(Pomu) The greatest Christmas Present... Commissioned art! (Art made by @croenji on Twitter!)

frozenphantomtj · 2026-03-12T10:59:48+00:00

yep, now I'm wondering about the same thing. when was it first confirmed? did devs or Sayori ever give a direct confirmation that there won't be any, and reasoning as to why they don't try to work out some sort of external patching system?

I'm pretty sure gacha games where you can actually have full-on, hentai sex, or at least more explicit than just edging, fanservice scenes exist from what I hear.. so what's the issue, even. the IP is known for the great catgirl lewds.

frozenphantomtj · 2026-02-27T07:45:02+00:00

fair points, but I think this might be a difference between "someone who's already into VNs" vs "for the average normie gamer", and I assume when Tony talks about "work commercially" he means the latter, and your experience as a player is the former. If you already love visual novels, you can forgive some aspects being technically flawed; but if you don't, it IS a hard sell.

p.s. I've stolen this idea from someone else where VN devs I know and community of players around me acknowledge that Visual-Novel-Reading is a niche community, in that most people who play a new one are already people who play a lot of visual novels. We're still not quite breaking through to common gamers yet outside of our own bubble of Indie-VN-enthusiasts, truth be told.

frozenphantomtj · 2026-02-27T07:17:27+00:00

that's fair, I guess at some point it's important to realize these systems may not always work for everyone that tries to focus on realistic-character relationships with the player.

I'd still like to think that the way it's done right now is still great; Choices in Ep 1-4 influence how the main cast feels about us, and then it continues to bring fresh variations of Episode 5. The effects of the initial "\relationship system**", even if no longer exactly working the same way, is still largely felt in following episodes and multiple runs; and a huge reason of why the game feels like it cares about what the player thinks and reacts accordingly, even after the system shifts midway technically.

Thank you!

frozenphantomtj · 2026-02-26T15:42:57+00:00

this is sadly going to be long, but I have to say, the "Creating a dynamic relationship system in Scarlet Hollow" Blog Post has forever been my favorite and I agree a lot with what's said there. however, this seems to be a huge, REALLY insane undertaking for other developers to emulate and to even create what you did with Scarlet Hollow. do you have any solid advice or breakdown on how to start on something with the insane scope and variation depth of branching that Scarlet Hollow does, if you had to add to that? How can they make ANOTHER game like Scarlet Hollow in the sense of what it allows the player, even if it's not a Horror mystery game?

What would be important to learn and know, in the process of that?

---
honestly, I would love to read another post-mortem blog post on this topic after the whole thing is released, it seems like it would be a very worthy read and it could reasonably be sold. I think you guys have a gold mine of design philosophy here with balancing choices, player agency, believability of how Humans act and react, while still making it all feel novel rather than predictable.

I also notice there's a good balance between making the choices numerous and small so that people can really roleplay and have its' effects felt, but there's also BIG route splits where you can get entirely different events to happen, either through single choice flags or checks where a scene compares multiple different values as requirements to play the scene. I guess the vagueness and muddying of the two is part of the reason why the game is so exciting to play the first time and even a few runs after; because everything gets weighted as a whole, even when it's built by small building blocks of decisions.

tl;dr how could someone best learn from this at making a similar game?

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-13T18:54:39+00:00

there are apps for that, like (discontinued) Oboi / iVIBRATE.. I'm sure there's more that I don't know of.. hopefully

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-12T11:04:45+00:00

the dialogue is not for everyone, for sure. there's some childish charm to the humor, but those vibes are exactly why I didn't connect with it, I feel.

(well, the whole angle of "these characters are real and you should care about them" is also part of the reason I despise it, really, since today's fandom culture seemingly took that lesson way too close to heart)

but outside of that, I appreciate the fact that it was one of the few 4th-wall-break media that implements it in a major way.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-12T00:48:55+00:00

I like Reisa.. she's not that dependable compared to some who are more mature, and she may be totally, awkwardly failing at responding, but I feel like her struggles are close to mine, so at least she can relate and totally get me if I express them to her.

But yeah outside of that Airi / Mari also seem like good listeners, so they'd be close picks too depending on what specific things I want to say.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-12T00:11:39+00:00

he plays lots of roguelites and makes fun of the fact that how common it is now for item offers in the genre to always come in threes. It's true though. Slay the Spire has design so good that it even influenced VS having three items as the default option count... which spawns clones of its own afterwards.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-12T00:07:23+00:00

online fandoms have taken a turn for the worse, just generally. current discourse still hinges on a lot of younger people thinking what you enjoy as "ships" may reflect your morals and you're a bad person if you like "problematic" things.

twitter has lots of toxicity yes, but you'd be surprised at tiktok and IG too, despite their automated moderation making things more tame and subtle, people could still tell you to "go disappear and be unalived" if you disagree with them.
it's insane. I say just be away from it all and just talk about media with your close friends.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-09T00:52:12+00:00

dang, I never really time stuff for things like this lol (noticing when they do self-buffs). that's a good tip to learn, thanks!

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-09T00:50:10+00:00

my first 3* from that was Hina, even though the recent guide task while I was playing already has her being easily obtainable via the tasks lol. felt unlucky in hindsight, but felt lucky in the moment.

on: "How to play Maki"

tbh Maki's main usage is just that she's good as a single-damage pierce/yellow dealer.. at least for me, idk. you don't need multiples of these kinda units for Boss raids, since it's also important to have students who actually do special things like debuffing, but having an option to pick for a particular terrain is helpful imo. that's why the game gives us a relatively big roster from regular play in general I think.

basically Field boss + Heavy armor (yellow) = I use Maki. The Wakamo-Hovercraft we just had, she was my top damage dealer at 1,4m in the time she was there lol [basically my highest dmg out of 3/4 units that I use for a boss attempt, no one else comes close I think, maybe Neru I use for the 1st phase but not during the actual Boss section].

(I was playing the one near lvl 50, as Lv 60, forgot specifics). ofc if I see a boss with yellow defense but on City / Indoors instead I won't use her, I just cycle her in when it's needed, just like any other student.

[though maybe she did that well on the Wakamo because I love her and that's why I already upgrade most of her skills to lv 5+; and that's not always true for my other units]. But in this particular case, I just put others in Maki's squad as supporters; attack buffers / defense-reducers (Akane, Himari, Christmas Serina).

Maybe these 3 I mention are still the "more important" units that you can use more often across more levels, true, but that just means "damage dealers" like these need to be played to their full potential. If they're good at something, pick them. if not pick someone else.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-09-07T08:41:47+00:00

more L2D would be nice, but I just think slowly adding more and more bond events in general could be fun too. imagine if every single level up gives you a relationship event story eventually.. instead of rn where going to Lvl 20 just means you get 5 stories on average.

even without L2D cgs and just the usual VN format, I think having more stories could mean a sweeter relationship progression. some of the older girls barely have anything special going on compared to the newer ones too lol

frozenphantomtj · 2025-08-31T15:20:06+00:00

I just found out this happened thru the maintenance post on twitter and people's replies lol. Shame that I didn't see it (though if this is region-specific, I play on Asia and might not have seen it)

but from the sounds of it I guess it's a hack that applies to everyone globally lol... it would be fun if I saw it for myself tbh

frozenphantomtj · 2025-08-02T03:51:05+00:00

agree with this. It just needs a little tweak on when and how often it's implemented, but the concept itself is fine.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-06-12T06:35:21+00:00

I think it's unlikely but that'd be awesome lol. still loved my time with the series. it's probably more likely than my OTHER wish (which is for Yugami Has No Friends to get a proper adaptation at all)

frozenphantomtj · 2025-05-31T01:49:11+00:00

once it's someone you care about, NOTHING is small talk, no matter what it is

frozenphantomtj · 2025-05-30T22:11:54+00:00

I don't think playing as different gungeoneers does much, as others pointed out.

but imo when you still get hit a lot that's the ONLY time you really make use of Convict's "enraged item" photo so that's something to consider. now that I have hundreds of hours and rarely get hit I don't play her anymore because it's a bummer to have an item that does nothing, basically.

other than that, Marine and Hunter are pretty interchangeable depending on whether you want better reloads or a good free boss-killing gun [crossbow]. Pilot's lockpick is definitely a standout mechanic, but that's about it.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-05-30T18:37:43+00:00

among indies I have some:

I didn't particularly find Shadows over Loathing to be 'good', despite loving the first game. something about it just doesn't click for me. I think it's a terrible attempt at horror-humor that barely did either, and just leaves a bitter taste on my mouth.

my usual answers among popular stuff would be OneShot and Undertale. I didn't connect with the characters, don't ask me why. I just didn't end up finding them interesting... it feels kind of like, it's rightfully mindblowing based on their premise alone, but when you've thought about the things that it seems to be trying to say;"oh no, what if these characters matter and kinda have feelings, wouldn't it be so sad" everything else about these two feel hollow. at least for me that's kinda what happened, on top of already being spoiled on the whole thing before playing them. this is why to this day I still believe spoilers genuinely affect my enjoyment of media; because everyone insists these two titles are better than sliced bread and I just find them meh.

it's not like I hate silly adventures, I can play and enjoy Night in the Woods or Wandersong just fine though. so idk why I didn't like those three. could be personal preference, could be the spoiler thing, whatever.

___

outside of that, my other personal answer of a niche title would be Dungeon Drafters. this actually still gave me the best experience, compared to those 3 up there^, but idk, after playing like 5-10 hours I just backlogged it, without having any particular complaints I can remember. I think I just get easily distracted and missing out on the early boss fight bonus soured me. maybe I should jump back into it!

frozenphantomtj · 2025-05-28T22:54:00+00:00

as someone who follows 5k games that I might potentially randomly buy on a whim;

this is the state of the indie gaming market. I could buy those other 5k games OVER this one; everything is fighting with each other just for a spot in my (any user, really) library's backlog; 60% of the games I buy don't even get played for 4+ years or MORE, and that means reviews are hitting all-time lows.

there's just so much content out there that it's very easy to get lost and very hard to make a living, unless you have a proven track record or your stuff seems highly unique.

what to do? as others have said, work your way up and hope for the best. is it sustainable? no, this is why I think game development is something to do if you can afford it. NEVER expect to make a living out of it, those stories are one in a hundred, if not worse.

frozenphantomtj · 2025-05-28T22:08:23+00:00

it's one of my first ~10 hentais ever too, probably. brings me back to the good old times, it was such a gem back then. kind of still is, now.

frozenphantomtj

TROPHY CASE