TableTop BornStar v0.7 (NSFW)

I appreciate that you appreciate it. I used to review games professionally and am pretty obsessed with them. I have alpha and beta tested more than a few over the years and back in the way way way back time machine infancy of Newgrounds I reviewed the hell out of some flash games....Then I forgot my password and ended up going back later on and had to start over. it kind of fell by the wayside. What it comes down to is I am a creative myself but my attention span for my own creations is that of a gnat. I am far better at giving people advice, feedback, positive and negative criticism alike than I am at finishing my own stuff. I have something "in progress yet stalled" for every facet of the entertainment industry...all of them TT It is always easier to tell people what they are doing right or wrong than to focus on my own issues right? 

I may tear you a new one but I will be honest about it and if I like something I will praise it as well.

I am VERY new to the itch.io space...even though I created a profile a few years ago and forgot aobut it? (kind of the story of my life) but I see this as a much more high stakes indie community. In a "niche" adult game market where now that I am 35 instead of 13 I don't have to hide the nudie games anymore.

I understand you not agreeing with that last point but that gameplay clock was nearing several hours (before I just started pressing "next" as soon as it popped up. I have noticed the barista scenes are different and I guess I wasn't aware of the music changing. But me ending at 20 was deliberate. It seemed like a good stopgap measure of the absolute bare minimum (major gameplay/story/change increase elements etc.)

If you had some variation in the responses if the same exact line of "here we go again" didn't play every single round...There is just so much repetition. And I get that may be the case in boardgames but even those "spice themselves up" knowing that the true advantage of a board game is interacting with your friends. 

If I were to compare your game to monopoly for CD ROM in the early 90s it would NOT hold up well. At least that had like different train whistle sounds for the railroads.... because you responded favorably to my criticism I will throw a little more detail your way. I still don't plan on playing it until it is further along again but at least can give you a blueprint of sorts of what you want to achieve. This is necessary and it is ONLY necessary because of the monotony.

FIRST AND FOREMOST

The game is not finished I know it isn't and you know it isn't the people who download it on the page know it but IN GAME you don't mention it enough. I hate to say it but people aren't as smart as you want them to be in a videogame. You have two camps. One want their hand held for everything. The other wants no hand holding whatsoever. Your goal is to find the middle. You have to give indication within the tutorial itself as well as the game progresses that x feature is still in development. You just have to. Even when you explicitly tell someone THIS GAME IS NOT FINISHED they are going to scream at you BUT HOW COME I HAVE A BUG OF IT NOT WORKING WHEN I LAND ON X SPOT?

A simple (this feature is not available with your current progress) or (this feature is still in development thank you for your support) depending on which it is. will go a REALLY long way to dispelling confusion. You give a tutorial for the whole game board but each round (at first) adds a new "space type" but then it doesn't...and it doesn't...and it doesn't... by the time you hit I think round 7 or so almost all the space are unlocked and then....nothing else unlocks....Round 20 from something like round. 9 to round 20 no other space unlocked. I may not have the correct rounds and it may be more criteria based but if the text in your game has one character explicitly say to another character give me money so she can get those photoshoots. and then 5 6 7 8 rounds later that still hasn't "materialized" into anything that is a problem.

The biggest issue you have is trying  to marry the visual novel with the tabletop gameplay. I expected the story to be far more "interactive" BECAUSE of the tabletop element. Its not about it doesn't have enough sex scenes or they don't happen at the right time or anything like that. Speaking purely from a gameplay perspective the pacing is wrong. I feel like you have allowed of experience as a writer of narrative stories and this is a way to dip your toe in the water at adding a little bit more interactivity into your story giving some player input having consequences etc.

Then you have to worry about if the game is too hard or too easy and yes the sex is obviously important I mean it is called tabletop pornstar but I mean just basic stuff.

You have cute little handdrawn cards to the left of the spaces she lands on but especially with the career one there is no information given whatsoever of what you need to accomplish or how quickly to get to that next point.

"I pay my rent and bills" but it doesn't explicitly tell you anywhere "what that amount is" There is a scene where she spends money and your character gets understandably pissed off about it. but my money doesn't change. So that penalty doesn't even exist. These are two entirely different types of games you are making here and to make them as one ESPECIALLY since the story is the meat of your game and the tabletop is the gimmick for interactivity it CANNOT be boring. It just can't be. 

Real Talk? At the BARE MINIMUM

progress updates (far more detailed than the ones current every 5 rounds) Hinting but not explicitly telling a player EXACTLY what they need to do to unlock x function. I love the narrative you have here that you either grooming or saving a girl from the ills of tinsel town. I see in the description for the game that will have genuine consequences later on but it doesn't happen quick enough. I could con my way to the pants of the women way too easily. There is no real world interactivity between the gameplay and the story. Its just checkpoints you hit after unlocking specific unspecified numbers.

My guess is you are trying to balance the pro/con of how linear or nonlinear you want the game to be but the unfortunate reality is that the second you decided to make it tabletop themed it became non linear. You probably have a really great story you want this game to tell and the tabletop aspect is a creative way of involving the player but the game itself is too generic right now. You pretty much to have either overhaul the hell out of the gameplay aspect and/or double the size of the story. When you decided to make this a tabletop interactive visual novel it stopped being a visual novel.

And honestly I have no idea how the hell you can fix this that is the fear. I worry that the game is built with an engine specifically for visual novels with very little mechanics outside of that aside from telling the story. Which means every "random" or "other" plot thread means going through your  thousands of dialogue option threads and adding a second choice but how do you randomize it? isn't it just a different character talking? a different result? Then you run the very real risk that random dialogue for the completely different storyline will get mixed in with  or overlap the other "triggers" for landing on specific spaces getting specific hidden stat bonuses etc.

Example if your plot is really groom or save you REALLY need to drive that point home. I would add a mechanic to assist or hinder mary jane from the player perspective. maybe even a skill tree for it. I had the hidden stat that she is obedient so all 6 rolls become 1 and that was a nice little secret but it should be a randomized gameplay aspect based off of a player decision not something that just happens at a specific point. And again I don't know how easy that is to do. Example being like betrayal and trust mechanics. Right now you have a Perv stat but you don't have an innocence stat. My guess would be that number being lower makes that check happen but since it is a GAME you want to give that option.

I can tell your hands are tied already with quite a few things because of the game engine chosen so instead of worrying about the things you can't change change the ones you can. Go over every line of dialogue and make them unique witty and creative. And (again I don't know how you do this in a visual novel engine) have alternates. I would love to tell you 2 or 3 but its probably closer to 10. It is a text based visual novel with gameplay ELEMENTS.

But things happen way way way too quickly. Speed it up to fast and players won't feel invested. Don't speed it up enough and they will straight up abandon the game entirely. I am actually a pretty patient guy. The amount of time it takes to get the ball rolling by round 20 after several hours of "gameplay" is just way too long. I only played that long knowing the game was unfinished wanting to give the benefit of the doubt give it a little more time to flush out the story etc. But when I "fight" 7 times and at some point in those 7 times I got a visual novel scene (my guess would be 5 as I think I got 3 in one turn) that was an "activation" but on a gameboard about being a pornstar heavily monopoly esque but dumbed down (which is good in this scenario the game needs to be worth playing but it is a companion to your story. The last thing you want to do is sideline the story itself but for people to read your story they have to be able to bear the game.

You don't have enough penaltys. I'm not but a surprising amount of people are. Your board needs to get some life to it. You have generic colored squares. People are colorblind and accessibilty options are defacto for the majority of developers now. They claimed in the past (true or otherwise) that it was a matter of the technology not being available for it. But despite that they all do now. I know quite a few games that actually aren't that great that get praise and far more plays and attention then they normally would JUST FROM the simple addition of disability options. Before that is language of course but excluding menu overlays no one expects every game to be fully translated into 10 different languages ESPECIALLY a visual novel but really anything text heavy. They want it sure but it isn't realistic in the slightest.

Your artwork for the story is great but your gameboard looks like it was drawn in MS Paint. Give the same attention to detail for the gameboard and the piece (which should change as she changes careers should reflect that same level of quality. Every little attention to detail matters (but an artist already knows that right? How often do you erase and redraw a strand of hair that doesn't fall the way you want it to?)

I don't know if 0.2 for you means 20% but I don't think you are there. I think you have a good script worked out on your pc or mac with a lot of the illustrations to accompany it done and quite a few more to go and a an absolutely bare bones pre pre pre pre alpha demo of a tabletop idea to present to a company. If this is called tabletop pornstar it needs some insane overhaul. I don't think this was your intent but because you have now staked the entirety of your novel on that gimmick (not meant as an insult it is just the method of delivery you used to tell the story) you know have to put a much larger emphasis on the tabletop aspect of it. And here is the real problem. The vast majority of tabletop games that are singleplayer only fail. It is physically impossible for you to make your game a multiplayer game because of how heavily it focuses on what is looking to be a great narrative. A company only makes a digital tabletop game a singleplayer experience if they have that existing in the world as an established game. You can play with AI or online with friends....you can't do that in this game and being able to would be like setting your script for the game on fire. That is NOT what you want to do. So it puts you between a rock in a hard place. You want to tell a great story accompanied by your uniquely handdrawn retro vibe illustrations but focusing to much on the tabletop aspect will do just that but not focusing enough means people won't even read past chapter 2 of your 30-50 chapter book.

My guess is that you had been prioritizing the tabletop aspect as maybe about 10-15% of the game. The gameboard itself is a creative medium to tell your story the handdawn animations of Mary Jane at the Barista look absolutely amazing the first time I see them and they still look great the 5 time and the tenth time but by about the 20th time (which is NOTHING in the pace of your game so far) It starts to be a little....ya I know ok give me my 12 dollars so I can move on.)

By the end of my gameplay Or maybe even halfway in Mary Jane started to sound a lot less like a scared beautiful doe eyed runaway and more like Deadpool.

"Here we go again...."

Yes Mary Jane...here we go...again....and again.... which 30 seconds of dialogue will I unlock this time before pressing next on somewhere between 6 to 15 "turns"around the bend?

I know I am being harsh but I am genuinely trying to be as detailed as possible and typing quickly this has taken about an hour to type so far and still not done. Just think of it as a free one man focus group who actually knows what he is talking about.

The gameboard and pieces should evolve alongside the story. Not just narratively but mechanically. I love absolutely love the homemade touch you give your instruction and description cards for the game aspect itself. It feels like you are playing a game your friend made and he scribbled out the instructions for the game as he builds it. And it is also kind of meta because that is exactly what we the players are doing. Playing your game as you build it. I don't love the vague content ON the card....-

Barista, Dancer, Actress, Fighter, Pornstar 

Ok...but is this an evolution of HOW my career progresses? Or a description OF some of the jobs available. When do I unlock these jobs? How many properties do I own before I can build houses in otherwords. Then it says $$$ (ok how much?) at least it is honest (varies)

You could get away with SOME of the stuff by changing up the dialog a little bit to make fun of the game itself and in a 4th wall directly referencing what you can't change. Draw a scene of Mary Jane complaining to you the player that she never knows how much money she is going to make or have her bitch at still being a waitress and quit her job midshift for the next thing.

But  purity/slut is definitely the way to go. The jobs and interactions should change accordingly. The slut path should be high risk high reward the pure path should be like the tortoise and the hare more steady gradual calculated movements. And again skillsets that directly effect the game itself. The player needs to be able to interact with the board. You gave her a pager which from a story standpoint make sense and is great 90's reference material. The 90's reference stuff is great but you need a HELL OF A LOT MORE of it. You don't have a short book here and you need people to stick around. Your game doesn't have to be groundbreaking but when there are 50 other games just like it that do most of it better you have to focus on what makes your game stand out Setting it in the 90s the theme of the game itself your illustrations the easter egg references playing on the childhood nostalgia of the player. Your main story should still be present obviously but you need a lot of "interactive tongue in cheek reference padding to appease some of the monotony.

But of all of the salt I have poured in your wounds here is the really big one. Everything I said is good advice that may or may not be worth your time to implement may or not be feasible for you to even implement but it won't make your game succeed in the slightest it just makes it a better game.

But you decided to make a porn game....so ya.....your audience is going to want a lot of it...often like REALLY often like 50 times more than you are giving them so far. It doesn't all HAVE to be illustrated but your character should be getting hot and heavy or being hit on hot and heavy just just narratively not just visually but like the game pieces themselves the tone of the text itself has to get more raunchy a lot quicker. Personally I am perfectly fine with your story as it is it is a nice change of pace from the usual throwing the tits in the face 5 seconds into the game but most people are not that patient. ESPECIALLY for the porn games.

Almost every suggestion I have given you even though they are sound reasonable suggestions don't matter anywhere near as much as a lot more sex a lot more often steamy dialogue lewd pictures random encounters people paging her for sex. It completely destroys the heart of your game but it just takes so long for things to happen. Just with more sex your game will succeed better. Your illustrations are great they really are but it could change the overall theme of the story you were trying to tell and very likely risk people not finishing the story at all. Playing it halfway through and sending you messages asking where the F the gallery is! send nudes etc.

You need to have a much more interactive much seedier much more prevalent underbully that involves Mary Jane and those around her much much quicker. I mean you have a tile that says SEX SHOP and two hours into the game it still isn't unlocked?

I am genuinely worried on whether this game can succeed. I know you want it to and I have every belief that you will do everything you can do to make it do so but I don't know what you can and cannot change game engine wise and so many suggestions contradict eachother and all of them add quite a bit more work. The easiest way out is just to add a hell of a lot more porn and 90s references but I did see the cracks of a really good story being told here and I worry that those easy changes would actually change the narrative tone you were going for. Maybe not who knows.

Now go see a nurse about that burn.

Sincerely,

George