One advantage of buying here is the money goes to CoG BUT buying on Steam allows you to leave a review, and the first review for this on Steam was a neg. Its got a positive rating now. Also, the more reviews, the more Steam promotes these games for others to find. Its a two edged sword which way you choose to purchase.
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The ideal way to buy a game is on Steam the week it’s released. It’s ideal for us as players because there’s always a release-week discount, and it’s ideal for the company and its authors because strong release-week Steam sales do more than anything else to set up a game for future success.
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I do really appreciate any support and reviews. It took a lot of work! And since release, if I’m honest, it’s been a very bumpy road. The first review being negative (and not just negative, really insulting) stung, even if I am totally fine with people having varying opinions, and I’m glad it’s way more positive now. The piracy hurt far, far more. Destroyed the weekend. Made me question humanity and the point of creative works.
And, of course, ultimately sales will decide if there is an appetite for a sequel.
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Me encantó el juego como no tienes ideas ahora es parte de los favoritos
I do hope there is a sequel, I love the world you have created! Please don’t feel bad about that neg. Just because one person was having a really bad hair day, or simply cannot be nice about anything, does not mean the rest of us are unappreciative, and I, for one, am really enjoying this game! I just wish I had purchased this on Steam as I usually do.
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So, a few things that come to mind here.
HC as a label is viewed by the majority of players to be a massive disappointment that rarely if ever delivers on what it promises. As such few people at this point are willing to give HC games a try unless the reviews are overwhelmingly positive and even then it’s a gamble.
Now based on the HCs I’ve played, most if not all suffer from 2 issues: an ambitious plot that doesn’t have enough time and wordcount to get resolved in a satisfying fashion and lackluster romance. This game in my eyes is guilty of both.
You have the plot which has this big faction war that you’re thrown into and despite being a newly turned vamp you are for some reason asked to make the ultimate choice of which faction lives. Problem is you as the reader have no reason to care about said war, it might’ve been years in the making but what are the actual stakes for mc? mc’s in a foreign country, they hardly know anybody here and there’s just not enough throughout the course of the story to make you invested. And in the end it all gets resolved in a few pages via one or 2 persuasion checks…
So the plot is a letdown, but whatever, HC was marketed as a romance-focused label so it’s what people would care about most anyway… Alas the romance is a massive letdown as well, but again at this point it’s what we’ve come to expect of HCs. There’s not enough meaningful interactions with the ROs, hell i can’t even say i know them outside of what their profession is. And with some ROs declaring their undying love after a few days it all comes across as shallow. Not to mention, for an ‘erotic’ novel I found there’s not enough sexual interactions and those that are there were unremarkable. I have yet to see Saffron’s scene, which the author says is the wildest, but I highly doubt one scene would salvage this game.
Regarding piracy… I understand how it’s discouraging and frustrating to see it happen with your work, but piracy has been around for as long as CoG has existed and the people who pirate your stuff were never your customers to begin with. If people want to support a game they like they will buy it, hell they’ll buy several copies just to give the dev a little extra. But the game has to be good. And that’s the sad reality.
Ultimately it makes me wonder what the point of HCs even is, seeing as every new entry reinforces my belief that CoG does not know what the audience wants, but that’s just my take and a ted talk for another time.
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7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Heart’s Choice General Discussion
I’ve moved the posts about Heart’s Choice in general to the Heart’s Choice General Discussion thread - please feel free to continue there, just to keep things focused on Vampire’s Kiss here. (My bad for contributing to the drift off topic - apologies)
I’ve expanded my earlier thoughts after a few days to mull the game over, into something more formal. I don’t usually do this but I was feeling in a book-report sort of a mood 
Long post here
In Vampire’s Kiss by Dash Casey, you wake up in a London morgue having been turned into a vampire. You dive into vampire society, encountering a cast of intriguing characters and their perilous schemes - and as it turns out, your former museum job looking after an ancient artifact may have had something to do with your recent demise…
This one caught my eye because I found the demo very well-written and the plot grabbed me. There’s an opportunity to get a hint about the major characters and I found them interesting and appealing, and you have the hints of the overarching plot to come. The demo gives a strong sense of the game as a whole so if you like it, it’s very likely that you’ll enjoy the rest.
I enjoyed the game a lot - it felt very well put together and it’s clear how many different paths and outcomes there are. I replayed the demo section after buying and had some very different interactions and events that still felt cohesive. The game makes the fitting-together of the plot’s moving parts look easy when it’s anything but. There are plenty of vivid characters to get to know who are intriguing in their own rights, as well as in the relationships you can develop with them.
Per the marketing copy there are four romances: a passionate socialite (gender-selectable), a scheming vampire queen (female), a cheeky vampire rogue (gender-selectable) and a stoic hunter (male). I went for the hunter and enjoyed the romance a lot, but it was a tricky choice as the other characters were very appealing too - this is unusual for me as I tend to go for one character with any particular MC.
I was able to have a fair amount of time with my romanceable hunter as he was a key part of the plot and he was a very fun character. I very much liked the various ways in which I could draw him into the events of the game and work together even though I risked a lot doing so; I’d have enjoyed more romantic buildup and steamy scenes with him, but there is a lot going on in the game and I didn’t mind the whirlwind feel.
Vampire’s Kiss has a three-chilli rating which is the highest “spice” rating on the app. On this playthrough, the sex scene I played happened to be one of the shorter ones and I wasn’t totally sure what to make of the rating compared to other games I had played with the same heat rating. Upon investigating, many of the scenes with other characters (and others with the same character) are longer, and often include more spice in the way of sexy vampire powers and wilder rides. Nonbinary NPCs do have less detail in their scenes compared to male and female ones; as discussed above, I think there is room for other ways of approaching descriptions of nonbinary characters and MCs.
The vampire society was a lot of fun, as were the side characters. The writing style was a pleasure to read, and I found I was always able to pick from at least one choice that suited my character and path through the game. Sometimes it was hard to make those choices because more than one felt like I’d get a good story from it, which is a great problem to have! Mechanics-wise, it was neither easy nor difficult: I don’t tend to play with a super close eye on stats, and I failed at things a bunch of times, but was still able to have an enjoyable story. The results of the failures didn’t feel punishing and I got a solidly happy ending. The vampiric powers were cool and I had a solid sense of what I could do with them, and I liked the lore around the vampire magic and society in general a lot.
There is clearly a lot in the game that I didn’t scratch the surface of - I’d enjoy romancing the characters I didn’t go for this time, there were some characters I didn’t befriend or even encounter, and paths with wildly different outcomes and adventures, and I look forward to exploring more of the game and the routes available on further playthroughs. If you’d like a fast-paced vampiric adventure in the streets of London that feels familiar without being derivative, I recommend it. I’d love to see the author return to this setting.
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Okay… I’ve now played ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ five times - and have just 11 Achievements still to get. So here goes…
Firstly, thank you for your time and effort into writing this, and sharing it!
What I liked about it:
- Having a story set in the UK, even if it was just certain parts of London.
- It’s not ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ - but you came up with enough ideas to make the London Council of Vampires interesting. The three abilities, and how to boost them, were well handled.
- Marky the Cockney vampire. My preference preference is for female Marky. She makes me think of Tonks from the ‘Potterverse’. Marky is sweet! I’ll get round to romancing her in due course.
What didn’t work so well for me:
- Having played games from Choice of Games such as Donor, Out For Blood, and Parliament Of Blood, for me your game felt short at just 8 chapters. I know that you’ve done a lot of work (appreciated) - but my honest impression is that the game needed to be longer, the characters being given more depth, and the whole ‘it takes place in a week, from awakening as a new vampire’ to ‘you’re the deciding factor in a game that’s centuries in the making’ felt too condensed for a timeline. Consequently, the romances felt rather rushed - though I did like roller skating with Alex!
- I was excited to see amongst the Achievements that the MC could turn one of the ROs into a vampire. And I’ve got that Achievement today. But.…he/she just verbally accepts. There’s no well-written description of his/her transformation! No contemplation of Alex dealing with the voice of the Thirst in his/her head. No epilogue with the two of you sharing a hunt in a dark alley, or having a sexy exchange of biting in bed. Boo.
- Think this is in Chapter 4: Marky referring to the ring as ‘jewellry’. Whilst it’s easy to mispronounce the word, being English, wouldn’t have Marky used the correct British English spelling, jewellery? Likewise, I think one local character referred to a floor in a building as a ‘story’, when it’s a storey. And there was the scene when the MC is aiming to retrieve the ring from Alex’s safe. You are given the option to ‘I’ll use my smarts’. Aagghh! ‘I’ll use my intelligence’ would have worked better as a generic description. Not all of your English readers are American.
After achieving it by accident, it did take me a few tries to work out how to woe Alex upon the first meeting, and so get to date him/her. The ‘Sisters of Mercy’ Achievement alludes me in particular - but I’ll work at it, when I have enough time…
In general, I will give this a 6 out of 10 (Reasonable). If you did happen to write a sequel, I suggest giving the RO’s character scenes more time and attention. I would like to see the MC sharing a happy life with vampire Alex - and seeing how Alex adjusts to living as a vampire!
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Choice of Games/Heart’s Choice house style is to use American English, it’s not the author’s decision or related to where the games are set. (Though if it did say “jewellry” with two Ls, that’s not the American spelling either, so that would be a typo.)
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I thought Commonwealth English was allowed in games that take place in Commonwealth territories?
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It’s varied a little over the years, but currently we tend to go with American English.
In general, though, it’s the team’s decision not the author’s, so critique us and not them 
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For what it’s worth, I would prefer Commonwealth English in a story like this one. (Granted, I am an insufferable nerd who regularly pays extra to get the UK edition of books rather than read the Americanised version.)
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Now imagining it being US English for a New York or LA hometown MC and Commonwealth for the others… that would truly be a weird multireplace flex 
I can get behind the use of things like “news anchor”, though, even for an MC with a London hometown since the MC was living in New York for quite a while before the start of the game.
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Okay. Thanks for the clarification.
Personally, I think AletheiaKnights raises a good point. I am concerned that with the team decision at some stage there’ll end up being British characters in a story, set in the UK, saying things casually in American English that they wouldn’t actually say in their British lives, if they were real. Thankfully, in ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ ‘I use my smarts’ wasn’t actually said by one of the London characters (it was just presented as a choice to the USA resident MC).
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It’s more US spelling and grammar - such as using “if I were” more commonly than “if I was” which took some getting my head around - than very noticeable phrases. There have been a few times where I rephrased something for clarity for US English readers (not an idiom or anything particularly interesting, just small wording changes) but I haven’t ever been asked to change a British English phrase to something wildly US-flavoured.
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I … don’t know very many Americans who say “If I were” rather than “If I was.” I had no idea that would be considered an American vs. British thing rather than a “formally correct” vs. “colloquially acceptable” thing.
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It was about bringing more of a formal/old-fashioned tone, relating to one of the US English Manuals of Style I think? So probably not applicable to more modern settings, on reflection. That one stuck in my mind but it was a little while ago now so I can’t remember all the details 
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You’re both correct. The subjunctive mood is definitely diminishing in popular usage, both in the US and Commonwealth nations. It’s a grammatical rule that not even classic authors reliably followed, but its adherence has been more or less strictly enforced in different times and places.
Those raised by strict grammarians with exacting traditional standards probably use it naturally. And some who are raised by wolves and library books like myself might have a knack for it purely by accident.
Like with proper use of “whom,” it’s a rule that needs consideration with regards to when it should be strictly followed.
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