WIP - Love & Order

[Riviera]

Yeah, my first run I actually went around looking for work like a sucker. Ha! I started over and made them come to me. It still seems to really pile up, though.

I never like to say no and thus get used as slave labor. orz

I was up in Montreal, once... the traffic was wretched.


EDIT: Okay, finally balancing stress, and now Pierre is being a total jerk and piling stuff on me. No matter how much work for him I do, he's all mister frownface. I cannot win. orz

[jack_norton]

Lol "mister frownface"
Perhaps we can add different difficulty levels!

[Riviera]

Okay... a few things.

If you check on someone after completing all of their tasks, if you click them more than once you can get multiple rep+ or rep- hits without any additional effort.

It'd be nice if there was an option to tell the person on the date ahead of time that you can't afford to go to a place.

I turned the volume all the way down, but the jingle that plays every night when you go to bed still plays at full volume.

It'd be really nice if there was a way to earn more money based on how many tasks you complete. Cuz I tend to get maybe 5 or 10 dollars when she gets paid, and one date with Jonathan is $30. And when you have no money at all you have almost no way to cut out big stress.

EDIT: Game said there was an error. I didn't notice it, but it did give me a log file, so here ya go.

[Aetheria]

It would be nice if the difficulty could be turned down a little - as it is, it seems pretty easy to get into a death spiral of no money + high stress. It'd also be nice if the "projects" list showed when each task expired. It's hard to remember them all, and tedious to go around to all the rooms checking on them. Also, the things the other characters say when they give you assignments often don't make it clear that you've just got a new assignment - like "That's all there is to do," which I at first thought meant "there isn't anything else to do." And, I'd like it if we could load games from the menu, instead of having to go back to the title.

Finally, I noticed that when I load an auto-save from when I'm in someone else's office, that character disappears and is gone for the rest of the day.

Other than that, though, I'm enjoying playing it so far!

[Scout]

Thanks so much for the feedback, guys! I really appreciate it. I've pushed a number of changes based off the suggestions-- please, keep them coming-- thus far. I don't have any control of the download system, but hopefully Jack will put through the updates in the morning.

Things I've put in:

• A cancel button for the save screen, since it doesn't really hurt.
• You can load from the save screen again! Kinda had trouble working that out, but I think it should be okay.
• Loading auto-saves should work better now, and not lead to empty offices.
• The base weekly pay, as well as the overtime bonus, has been increased a little. It should be noticeably easier now.
• The stress function has been tweaked a little bit, although in general, you shouldn't be working at 50% stress.
• You get a little indicator in the top corner, in addition to on the menu, when there's an upcoming date.
• The jingle volume gets adjusted along with the music properly, and it doesn't pause if you've muted the game.
• Stress failures where you can go get someone to help happen at the normal frequency, instead of happening every single time jdsfhajhsdsfhjsaadurrrrr

Things that are intentional design features, so I think probably should remain:

• It's easy to work through lunch: ...yeah, that's pretty much true to life. Unfortunately.
• Jonathan is crazy expensive: yep! He kind of is. He's definitely the hardest of the lot.
• During stressful periods, it's better to blow off work: sometimes it's worthwhile! With apologies to all my former employers. orz

Aetheria: I'm not sure if it's unclear, but when you get a new project, there's a little extra blurb explaining it, that you don't get when it's just another task. Do you think it needs to be more obvious?

Riviera: Are you sure it's going up? I could've sworn there was a check in there to stop that; is it the like bar that's changing, or their mood? (If you bug someone when they're in a bad mood about you screwing up work, it'll go down each time, but I think that's about right.)

Thanks again!

[jack_norton]

Yep I was sleeping, sorry I've just put the new version online on all my mirrors so you can get it now!

[tsukamaete]

I just finished playing through the demo (the version prior to the one just updated, so maybe some of the things I'm mentioning got fixed!).
I played through the demo a few times and I think I had problems with persistent data from past save files. For example, Dorothy telling me off for forgetting to work on a case she had assigned me in a previous save slot.
Also, not sure if this is an example of the above or not, but my "projects" page had a glitch where it didn't organize projects correctly.

And lastly, when I went to "talk about work" with Ross, he got mad at me for not working on a case he hadn't even assigned yet. Then, after losing affection points and one time period passed, he came by and gave me the case.
All these problems appeared after my first play through, thus my suspicion of persistent data.

Now, as for my preferences:
I didn't like that I could only save at my desk, but that's because I'm a saving maniac But I found it particularly irksome on weekends.
It would be nice if, on the projects page, there was some indicator of how much time was left for the assignments, rather than having to go to the locations and see when the deadline was. I had trouble with forgetting which case was assigned when. But then, I have no short term memory.
And lastly, it would be nice if there was a "back" option for talking to people. I had a few slip ups where I talked to the wrong person and ended up being assigned even more cases.


Despite my nit-picking, I liked the game very much and look forward to playing the full version once my (pathetically meager) paycheck comes in!

[jack_norton]

Thanks for the feedback and I agree completely on the need of a "back" button, since sometimes when you replay the game quickly to get another ending is easy to click on "talk with..." by mistake

[Megumi]

Hm. Also, the 'volume' in the menu.

I put it to 0 but the sound when the day ends is still hearable.

You should probably make it mute too. :3

[jack_norton]

Have you tried redownloading the last version? I think Scout fixed that (see her post above).

[Megumi]

Oops, my apologies.

I personally think it's actually manage-able (to balance love/work/stress and the clues) but you'd need a few runthrough first.

I think the paycheck only depends on how many tasks you do for Ross? I'm pretty sure I had gotten a paycheck of 25$ but then again, it may be my short memory imagining stuff.

PS: I had a good laugh with Dorothy. XD

[Mirage]

I find the game rather easy once you understand what everything does, but the frequency of events are so little, I get bored easily. The every day tasks are so mundane and repetitive, I feel I have done similar jobs over and over again (I know it's simulating real life but still...) I can't help to feel I'm their slave or something lol... I mean they are so horrible to you when you messed up >___> Sometimes I wish there's option to punch their face.

And then the option for asking out... does that happened only once in the game? After I accidentally stood Jonathan up, I don't see that option anymore.

And what does changing outfit do? I felt stupid spending money, but didn't get any event, and Jonathan (the jerk who told me to change clothes) didn't bother to say anything but told me to get my lazy ass to work.

The only mildly interesting thing about the game is the ongoing mystery, but even with that, I am not sure if I want to go through this again. I guess Dating Sim is completely not my type of game.

Oh, I forget to mention this... Dana's blush... it's too low, it looks like she is having a toothache. ^^;

[Scout]

I'd like to figure out what you experienced, tsukamaete, but this is pretty tricky to diagnose.

I just finished playing through the demo (the version prior to the one just updated, so maybe some of the things I'm mentioning got fixed!).
I played through the demo a few times and I think I had problems with persistent data from past save files. For example, Dorothy telling me off for forgetting to work on a case she had assigned me in a previous save slot.

Do you remember what she actually said? Was it one of the "I'm working on what you didn't finish" messages, or...?

Also, not sure if this is an example of the above or not, but my "projects" page had a glitch where it didn't organize projects correctly.

Sorry, what's the issue? I'm not sure I see what's wrong in the screenshot.

And lastly, when I went to "talk about work" with Ross, he got mad at me for not working on a case he hadn't even assigned yet. Then, after losing affection points and one time period passed, he came by and gave me the case.
All these problems appeared after my first play through, thus my suspicion of persistent data.

Again, what did he actually say? Did you get the blurb about what the project is about when he came to your office?


I'll try to work in some of your UI suggestions!

Other things:

The paycheque is actually dependant on how much overtime you do. Is that unclear? I'll add in a little message that explains it, if you're getting a small cheque all the time.

You can only successfully ask a character out once per playthrough, yes. After that, they'll come by and invite you out themselves. (And Jonathan is just a little slow on the uptake with the vest is all.)

[Aashtarsrain]

I love this game, I feel I'm Ally MacBeal and that's great, but I'm losing my mind with that 100% stress failure thing, looking like a jerk after three days work loool Gonna get fired soon I'm afraid

EDIT : I'm using the pub tip and I try not to do too much and stay below 40% and things are working quite well now ! Thanks for the tips.
EDIT 2 : Aaaah but now I'm broke !

[Riviera]

Riviera: Are you sure it's going up? I could've sworn there was a check in there to stop that; is it the like bar that's changing, or their mood? (If you bug someone when they're in a bad mood about you screwing up work, it'll go down each time, but I think that's about right.)

It might possibly have been that I didn't check in on them after every completion, so they piled up and came after every click?

For a while there I wasn't checking back with them after I completed things, and just let them come and let me know when things were done. I just noticed it with Dorothy because I stress-failed a few tasks, and when I talked to her a few times in a row it kept giving me -rep each time I talked to her. So, that particular instance was probably right.