apolloseven
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9/20 Status Update
🕑 Added 2024-09-20 22:43:25 +0000 UTCThis is going to be a special status update because I'm going to talk about things besides Netoria Tactics 2 for once. It's been a while since we did that. But this weekend is the first anniversary of At the Mountains of Friendship. It came out in late September, and further development was canceled by early March. It didn't even last half a year. It wasn't received badly, it just wasn't very popular. The biggest reaction was more of a "meh", which is basically as bad as it can get. Indifference is a bigger sign of death than hatred for a creative project.
Well, this last week I've been sprucing it up, playing it again to get the game ready for a one-year anniversary update with all the characters unlocked for everybody and... this game is awesome. What is wrong with people? Fun characters, interesting gameplay, cool art, and concept, sure it's not perfect but there's some damn good stuff here. With creative projects, you often need to step back for a while to see the actual quality of something you've been working on for a long time. Well, it's been a while and I think AtMoF is cool.
Does that mean I'm going to start working on it again? No, it's very expensive to make and the main artist for it is working full blast on Netoria 2 now. Usually, when something I make fails, I blame myself. I probably didn't make a good game. This time, I'm changing my mind. AtMoF is a good game, it has some big flaws of course but the core stuff is cool, it's the market that's wrong. Of course, that doesn't change the business reality of the game not working out, but that's not all that matters.
I mean look at this tableau of the characters. This is the good ending, where the player character kidnaps them all to get tentacle fucked for all eternity because he likes looking at them. That's the good ending! Playing as the eldritch abomination destroying reality is a cool concept dammit! And these are cool character designs with fun personalities.
But what's that I said earlier abnout an anniversary update? That's right! Coming this Sunday, AtMoF 1.4, with all 15 girls available to everyone. Including Turnip! Does anyone care? No idea, but I'm doing it anyway.
Let's talk about another game that "failed", Futa Oasis. Now this one I can't be as indignant about, because it has several glaring flaws and design mistakes. But again, it has cool stuff in there. A fun setting, what I think are interesting and well-written characters. It's just ruined a bit by a cardgame I could never get to be fun and a randomized dialogue structure that was cool in concept but ended up being a disaster in the end. This is another game that I got super discouraged about developing further because of the mediocre reception.
But... there's a lot of good art and writing already in place there that I could repackage into something better. I'm leaning back towards doing that again. I can put it up on Steam, it'll make some amount of money (hopefully), and Jasmin, Zuri, Parisa, Nadiye, and Azra will get the game they deserve.
While we're talking about old games I can take Naked Ambition and... nope, sorry. Still no movement on that one. I know, the game has literally like two weeks of game time left. It's almost done. That's kind of the problem. Whatever I do with it can; 't be half-assed. It's the ending, it needs to wrap all of these threads up in a satisfying way. And so far, nothing I've done has been anywhere close to satisfying.
And now back to our regularly scheduled Netoria 2 update. Things are going well, that second demo should be ready for next week with six levels to play through. Things are going fast enough that I might even beat my anticipated release date of January for Act 1. Maybe. No, promises. This week's preview art is of Zaman in his female form doing a little exploring.
He might be a little unsure about it now, but he'll have to get used to it because Zaman's POV is all about his TF. You play that route, Zaman is going to be a girl whether he likes it or not.
That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.
Comments
Jeremy
maybe like a slay the spire esque prestige system where you earn each scene progressively over a long time as you use a girl and each character and combinations more. Maybe even have the gallery say 2343 exp till next scene or use this girl and this girl in 6 more battles to unlock. you could even do more perminent buffs for earning each progression like a new skill they could have or maybe allowing a girl to have 2 of her skills at once
Apollo Seven
Yes, it's pretty much the consensus that the way unlocking scenes worked didn't really mesh with the gameplay very well. I can't really think of a different way to integrate story scenes within an autobattler though. It's a little frustrating because if the game was a VN this wouldn't be an issue, but in theory the VN would take time between getting to sex scenes as well, just with a more boring mechanism of reading more dialogue over playing a fun game. But that is the problem in the end, the game takes too much effort and thinking taking you out of the headspace you want to be in for the sexy stuff. Even thought the game does let you autowin if you want, I don't think many people used that.
Nyarawee
I liked the setting and idea of AtMoF and the actual gameplay of it was fun but in my humble opinion the issue comes with the integration of NSFW content. Many times I would be playing the game and really like a NSFW scene wanting to see the next part and then maybe continue playing the actual game my next session only to find out I have to play more of the game which if I failed at beating that section of the game meant I would not be able to see the next scene. This is further exacerbated by the fact there is no way to easily see the next scene except sandbox mode so even if I wanted to go and view the next scene I would have to rewatch every other scene I have already seen or if I was really enjoying a run and was willing to keep playing the game I would have to continuously reload the game until the girl whose scene I was interested in appeared again when starting a new game (which got harder and took longer the more characters that were added). This whole experience basically led the game to feel more like a "game which happens to have NSFW content at some points in the story" rather than a "NSFW game". Leading at least me personally to play the game once in awhile for the gameplay but never really go back for the NSFW content as it was frustrating to get to and while the gameplay was interesting it wasn't deep enough for me to want to replay the same story over and over again. While the AtMoF lewd scenes took enough time to get to that they felt short in the context even though they were sizable in length. In all honesty I found Futa Oasis to be more succesful NSFW game in that if I wanted to it was super easy to access a really sexy scene even if it had a pretty terrible card game attached that was easy to cheese. I might be rambling but hope these thoughts help you at least a bit. I agree with the sentiment that if you don't have a good way to conclude Naked Ambition you should keep it on ice, at this point it has been so long since it has been touched that the only way to really redeem it would be to have a near perfect ending which is not easy. TL;DR Integration of NSFW content and gameplay in AtMoF felt off and frustrating sometimes despite that being one of the major selling points however the gameplay itself was fun. While Naked ambition should stay on hold until you find inspiration for the "perfect" ending given the time it has been since the last release. Overall you have done a lot of great work since I started following you during Naked Ambition active development that you can be proud of, thank you for your efforts and I look forward to future releases!
IncubusLaertes
I can´t speak on FUTA Oasis, since I didn´t play it, Futa beeing sprinkled in a game I can tolerate, a complete game, sry but not my cup of tea. AtMoF IS a good game, to say otherwise would be a lie. I enjoyed it and I did what I always do with content not to my preferences: I tolerate it and skipp through the scenes (yeah, I need to collect a complete gallery). However, not all ppl are so tolerant as I, and that is in my opinion the main reason for the mediocre reception: since every girl is correlating to a kink, if a person finds less than half of them to their preferences, this person won`t enjoy delving into the story of the other girls, since their related kinks are not to their liking. I mean, I would like to see Naked Ambition to be finalized, but an unfinished ending is better than an ending that disappoints. And if atm you don't see how to reach a "fullfilling" ending, I support your decision to keep it on ice.
Jeremy
I mean I guess luckily it's kinda a roguelike which is why I probably copped like 30 hours in it so it's easy to add to if you ever change your mind. Though that's definitely my bias speaking I thought ATMOF was so good it got me to start a small little adult game review thread on my private Twitter because of how many strategies there were to approach it and with how much everything interacted with each other. But I understand wanting to put bow on a project. I just suggest that you have a very strong base there and if you ever want to do something with it again don't start from scratch
Apollo Seven
Well the good thing is that the parts that work and the parts that don't aren't all that interconnected. The cardgame can be cut out without affecting the good parts all that much. If the idea of working to gain favor is left in, it can just be abstracted in a different, more fun way.
Apollo Seven
Unfortunately it was just a really expensive game to make. The gane was loaded with hand drawn horror art, some of those monsters cost $300+. And each girl cost around $1,500 to produce. I needed to make around $3,000 a month on Patreon to have any hope towards recouping costs along with affording continued content. And I just didn't get there.
Diana
I really loved the art, characters, and settings for AtMoF and especially Futa Oasis. I was super bummed when both flopped. I'll admit Futa Oasis definitely was grindy, but gosh did I adore everything but the card game aspect. I really hope it lives again with a new mechanic.
Jeremy
I'm sad to see at the mountain of friendship flop it's why I joined the patreon it actually has such deep gameplay and I thought only more potential to grow but ultimately if it isn't good for you to make I'll have to accept it
