Castaways [GxB] [Otome] [Romance, Adventure] [Free]

[Sleepyferret]

Hi LemmaSoft! This is my first game, and I'm really excited to share it with you all. It's called Castaways, and it's been a long road getting here but with the hard work of my fabulous team and my wonderful co-creator Kherohi, we are finally officially released!



You play as Lily, a young, motivated woman who is leaving home for the first time to start a new career and life in Japan.

On the journey, though, something goes horribly wrong and the plane crashes. You and a small group of other people are marooned on an unknown tropical island.

Follow Lily and her fellow survivors as they work out how to help each other, face off the island's dangers and try to make it home. Maybe you'll even find love along the way with one of these other castaways...?


Meet The Guys













The game is purely just a visual novel, with fairly straightforward gameplay involving only reading and choices, no puzzles or character control. It will feature:

- 6 playable routes, 2 with different route paths
- 1 'secret' ending
- 21 unlockable CGs
- Beautiful backgrounds that shift from day to night
- 10 individual character sprites

This game is fairly unique, in that in each playthrough you will only have 4 out of the 6 available men on the island with you (selected by your choices early in the game), and the social nature of the situation that you find yourself in means they will all interact with each other as well as with you. Some of them are amiable and helpful, but others might not get along with each other (try putting Seth and Billy in the same group if you like to stir up trouble...).

When playing through over again for different routes, try out various combinations and see what new parts of their personalities you uncover!



Thanks for reading and please post any comments or suggestions below - we would love to hear your feedback!

You can download the game for Windows, Mac and Linux here: https://sleepyferret.itch.io/castaways

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CastawaysGame

[Godline]

Okay, played it!
I was super excited and so glad you continued to completion.
Spoiler time!

LMAO. Adam's route. With all his r/niceguys whining I really wanted the MC to punch him. Seriously, so much feeling sorry for himself it was ridiculous.

I really liked James' route but I wish that sleeping with him right away led to a bad ending, sort of having more consequences for your actions. Instead both options lead to a happily ever after.

Kazuki is all paranoid and possessive. I like that touch too.

I love the little touches of the friendship between Chris and Adam and the fighting between Seth and Billy if you have both of them with you. Makes each playthrough that little bit unique.

Good job and all that.

[Sleepyferret]

Okay, played it!
I was super excited and so glad you continued to completion.
Spoiler time!

LMAO. Adam's route. With all his r/niceguys whining I really wanted the MC to punch him. Seriously, so much feeling sorry for himself it was ridiculous.

I really liked James' route but I wish that sleeping with him right away led to a bad ending, sort of having more consequences for your actions. Instead both options lead to a happily ever after.

Kazuki is all paranoid and possessive. I like that touch too.

I love the little touches of the friendship between Chris and Adam and the fighting between Seth and Billy if you have both of them with you. Makes each playthrough that little bit unique.

Good job and all that.

Hey Godline,

Thanks so much for playing the game and I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it as much as you hoped after waiting so long!

Totally understand the feedback as well on James's route - it's definitely something I could've explored but I also felt that the way things went, you couldn't really blame them for what they did xD so it was a tough call to make.

Really glad you liked the rest though, and I hope that it was worth the long wait.

[Zelan]

Woohoo!!

I'm still trying to finish up the last of this year's NaNoRenO games, and online school is starting soon, but I really hope I'll be able to play this soon!

[merkmerkmerk]

Congratulations on releasing your first game! Looking forward to your team's future projects.

I have only finished 4 routes so far, but here is my feedback (lengthy because I like the game a lot):

1. Story - generally it is enjoyable though personally the romance progression is a bit too fast. It might have helped if the romantic events were moved to the later days, and if there were more interactions and days - not necessarily adding much more narrative or options but simply implying that x amount of days has passed wherein the relationship grew even further. I understand though that the situation influenced their actions, but still six days is a little too fast (arguable of course).

Another thing about the story is the timeline. While playing and reading through the story I thought that at least 10 days has passed already because: a) the prompt 'a week has passed' which I assumed is on top of the first 3 days; b) the day it rained, there was a description that it rarely rains and most days are sunny, and the narrative part mentioned about repeating their activities thus I assumed several days have passed for her to have those statements - my interpretation skills though are sometimes iffy thus it might just be me who assumed that.

For the bear attack I was hoping that her survivability depended on Lily's actions, e.g. if she will run or stand still or so, and not entirely be based on having enough romance points (assuming that is the case). I know that this plays an important part of the story, but a 'lone route' can be an alternative.

For Seth's route where he requested to have the same room as Lily, I find it weird that everyone supposedly expected it, and no one questioned nor gave side comments about it, not even Billy, when just earlier that morning he confronted Seth on how badly he treats Lily.

This might be purposely done as part of the writing style, but like Lily I also find it weird that they weren't found when they were just 10 miles (roughly 2-3 hours) away. Given that it seems the crash site isn't far from the area they stayed at, there should either be helicopters or boats nearby or that the manager has been personally spoken to by the authorities prior (I believe that in such situations nearby establishments will be interviewed for any possible leads) unless they were assumed dead early on because some of their personal belongings/clothing were found with blood (or something that will suggest such).

2. Art - I really like the artwork for this game especially the CG for Billy's home reveal and Chris' marriage proposal. I observed though that the background image used for when they arrived at the resort is a photograph instead of a drawing. I assume this is a scripting error caused by a difference in .jpg and .png for the intended background.

It will require additional work (might be a lot actually since there are a handful of characters) but adding less clothed version of the sprites will be a very nice touch to emphasize they are stranded on the coastal part of the island. Lily might have expressed that they can't remove much clothing to avoid sunburn, but I still feel really hot for Seth and Chris. They should either have been topless (not that I want them to flaunt their bodies ) or had removed their coats at least.

3. Music - really nice selection.

I also found a bug on Billy's route - lines 7614 until 7620 results to "An exception has occurred. Exception: Switch could not choose a displayable." screen. Clicking ignore until line 7621 will move it forward properly.

Scenario/conditions to reach the error:

The group is looking for Tracy. Lily disclosed the confrontation to Billy then chose not to trust him, yet is romantically attached enough not to die.

As a whole, a very good and enjoyable game!

[Sleepyferret]

Congratulations on releasing your first game! Looking forward to your team's future projects.

I have only finished 4 routes so far, but here is my feedback (lengthy because I like the game a lot):

1. Story - generally it is enjoyable though personally the romance progression is a bit too fast. It might have helped if the romantic events were moved to the later days, and if there were more interactions and days - not necessarily adding much more narrative or options but simply implying that x amount of days has passed wherein the relationship grew even further. I understand though that the situation influenced their actions, but still six days is a little too fast (arguable of course).

Another thing about the story is the timeline. While playing and reading through the story I thought that at least 10 days has passed already because: a) the prompt 'a week has passed' which I assumed is on top of the first 3 days; b) the day it rained, there was a description that it rarely rains and most days are sunny, and the narrative part mentioned about repeating their activities thus I assumed several days have passed for her to have those statements - my interpretation skills though are sometimes iffy thus it might just be me who assumed that.

For the bear attack I was hoping that her survivability depended on Lily's actions, e.g. if she will run or stand still or so, and not entirely be based on having enough romance points (assuming that is the case). I know that this plays an important part of the story, but a 'lone route' can be an alternative.

For Seth's route where he requested to have the same room as Lily, I find it weird that everyone supposedly expected it, and no one questioned nor gave side comments about it, not even Billy, when just earlier that morning he confronted Seth on how badly he treats Lily.

This might be purposely done as part of the writing style, but like Lily I also find it weird that they weren't found when they were just 10 miles (roughly 2-3 hours) away. Given that it seems the crash site isn't far from the area they stayed at, there should either be helicopters or boats nearby or that the manager has been personally spoken to by the authorities prior (I believe that in such situations nearby establishments will be interviewed for any possible leads) unless they were assumed dead early on because some of their personal belongings/clothing were found with blood (or something that will suggest such).

2. Art - I really like the artwork for this game especially the CG for Billy's home reveal and Chris' marriage proposal. I observed though that the background image used for when they arrived at the resort is a photograph instead of a drawing. I assume this is a scripting error caused by a difference in .jpg and .png for the intended background.

It will require additional work (might be a lot actually since there are a handful of characters) but adding less clothed version of the sprites will be a very nice touch to emphasize they are stranded on the coastal part of the island. Lily might have expressed that they can't remove much clothing to avoid sunburn, but I still feel really hot for Seth and Chris. They should either have been topless (not that I want them to flaunt their bodies ) or had removed their coats at least.

3. Music - really nice selection.

I also found a bug on Billy's route - lines 7614 until 7620 results to "An exception has occurred. Exception: Switch could not choose a displayable." screen. Clicking ignore until line 7621 will move it forward properly.

Scenario/conditions to reach the error:

The group is looking for Tracy. Lily disclosed the confrontation to Billy then chose not to trust him, yet is romantically attached enough not to die.

As a whole, a very good and enjoyable game!

Wow!

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback and I'm really glad you enjoyed the game

RE the bug - Thank you for pointing it out and I'll make sure I go back and fix that for any future releases. Also, the background you correctly assumed is a scripting error so I'll also check that out - much appreciated

Per your story points,

thank you for going into this so deeply as it's always great to have constructive feedback.

Per the romance progression and the timeline, I'd intended it to be a week on the island and perhaps that didn't come across in the way some of it was written so that's great to know, and perhaps if I were to edit the script for a re-release or for future games I'll make sure to be more clear about the passage of time. My theory was that it's very easy to fall for a whirlwind romance in that space of time, especially in highly pressurized situations like theirs, but I agree that on reading back through some of the routes do feel fast so that's definitely something to work on in future.

For the bear, I did consider having a lone route that worked, but the difficulty was in the fact that in the beginning of the code there are 15 separate iterations of how the island would work which jump around dependent on the guys, but post-bear it all becomes one route with many (many many) "if" functions - and a lot of the code is based on having the guys there and at least one route completed, so it would have been a lot of extra work to include this as an option when it came to programming. If I had had it in mind when I started, or I'd been better at Python to start with then I could probably have incorporated it, so again, it's a good thing to consider for a new game.

For Seth's, that's a fair point and well made - I think by that point in my head, everyone had already kind of realised that they're "together" and hence they weren't surprised by the request - and Billy doesn't speak up because he's occupied with Tracy at that stage (and eventually he has to stop causing trouble!).

I had to take a little creative licence with them not being found, in all honesty - with today's tracking technology it's very difficult to become a castaway! But I hope that you can suspend your disbelief enough to see the spirit of the story moreso than the (admittedly pretty stretched) context surrounding it.

In any case, I'm very glad you enjoyed the story, and thank you for taking the time to leave these comments

Who was your favourite route? I'm dying to know!!

[merkmerkmerk]

Thanks for considering my inputs

I am thorn between Chris and Billy <3 hahaha