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Don't Save the Princess Beta (Patreon)

Published:
2019-04-15 00:52:44
Edited:
2019-04-16 01:20:36
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Well, I got the build unexpectedly early, so... we're doing this now, I guess. This is a new version of Don't Save the Princess for everyone to try out before we show it publicly.

PC: https://mega.nz/#!O4NHiCRT!6R0k0aniuS4WsKeu7dP_0N6T9BgIsvyJvWwqGykPieo 

Mac: https://mega.nz/#!r98y2KZY!XMMvpBlq43fCS7aL5xIGzT_yfvlmBM_fp_hcIoCNboo 

I forget the condition of the game the last time I showed it, but this one has almost entirely removed placeholders, added in the sex scenes, made many improvements, and added an Endless Mode. It should be a much smoother and more polished experience.

Having said that, I decided to keep working on TLS instead of playtesting this most recent build. It's probably fine, but if there are weird issues that crept in at the last minute... please report them, I guess.

I'm looking for three kinds of feedback:

1) General reactions to story/concept/gameplay.

2) Reports of specific acute problems, like game-breaking bugs or issues that could be improved with tweaking.

3) Thoughts on broader issues that could fundamentally change the game. We're not going to alter the core coding of the game before the public release, but the whole purpose of this demo launch is to see how people feel about the core gameplay loop and iterate to make it more fun wherever necessary. There are more notes about this in the game.

Anyway, that's all for now! I hope people enjoy this little side project. ^-^

Comments

StormyAngel

Well, I would playtest it for you, but I'm on a Mac and Wine doesn't seem to be able to run it. Are there any plans to do a Mac version? I would love to play this someday, but I wouldn't blame you if the answer's no. Producing multiple versions can be a lot of work, and that would probably end up taking away from TLS time.

Vorthod Wiler

A report of your total gold amount at the end of each level (as well as a link to open up the shop from that screen) would be very helpful.

Captain Hair

So, positives: It's a lot more managable than it was, I remember having trouble right from the start in the initial build, this one I didn't have too much trouble till level 1-5. Playing through levels is easy to get the hang of and, aside from occasionally mixing up the key for spikes vs droping the block I had a good grasp almost immediately. End of world scenes are pretty good, looking forward to more. Cancelling out of levels with no fuss is a plus. Things I found more negative: Coin farming is BRUTAL on the fingers. Granted I don't know how that would be altered, but it had to be said. The price of the upgrades could go down a smidge, maybe, to help. I also essentially abandoned grabbing coins from 1-6 onward, instead electing to farm 1-1 to 1-3. Him getting the coins past 1-5 didn't seem to give a negative and I could focus on whaling on him. Some of the cutscenes acted a bit wonky if you hammered the button to speed it along, most notably the shoe dude appearing in 3 places at once during the first health increase cutscene. Overall I look forward to more levels.

Nome

I found it fun, a good mix of grindy and reward. I did notice however that sometimes when collecting coins I would collect them before even seeing them on screen. I mostly noticed this in the early levels before the lightning cannon decentivized spamming the right arrow key.

Blue Dragon

This was the first build I'd tried, and I had fun (even though it's definitely a different sort of game than I typically play). I started having difficulty near the end of World 1/beginning of World 2, and generally had to do 2-3 attempts per Stage once I made it into World 2. It definitely felt like the need for upgrades increased faster than we got the coins to afford their increased costs - I'd like to see either more coin availability in stages, lower costs, or each level of upgrade being a little more significant. I finished at level 3 in each of the attack types (for all three aspects of each), except for a 4 in damage in projectiles, and still found 2-10 to be a bit tough. However, as noted, this is a different style of game than I typically play, so that probably has a significant impact on my perceived difficulty (for example, I had a devil of a time getting combos). Aside from that, I love the premise, the end-of-world scenes were fun, and I was definitely right along with Princess Plum in hating Runman and the Shoepeople.

Silentwatcher

Hey there! First time player of DSTP long time Sierra Lee fanatic :) 1) Story is interesting and funny, love the humor of the princess being the sole competent person in the kingdom and she can't connect with anyone other than her "kidnapper" on any relationship type level. Would like to see a bit more from Dragogai in the ruler of a world of incompetents so as to make him more relatable to her and someone she wants to spend time with as opposed to a convenient sex buddy from time to time...though that could also be funny too tbh ;D Love the light-hearted approach to the story throughout! Was totally expecting something completely different gameplay wise, I imagined something like tower defense but against a single runner. Once I got into the gameplay I found it pretty fun in that casual game sort of way. Not a huge casual gamer, but I did find the idea of combos and crits very fun. I didn't find it particularly challenging. I got all the way to 1-6 before I had to upgrade, and then with some damage and crit upgrades I slaughtered the rest of World 1 and up to 2-4 before I had to upgrade again. Perhaps if I had to give some feedback I don't particularly like randomness in my games and the random spawning of minions made me feel like combos just weren't viable in some runs, which was much less enjoyable than when they were plentiful and I ALMOST could rack up to that glorious 5x combo I'm still waiting to see! The introduction of powerups for Runman was interesting, but with how random the minion and trap spawn was sometimes there was just nothing you can do and he's gonna get that powerup no matter what, which feels kinda bad. I found that I ended up just saving the lightning cannon 3k for only powerup denial, which took away from getting those combos since that was my only consistent way of hitting lining up all the stuns. Beating all current levels didn't take too long, and my highest score in Endless Mode was 219, which I feel is pretty good, and that was pretty simple to get once I realized the coins were the points :P All in all a very enjoyably simple casual game with a bit too much randomness for my liking, but nothing that I found made the game overly hard or tedious. 2) Biggest issue I found was that sometimes the shop menu (when you go into the shop directly from the game) will overlay onto the main menu and you'll need to close the shop to not have two screens at once. Same with the level menu after I watched the final cutscene, the level screen overlayed over the main menu. 3) Hmm, I might suggest more risk/reward when relating to coins. Right now it doesn't seem to matter much if Runman takes a coin from you other than...you just don't have that coin. It would be a nice additional difficulty layer if Runman got more health upon picking up a certain number of coins (like say 10?). Then you can also put in some extra items in the shop: Such as more minion and trap spawn frequency, longer stun time, bigger and better traps, etc. New worlds are obviously really good, but you seem to already have plans for those! Desert levels would be fun and I can imagine some interesting warp pipe mechanics where you'd need to press a button to stop Runman from going into a pipe otherwise he gets to "warp" to later in the level. And hey if your artist is up for it World themed outfits for Plum would be very much enjoyed ;D I notice that there's some comments here about the grindy nature of the game. Personally I didn't find it grindy at all, and I beat the final level with max damage on spikes, level 3 damage on projectiles, and level 2 on everything else ;D I didn't go back to play previous levels to grind at all so maybe just making the levels a little bit longer to give more time for minions and traps to spawn just in case people miss or don't hit crits quite so often? That might fix the grinding issues. Anyway great game as usual. Love seeing your work Sierra!

Zanfib

I found the "you have unlocked thing x" message would hang on the screen for a long time and no button would allow me to progress.

Decanter

Okay, just gonna dive in blind here and list stuff as I observe it. Credits page, Kevin MacCleod should be Kevin MacLeod. Though I don't actually hear any music...? Runman is kind of effeminate, in an anime boy sort of way. Graphics in the initial Plum-Dragogai conversation look pretty aliased - I am fairly sure that's fixable in Unity. And between that and the fixed small resolution, it can be difficult to see facial features that consist of just a thin line, such as Dragogai's downturned mouth. The basic concept, sort of a Mario where you control everything else, seems potentially fun and I look forward to seeing how well it works. Jeez, this initial run is a bit fast-paced, isn't it? I'm still getting used to the controls and experimenting with, for example, whether there's any reason not to spam right arrow (there isn't, so far). I am not enjoying this right-arrow spam at all, but there are a bunch of coins, so it seems necessary. So combos exist. I found this out from throwing a shuriken(?) while using a spike pit. I had thought combos were impossible because before I used a spike pit while dropping a block on Runman and it seemed like the spike pit just did nothing. Maybe I mistimed it and didn't realize, or something. Ah, they're introduced next stage. Okay. "Maybe it is in bottom" made me think I was about to watch a Shoehead root around in his colon... maybe consider rewording. Weather control? Dragogai has big dreams it seems. Why did Runman's health increase after the Lightning Cannon cutscene? If it's the Bonus Shoe, maybe that should show up when he gets the shoe. Though, I don't see why the Shoehead would be so excited about using that... I have to use those shuriken guys right away? Saddening, and unexplained. Could use some sort of visible timer on him. I notice the game counts how many coins I grab in a stage, but I'm not sure why and it seems to reset with each stage. If I'm just supposed to keep them away from Runman then it's just extraneous info, but if they have a purpose, that could be made clearer. Well, the first two levels after the Special gauge was introduced, I didn't get to use it. That's disappointing. It looked like it was wavering up and down the whole time. Wait, are these levels random? And here I thought I might just be bad at setting up combos, but now I know the gameplay experience just is fundamentally... not designed. How are we supposed to gauge difficulty when it's just random? And while this is less important, it really makes that dialogue about "spikes just where I like them" ring hollow. My right-arrow finger is extremely unhappy and I'm not going to give myself carpal tunnel for the sake of this. Actually it kinda hurts to type up this feedback after that. I'm stopping here at 1-6 for now. It occurs to me that I'm only inferring from dialogue that letting him get too many coins is bad, and I have a vague intuition that 100 is the number to avoid, but... maybe I shouldn't be worrying about coins at all? It would certainly explain how this got through alpha testing if I'm just doing it wrong. Overriding takeaway so far is this: Fuck coin collecting. It's hard on my hand and it's constantly occupying my attention when I should be lining up shots and stuff.

Definitely My Name

I had more written up, but I feel like a lot of it was repetitive so I'll cut it to this: This game is much less like a runner and much more like a launch game where you're trying to get less distance, not more. That genre is chock full of aesthetics and ideas that could really spice this gameplay loop up a lot, and it needs it. Burrito Bison or Toss the Turtle are the exemplars, but I'm not expecting that, just the basics from those games would help so much.

Hollow49

OK, you have a BIG problem with the world 2 background. As Runman builds up speed you get an optical strobing effect, which can trigger various issues in some people. I can feel a potential migraine buildin up as I play in world 2, and I would highly recommend anyone with epilepsy to not go past world 1 of the current build. I recommend spacing out the pillars more and adding more variety to the background - break up the pillars with a doorway every so often, perhaps, or something else? I liked the game itself (chad some issues in world 1-4 until I got the timing on the block drops right) butcan't go back to complete world 2 without feeling ill.

sakkra83

So far so good, the basic game loop is a typical runner game. Question: Are You considering portation to smartphone? If not, would it be possible to add further minions? E.g. 'hit control now for a stampede of rats'? Or another possibility: After completing the game the option to start a New Game+ with higher dificulty and more rewards?

sakkra83

Otherwise is the core a good base to expand further.

Louck

Thank you everyone for your feedback. If anyone encounters any technical problems, don't hesitate to report them, so that I can fix them as soon as possible.

Loomenaro

Mostly some of the same comments as other people. 1. Overall I found the balance fine. I lost a few times on some levels but never felt the need to grind. 2. The screens that mention new features unlocking don't seem to respond to the keyboard. I had to click on the mouse to advance. 3. I'd like a way to access the shop at the end of a level, both if I win and if I lose. 4. Coin collecting is hard on the fingers. Maybe it would be better to reduce number of coins in each level and the shop prices.

Quiet Stranger

My experience significantly improved after I started ignoring coin collection. I am glad I browsed the comments. I was really struggling through the first six stages until I focused entirely on the attacks. Of course, by the time I got to stage seven on that advice, I'd already earned over 2000 coins. The upgrades were a dramatic change. Very smooth sailing. Short, easy victories. It's much too bad that it took me so long to obtain access; I was thoroughly turned off to the game by the time I made it over that hill. Maybe it would be best if the upgrade option came after a certain number of failures, rather than after a certain stage. It would provide a dynamic, reactive difficulty setting.

StormyAngel

Alright, finally had the time to play through it. I've also read most of the comments, and I'm going to echo the ones I think are more important as well. 1.I love the story/concept. It hits the comedic note perfectly, but still gives some character to Plum and Dragogai (poor Dragogai...his castle defenses are all out of place now). That last line in the World 2 opener was gold. What a troll for TLS fans. XD 2.The coins do become something of a hassle. I'm not very well suited to rhythm games (I generally avoid them) and it's hard for me to hit runnerman enough to get a combo of 3, let alone anything better. Adding coins on top of that is too much for me. I basically had to split my play between advancing levels until I hit my skill ceiling, and harvesting coins to make the upgrades necessary to advance more levels. It was something of a grind. 3.The shock cannon was fun, but it could probably stand to load a bit faster. I only see two uses a level, and I'm not even going for the coins so it's loading at full speed. For comparison, I see something like 6-7 spike traps. And the shock cannon doesn't seem that much better (although I might just not be noticing since I use it so rarely). 4.Speaking of the shock cannon, I notice that the scene where Dragogai promises it to Plum comes one level before it actually shows up. I can understand why that got lumped in with the Runnerman Powerup Scene, but it confused me because I couldn't figure out how to activate it. It might be better to move either the actual ability forward a level, or the scene back a level. (Although this would sadden me, because as it is Princess Plum gets the D at...well 1-D. Fitting. Presumably splitting the scene up would change that.) 5.On that note, have you considered creating a SFW version of this? The game is genuinely fun (I don't like casual games usually, but I found myself going back to it to relax). It's a shame that such a good concept and heartwarming tale of stockholm syndrome-esque dating is going to be restricted to just NSFW audiences. 6.The 2nd world pillar strobe effect is an issue. I only really noticed it when Runnerman was at full speed, but after a minute it was enough to make me want to stop playing for a bit. 7.I notice we keep coins even if Runnerman "rescues" Plum. You might want to leave this in, because otherwise it's even more of a grind to collect them, but since you might be changing the way the coins work this could become an issue. 8.I agree that the shop coming after a number of failures would be better. I failed 1-4 like six times before I got past it, and without the shop to work with I had no choice but to just keep trying. It made it much less fun. All in all, I really enjoyed it, minus the grind and the strobe pillars. The game feels mostly pretty balanced, with just a bit of a grind, and I would consider myself pretty low-skill at this type of game. My suggestion for the coins would be to drop the prices for the upgrades, and that would make the grind take less long. Either way, thanks for sharing this with us! I look forward to seeing the rest of the story! :) (How many worlds are you aiming for incidentally?) EDIT: A potential balancer for the coins issue: if holding down the button still collected coins, it would be much less of a carpal tunnel thing. And if you double the loading speed for the shock cannon, then set the coin button to halve that speed instead of stopping the reload entirely, we'd be making the decision between collecting coins, or having more shock blasts. It'd make it more of a strategic thing, instead of a repetitive task. EDIT2: Sorry, last thing. I find that if I miss even one of the spike traps, I tend not to win the level (since I rarely get combos), which can be frustrating just because they're so infrequent. So I want to second the ideas that an option to increase frequency of appearance or maybe a consumable item purchase (one-time use trap) might be worthwhile.

Trevor

This was the first chance I had to get my hands on "Don't Save the Princess" and here are my quick thoughts: 1) What is fun? What isn't fun? What seemed too easy or too hard? Fun: I like the general game play loop and idea. Try to hit the hero as he runs though the level. It speaks to a darker part of my psyche. Not Fun: Difficulty ramps up a bit quickly/artificially. I don't know how long the finished product will be but I think that Runman reaches max speed to quickly. As such the player quickly encounters the speed cap of the game and difficulty can only be inflated by adding more hp and shortening the level. This makes it critical that we hit each and every time or the entire level can be lost in 5-10 seconds. Thoughts on how to adjust this below. Too Easy/Hard: Some of the traps feel like they're not worth the trouble to use or upgrade as they're too hard to use (Spike) while others have the opposite problem (Projectiles). 2) What features would you like to see added or changed? Restart level option in menu. Sometimes it is clear that you have lost and just want to start over with a clean slate. I'd like Runman's max speed to ramp up over several stages with the MAX being achieved after the player is introduced to the mechanics (or world 2 perhaps). I'd also like some way to influence how often traps spawn, a frequency upgrade perhaps. Sometimes I found myself sitting around waiting for a trap to finish off the hero and wish I could influence this more. On upgrades I'd also consider adjusting the prices based on how easy a trap is to use. We cannot miss with projectiles which make them a no brainier, while the others require a bit more skill to use properly. Is there some way to show where our traps will show up on the progress bar on the bottom? It might make combos a bit easier to chain. A timer on how long the projectile can be used would also be nice.

Runcible Technician

It took me a bit to get past a few stages, but after upgrading it got easier. Had quite a few runs where the rng made it near impossible to complete. Without upgrades I literally hit runman with everything the map gave me, even getting multipliers, and he still rescued the princess. I think that was in the later half of level 1. After I realized I could access the shop at any point, it balanced out. Can confirm that the stars can align and I did get one 4x. It was awesome, like a combo attack in street fighter. hope we actually get more ways to attack Runman so the animation can continue, getting 8 or 9x would be so satisfying, even if it got into bullet hell territory.

Trisk

I really like the concept of the princess who doesn't want to be “rescued.” The game should probably make it clear that the only downside of Runman collecting coins is that you don't get them. For most of the game I thought coins healed him, and that it was therefor imperative to collect them to avoid loosing ground. I think I got that idea from the comment about how collecting so many coins gives him endless lives. The last couple levels before the store unlocks were by far the hardest for me. I chalked it up to just not being very good at this sort of game, and almost gave up because I was failing repeatedly so early on. Then when I got the store I was able to immediately upgrade damage on every attack to level 3. The rest of the game got a lot easier form that point forward. Runman's powerups were frustrating because there was often no chance of stopping them. If there don't happen to be any attacks ready at the time, all you can do is helplessly watch it happen.

Nathan Phoenix

Just finished playing the beta and It looks like you have a good groundwork here. Couple of suggestions 1: Try to add button mapping at least for the coin button, doubt I'm the only one whos finger was getting tired. 2: I would add a coin counter (per level) both for the player and for Runman, a sort of highscore incentive. 3: Eventually add powerups for the minions to the shop. Give an unlockable timer for the Thrower or a scatter-bomb for the Dropper or a stun extension for Spikes. That sort of thing would add more variety to the gameplay and act as a mock-difficulty selection.

Roy Cabaniss

OK, just finished. Conclusion... Story is amusing, short, and simple. Good enough. The gameplay is a reflex test - hit the button. There's no resource, or strategy per se (which makes the 2x dmg on combos a bit of a tease). May want to play with Runnman's speed gain - hitting him never seemed to slow him down (to the point where slowdown powerups seemed a waste). It's definitely not a thinking game - my type speed helped more than any math I have. Seemed possible to mine gold just by running a level hitting the right arrow. Might want to discourage that, at least make the player TRY to work for it. Keep track of number of times a level was run & failed? No gold gained from failed level? So, whatever else he does, do NOTHING to increase level turnaround time. It's about 1 minute per level - leave it there! Maybe, instead of spending gold for damage, increase number of attack events? As in, number of spikes in a level, number of projectiles, etc? Might make the optimal gameplay to focus on one type to the exclusion of all else - prevent either by hard-capping, OR (and this is just a though) increasing the dmg multiplier from different dmg types (we want to prevent spike-littering, so chaining spikes doesn't help much, but chaining spikes / projectiles / rocks helps a lot). Because I think it's important, I'll repeat it - do NOTHING to increase level turnaround time. A fail should get you running again in less that 2 seconds.

Lamsey

I'm not a particular fan of this kind of game (I am bad at twitch timing games - I prefer to use my brain), but it seems like it has potential. It'd interest me more if there was greater variety and opportunity for strategy, rather than simply twitching at a limited number of cues and praying for blessings from RNGesus. Some of what follows might duplicate what others have said, but I'm leaving it in so you know that multiple people have the same impressions. I didn't spot any typos not already flagged in Decanter's reports. Gameplay: The spikes are easy to miss because they have no audio cue, unlike the other defence types, and they can be partially obscured by coins. A subtle metal sliding sound might be good, perhaps along with a little animation of the spikes arming themselves by sliding into the ground just after coming into view. I also suffered from the aching right-button finger problem reported by others, and I agree that the coin-collecting mechanic needs reworked somehow. Perhaps you could make it a periodic "zap all the coins onscreen" ability, with a cooldown so you can't spam it, making it a question of timing rather than just mechanically hitting a button whenever a coin is onscreen. A bit of jeopardy could be introduced by making the cooldown longer than the time it takes Runman to run the length of the screen, encouraging the player not to hit it too early in case he hoovers up a big clump of coins which are just offscreen. Just having the plucky hero running over flat ground gets boring pretty quickly. It'd be more interesting if he jumped up onto platforms, dodged over/under obstacles, leapt to collect coins, etc. Adding some other gameplay elements would be good, like differnt kinds of coins, ramps which slow him down or speed him up, wandering shoes who trip him up and destablise him (allowing more combo opportunities), etc. Every level should introduce something new, even if it's just something minor or cosmetic. Any level that's just a repeat of the last one is a fast way to bore the player. You could add a bit of learning by adding repeated sequences of map features that the player can learn to recognise, so they can predict what's about to come onscreen and prepare for it. Alto's Adventure/Odyssey do a good job of this - certain terrain features or coin patterns become learned triggers to prepare for a particular kind of jump, combo, or trick, which makes it doubly satisfying for the player when they correctly spot something is coming and react accordingly. This would be one way to address the dissatisfying randomness of the defences at the moment whereby the player can go long periods without the opportunity to trigger a combo. The Escape menu would benefit from a "restart stage" option, for when you know you can't win in the time remaining, but you still have plenty of distance left to churn up. The 'start level' screen should display the Princess's current coin total and give the option to go to the shop, possibly with an indicator label showing how many upgrades are currently available for purchase. Incidentally, if you add microtransactions to the shop, I will be inclined to terminate my Patreonage :-P Some sort of continuous audio cue for the cannon being charged would be good - crackling with power, maybe. I sometimes forgot it was charged, since I always wanted to wait until I could trigger a combo with it, or sometimes decided to hold it in reserve to defend against Runman powerups. The visual cue on the charge meter would also be more noticeable if it had a bright electrical crackling effect. The cannon's sound effect is good, and it'd be better if the visual effect matched it, perhaps with a flash, camera shake, and/or a bolt shooting out of the sky (like Robin's Lightning Lance, which is an immensely satisfying animation/sound combo). The cannon would also benefit from upgrades (perhaps more expensive than the basic defences). Some sort of indication of the duration of Runman's powerup effects would be good, like glowing auras or a literal giant magnet in his hands. It seems to be pretty much pure luck if you can stop Runman getting a powerup, depending on if there's any defences active and in the right timing window. Whenever a powerup appears, so should a defence which will make him miss if appropriately triggered, so that the player has a chance and doesn't feel cheated by unlucky RNG. Upgrades: There's no indication of the benefits of a given upgrade, which makes it difficult to decide which would be most useful without actually spending the coins. It's difficult to relate the upgrade numbers to gameplay effects. What is three damage? Slow down by 0.2 what? What does Hover Time mean? This would make for ideal hover text for each upgrade. Crit accuracy seems like a bad investment - 12.5% increase at the first level compared to 50/33/20% for damage. I don't really know what it means, though - does it widen the window for getting a crit? Upgrades for stun duration would be useful - combos are basically down to RNG at the moment, depending on when your defences appear and in what order. Upgrades with different costs would be good, encouraging the player to decide between taking small incremental improvements or saving up for big ones. It'd probably help with balance between the defence types, too. I beat the game with enough coins to get all upgrades up to level 3 except the two for crit accuracy. I didn't bother grinding in early levels, I just kept collecting coins as I retried each level. I'm not sure my right-arrow finger is happy with that decision, though. Story / cutscenes: I like the core premise; as ever, subversion is what you do best. I think there's enough of a tongue-in-cheek parody air to it that you shouldn't need to worry about Nintendo's lawyers coming knocking, but I do think it'd be worth keeping that possibility in mind as you develop it further. The dialogue is fun - I liked the pisstake of Mario tropes, especially the karting reference - but there needs to be a lot more of it. A short cutscene after each completed level would be good. It would give you the opportunity for lots more jokes, and a bit of actual character development to make it seem less like the sex comes completely out of nowhere. Jumping straight to full intercourse is a bit abrupt. I feel like even a sexually-starved princess would want a bit of foreplay, or if not, perhaps Dragogai would want to take his time - he is supposed to be an evil genius, after all. You could even invert the usual gender stereotypes by having Dragogai be a bit fumbling or reluctant at first, and have Plum be the one seducing and coaxing him into things. The smut did nothing for me since the characters barely have time to establish themselves, but I guess that's the nature of an arcade porn game. I actually had to go back and hunt for typos, since I found that I'd just absently skimmed through the sex scene text because I didn't care. Perhaps TLS has spoiled me, but I've come to expect more than just empty smut from your games. The art is well-drawn, although there's a depressing sense of playing to the stereotypical audience about the way Dragogai is just a shapeless blob in the sex scenes. That stands in sharp contrast to the fact that it's the girl who's chasing after the sexy times, rather than the usual horny male.

DukeLeto7

The later bits of World 1 kicked my ass until I realized the shop existed. I might be dense, but I think that quitting to shop might be more strongly encouraged.

Hell Satan

Oh so this was posted on the 15 I was busy with work ill check it when I get home.

Argenten

Sorry for the long delay in reviewing, life has been busy in a lot of ways. Have to say for my part I'm not sure the game is for me. It's not bad in the early levels but around later level one I found myself having to grind repeatedly to get enough shop upgrades to make it and for me, there isn't enough beyond the tension of trying to get everything exactly right. That I think is the biggest reason I am not the target audience, for me I spent too much time being tense and worrying about getting everything right. The dialogue is fun and the mario tropes it pokes at make me laugh, but there wasn't a lot of it compared to how many times we had to grind and so the stress and minor frustrations built up for me. However I recognize art is expensive and time consuming so having art after each level or even ones that repeat for the losses would probably be more hassle than help. Maybe a scaling series of scenes where the princess and her 'captor' get close and closer to sealing the deal before getting interrupted would help sustain motivation? That ties into one thing I wasn't clear about and should have asked beforehand...but each time the player succeeds in stopping runman in a sublevel...is this all just one long area he's running in chopped up into sections or are these distinct areas that he fails to get through and returns home after failing? With the super mario way of dividing things, the level sections were a series but also separate. to try to clarify, are the levels ------------------------- or - - - - - - in terms of how they connect to each other with each of the sex scenes/rescue attempts. That being said, I did find the shop upgrades very useful in making a difference and the better I timed things/played the more I was able to buy and it would snowball...right up until Runman started getting powerups too. The random nature of the defenses and the runman powerups sometimes made it very hard to win or even combo at times, especially if the star powerup happens *juuust before* the defenses, and thus the level is pretty much lost unless one gets *veeerry* lucky with defense placement and combo. My question is, are we not supposed to worry about losing/having to do it over and thus the random nature of the defenses/powerups is to keep things from getting monotonous or tedious...or is it still being tweaked into how they show up. I saw above others commenting on how fast Runman reaches top speed and I have to agree, it gets maxed withing a 5th or 6th of the map and after that the level becomes a frenetic hussle to try to remotely slow him down or combo at the right times. The sex scenes were good, simple and quick, but honestly, they're all the better for it because after all the work to get to them, we the player can *feeel* the princess's release of stress at finally getting some nookie :P In summation: It has some balancing/smoothing out to go, but the premise, the mechanics, the story and the pron, they all are good and I would be happy to try it out again or play the finished product. Cause even if I'm not the target audience, it's a good game to play if you just want to get an adrenaline rush without too much drama :P