Re: Lily of the Valley - NTR H-English Game [ver0.6]
I gotta admit that this game's potential is huge, but in some ways has been totally wasted.
I think overall the team is making a very nice work and in relation to most western games their quality is way above the avarage... However, for me this is the crucial point, because the potential is to be one of the best and you guys shouldn't settle for just this "way above the avarage".
On a first note, I'd like to express that this comment is meant to be seen as a constructive critic from someone who isn't a patron and who saw a link to your game recently on another site and decided to give it a go, unaware I wasn't downloading the last free version, but actually the current version. Anyway, after reading a bit of this thread I thought the least I could do is give you guys my opinion, which is based not on gaming industry but on people analisys, what they want and what moves then. I won't go into detail on what I do on a daily basis, but trust me when say that all my work is based on this "soft skill".
The whole premise of your game seems pretty interesting and for a big part of the game Lily seems like relatable character, but I feel that consistently you guys downplay her intelligence and motivations which is what I think some of the people here complaining are referring when they compared you game to Sarah's Life, or whatever that game name is. I'll give you a few concrete examples on your own game further down the line, but for now let's focus a bit more on this issue with a few examples of sucess and generally good reviews from other authors, because analysing this is most of the times the key to success. However, this is not about copying what others do, but trying to replicate things that are working and getting good reviews and implementing with your personal style and ideas. With that in mind, let's start.
Tlaero games have been for a few years highly recognised as some of the most interesting games in terms of female MC's, because she makes her characters personalitiies, ambitions, motivations, feelings and actions cohesive and highly believable. You never get that frustrating feeling in any of her characters that she's suddendly behaving like a stupid bimbo when it comes to sex. Unfortunatly with Lily, that's not always the case...
Also, another case of success are two games from LOP, Living With Temptation and Eleanor. What makes these games great? The fact that altought their main female characters are pretty different from each other, they are pretty much consistent throught out the whole game. And this is the main factor of their success.
In LWT, you play as Justin, but Tracy is by far the lead star of the game. What made her such a good character? The fact that she is a strong minded woman, who likes sex, knows what she wants and all the decisions that she makes while you play with Justin make sense in the context and the timing they happen. She can get really nasty, but when she does you never get the feeling that she suddendly became just a dumb slut. The feeling you get is of a woman discovering new things in her sexuality and wanting to explore them by having new experiences. And people can relate to that.
Eleanor on another note is a completly different case, but also highly consistant. She's basically the bad girl with a nympho instinct who consistently uses her body to get what she wants, but she does it because she likes doing it. She likes to tease and to be desired, so it isn't strange for the player to see that even when she gets in some unconfortable situations for her, like being blackmailed, she uses her body as the bargaining chip without much thought. After all, that's natural with her personality.
With that said let me give you my insight on two scenes in your game that I felt that with the regular course of the story didn't really make much sense at all.
The first one is with the student at the library. I mean... what was that? She walks into a library, asks a guy for information and he out of the blue just asks if he can touch her boobs? Almost no one is that stupid and if it was he wouldn't certainly hang out in a library. Also, in any cenario with the minimum of credibility the immediate response would be she yelling "WHAT?" and slapping him in the face. Also, she would never ever again talk with him regardless of whatever help she needed or not.
A much more beliveble scenario with a different outcome would be for her to notice he was checking her boobs while trying to be helpful. After a while she could start to tease him a little bit (we must take into account that she's starting to discover a new side of her sexuality) and noticing that he's a little bit of nerd and inexperienced, offer him the reward that she senses he so eagerly desires, because it would also be fun for her to do it. But the thruth is that as it is at the moment it just feels that her brain at that moment decided to crash and her IQ dropped to nearly zero so she thinks that the only way to find the book she needs is to let a teen perv touch her boobs. In my personal opinion, that outcome is just lame and frustrating, because althought Lily isn't the most intelligent woman in the world, on a general basis you don't sense her like a complete idiot with nothing but wind on her head.
Another example for me is the scene at the gym, where she let's a guy fuck her in the ass just because she feels sorry for him. I mean once again, that scenario could've happen, but the motivations used to justify aren't believable at all. If for example she would be mad at her husband for something he did or said, plus she felt that the guy at the gym was really attractive, the scenario would be much more credible. I mean, she's leaving the gym, still mad at something her husband did or said, and on her way out she hears someone furious in the guys locker room, so she decides to check it out and sees this guy that she had already been checking out and thinks he's really hot mad at something. With that said she decides to go in and talk with him to see what's happening and over the course of conversation one thing leads to another and they both end up having a revenge fuck. To me that would seem a more plausible scenario. But in it's current state it just feels completly off, because Lily has only been fucked in the ass once by her husband, which was really recently, and she has no personal motivation whatsoever to let things go as far as they go with the guy at the gym.
All in all, my personal opinion, is that you guys need to start giving Lily some personal motivations for her to be doing what she is doing. She's starting to discover a new side on her sexuality and the things that she ends up doing must start to feel like they are also her choice because she wants it, she desires it and she has a motivation to do it, because right now it just feels that many times she ends up doing stuff because she's a dumb bimbo. I think she needs to start to be a bit more flirty, more open minded in terms of sex and wanting to experience new things, because that's how things happen in real life for women. You need to stop playing her always as the offended virgin who just goes along with what's happening for no plausible reason. If you manage to do that, you'll see that your character will become much more consistant and the player will be able to relate more with her because she will feel much more real. She's already started to realise that many men desire her and since she's feeling much more open to sex it should feel natural for her to want to make the most of it, because in the end she knows that she will enjoy it.
I'm gonna stop here, so take what you want from here, but it is my honest personal (and professional) opinion that you would greatly benefit from this change of approach. Anyway, I hope this proves helpful for this game and future projects and at least now I no longer feel bad for myself since I believe that I at least contributed in someway.
