​Thrallworks; a multiversal BM Company that works in the aquisition, development and sale of 'thralls',​ sentient servants who perform a multitude of functions.

You are Instructor William Reinhold Keller, recently transferred from the Harvesting Deperatment into K-Class Thrall Development; those thralls well know throughout the multiverse.Here you're to orient your first thrall, L-D19; or as she used to be known, 'Ty Lee'...

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'Sup mah hubbos? Well I've finally made the thing! Check it out here:

tdl.itch.io/thrallworks-orientation


This is a demo for 'Thrallworks', an erotic VN where you teach thralls about their new lives and find out what makes Thrallworks tick, meeting the other staff and developing your skills as an Instructor within their web of bureaucracy and under-table dealings...

This is just the first part of the process of instructing a thrall; getting her to agree to her instruction and accepting her place. It's the most 'involved' part of the process so far as wrangling her goes and also the most Visual-Novelly.

There's a ton of CG's in there and all at 1920x1080 res, along with Thrallopedia entries for the various models of thrall you can get, with some unlockable Instructor Logs if you do a realy goob job convincing her!

In the future this is going to be converted from ren'py into Unity so I can add the features that will be approriate going forward. Expect it to be something more like Princess Maker more than Princess Trainer. I'll be posting updates about it bi-monthly, giving out free public releases as we go.

At any rate, thanks for being here and I hope you have fun! If you do, please consider supporting the project over on Patreon:

www.patreon.com/thedaili

Really can't do, and couldn't have done, any of this without y'alls support, so cheers!

If you find any bugs or other errors, feel free to message me.

Enjoy!

Okay, slowly working through the first thrall, and HOO BOY I got a lot of things to say. I don't know how long this is, but this is shaping up FANTASTIC, man. Certainly one of the most involved VN's I've ever seen, utterly FASCINATING in the amount of customization and dedication at every turn.

But it REALLY just likes to throw you in the deep end, huh.

Don't get me wrong, it's the best way to learn; I'm a Majora's Mask fan and an avid tutorial hater, I get it. But oh me oh my, Cerise's (I think that's her name) tutorial is overly-wordy, and then the first thrall just gives little indication of HOW all the stuff Cerise was talking about fits in in a practical sense. If I were to ask for anything from future builds, I'd ask for clearer "exit" buttons from the sub-menus like thrall profiles, as well as extra in-Keller's-head text boxes during the first thrall's first scene where he says "now might be a good time to take that scan" just to ease the player in a tiny bit better.

Let's put it this way: if your game's biggest struggle is tutorialization, which is a problem you see in the BIG LEAGUES of gaming, you're on the right track. Keep it UP

Everyone, I don't know if I expressed this clearly enough.

ahem...

PLAY THIS DAMN VN. NOW.

This is excellent! I've already put a few thoughts out about the game on the image post, but this is truly a superb demo. I do wonder if it would be good or helpful to have an "easy mode" where taking scans does less/no damage - Ty Lee is a very expressive character but it's hard to know what will happen or expect certain outcomes on the first run (which is the entire game at this stage). Frankly, I couldn't get through it without extensive use of Ren'py's rewind feature - maybe when it's converted to Unity there can be an option for something like that?

Also, since it's very explicitly stated in her project file that Ty Lee is taken from the events of the second season, that makes her about 14 iirc. I love the concept of the game, but perhaps there should be an option to age up or exclude underage characters? I know the hub plays a little fast and loose with that sort of stuff here (and this isn't exactly the most moral of fantasy games) but personally, it does feel a little gross to be mind-controlling minors.

Her bio says she was forcibly brought up to 18.

That it does! "Age: 18 (accelerated)". Missed that part, I was playing pretty late at night and mostly focused on the text blocks.

This is definitely a VERY compelling experience! I've only successfully completed one run on the "Trust" route thus far, but I found it quite satisfying and involving; the focus on interactivity, the willingness to build a rapport between the player and the character, makes each bit of progress you make in the story feel earned and exciting, and the art and aesthetic are great, adding perfectly to the overall atmosphere. In terms of mechanics, these are my big take-aways:
* I think you might want to provide non-diagetic instructions that the in-game instructions reinforce; as it stands, the use of in-universe terminology can sometimes render it a bit unclear what the player is trying to do and how. Having a plainer set of instructions removed from the in-game universe would probably be beneficial.
* The sound of the Triggers being activated, and the way you translate it visually to the character, is VERY effective, REALLY nicely done. I almost wish you had the ability to decide for yourself when to use it, but I suspect that's maybe one layer of complexity too many here.
* I would consider doing something to give the player a better indication of how much time they have to establish each trigger; more than once I wound up jumping at a scannable moment that I could tell from the CMS probably wasn't optimal because I was nervous I wouldn't have enough conversation left to get a better chance, only for the conversation to promptly go much longer than that.

Also, I've been trying a "Guilt" play-through, but after multiple attempts each of which used differing options, half-way through the second Trigger ("You're the worst") I get a "lol whoops" message and the game automatically concludes, giving me my scores and grade and going to credits. Is this a glitch or is that section just not properly completed yet?

But otherwise? This is seriously GREAT, and I am EXCEPTIONALLY eager to see more of it.

Thanks for the kind words all!



I've gone in and changed up the profile page button so it works; I thought I had before but yeah it seems it didn't function right.

I also did a little bit of tutorial rewriting so hopefully it's a little clearer now.



I've thought about an easy mode....but NAHHHHHH, to fail is a risk of the game! And is actually to be expected to some degree. Currently there's no 'and then' due to the nature of the demo, but as the game develops it'll show to not be the end of the world.

And yeah, as has been clarified thrallworks adapts a material's genetic age to acceptable levels on aquistion.



I may include some non-diagetic instructions, but I'm 50/50 on it. Or rather, I think I can rework things to be clear even diagetically.

As for how long the player has to take the trigger, that's again a risk but I do think it might be a thing to have Keller ruminate a little more on how much conversation remains.

I've also fixed the 'lol whoops' issue I reckon, or at least looking through the code there was only one thing I could see that was triggering it. If it happens again or similar and you think it's a bug, message me with screenshots and hopefully I can get it sorted.

And I'm glad you like the trigger effects! I too'd like to be able to use them willy-nilly but- at least for the demo- there's no reasonable way I can think of doing that without also having the conversation stream feel very unnatural.

Totally fair in both cases; it's clear the integrity of the game-world is very important to you, and indeed the way that heightens the player's sense of involvement/investment is a crucial piece of how it works, so I very much respect the intent there.


Will do, though it may be a little while until I get the chance to play again, just FYI.


Yeah, like I said I kinda figured it'd be unfeasible, so again, I definitely understand. I'll be curious to see how the triggers progress as things progress, too; even just between Ty-Lee and Cerise, there's a clear distinction in how powerful they are, what effects they have, so it'll be VERY interesting as things go further to see what other such distinctions emerge.

This is really good. I like the emphasis on triggers.

I've been enjoying it so far, but man is it tough figuring out the limits of when to lock in stuff. I really can't figure out when to hit the buttons for the second trigger without her going on the fritz on me. The furthest i've gotten is getting 3 choices during this part but this is after locking in the second trigger and each one of those choices leads to her getting "droned" or "dreamed". Any help?


Also i did run into a bug during the second trigger though i don't know if i'd be able to replicate it but sometime while locking in the second trigger, when given the choice to drone or dream, choosing the "drone" option loops the game, so you can't actually choose that option.

Just played it. Super high quality to be sure, but frankly I'm wondering how far this could possibly go before it runs into copyright violations. It's one thing to draw free fanart (which IIRC is still in copyright gray area anyways), but this already draws on so many different works, and TDL is making a profit on top of that as well.

Well I'm not selling the work itself, I'll always be releasing Thrallworks for free. And when it comes to patreon you're more just supporting me than specifically Thrallworks or the like so I think I'll be alright.



Hmm I'll have to look for that, thanks!

Heya!

Just wanted to say the Windows version of the download has it perma-stuck on "Not responding" with a white screen and the Linux version well...doesn't come with an APP file or anything you can "run"(basically has all the assets...but no game). I seem to have this as a problem, I have no idea why other people are doing fine but all I can say is I hope for a fix! Cheers!

Odd. You're running Windows 10, right?