Nice demo! Hope everything goes well with this one!
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Hi guys!! Long time no see, am I right? Sorry about that, there was just one delay after another and I only wanted to unlock this thread once I knew the next update was close in sight, which it luckily is!!!
TLDR; The reasons why I did not in fact get this update done at the beginning of the year like I intended.
- Attended GDC where I actually just so happened to meet THE Dan Fabulich of CoG fame and made him take a selfie with me :3
- Made a yandere visual novel for a jam that I had been planning to participate in even before VLNG. It got some surprisingly good traction so I also spent some additional time polishing the demo because of all the playthroughs people were doing of it… eheheh…
- Went to Japan on a trip!! Super fun and super educational since we were on a partnered tour. I wrote and drew some highlights in one of my dev posts!
- Got hacked :((( I’ve taken all the necessary precautions to protect my information and even cleared my laptop to its original form (meaning I’m in the process of reinstalling and updating anything that was lost), so hopefully it’s done, but I was totally silently freaking out when I got sent evidence of the breach and couldn’t touch my cleaned laptop for a day because of how stressful and freaky it was
- Started some certification courses for work stuff. Nothing interesting to share, just want to note the new time consumption!
But now that that’s all dealt with, I am happy to say that I have been working on VLNG all throughout these detours, whether it be typing on the plane rides out of country or in between assignments. I just have one more major event to write and then I’ll have a friend playtest to make sure it functions at a base level, and then I’ll release Ch. 1.2! And yes, preferably I would have loved to just put out all of Ch. 1 as I intended, but once you finish the new demo release, you may see why I decided to separate the rest of the chapter for another update…
Anyways, see you hopefully relatively soon with the update! I’ll also check on any replies that were made since I was away in due time :))
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Wow, talk about a roller coaster. Glad everything’s working out, and looking forward to the next update!
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I’m just glad you’re alive! Can’t wait for the next update! 
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So glad you are back. I love villainess stories like this, but they always tend to feature a villainess. Let me play a guy! I need my bl fix, but in villainess style. 
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First thoughts: I am so excited; I love the 'Reborn as the Villainesse" genre.
Grammar/Typos
“You had thought you’d get more…” (past perfect tense) or “You thought you’d get more…” (past simple tense)
Missing space in “his fate”.
Story
I really enjoy your writing style/voice - especially for this story. Its the perfect amount of informal to feel like the narrator is the player’s internal monologue, and you have a strong ability to create a visual picture that really suits the story.
There is a certain dark humor in picking how you died, so thank you for that. In general I think you do a great job of balancing the tone between the pc’s existential dread of knowing they are fated to die alone and hated versus the player’s enjoyment of the fantasy and drama of the setting. Even things as small as the “apologize(?)” choice were enough to make me chuckle.
Really small comment, but I usually read bold as loud/forceful so the description of a cooing whisper felt odd (to me, personally). Emphasis on how minor this comment is.
When we get to the choices about the power dynamic with Maddalena… I feel like they are limiting/unclear? I guess my question is, are the choices supposed to reflect on how the PC feels about power dynamics in society in general, about having power over an elder, or having power over Maddalena specifically? And maybe consider editing the wording to reflect that?
I loved the bird scene! I think it would be nice if there was an initial choice about ignore/show mercy/save the bird. And then (I’m not sure on the coding) if you wrote it so the “snap the neck” had an alternate “don’t do it” option that was greedy out. As a way to play with the CoG medium and really emphasize the idea that this has to happen.
Oh, also, the dinner from Madds and the choices about how the PC emotionally reacts was perfect. Chefs kiss.
Your timing/pacing for describing the setting and worldbuilding is perfect: for example the way you introduce and continually give more information about the masks in society.
Character Creation
I have so many thoughts about Character Creation they needed their own section.
You might want to get multiple people’s perspective but at first I didn’t realize I was describing the original body - I think because it is described as “unfamiliar”. Maybe try a different word, like “unreal” or “out-of-body”?
It is interesting to me that the player gets to pick a name for the original body but not the villain? (Is this for a plot reason?) Have you considered giving options for the villain name for the player to pick from?
I enjoy that so far there seem to be options to go for either a redemption or a villain route – choices are always fun in a CoG game.
This was just my first playthrough, so I’m going to try a few more playstyles and see if anything else jumps out at me. Im definitely keeping my eye on this, and thank you for sharing what you have so far!!
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Thank you everyone for the feedback! I’ll be replying to individual messages soon but just wanted to let you know that the update has been finished and after having my friend beta, I just need to make some formatting fixes and it should be good to go tomorrow! Of course, there’s no guarantee that there won’t be bugs or other hiccups–there’s only so much the two of us can run through with all the flavor text branching, but I hope that you guys will enjoy and let me know if there’s anything gamebreaking when the time comes!
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Well well well, if it isn’t update time. We’ve got approximately 34k additional words now, yay! Ngl not as much as I was hoping for, but I’ve realized that it’s better for both my head and the quality of my games if I do these smaller updates to keep momentum.
Also, make sure to start over from the beginning, as stats have been changed and older saves will NOT mesh with additions I’ve made. This will likely remain the case with any future updates, but I do plan on later making a shortcut option to skip to newer parts when the story updates call for it!
See my Tumblr post for details, including a significant change I made to how the potential gender storyline will work in the game, and as always, let me know if you encounter any bugs or errors!
I need to lay down before I get back to work… lol…
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I really love these types of stories and enjoy your writing, but MAN is it frustrating to repeatedly get beaten down by the universe whilst trying to be a good person 
After I thought the MC and their brothers were making tiny bits of progress leading up to the event, as well Feels like I’m firsthand experiencing the path to villainy, two different sides of mind warring between giving up the attempts to fix/prevent things and instead leaning into it vs refusing to give in just to spite whatever is causing everything to play out this way.
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Stayed up way too late last night readin the update, it was great and I cannot wait for more!
Am I the only one who thinks the Mc acts a bit too childish, and unaware of significant people and events in a story that should be fairly known after so many reads?
Not sure about childish, but as far as being unaware of people in the story, I’m convinced that the world itself or the gods are actively manipulating the MC’s mind/actions to some degree in an attempt to prevent the events of the story from deviating. It might just be me, but it seems like “canon event” logic is being applied here so that no matter what happens, the MC always ends up vilified and unable to use their meta-knowledge to their advantage.
But hey, that’s just a theory.
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I think it is the villain’s own consciousness—or a remnant of it—that drove us to kill the bird, acting like our own “dark passenger.” After all, we don’t know what happened to them. Was their consciousness erased? Suppressed? Transferred to another body like ours? Did it merge with ours?
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The mc life is so fucked up, that’s not even funny. Honestly if I were them I would kill myself as soon as possible. Like can they even be happy for one second? I’m surprised we even have a Li although I’m sure all of them hates the mc too.
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I’ve decided that my MC is going to be a good person purely out of spite against fate at this point
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The “Little shit”, after meeting their brother, from the MC really made this game for me. And it honestly only gets better from there.
Awesome so far
I feel like this might be a case of ludonarrative dissonance, but my good PC didn’t regret killing the bird up until the point Maddalene was fired. It frankly seemed cruel to leave the creature suffering in that situation; this is also reflected in the choice where you say you’d kill the animal again.
But strangely, in a later scene, the PC reflects that killing the suffering bird couldn’t have been mercy, regardless of that choice, which took me aback. Again, because my PC’s sole regret was more so that the act hurt an innocent bystander rather than it being itself immoral.
So yes, maybe it is as you say, and it’s simply a case of the original Arami’s murder of the goldfinch being something the PC can agree with/rationalize. But still, I found the posterior self-flagellation a bit odd.
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