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Once Ever After has released! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-04-15 22:09:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

At long last, Once Ever After is out! I could do a history of this project, starting from an email to Crescentia and Wolfenstahl years ago, but I need to conserve energy. For now, please just check it out:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951860/Once_Ever_After/

Many patrons are due copies, and I'm happy to send you keys once everything is sorted out. But if anyone does purchase a copy, kindly leave a review! Getting to ten reviews as soon as possible will help the game, and the shortest review helps just as much as the longest.

Reviews from free keys aren't counted by the algorithm. They do still appear, so they could help if anyone is passionate about writing a long review. But for most of those using keys, don't feel any obligation to write one. Just enjoy. ^-^

One thing you can do, if you feel led, is to upload art and screenshots so the Steam page is lively. We already have some, and I know a few of you have created fanart for this game! Now that the game is live, you should be able to post it, unlike before.

That's all for now. If you're waiting on a reply from me, I will get to it when possible. I've gotta get through a lot of official announcements, then this one is in the hands of the algorithms. Wish me luck!

Files

Comments

Wrath

is there a minimum tier for a key?

empty-empath

I'm so thrilled! I got so caught up in it when you posted it on New Grounds a while back.

sierralee

Usually it's $10, but since the game is out now it's about totals. Or, to be honest, more about me finding the time and bandwidth to hand out a bunch of keys.

sierralee

If you enjoyed the Newgrounds demo, I think it's very likely that you'll enjoy the full game!

ThatPatronDude

Legit one of the very few Patreons I don’t regret supporting! Well done and can’t wait to give it a shot!

ushiroace

Congrats! Happy release day!

sierralee

I appreciate that vote of confidence, and I'll strive to keep to that standard!

Quiet Stranger

I've decided to buy it myself to help boost its sales profile on Steam. Once Ever After deserves all the attention it can get.

sierralee

No patron owes this to me, but I appreciate your extra support! Since you've already done that, please review if at all possible. ^-^

Desertopa

I've been re-playing the official version, will definitely leave a review later, maybe once I've completed it again, maybe earlier. There's one issue I'm running up against which I definitely *could* just move on past, but I don't want to miss the benefits from it. In my playthroughs of previous versions, I held out against the wolves for as long as possible, but this time, it seems like their crit rate has gone way up? I've been using what I'm pretty sure is optimized strategy, but I've died due to critical hits somewhere upwards of a dozen times now. This last time, I thought I was about to finally make it through the penultimate fight, but I died to a second critical hit in the same fight. It's hard for me to imagine my being this unlucky if the critical rate hasn't been adjusted upwards, but for a gauntlet which offers lasting benefits later on, I don't think it's beneficial for it to have such a significant element of luck.

Barissia

Stayed completely away from this project so I could go in blind - what a shame that patron gift keys don't have the same review weight as a purchased one as I was looking forward to a blind review of the game Congrats Sierra hope the steam launch does as well as you'd like it to!

Johns Page

Nice, can’t wait to play it, are you going considering another crimson gray game?

Ai Muhao

Congratulations! It was a long road, but here it is at last for all to enjoy!

sierralee

Did you perhaps miss the Scratched Bracer from the cavern? The new skulls piles are easier to miss than on the default maps, so I tried to add dialogue, but it might not have been enough. Anyway, the enemy crit rate hasn't changed, but that accessory gives 100% immunity to crits.

sierralee

Thanks, hope you enjoy! And gifted keys don't hurt, so if anyone really wants to write a review, they're welcome to. Just didn't want anyone to feel obligated to contribute for the algorithm.

sierralee

That support message looks more flexible than when I contacted them: they told me that when they raised it to 2 GB that was the absolute maximum. But even with that, there's a maximum number of files, and OEA is way over. I like itch.io, so it would be nice to figure it out. Maybe I'll need to contact them and see if they're willing to bend the rules.

sierralee

Hope you enjoy! I have often thought about another Crimson Gray, and might potentially look toward one after the completion of TLS.

Pseudonymous

I noticed that the skills "Slut II" and "Gift" aren't working as intended. "Slut II" grants no extra skill slots. "Gift" takes up Ingrid's turn, but does nothing to the turn order, nor does it grant the target a second action.

georgo88

in Germany i get this message: This item is currently unavailable in your region. Maybe you want to look at this. you can get the game Desecration of Wings in germany

sierralee

I hope not. I just opened up the game again and tested both. All passive skills like Slut II need to be equipped, if that wasn't clear. Put it into a slot and you should immediately see new slots appear - or remove it if the upgrade replaced Slut I and you'll see two disappear. Gift is harder to judge. It's possible that there are conditions where it doesn't work for some reason, but on my end it should jump the target to the front of the turn order.

sierralee

The difference is that DoW went up before Steam allowed adult content: it's technically a SFW game with an optional patch you can get off-site. Due to conflicts between Steam and German law, all adults only content is banned in Germany, unfortunately.

Pseudonymous

Ah, let me clarify: Slut II provides the same two skill slots as Slut, but it doesn't seem to have any extra effect. It doesn't grant any further skill slots (Which may be expected, since the upgrade's description is "+2 Skill Slots" prior to purchase, which makes it ambiguous), and seems to provide no stat boost. I tested Gift in the Wasteland the first time you're there. It doesn't seem to cause William's turn to pop to the front of the order.

Desertopa

I did miss it, actually I stopped looking treasure after I checked the four other skull piles and got notification that the "look for supplies" subquest had been completed, so I forgot about the Scratched Bracer and assumed there wasn't anything left.

Pseudonymous

I'm not familiar with how this version of the engine works; could you add a shim for loading files from a zip file or tarball? It wouldn't save much space, but it would reduce the file count.

sierralee

Just to be clear, I'm referring to the Bleak Caverns where you meet Hood. But yes, that accessory is the different factor.

sierralee

Well, I can't say that I understand this process fully. But when I tried to upload a single zip file (the standard method for MV games), it was rejected as 1000+ files instead of one.

sierralee

I guess that's ambiguous, but yeah, the passive skills aren't cumulative. Ingrid's passive skills start out with negative stats and slowly shift positive as they upgrade. It's hard to say about Gift. If you can reproduce it consistently, let me know and I'll try to look deeper.

Markus S.

I thought it would be temporary, because it's not like German laws for erotic content would be more strict than from other (Christian) western countries and the reason I read some while ago sounded rather ridiculous. Meanwhile I cannot even find the game, it also has been removed from my wish list. It seems they entered some sort of boycott mode.

sierralee

As far as I know, it's still the same age registration thing mentioned before. I really expected it to be resolved sooner, but it seems that German IP addresses are locked off from adult games and will be for the foreseeable future.

Jeffrey Lebowski

After seeing a few other people do the same, I also decided to buy the game on steam to leave a review and help boost your numbers. But... I'm not able to leave a review yet because the account I bought it on is so new, so live and learn. Will play it through steam until I have enough play time to review. I have secrets I want to replay and find anyway (I totally missed the secrets of the bleak cavern and surviving the wolf assault on my last play, among other things). Also I didn't know you this was going to be an early access release and that you were planning on continuing to refine things: fun! The steam page said you were planning on replacing some more npcs and things with custom assets, could you give an example of what kinds of npcs are currently placeholders?

sierralee

Reviews are appreciated whenever they go up! Regarding the secrets you mention, check the guides section, where I understand there's some activity. Honestly, I don't know how much will change, I just judged that an EA release was the best decision. But for one example, the Arena Champion sprite is just a generic giant wolf, so he could use an upgrade.

Jeno

Bought it and played for a good couple of hours today, left a review as well! I have intentionally not really been keeping track of development of this game so I'm quite in the dark :) The one thing I must say I dislike is the respawning of enemies, meaning grinding is possible. Whether it's necessary remains to be seen though :)

Jeno

Have you tried a VPN? Could be possible to circumvent it that way.

sierralee

I really appreciate your review, and hope you continue to enjoy the game! You may be glad to know that only a minority of enemies respawn: many mobs disappear for good. The remainder do allow grinding if players want, but I tried to balance things for it to be unnecessary.

sierralee

I don't know how Steam handles region in Europe, but I can confirm that if you own a game on Steam, you can play it even in banned regions.

Jeffrey Lebowski

Oh wow, Grim8P did put out a detailed guide! Many thanks to them!

Dennis Evert

I've just checked, Steam does region locks via whatever country you've registered and a VPN doesn't help. So yeah, the nanny state buggers us Krauts again.

Pseudonymous

Yeah, itch.io looks at the files in the zip, but it only looks one level down. Most engines let you pack data files together; even without compression that saves a little space and gives slightly faster loads, since the data you need can be read in one long read instead of having to use one read action per file to fetch it from all over the disk. Digging deeper, it looks like RPGMaker MV may not have any kind of I/O optimization. The hitching when a spell is cast for the first time after a restart tells me it does zero preloading (There may be a plugin for that, btw). It also seems that RPGMaker MV is really locked down as far as what developers are allowed to do, so I don't think it's possible to create a shim to allow packaged assets. Unfortunate :/

Anemone

Hi - I've been avoiding this project to dive in blind on release, and it's a fantastic time so far! Big John is a treasure in the rough and I want him to lead a long, happy life full of as much or as little sex as he finds personally fulfilling. Unless I'm missing an obvious escape route, I think I may currently be trapped in some sort of map glitch? There's an invisible wall keeping me from moving past this rock in the volcano tale, and I don't see any other way out of here after jumping off the little cliff: https://i.imgur.com/dUsH8g6.jpg First-time poster, I hope this is the right place to report bugs ^^;

sierralee

Hello, nice to hear from you! This is fine for reporting bugs. First off, I'm glad to hear that you've been enjoying the game. ^-^ Also nice to know that Big John has fans! I enjoyed writing some of those smaller stories on the borders of the primary narrative. The glitch you have identified is very weird. The mapping looks right, and when I travel there now, nothing blocks me... however, I was able to run into a strange error that did lead to invisible tiles elsewhere. I can't perfectly reproduce it, but I think it was tied to moving around the stairs and overhang - the sections involved with the two layered effect of the map, in other words. So I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this could happen just yet. For now, I suggest taking the left path from your screenshot and running through the pass a few times to see if the glitch ges flipped back.

Pseudonymous

I'll see if I can figure out the conditions. Meanwhile, it looks like I'm permanently stuck at 5/8 for the Slut archetype. There's no new skills that can be unlocked, and I'm pretty late in the game. Are the last skills for the major archetypes post-game content?

Trisk

I bought the game and left my review last night/technically early this morning. I consider this purely self-serving. I want a sequel, and helping convince Steam this is a good game more people should play increases the odds of that happening someday. :) I noticed that while it's not showing up on the main New & Trending list, if you look at the Steam pages for any of the game's tags it's on the trending lists for all of those categories. At least on my view. I'm not sure if Steam customizes those lists to the account.

Grim8P

Hello Anemone! I attempted to recreate the bug in a few ways but was unable to do so. Are you able to upload a save file with this issue somewhere for testing?

sierralee

Your support is very much appreciated! Momentum and algorithms seem to make a huge difference, so every little bit helps nudge things in the right direction. To my knowledge, the methods Steam uses to display games are extremely opaque. It's neat to see that OEA appears on all those trending lists, and the varying rankings suggest that it's not purely artificial. We'd probably need a more neutral account to test, and my account is certainly not neutral. But thanks for letting me know. ^-^

Grim8P

Very weird. Here is your save back but you're back at the entrance to this area: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16gj-NRB3KM0srQ-tJTlHG0G5bQqnmdXM/view?usp=sharing. For anyone looking to help troubleshoot, some notes: - I can't load this save via the Steam version. Not sure why. - If I load it with my standalone version of 0.6.0 and walk up underneath the overpass, the enemies can't cross the overpass part. Makes me think the 2F switch is off, which it should be. - If I load it with my standalone version of 0.6.0, I can walk by the spot Anemone can't just fine. I can save over this file just fine. - If I save over the slot, I still can't load this specific save with my Steam version. Very weird. Unfortunately this is beyond me. Sorry I can't help further here.

sierralee

I don't know about preloading by default, but I had to get a new plugin to load character graphics and a number of other commonly used assets so they wouldn't jump around. I probably don't want to load the entire animations folder, though...

Markus S.

VPN isn't that easy. You need to find an exit point in the country you want to register your secondary account with, Swiss or Austria making most sense for German speakings, I tried some free proxies but by the rate of failure I assume they are blocked by Steam. So even when I went up to through money at a VPN service, I might still not be able to register a secondary account. At least just logging in with the existing account will no longer do as far as I am reading that on the internet correctly.

Anemone

Thank you!

Reddy Bread

I think ill take a key but ill probably buy a copy as well. I cant figure out how to leave a review on steam. Do I have to purchase it first to leave a review? I've never used it before tbh lol.

sierralee

Dang, sorry I missed this message before now. Yes, you need to own a game and I think play a little bit before you can leave a review. All support is appreciated, but let me know if you want a key!

Joker

I have been enjoying the game a lot. The story is a lot of fun and the gameplay is fun too. In particular I really enjoyed the archetype system of collecting skills. As a completionist obtaining all those "mastered" states was really fun. I also really enjoyed the meta-storytelling. The parts where the team abuses common storytelling tropes in order to force success were really fun. I also liked Ingrids character progression and it was really funny how she basically turns on "porn logic" around herself. Only thing I would say was that the true ending felt a bit unsatisfying. It feels very similar to the regular ending, which doesn't feel great as an ending, given how much time is spent on reaching that true ending after the regular one. I think it would do a lot if it were just a bit less ... open. Some of the characters get some closure, but for most of them it feels very up in the air. One in particular. Sorry for being vague, I am trying not to spoil too much for people who haven't played it yet.

sierralee

I'm glad you enjoyed it! That "mastered" label wasn't something that wasn't in the base plugin I built into the archetype system, it was something I asked for myself because I thought it would be satisfying to some players. ^-^ It's also good to hear from people who enjoyed the meta-storytelling elements. I'm always happy to do more with this. Sorry to hear you found the true ending disappointing. I did intend it to be more a modified version than an entirely different conclusion, but I understand your criticism. Some of it is wanting to give the sense the characters are moving forward into new stories, some of it is... honestly sequel bait, which can fairly be considered a weakness. I also focused on the fate of the antagonist, which I know won't hit the same for everyone. I probably won't radically alter it, but I'm open to suggestions for improvement! Anyway, please leave a review on Steam if possible. ^-^

Joker

One thing that would be nice is if the group, at the moment were they are all still together talks a bit more about what they plan to do next. We get to know some of the afterwards but it still feels weird that the group is just "Everything's changed now, huh? Won't know when we will see each other again. Well bye." and that's it. I feel like after all they went through they would have more to say to each other in that situation. One of the pairings we see afterwards feels fairly complete with a new start to them. For the other pairing it feels more like they are just going on as usual. Maybe just something like "Whatever happens next, we'll face it together" could be good. That way it feels more like a significant chapter in their lives has been finished and they are going towards something new. Also just a hint towards what the not-paired up person is up to would be nice. I get that it's supposed to be sequel bait and that's fine, but currently it feels more like a hook without actual bait. The game just goes "Wonder what that person is up to" and just gives you a shrug. Just a vague goal or idea would work better in my opinion. That could also happen in the situation I mentioned earlier where they are still together.

sierralee

Hmm. Having the group discuss their future more is the sort of change that's compatible with everything I was going for, so I'll have to think about it. Likewise with Hood and Fenris. I'm reluctant to give much information about Ingrid at the end, though. I respect that it didn't work for you, but what I was aiming for was her undergoing serious changes and entering a new stage in her life where even she doesn't know where she's going, with that mystery serving as bait while also being thematically sufficient if this is the only game.

Joker

Yeah, I thought that was what you were going for with Ingrid and that definetly makes sense with the ending. My issue wasn't really with what the ending conveyed about the characters but more about it's ... feel. This is kindof hard to explain, but it felt like Ingrid was left pretty open ended, Just having her say something along the lines of that she has to figure out what the ending means for her and her future would serve to make it feel more like a a proper cap on things with a new journey starting for the characters. I didn't expect any grand details about Ingrid's future or something of the sort. Also please don't view these comments as complaints. I didn't hate the ending or anything like that and enjoyed my time with the game. I just want to give a bit of feedback in the hopes that some of it can be usefull.

sierralee

All feedback is much appreciated! I'll take it into consideration and see if I don't come up with anything that I feel strengthens the story.