when she acted different from what you would expect she still maintained her general attitude and wasn’t all blush “Oh you are so sweet. May we HOLD HANDS” giggle. Overall the scenes we got were top notch and I looked forward to the next books with her

But I still have a major problem. While it’s a romance novel there is still the other part. The mystery part. Maybe it’s just me but that wasn’t handled really well in my opinion. While I get that we are still adapting to the world I found reading the first part really frustrating. Not because I felt helpless (this was like I already said in the demo handeled pretty well) but more because EVERYBODY was keeping secrets and I had no person I could even trust remotely. While that’s maybe intended because it’s from the mystery genre it doesn’t really help on building a relationship. Also it seemed everybody kept their secret just for the sake of it. There was often no reason not to spill the beans. But they are always like “nah bro it’s too long just trust me” or “welp I guess I can’t answere that” For example Q muzzel was handeled good. I didn’t have the feeling they just were petty and didn’t want me to know but it has a reason why she don’t want anyone to know. But the main secrets are just weird. We get practically no information about the tatoos because… time? How does it even work? What can I do with it? What does the shadow man want from me? Or the group? I don’t feel like we get an explanation why we should fight against the shadowman. We don’t get even briefed on his goals. Why should we even try to even achieve our goal. Or even more basic. WHAT IS OUR GOAL? It sure makes the mystery bigger but why wouldn’t they tell us? Again it doesn’t make any in-universe sense. They would be far better of with telling us what it is we should care about. They never give us a reason why we should help them. If they for some reason can’t tell us they would be still better of with lying. It’s like “He is evil!” “Why?” “umm… can’t tell just trust me. I’m not gonna tell you anything and be secret about everything but I mean you like me riiight?” From the MC perspective (without our meta knowledge) it’s nearly impossible that a sane person wouldn’t betray them the first chance they get. They keep them captive, don’t tell you what the tatoo is, Talk about using you, don’t give you a reason why the ruler is bad, they literaly TRADE you and don’t even tell you what they plan to do and they even use dead people as fuel just like the shadowman and want to kill civilians. If it weren’t a book and I wouldn’t know that the main cast are the good ones (or at least we won’t have an opportunity to join the other side properly) and the main ROs wouldn’t be on the side of the hideout I would honestly thing the Shadowman is the least worst of the factions. At least he is willing to give you freedom and some answeres. He even let’s you go and openly tell you that he needs you. Yes he kills a few people in the hideout but it’s not like the main group didn’t (want)(depending on your choice) to kill people aswell. And of course the circle things is one point against the shadowman but for all we know the Group isn’t any better. Well way too long story short I think either it’s a bit forced on the mystery part or the main group are a bunch of idiots who just don’t know how to motivate someone for their cause. I at least didn’t feel like they want to help someone and that the shadowman is evil or mad.

On a positive note the Shadowman is written amazing. He drips from charm and if he would be a woman he would be my favourite RO. In contrast to the rebels he doesn’t make any useless secrets and tell you as much as you need to know while still don’t giving you too much info about his “evil” plans. In general your strong point is truly the character writing. The characters never feel shallow and all have their owns charm in a way. Their relationships are believeble just as their personalities. Also it’s really interesting to see that the main group is really made out of people who aren’t really friends. They are forced by their circumstances to work together and you feel that even among the group there is distrust and spite.

As a tip I would recommend you to try to give the characters more time together. You don’t have to end every scene with the RO and the MC departing because A; the RO is suddenly busy B; The MC has bedtime. Just little sentences like “After this you spend a few hours/a while together and then you depart to sleep because you still have to recover” (Of course there wasn’t much time for the chars but it seem unlikely that they never even once had more than a few moments. And if that’s the case it still feels rushed to me. I know comparing is dumb but as an example in Wayhaven you spend hours and hours together researching things and doing paperwork, getting watched or just eating. You don’t have to spend downtime together but even working together helps building a deeper relationship.)
And the second advice would be to not force secrets. Before you withold the reader an information think about it from the chars perspective. Would they benefit that much from witholding the information so it’s worth losing trust? Or could they even benefit from the MC knowing (for example heroic MC would be much more motivated if they had a concrete reason to think the shadowman is mad). If an information is too long for the time frame the character surely can give you a few basic answeres instead of saying “too long” They should have 5min to tell you a shortend version

But maybe I just missed many things. I’m not an author so take my advice with a big grain of salt but that are just my feeling after the first playthrough

Sorry it’s gotten way too long

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I was just wondering if the plot is linear? it ended with my MC going back to the Sunworld w/out M. Or are there any endings besides that? Great book btw! I’ve been waiting for this ^^

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The MC always ends up back in Sunworld. The differences in the endings revolve around M and Q, and what happens to them. They can die.

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What the… They can?! Hell…
Thanks for replying fam.

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Honestly I was team A/G from the start but the Dad has me weak wtf. I did not expect to actually like his character like this. Im sorry A and G Y.Y

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So, is there an ending, where you & M both end up in the sun world safely?

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Thanks i thought what did i do wrong??

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I’m also wondering about that. In my playthrough M got pulled back and captured.

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You know, I think one of my favorite things about this game is your ability to just make the protag a complete idiot. Like I did a playthrough where my sole goal was to make my character as chaotic and dumb as possible, and when I did nearly every time I saw the options I was reeling with laughter because I saw the one I knew I was going to have to pick in order to stay in idiot mode. By the end, the only one not completely done with my protag was the villain

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Seconded on amazing options! I was laughing my butt off from pretty much the start, and I adore how you can be a complete ass with pretty much no reason sometimes. Just brilliant. I loved this book!

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Okay, so now I have to do a playthrough for each RO + an “evil” one and a chaotic dumbass one. Gonna be fun.

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Just bought the game on steam and while I think it’s amazing-
I feel like there could’ve been a lot more cause and effect happening with the story, as well as stats, in regards to the choices the player chooses for their MC.

Not to mention all of the ‘secrecy’… as aforementioned by @Daedalucius

(Might addmore as I continue to play, but otherwise I love the book and can’t wait till we get a post for the second one. :open_mouth: Really wanna beta test it when the time comes)

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I hope @Carawen don’t mind if I post your tumblr announcement here:

It seems there will be an updated content for Book 1. I am excited but I hope you take a break @Carawen. You deserve it after all the hard work. :smiley:

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