Lemma Soft Forums

Thanks so much for playing Beckers!

There are already several awesome and comprehensive fan-made walkthroughs for the demo floating around (I link to a few in the other thread) but I do plan on making an official one for the full release

(For now though, there's too much that might change, so it's on my 'after the game is finished' list)

Alrighty, I went through this thing twice so far and I expect I'll need another run to wrangle Lyon outta his cocoon! The game is incredibly well written and in-depth, and I can only applaud your ingenuity and eagerly await the chance to throw my money at you.

So here's a bit of a wish-list of suggestions:

- The stats screen should be more accessible. Any stat-raising games needs to have those values either in full view, or one-click away. The personality, relationships etc' are less critical, but since you need to refer to your skills so often, that screen MUST have a shortcut of some kind.
- Even on "Large" settings, the font is not ideally suited to long reading. As this game is text-heavy (wonderfully so!), I advise considering a more readable font. I understand this is a stylistic choice, so consider styling the text box while using a plainer font - it looks professional and stylized while retaining the readability.
- I greatly enjoyed the character creation, but not all choices clearly relate to stats. I assume you disregarded the typical floating "skill gained" texts due to style/immersion reasons, so perhaps revising the options to make them more intuitive can help?
- Some skills are harder to increase, or used far more often than others. Of course it's hard to balance the skills at this stage - but take into account that if a skills is often used in the first week, it should be possible to raise it sufficiently until that time, otherwise certain character builds are immediately invalid.

Hi! I've played this demo many times with a variety of backgrounds, and I'd like to say that I like it very much. I appreciate the amount of work that clearly went into this. Overall, this was an amazing demo and I can't wait until the full game is out; I plan to definitely buy it. I think my favorite characters were Lisle, Penelope, Clarmont, and Cordelia, but I was also intrigued by Avalie and Gisette. After it made me very curious as to how the romance with Gisette will proceed. I was also very interested in the rivalry/respect thing you have going on with Avalie, and how that's going to affect the plot. I loved how kind and sweet Penelope was; it made me wish there was a chance to romance her; I think I'll try to 'romance' Lisle in the final game, because the interactions between the siblings were adorable. I also liked the romance with Ria; it seems like that could be one of the cutest romances in the game. I also liked how you could develop friendships with various characters! I can't wait until you finish this game- I saw on the Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem that it's suppose to be released at the end of the year. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you're having as much fun making the game as your fans are evidently having playing it!

Hi Jackrabbit

Thanks so much for playing the game and taking the time to give feedback, I super appreciate it!

A few quick notes. The stats are several clicks away purposefully! I've noticed a tendency for people to fixate on the numbers and the stats, and while this works well in a typical stat-raiser, it's actually detrimental in this game. The stats are there to as a representation of your character, not as an end in of themselves. Your decisions and relationships are way more important in the game itself, and I don't want people getting frustrated when they have mastered the stats, but by doing so have missed out on all the other stuff they needed to have done to succeed as well For instance, in my 'perfect playthrough' test character, I actually purposefully raised stats only twice in the entire first three weeks.

Which relates to your point about the stats. It's true that some stats are used more than others, although everything will be crucial at least once. But again, you aren't supposed to succeed at everything! Having things you are bad at as a MC is important to the story. Having builds be invalid assumes there is a set way to play the game, which there isn't. There is always going to be multiple ways to get out of situations. And almost always there are going to be options that don't involve stats directly, but something else, like relationships instead.

I do worry about balance though! It's not something I will be sure about until the game is finished and people have playtested it for me. As it is the stats that are used most frequently are intelligence (which you have many more opportunities to raise in character creation than the other stats) insight (which is an equal opportunity stat raised during the game) and manipulation, which isn't supposed to be a stat you master/figure out on your first playthrough. All the manipulation stuff is basically bonus content for super-playthroughs after you have figured out the game itself.

The not raising stats parts in the character creation you are talking about are probably the places where you set your characters personality?

I hope that helps and doesn't just end up more confusing I just try and warn people away from taking the stats too seriously. Yes, there are lots of stats checks, but they aren't as important as most people think they are!

Hi Rigmorafaith!

Thank you so much for playing the game and taking the time to write a comment

I'm not sure about the this year part anymore, that will depend a lot on what happens in the kickstarter and how long testing takes. (Beta for the demo took way longer than expected. CURSE YOU TYPOS/BUGS) But there is definite plans to have an inexpensive pre-order tier that grants alpha access during the kickstarter. So people will be able to play the game as it's written, so the wait won't be that long for new content!

Anyways, HAPPY JULY EVERYONE~ *melts*

alylt wrote:The stats are several clicks away purposefully! I've noticed a tendency for people to fixate on the numbers and the stats, and while this works well in a typical stat-raiser, it's actually detrimental in this game.

I've noticed it too in the demo and my opinion is that making these pages less accessible won't stop people from checking the stats frequently but will only annoy them as they do, at least I will definitely check stats

Katta wrote:

alylt wrote:The stats are several clicks away purposefully! I've noticed a tendency for people to fixate on the numbers and the stats, and while this works well in a typical stat-raiser, it's actually detrimental in this game.

I've noticed it too in the demo and my opinion is that making these pages less accessible won't stop people from checking the stats frequently but will only annoy them as they do, at least I will definitely check stats

Gotta second this. Sorry Aly.

Wow. This VN demo is so fun. It kinda blew me away. Great job on such a wonderful game! I can't wait to see it finished!

So I just spent my whole Saturday playing this demo... it was AMAZING!

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was not expecting to have so much fun and before I knew it I was sucked into this strange and adventurous world... if you ever make a kickstarter for this I will definitely make an effort to be a backer!

I need to properly reflect on my thoughts and feelings before writing out some feedback, but I just wanted to provide my initial reaction.

For a demo it was simply the bomb. With every scene I could feel how much heart, soul and effort went into the project. Now you've inspired me to try do my absolute best with my own visual novels!

A few quick notes. The stats are several clicks away purposefully! I've noticed a tendency for people to fixate on the numbers and the stats, and while this works well in a typical stat-raiser, it's actually detrimental in this game. The stats are there to as a representation of your character, not as an end in of themselves. Your decisions and relationships are way more important in the game itself, and I don't want people getting frustrated when they have mastered the stats, but by doing so have missed out on all the other stuff they needed to have done to succeed as well For instance, in my 'perfect playthrough' test character, I actually purposefully raised stats only twice in the entire first three weeks.

What you've said in the above paragraph Aly makes me so damn curious. When I was playing the demo I was so anal about checking and rechecking my stats. When you say that they aren't actually that necessary, and your decisions and relationships are more important, it makes me wonder exactly how this is so. I think I will try play the demo again to figure this out, haha.

Ok so I found this page the other day and wow!While I have a policy against playing demos after so many times of getting hooked on a game only to have the project fall through, by the time I finished checking out your site it was too late and I had to play. And now I'm even more on the hook cause it's even better than I was hoping! The art, the story, the characters, the absolute depth of the narrative, characterization, and game design...I honestly can't wait for the full game!