Unfortunately, the situation hasn't changed on our end yet.

For the level, there's still some more work to be done on completing it, and for the English translation, it's as done as it can be. There might be some extra goodies too (which I don't want to spoil because xenon hasn't announced anything about it), but I don't make the call on whether it's included in this release or the next.

However, most everybody on our team is still pretty busy with RL stuff, so there's nothing we can do except wait until things are less busy.

Is there any way to get the scenes from the replay as a file, Like lets save one of the characters service or something like that. I played and liked the game but want to add the pictures to my ever growing collection. I do realize there will need to be a new image every time new text pops up so there will be many, but is there a way to save just the pictures. Like how in some games they have a rar file with just the pictures.

Worst case, you screenshot.

That said, I'll talk with the team about releasing art assets. No promises!

Thanks

Are there any cheats/ways to turn off combat in this? I remember trying this out and being somewhat turned off by the actual gameplay - I mean no offense to you or any one of the creators when I say this, because in my case, this also tends to happen with RPG Maker games and the like. I know every serious gamer will consider me a heretic for saying this, but when it comes to fetish games like this one, I like to be able to skip ahead to the mind-control as much as possible, rather than "working" for it.

No worries, that's understandable.

The only major cheat is the Cheat Amulet, available in the shop after you beat the tutorial level. If Jack, Anna, or any other unit on your side equips it, they gain invincibility and one-shot attacks.

Tip: you can equip multiple Cheat Amulets and distribute them to your brainwashed allies mid-battle. If they snap out of it and become enemies again, the amulet's effects disappear, so don't worry about dealing with invincible enemies.

You'll still have to manually "look" for all of the scenes though.

Yea it took me about 4 try's to not die in the first battle a version or 2 ago, so I understand wanting to just get the goods

I've always been sketchy on this, because it's not clear how much is actually there at the minute.

Thanks - I guess I'll have to try to get past the tutorial level, then. No joke, it's a pretty tough-as-nails experience, unless I'm doing something wrong?

[spoiler=a long meandering exploration of methods]I mean, I guess I'll explain how I do it, in case anyone has better suggestions:
We have two characters available. So using one I distract one enemy, while using the other I attack the second one.
"Hypnosis" is good for distraction, but ultimately the Fire Attack is just way more damage than the girl's pathetic knife, so I just go for "Temptation".

Issue, of course, is that during that first period where one character is distracting and the other's attacking, the non-distracted one is free to feck me up. I've managed to kill the two dudes at the start (little bug, btw: it seems like killing one triggers the event for the other three to appear at the bridge, even if the second one isn't dead yet) - I think I've been quite lucky, because the girl often managed to evade enemy attacks. What makes the process somewhat painful, as well, is that enemies can attack your character while they're doing "Temptation", but you can't attack the target of the "Temptation". Not only that, but... am I dreaming, or does "Temptation" actually heal the enemy?

Am I missing some sort of tactical action that prevents enemy characters from moving for several turns? Is the "brainwash" ability useful (the girl keeps putting herself back under, while the game tells me I should use brainwash, but I'm feeling if I use brainwash, I'll get stabbed by two enemies)?
So now I'm facing two other dudes with the same problem as before (and my "temptation" just whiffed, so I guess I'm just dead), so my tactic is the same, and hope I can evade an attack, while not missing on the temptation.

Also, is there a way to load without exiting the game? The menu has no load option that I can see, and Escape just closes it.

EDIT: 'Kay, I've just "missed" a pretty damn critical Temptation three times in a row after reloading three times (the second one I used after engaging the bridge enemies) - is this just pre-programmed to fail?
And, uh, now, doing it the other way around, my fire attack did no damage to the other dude, reloading three times? It didn't miss, or say no damage, it's like I hit him with confetti.
Guess I can celebrate though, because I just leveled up. Yay.

Aight, so fire attack does no damage anymore (after tanking about 15 total damage the turn after to try seeing if another turn would bring some sort of change, I used it again, and did confetti damage again). Is this supposed to happen?

EDIT:

Never mind, I scrolled to this comment above - it answers my questions, so I guess I'll try that.[/spoiler]

All right, I finished the damn tutorial. Main feedback about it would be:


A) It's really not clear what the "optimal strategy" is (as mentioned, I tended to gravitate towards Fire Attack, which reading your comment seems like a bad idea), but more generally speaking, it's way too unforgiving when not going for some sort of optimal strategy. This is the tutorial level my dude, not some act 1 final boss.

B) Some gameplay elements are fairly unclear in how they're treated - for instance, using "Bodyjack" drains the slave totally of HP after a single turn; but since I got no indication that it's because of Bodyjack that they're now useless, I assumed the garrison commander had somehow magically slashed my two characters at once. Not a huge deal when you do understand it, but there are a few things like that - for instance, the unclear RNG rules.

C) Speaking of Bodyjack, is there any gameplay reason why using it doesn't win you the fight? You pump up your slave, destroy her health, to... not even kill the garrison commander? She does like 10 or 11 damage on his 20 health. Then you have a useless slave, and a commander that, if you're unlucky, can still definitely kill you. It honestly seems better to be cautious about it, not use bodyjack until you can land the killing blow or something.
I understand that you want to make this challenging and try to get players to think about how they're playing it, but making Bodyjack so weak in its effect versus its actual cost is problematic to me, for a few reasons:
-For some sort of "final ultimate move", it's just ridiculously anticlimactic. If I sacrifice the life of one of my slaves, I expect to be rewarded appropriately... for instance, via the death of the enemy. Doing 10 pathetic points of damage (compared to what's already a measly usual 3 or 4 with the knife) ain't gonna cut it.
-It took me out of the "rhythm" and atmosphere of that showdown. You're prepared to win big with a big (scripted) move, and then suddenly after successfully doing it you're back to bog-standard RPG action with all its variance and RNG, minus one character.
-There is no indication of its actual effects anywhere apart from "ooh scary move, you're gonna use your slave really hard and then she's gonna die really hard"; as a result, it's all the more infuriating when it doesn't end the fight. This is related to my "unclear mechanics" criticism above: when you present options to players, you want them to be aware of what those options do. Otherwise it just adds a layer of guesswork that can be frustrating. If you tell me: this risky but very rewarding move is a great way to deal large damage, I don't expect to then have to finish off 10 or 12 more health off a final boss that has 20. And if that's going to be the case, I'd like to be forewarned, so I can plan accordingly.
-It adds another amount of RNG to a fight which really doesn't need it. If we kill the garrison commander, then that's done, it's finished. If we don't do it in one blow, then we're back to RPG fighting, with an RNG-related chance to lose after this whole scripted offer to use Bodyjack. Given the amount of RNG already present, I fail to see what some additional frustrating few dice rolls contribute to this encounter.

D) As mentioned somewhere in the long spoiler above, is there a "load" option apart from quitting the game?
EDIT: Oh, I guess the "load" is only between battles. It'd be nice if we could reload mid-battle for when strategies inevitably come apart.

This is probably going to sound a little harsh, but in my opinion this fails, or at least doesn't properly succeed with, the two main goals that I could see when implementing a tutorial level, which would be:
A) To introduce the player to the mechanics in a smooth, meaningful, and informative way;
B) To provide the player with an entry point to the game, giving them a proper taste of what's to come and "whetting their appetite".

We, the team, agree with you, TheMadPrince. The tutorial level is way too difficult and frustrating. We are fixing that up for the next beta release.

As for specific remedies, I personally think you have a lot of valid criticisms here. I'll talk with the team about them.

But to answer some of your other questions:


Yup, it heals the enemy.


This is another thing that confused me personally as well during my 1st playthrough.

As it turns out, in the second stage, the girls do not put themselves back under, so you'll need to use the Brainwash command or a Self-Induction to keep them under, or a Trigger in case they snap out of it.


Yes, there is actually. Keep on pressing the back button (right click, or whatever else you've configured) until there aren't any menus or overworld highlighting. Click on the environment (not a character), go into "Options" and enable "Load".

Good to hear! I like the basic idea of the game, hence why I think it'd be a shame if it didn't have a smooth introduction. I'll be curious to see how it gets fixed up.



Yeah, I figured it probably had more to do with later stages - although I'm sure it's on the team's to-do list, seems like the reminder to "brainwash" whenever Anna breaks free, especially on this first level where it doesn't actually matter, could be reduced or removed entirely.



Thanks, this is helpful. It might feel a little better if that option was accessible on the same "menu level" as saving, but as long as there is one that's the important part.

<<xenon3134-mc.fanbox.cc/posts/2428990|xenon says:>>

Tried out the game, and it was really nice!
I just have one complaint: why does escape close the game instead of pausing it/closing the current menu????
I lost progress more times than i can count because of that, and i couldn't find anywhere to save during the tutorial, so i had to complete most of the tutorial at least a good 8 times since i just kept closing the game :/
and speaking of closing menus, putting that key on ctrl is quite un-intuitive :/

Also, i think some text is mixed up in the character guide, like Yuria having the same text as Yuri, or Auction Slave A having the same text as Auction Slave C

Apart from that, really nice game (even if it's pretty difficult), I'm eagerly waiting for the next releases!

Glad you like the game! It's what motivated me to join the team.

We've noticed that the character guide text is messed up, and I personally think the controls are kind of unintuitive too. We'll look into fixing it for next release.

As for what you can do now, you can always go into the "game.ini" file to modify the controls yourself. Here's what I use in the keyboard section:

<<www.fanbox.cc/@xenon3134-mc/posts/2618966|Slaver's Quest Progress Report>>

There's also another preview!